Roland Yeomans's Blog, page 117

T is for Twain

Is Mark Twain Still Relevant?

April 21, 1910 Mark Twain died.

In my historical fantasies, his death devastated his life-long friend, Samuel McCord.

The ghost of Mark Twain visits my blog so often that I should charge him rent.

Yet, does Mark Twain still  speak to us today?

 Samuel Clemens is the great poet of America's longest river, 

while his quotes on politics and human nature enjoy a constant half-life as staples among speech-makers.

 "All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn," Ernest Hemingway wrote in 1935.

Most humor does not travel well over time, 

Yet Mark Twain's humor goes to the root of human nature which never changes really. 


Mark Twain's observations on War still resonate with many of us.

  Twain’s words in the following passage have a surprisingly familiar ring 

 to what political pundits were saying in protest to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan:

 “We were to relieve them from Spanish tyranny to enable them to set up a government of their own, 

and we were to stand by and see that it got a fair trial,” wrote Twain. 

“It was not to be a government according to our ideas, 

but a government that represented the feeling of the majority of the Filipinos, a government according to Filipino ideas. 
 
That would have been a worthy mission for the United States. 

But now — 

why, we have got into a mess, 

a quagmire from which each fresh step renders the difficulty of extrication immensely greater. 

I’m sure I wish I could see what we were getting out of it, and all it means to us as a nation.”


Mark Twain also wrote a chilling piece called The War Prayer, 

illustrating how people who oppose foreign wars and government intervention are shamed into silence:

 “It was indeed a glad and gracious time,” Twain wrote, 

“and the half dozen rash spirits that ventured to disapprove of the war and cast a doubt upon its righteousness 

straightway got such a stern and angry warning that for their personal safety’s sake they quickly shrank out of sight and offended no more in that way.”


I have always been more fond of his newspaper articles, essays, lectures, and personal  letters than his fiction.


Do any of you still read Mark Twain?

S is for SEX

“My fear of abandonment is exceeded 
only by my terror of intimacy.”  - Ethlie Ann Vare


Has Casual Sex Destroyed Our Ability  To Think Beyond Ourselves ...  To Love?
Our generation centers more and more on an ever-expanding growth of technology.
Once girls wore letterman jackets of their boyfriends, 
exchanged love letters, and took long walks in the park hand in hand.
Now, lonely souls search Tinder, Facebook, and 
stare starry-eyed at tiny images on their iPhones, mistaking texting for touching.
So many of the young people you see staring intently at their smartphones are slightly dead inside, 
hollowed out by a complete lack of  real human interaction.
 Sigh.
Even talking on the phone has become foreign and uncomfortable to so many.  
We do not have conversations anymore.  
Texting is remote, less threatening, but ultimately less fulfilling.
To say "Good Bye" via Instagram is easy in all the wrong ways.
When couples meet, it is easier to let the hormones take over, 
engage in passion without purpose, 
and avoid the threat of true communication and its inherent danger of rejection of who we are as a person.
So many of us have become obsessed with the casual.  We don't want strings.
We want to drift where the currents of passion take us.
But a ship without a rudder soon becomes lost at sea.
Look at the faces of the models in the magazines:
Cool, Distant, Unobtainable
Those faces are icy.  
You could not imagine them uttering "I love you" and risk having another having power over them.
Funny.  
In this age of free sex so many are in chains of loneliness.
When you think of another person 
merely as an object with which you engage in external masturbation, 
you place your own desire for animal satisfaction above their dignity and worth as a person.
When you fail to see the humanity of another person, 
you lose a bit of your own humanity as well.
Do it enough times, 
and you become so hollow you start to ache inside without knowing why.
What Do You Think?

R is for Roland

"How rare it is to know who you are and  how you got to be there."  - Me
Who Is This Strange Man Asking These Stranger Questions?
That's me daydreaming with Midnight wondering what the heck we are doing on my terrace.
Thomas Mallon wrote in the New York Times --
Novelists’ lives are considerably less interesting than they used to be.  Longer, yes, but much drier in every sense.

He obviously has not lived my life!
* Abandoned at the age of six by my alcoholic father on the roughest street in Detroit, 
I learned over 6 weeks the true meaning of horror.
*My step-father later tried to kill me twice, jealous of the love my mother had for me.
* I ran afoul of a street gang in Lafayette, Louisiana, who were terrorizing the students from their lunch money.
Being more scared of my step-father than I was of them, 
I learned it sucked to crawl home with broken ribs, nose, and little fingers. 

* I have been forcibly evacuated twice from my city due to hurricanes destroying the town.

* I spent 3 fun-filled nights on the dark streets of New Orleans after Katrina.


*In the space of two years, I lost my last remaining childhood friend, my fiancee, my mother, and my business.
Oh, Boo Hoo, right?
   Everyone has had and is having a harder time than they appear.
Still, current theory has it that adding an author bio helps 
to connect the reader in a real way to the author.
I think the author bio gives a hint to the reader what kind of prose 
is contained in the novel if the reader turns to it first.
So this is the bio I add at the end of all my novels to say HI and tip my Stetson to browsers:


Roland Yeomans was born in Detroit, Michigan.   
But his last memories of that city are hub-caps and kneecaps since, at the age of seven, he followed the free food when his parents moved to Lafayette, Louisiana.   
The hitch-hiking after their speeding car from state to state was a real adventure. 
 Once in Louisiana, Roland learned strange new ways of pronouncing David and Richard when they were last names.  
And it was not a pleasant sight when he pronounced Comeaux for the first time.

He has a Bachelor’s degree in English Education and a Master’s degree in Psychology.   
He has been a teacher, counselor, book store owner, and even a pirate since he once worked at a tax preparation firm.
Now, he runs the roads delivering rare blood to ill patients.
So far he has written forty books.   
You can find Roland at his web page: www.rolandyeomans.blogspot.com  
  or at his private table in Meilori’s.   
The web page is safer to visit.  But if you insist on visiting Meilori’s, bring a friend who runs slower than you.

Just Wondering:
Do You Add An Author Bio To Your Novels? 

Q is for Quotes

“He wrapped himself in quotations -  as a beggar would enfold himself  in the purple of Emperors.” - Rudyard Kipling 

WHY ARE WE DRAWN TO
QUOTES?

My best friend, Sandra, is still battling cancer.
Reading a volume of quotations is perfect for her as her mind struggles with the pain and medication.
A quote is short enough to grasp, yet often insightful enough to provide her food for diverting thought.
No one quote is read and digested the same way by different readers.
Every reader, as she or he reads, is actually the reader of herself.
The writer's work is only a kind of mental lens he provides the reader 
so he or she can discern what she might never have seen in herself without the book. 
The reader's recognition in himself of what the book says is the proof of the book's or quote's truth. 
Take Ophelia in Hamlet:
"We know what we are but not what we may be."
What does that say to you?
  Or listen to Emily Dickinson:
"The brain is wider than the sky."
In our minds we can travel instantly to anywhere in the universe without boarding the Enterprise.

Speaking from experience, Einstein wrote:
"Great spirits have often overcome  the opposition of mediocre minds."
What helps you keep true to your vision in the face of opposition? 

Decades before Einstein, Abraham Lincoln wrote:
"I am not bound to succeed,  but I am bound to live up  to what light I have."   Do you agree?  Why?  Why not? 

Mark Twain echoed those thoughts with his:
"The two greatest days of your life are the day you were born --  and the day you discover why."

Thousands of years earlier, Heraclitus wrote:
"Much learning does not teach understanding."

Do you have any  favorite quotes?  
What are they? 

P is for PEACE and WEP

"They dress the wound of my people  as though it were not serious.  'Peace, peace,' they say, when there is no peace." - Jeremiah
Where Can You Find Peace In A Dark World?
I will let my avatar, Samuel McCord, answer that question from a bit of French Quarter Nocturne.
 His arch-nemesis, DayStar, has come for him in his darkened club, Meilori's.
Not just to kill him but to destroy what little remains of his soul. 

 (564 words)

Out of the blackness a voice, like the tolling of bronze bells far off in the desert, spoke, "You have interfered one time too many."
"Been said before."
"Not by me."
The half-moon peeked out from behind a cloud and for a flicker of an instant I caught two gray eyes studying me.   
Deep, gray eyes that seemed to look inward as well as outward.  Eyes that appeared to burn with cold fires. 
The darkness grew denser around me.    "I went to some effort to bring Katrina to New Orleans only to veer away, building up hopes of escape, and then have my carefully constructed levees collapse in the fashion I wished.  Such despair and death.  It was delightful." DayStar took two steps towards me.  "But then, you had to interfere." He sat down in the plush leather chair opposite me and neatly arranged his clothes. "Armani if you are wondering, talking monkey." "Only the very best for the very worst." He laughed as if I mattered.  I smiled back as if I gave a damn.  We both weren't fooled.   I asked, "Don't you have a government to topple, a politician to corrupt?" "All in good time, Samuel.  All in good time.  In fact, I am having a marvelous time right now with the opportunities still afforded me by Katrina.   Whispers to bruised egos to insure one agency will ignore another.  Stroking of inflamed pride to keep insufficient mouths from asking for help until it is too late.  Suggesting of shallow men for pivotal positions.   All so simple, so enjoyable, so effective.  Government agencies are such great fun to play like puppets.  And the nature of human nature makes it laughingly easy."
His voice lowered until I had to strain to hear it.  "And the helpless die." I barely made out the flutter of his long fingers.  A dim flicker of images swirled before my eyes.  An old woman clutching a small child as the rising waters threatened to swallow them.  A faint mewing came from the young girl. "G-Grandma, I'm ... I'm scared.  Awful sc-scared." "There, there, honey.  I'm right here.  I got you safe in my arms." I watched the woman hug her granddaughter as the waters steadily rose, saw the shivering girl clutch back as if onto a lifeline.   My fingers became fists in the effort it took me to keep on watching as the dark waters crept up their chests, nibbled at their chins.  I forced myself to keep on watching their thrashing about as the waters choked them, then smothered them to finally rise to the ceiling.  It took them much too long to finally die.  I felt DayStar's eyes on me.  I ignored him.  All I seemed able to see was the trail of bubbles shorten, then stop as their bodies slowly became loose and limp.  But somehow the grandmother's arms still held onto the small girl.  All became black once more.  And DayStar laughed as if at the funniest joke in the world. "Tell me, Samuel, where was your invisible man in the sky in all that?" His question echoed my own.  But I would be damned if I gave him the satisfaction of admitting it.  I reached into the bruised shadows of my mind for a truth I could say with a straight face and forced my throat to work.  "In the arms of that grandmother." 
Where Is Peace In This Dark World?
In The Arms of Love That Refuse to Let Go.

O is for OBSOLETE

"Compassion has become an  obsolete madness in the modern world."  - DayStar
Has This Become A Culture of Obsolescence? 
I am ancient enough to remember being taught how to use the slide rule in grade school.
I kept my old school one on my writing desk until my home burned down to remind me how quickly life changes.
Can you recall the Palm Pilot?
Dial-Up Internet?
Getting Film Developed?
Movie Rental Stores?
Road Maps?
The Land Line?
Public Pay Phones?
VCR's?
Dictionaries, Encyclopedias, Phone Books?
CD's?
Record Stores?
Mailed Letters?
All of the above have become obsolete in the past decade.
What Do You Think Will Become Obsolete in the Next Decade?

N is for NEWS

“A nation of sheep will beget  a government of wolves.” - Edward R. Murrow
***
"Just because a sentence isn't a lie doesn't mean it isn't deceptive."  - Mark Twain

Do You Still Believe The News? 
According to the latest Gallup Poll only 32% sincerely trust the news.
But you ask: 
Can I trust that Gallup Po ll?
which pretty much says it all, right?
In fact, that same poll says that only 32% of Americans 
have any faith at all in the 14 major institutions that make up America. 
That disillusionment helps explains why so many voted for Trump --
in that he was outside the system.
But then, the fox is outside the hen house, too.
Do You Trust The News Anymore?

WHAT IS EASTER TO YOU?

Chocolate eggs and bunnies fill the shops.

Hollywood blockbusters fill TV schedules.

But try to find a religious card and you will be busy until Christmas.

Many people do not know the story of Easter and many others believe in the paranormal more than in God.

The idea of Jesus is challenging to many. 
Say you believe He rose from the dead after having been asked in a secular situation,

and you can expect condescending smiles.

I was yelled at and spit upon at the science fiction club I belonged to last month

When I mentioned my worldview in relation to the movie, ARRIVAL. 

To encounter Jesus is existentially challenging. It can be scary and uncomfortable.  



It is much safer in today's society to say you are an atheist.

I love munching on chocolate bunnies

and hiding colored eggs for the children to hunt for as much as the next guy.

But on Martin Luther King's Birthday, I like to think on the man and what he represented and what it cost him.

Likewise the same with Jesus on Christmas and Easter.



Did you know the word “Easter” doesn’t have anything to do with the Christian celebration?

It is derived from the name of a German deity, Estre or Ostra.

She was the goddess of the rising sun and spring, and was celebrated in springtime festivals.

Bunnies represent fertility and are associated with the re-awakening of the land in springtime.

Bunnies were first associated with Easter celebrations in the 1500s,

and by the early 1800s, German bakers were selling Easter bunnies made from chocolate and pastry.

The tradition of the Easter Bunny bringing gifts to children Easter morning is also from Germany, where he was known as Oschter Haws.

Initially, the bunny left his treats in a nest made for him by children.

 Later, the tradition merged with the notion of the Easter basket.

Most people who walk beside you on the street or drive past you on the highway are not religious.

They doubt that a historical Jesus even existed. 

If a religious teacher did offend the powers-that-be 2000 years ago and get himself executed, it means less than nothing to them.

They will shake their head at you in scorn if you ask them if they believe Jesus rose from the dead.

The Apostle Paul wrote about the importance of the resurrection in his letter to the Corinthians:

"If Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith… if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins.”

You see, long ago we broke the terms to our lease on Eden.  We got evicted.  Jesus paid the back rent and rose from the dead as concrete proof that He had done it.

Still, Easter holds a significant message for us all, religious or not.

It's a message of hope and reconciliation.

"Jesus Christ risen from the dead."

there is life after death but more than that it's the possibility of forgiveness and a new start.



WHAT DO YOU THINK?

M is for MEMORY

“Sometimes I think the things I remember  are more real than the things I see. ” - Arthur Golden
How Accurate Is Memory? 

Not very ... as attorneys know.   
Eye Witness accounts vary enormously right after the fact.
Weeks later it is worse.
30% of witnesses are wrong about what they truly believe happened as proven by video records.
Our memories can change even if we are unaware ... 
which has led many juries to judge a witness a liar if his  testimony changes in some detail. 
Recent research reveals that our memories are constantly being re-written by our minds.  
This bit of data emerges from one of the most exciting and controversial recent findings in neuroscience:
 that we alter our memories just by remembering them.
Remember your childhood fondly?
The very colors you remember your room could easily be proven to be different than the truth ...
as some comparisons with memory and old photographs attest.  
What Does Your Earliest Memory Say About You?
 Where you are at the moment emotionally may shift your earliest memory accordingly. 
The extent to which an experience is understood in a meaningful way 
affects the likelihood that it will be incorporated into our recorded memories.
I recall a vivid memory from preschool when I was 3 or 4: 
A man in a business suit came to talk to the class. 
As he spoke, he slowly changed clothing, 
adding piece by piece of his Native American garb until he stood before us as a chief in full Onondaga dress. 
He made the point of the lesson clear, reminding us that he was the same man dressed in either outfit. 
As an adult, I believe that this striking childhood memory 
birthed my belief we should strive to keep from judging by appearance. 
What Is Your Earliest Memory?
What Do You  Think It Says of You?
 

L is for LOST

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00FPFOJNO It’s enough to be in stark places like the Badlands,  to be alone awhile in a place  where all I can hear is the lonely wind blowing,  where all I can see is the earth  stretching all around me  into the far distant mountains.  I look up into the wide embrace of the endless night.  Life sings to me again,  and I know I am not lost. 
 ***
Is Every Generation a Lost Generation?
In A Moveable Feast, published after Hemingway's and Gertrude Stein's deaths, 
Hemingway claims that Stein heard the phrase from a garage owner who serviced Stein's car. 
When a young mechanic failed to repair the car quickly enough, the garage owner shouted at the boy, 
"You are all a "génération perdue." 
Stein, in telling Hemingway the story, added, 
"That is what you are. That's what you all are ... 
all of you young people who served in the war. 
You are a lost generation."
'Lost means not vanished 
but disoriented, wandering, directionless—
a recognition that there was great confusion and aimlessness 
among the war's survivors in the early post-war years.
But look around you.
Do you not see in the eyes of those around you confusion and aimlessness?
No matter the era, photos from those times reveal "lost" eyes of not just the young
but the old as well.
Look at history:
those in power in whatever form seem to have lost their moral compass.
What Do You Think?