Sunday, July 31, 2011

"I Want to See Mountains Again Gandalf, Mountains!"

So says Bilbo Baggins at the beginning of Peter Jackson's masterpiece The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (which may yet be enough to force this old, DVD-clutching curmudgeon to stump up for an HDTV and Blu-Ray player).

At this point in the film, Bilbo has just celebrated his 111th birthday and is preparing for one final trip. He has loved his lifetime in the Shire, with its streams, rolling hills, and villages full of friends, but he yearns for the grandeur and majesty that only the peaks can provide.

I recently acquired a glorious panorama of mountains in Norway, taken by my old friend, Antony Spencer. I'd previously thought that if given free reign in his expansive gallery, I'd probably plump for a shot of a seaside sunset, or maybe a pic of my beloved Stourhead Gardens in the heart of what my childhood friends and I call our Shire. But  when I stumbled across a photo of this white expanse (see the first photo in Antony's gallery), there was something about the peacefulness of the landscape, the stillness of the frozen lake, and the sheer scope of the topography that drew me to it at a soul level. And now when I walk through my home's entry hall and see it, I sometimes imagine myself seated in the small red cabin that sticks out in the great white expanse, with just a heating lamp and an old typewriter, picking away on my next book.

For all such pondering, I couldn't fully appreciate the reality of a mountain view until recently, as I had never been in real mountains. Then I was lucky enough to spend a week with my wife, sons and mother in law in Estes Park, Colorado. The cabin we stayed in had unobstructed, three-sided views of the Rockies. Going from the flat, drab Kansas landscape, as devoid of topographic variation as is possible, to thousands of feet of snow-capped peaks rising above the clouds is as big a contradiction for the eyes as I have yet witnessed.



As fate would have it, the weather decided to be atypically hot between 10:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m., even getting into the nineties on two days. Very Kansas-y, except the thermometer was pushing triple digits back home, and the fact that before and after that time slot, it felt like autumn outside. Is there a better start to the day than clasping a cup of hot coffee on a chilly patio, inhaling the sweet vapors of pine trees while gazing at the dawn shadows slowly shifting on the peaks, and the pink-hued clouds above?

The trip only got better once we ventured up into Rocky Mountain National Park. As my wife and I have young kids (4 and soon to be 2) we couldn't do any intense hikes, but that didn't matter - every turn, every parking area afforded a new and spectacular vista. On the short walk around Bear Lake the boys took great pleasure in throwing pebbles (or "rocks," as Harry called them) into the shimmering water. Simple pleasure for innocent hearts. The pebble throwing was a little more exciting at the tree-lined, white-peak fronting Sprague Lake, where a two-year-old moose was splashing around in the water. The park ranger on duty told us to give it some space, as "it charged a group of visitors earlier and that didn't go so well." We certainly did as we were told!



Later in the week we climbed up to Alberta Falls, the waterfall cascading down sharp boulders and spray blowing up into the air and our faces. The sheer drop off of the path reminded me of my fragility in what is essentially a wilderness (certainly compared to Kansas suburbia). That feeling of insignificance is healthy and welcome, though it increased the alertness of the risk manager side of me (not least due to the presence of small people who have no self-preservation instincts).



I could go on for a few hundred words, but in summary, let's just say that I now understand Bilbo's longing for mountains. The vastness, the permanence, the jaw-dropping views - I think of them often now that I am at home on the flat prairie. My soul felt at home in Estes, a sense of belonging that I have not experienced before. What more could one want than a family and an endless mountain playground to explore with them? And there is a definite connection between natural beauty and inspired creativity - the words of my book have flowed uninhibited since returning. Hopefully I won't have to wait until my 111th birthday to return!

Saturday, July 16, 2011

Winston Churchill on the EU

Churchill is misquoted and his quotes misrepresented (or presented completely out of context) more than any other historical figures. One topic area where his position is most widely misunderstood is European integration.

Yes, he did call for a "United States of Europe," which many Europhiles incorrectly see as justification for the EU as we know it today. However, we must look at WSC's motives behind such a proposition. First, he wished to check the spread of expansionist Communism, and knew the only way to do it was 1) a stronger "special relationship" between the British Commonwealth and the United States (as he called for at Fulton in March 1946) and 2) to rebuild Germany and reconcile her with France.

It's easy to see why Churchill's true views on Europe are hard to fathom, as he did not provide concrete plans on how European collaboration should take form. But, his most telling statement, to his aide Jock Colville in 1941, provides some clarity. Churchill told the young man that in a new European community: “while Britain might be the builder and Britain might live in the house, she would always preserve her liberty of choice and would be the natural, undisputed link with the Americas and the Commonwealth."


Unfortunately, we live in a time when Brussels is fast curtailing Britain's "liberty of choice." Perhaps Mr. Cameron's government should re-evaluate Churchill's words and use them as a launch pad to recapture the powers that have been ceded to the EU 'parliament." 

The Easiest Way to Improve Your Writing Is...

http://histsociety.blogspot.com/2011/07/acknowledging-shortcomings-as-writer.html

Thursday, July 14, 2011

Making Room for Beauty

We spend too much time focusing on the ugly in our culture: political partisanship, the latest celebrity "meltdown,"  and the fall from grace of the next disgraced politician. Most of us are (and I certainly have my moments) are also chronic complainers - about our jobs, our car that's going to cost a grand to fix, and that neighbor that leaves their car parked on the street right in our reversing path.

There's not much room among our cynicism and negativity for God-given beauty, is there?

That's why I love going to the local lake, which some would call a pond, to get out on my stand up paddle board. Mr. Laird Hamilton I am not (more's the pity!), but it's a great total body workout and, more importantly, the lake is a lovely, calm spot with no cars or concrete. I saw a heron in the flesh for the first time this week. Two actually, balanced on long spindly legs, nosing around for fish in the shallow water. I complain vigorously about the lack of natural beauty in Kansas, and yet I'm eight minutes' drive away from the sound of water playfully skipping under my board, a rainbow of wild flowers on the bank, and, of course, my new feathered friends. I should celebrate every opportunity to get out there by myself after work, or with my wife and kids at the weekend. The latter is a particular delight - the boys are unconstrained in their wonder and delight when playing on the tiny beach where we launch the boards.

I am also making an effort to bring more beauty into our home. My good friend Mr. Antony Spencer won the British Landscape Photographer of the Year in 2010, and I'm privileged to have two large prints - one of dawn light streaming through a forest onto bluebells, the other a panorama of a frozen lake in Norway - hanging in my house. I want to see the world through his eyes, to share his appreciation for the natural wonders on each of our doorsteps (a lot of his best shots are taken our home county in Dorset, England), and , most importantly, to celebrate beauty more while putting ugly out of mind.

Monday, July 11, 2011

The Lessons of Srebrenica

Today, thousands gathered in Bosnia-Herzegovina to mark the sixteenth anniversary of the massacre of 8,000 Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica. As time passes, it is all too easy to forget the horrors of this atrocity. Ratko Mladic, the general who oversaw the crime, is on trial for genocide, yet refuses to admit that he committed a crime. In fact, he showed contempt for the International Criminal Court proceedings and worse, for his victims, tipping his hat and giving the thumbs up to the gallery and even laughing as the judge spoke.

Beyond the heartless antics of a troubled man, Srebrenica holds many lessons for the rest of us. We too often reduce the crimes of the 20th century to the acts of barbarism committed by Stalin and Hitler, glazing over the slaughter of innocents in other circumstances. Yes, these dictators were evil, but malevolence is not bound by time or place - it can haunt any person, any household, any nation, if we do nothing to stop it.

For me, one of the most disturbing facets of Srebrenica is that the killings took place on the doorstep on an enclave supposedly protected by United Nations "peacekeepers." At Fulton in 1946 in what became known as the "Iron Curtain speech," but was actually entitled "The Sinews of Peace" Winston Churchill warned that the then-fledgling UN could become either a force for peace, or a Tower of Babel. He warned against "a mere frothing of words" and yet, too often, we are all to quick to verbally denounce the crimes in Bosnia, Rwanda, Darfur, and elsewhere, yet reluctant to do anything before it is too late. No, freedom-loving nations cannot 'police' every inch of the globe alone or under the UN banner, but we must act together to protect those who cannot protect themselves.

We owe it to the memories of those lost at Srebrenica. We owe it to ourselves.

Sunday, July 10, 2011

Winston Churchill on Book Writing

Ne'er a truer word spoken about the joys and perils of penning a book:


"Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with, it is a toy, then an amusement. Then it becomes a mistress, and then it becomes a master, and then a tyrant, and, in the last stage, just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster, and fling him to the public."

Winston S. Churchill

Grosvenor House, London, after receiving The Times Literary Award

November 2, 1949

For more Churchillisms (plus a wonderful section on red herrings he never uttered), buy

Churchill By Himself, The Definitive Collection of Quotations, by Finest Hour editor Richard Langworth. We share a publisher (PublicAffairs).

Wednesday, July 6, 2011

Johann Hari & Interviewing No-Nos

Johann Hari, who writes for The Independent and is a former winner of the prestigious Orwell Prize, is under fire over claims that he embellished interviews with third-party material. Is he guilty? I have no idea. But the story does raise questions over interviewing practices and journalistic ethics. To that end, I've compiled a list of interviewing no-nos, published today on the blog of The Historical Society.


Click here to read the full story


If you'd like to read my previous HS posts, click here. I welcome your comments - let's make it "iron sharpening iron."

PW