Monthly Archives: August 2015

In This Corner

Vendetta
As the smoke filled Windy Bay on Lake Coeur d’ Alene this week, allergies, the likes of which I have not yet experienced, came along with it. It soon became clear that going outside made the condition about a thousand times worse, and that my best bet was to stay indoors with the doors shut. Along with the continuing work on my novel in progress, I sought escape in the pages of Vendetta: Bobby Kennedy Versus Jimmy Hoffa, by James Neff. While fiction fills most of my days, I switch to non-fiction often. I am drawn to history and the history of the sixties and seventies, has always been of particular fascination. For one thing, the period is dramatic, and for another, I have been intrigued by the players.

Going back to why Vendetta became the recipient of my one-click shopping on Amazon, I liked the idea that it was written by the Pulitzer Prize winning investigations editor of the Seattle Times. Reading the reviews, I was struck by the fact that Neff chose to give a balanced approach to the subject. Never in a million years did I imagine I would have one scintilla of empathy for Jimmy Hoffa. My knowledge of him was somewhat limited, and I thought of him as a thug who harassed the Kennedy home at Hickory Hill by having his teamsters drive by the house at all hours.

Robert F. Kennedy, on the other hand, always had my affection and admiration. Having read his own words, as well as the accounts of others, I never accepted the negative adjectives applied to him. Authors have sometimes launched into the tales of the good Bobby, or the bad Bobby, but Neff resisted that trap. Who among us could not be described in those terms? Robert Kennedy and His Times, by Arthur Schlesinger, Robert Kennedy: His Life by Evan Thomas, and Robert Kennedy in His Own Words: The Unpublished Recollections of the Kennedy Years, and last, but certainly not least, Thirteen Days, by Robert F. Kennedy, are among my personal favorites. Vendetta is written with careful attention to detail, and an absolutely thorough look at the motives that drove both men. So reading of Hoffa’s tough upbringing, his ability to connect with people, and his drive to pull himself and his family up by the bootstraps, humanizes him. Seeing the full weight of the Justice Department, absolutely determined to get him, made me cringe a little. On the other hand, his heavy hand was patently evident, and I, too, thought justice would be in order. Reading this book, reminded me of a boxing match with Kennedy in one corner and Hoffa in another.

Rorbert F. Kennedy

It is almost incomprehensible to me to learn that J. Edgar Hoover had an almost hands off approach to organized crime. He was interested in pursuing communists, and the mafia, in retrospect, looked back those times as golden. Picturing the characters swirling around the courtrooms and halls of F.B.I headquarters, I felt I could almost smell the cigarette smoke, and that the picture in my mind seemed black and white. Yet the reader knows the clock is ticking. Time waits for no man. Suddenly it is November in 1963, and we all know what happens next. We know that Hoover will deliver the news to R.F.K. in a chilling and entirely dispassionate tone. President Kennedy once said that in politics one does not have friends, just allies.

Thirteen Days

We are so inundated by tales of good guys and bad guys that a balanced account is almost foreign. We live in a time where the news of the day is so unbalanced that as a nation, we are living in dueling realities. Therefore, Neff is to be admired for his account of a man of privilege setting out to do some good in this old world against a guy who wanted more out of life than the world he saw around him.

The review that sold me on this book came from Erik Larson:

“From the violence of its gripping opening to the sorrow of its close, this is an astonishing and eye-opening account of the vendetta- obsessive, intigue-filled, hatred-tinged-that pitted Robert F. Kennedy against Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa, and nearly consumed them both. Amazing stuff, really-a triumph of investigation and revelation.”

The Trough Between the Waves

young finnegan

When we watch surf competitions on television, we see the waves from a distance. Despite great advances in technology to bring us ever closer, we cannot see what the surfer sees when looking up. A great writer can take the reader by the hand. Therefore, if you pick up Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life, by William Finnegan, be prepared to see the sport in a new and piercing light.

Having married a surfer, and having just crossed the thirty-seven- year mark, I can report that most people have the wrong idea about this breed. Based on silly movies, whose makers insisted on dopey characters, the mettle of the man who accepts the challenge of surfing had not been fully articulated. Not until now. If you love a surfer, you simply must give that person this book.

William Finnegan, a staff writer at The New Yorker, and esteemed journalist, has created a memoir that I venture to state will never be surpassed. The time he covers, from his youth in Southern California, to Hawaii and then to the spots around the world that where the best breaks can be found, will not come again. With the Beach Boys and the Gidget movies, even girls growing up in Toronto, Ontario, were pea green with envy about the surf culture of California.

It was a different story when I tried to take up the sport myself. A wave of four feet in height appeared enormous from the trough and been thrashed by one feels like an entirely bad idea once you are under the overhead washing machine. I decided to stick with my love of swimming and remain close to shore. I learned a lot about the culture in my salad days while I hung out on the beaches of San Diego and listened to tales of daring. Having grown up surrounded by the world of hockey, I knew about toughness, I knew about courage, and I knew all too much about hero worship. The flaky, airhead hapless teen, so often featured as part of the culture, bore no bearing on the guys I knew. To me, they were every bit as gutsy, fearless and brilliant as any men I had ever met. Hockey players, off-ice, in my experience, at least, were full of fun, gallant, sweet, kind and nice. Surfers were mercurial, often silent, cold and distant. We could jolly them along, and our friends were full of wonderful humor, but I noticed the younger surfers, the ‘grommets’ who followed them around were too afraid to say a word.

We listened to endless descriptions of breaks, rights, lefts, gnarly, mushy waves, closed out waves, glassy days, and every nuanced condition at Scripps, Wind and Sea or Blacks in La Jolla. I enjoyed every minute of these tales because the ocean is a dangerous mistress. Nothing, and I mean nothing, would come between these guys and their first love. This is the world Finnegan describes with such expertise and beauty that I felt transported. A big wave rider, he impressed me to my toes. I could picture every wave perfectly, and the line he constantly pushed between the wave that could kill you and the wave that could make you weep makes this the best adventure story I have ever read.

Finnegan surfing

I could gush on and on, and readers will have to forgive my fangirling here. Ever since I first saw those big wave surfers on Wide World of Sports, all those years ago in Toronto, I have known that surfers are men of exceptional courage. Mid-way through Barbarian Days, I knew we were going to hit surfer depression land at any moment. It is present in every surf movie, for the time will come when decisions have to be made, and comprises will be required. Dilemmas common to all risk-takers will be staring them in the face. The balance is as tricky as the ride itself, yet it can be done. As a reader, we pull for Finnegan through every phase of his life.

 Barbarian Days

From Page 360

“The takeoff was huge, clean open face, not breaking exceptionally hard, and the wall seemed to hold up reasonably, with no catastrophic sections, all the way down the point. Eventually, Peter caught a wave. With a shout, he jumped to his feet, rode over the ledge, and disappeared for what felt like a very long time. I thought I saw his track once down the line, but I wasn’t sure. Then he came flying over the shoulder far, far inside with arms raised. He came back raving. It was doable, he said. It was insane. I moved over, into the lineup, heart thudding, and caught a couple. The takeoffs were giddy, almost nauseating, but not overly steep. The rides were long and swooping, the blue walls like great stretched canvasses. Each of my rides ended with a safe, gliding pullout somewhere down on the boat ramp. I was very glad I was on my gun…”

People smiled when I said I was dating a surfer. Some of my friends said with disdain, “Oh Liz.” Lots of people thought our marriage would flame out. Everyone waited for me to return to my senses. Not so my grandfather, the consummate hockey man, a war hero who judged everyone by their toughness. He had utter contempt for a lot of the men my sisters and cousins dated. My husband came through unscathed. It was decided all at once. He passed.

Hero worship, plain and simple. Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life tops every chart I have to top. Take this book to the beach.

How Did I Get Here?

Sunrise wits end

Do you ever ask yourself that question? This query need not be existential in theory; I refer rather to one’s geographical location. Windy Bay, Lake Coeur d’Alene is our present home.

When I reached the age of seven, I was sent Canoe Lake, in Algonquin Park, Ontario to attend summer camp for the month of July. I had been waiting desperately for the big event. My older siblings had all gone off ahead of me, and I could not wait for my turn. While my mother fretted about me being so young my father had utmost confidence in me. As a camper in training, I swam my three hundred yard requirement with him in the cold waters of Lake Joseph where we kept our summer home. On my first day at camp, I dove in confidently, assuring everyone in sundry that I could do it. In fact, I had already done it that morning at the crack of dawn. I took to camp like a duck to water and loved every minute. The first night, the camp director’s husband, Dr. Harry Ebbs, came to talk to us, and give us a bedtime story. He wanted to tell us about trees. He took us out- a little gaggle of girls in baby doll pajamas with flannel robes wrapped around us and flip flops on our feet, for a brief walk in the woods. He had something to show us. We looked at a beautiful assortment of saplings of birch and fir, protected by buildings on three sides. Next, we walked the length of the island to see an amazing pine jutting straight out over the water with roots clutching to the bare rock. Which trees had the greatest chance of survival, he asked? We thought the protected ones would fare the best, and all chimed in that the trees behind the lodge would have the best chance. He surprised us all by telling us that we were wrong. The dramatic pine, bent by storms and seeming to be facing the greatest of challenges would fare the best. Why? He told us that the saplings were vulnerable because of their protection. They did not have to develop deep roots. A squall could topple them, but the tree that fought for every square inch of its territory had developed the roots to endure. He then added that our parents had sent us to camp in order to develop our roots.

A few nights later we trooped into the lodge, a great building designed for dramatic events, to see a film about the voyageurs, the hearty fur traders who explored the lakes and rivers of Canada. My hair stood on end. They sang as they paddled, and this old film re-enacting their journeys featured a map showing us how far they traveled. The next day we went out to learn how to weave, and I endeavored to make a voyageur belt, a long affair that wrapped around the waist twice and ended in a fringe. Perhaps it was the sight of me in that belt that I would not take off, or perhaps it was my love of camp, or perhaps it was something in my nature that led my dad to call me la fille du bois. We did not speak French in our home, so he explained that it meant girl of the woods.

Years later, when living in Sacramento, California and contemplating our future, we planned a trip north to visit relatives in British Colombia. I had often begged to drive through Idaho as I had been curious after reading Ernest Hemingway. A more direct route was always favored until a fortuitous offer of free accommodation near Rathdrum changed the route. Looking at a map in my father-in-law’s fantastic atlas, I saw the French names of the lakes in North Idaho. That prickly, funny feeling crept across my scalp and into my heart. I knew there could only be one reason: the voyageurs. So we drove up with our kids in the backseat of the old Subaru station wagon full of excitement. We were heading north from Moscow when I saw a sign depicting a boat launch.

“Turn!” I yelled. “Turn! This must be Lake Coeur d’Alene!” We drove down to Sun Up Bay. “It’s great!” I screamed. When we got back in the car, we carried along the upper part of the road until we came to a stop sign. We could not proceed, due to its designation as private.  We stopped to admire the view which by the strangest of all co-incidences, is where we live right now.

CIMG2864

More years later, I took an interesting journey with ancestry.com following the line of my paternal grandfather, James Gaudette, a man I never had the privilege of knowing. I was astounded to learn that records kept leading me back in time all the way to 1635 when the family arrived in Port Royal, the first settlement in Acadia, now Nova Scotia.

Astoria

This summer I read Peter Stark’s, Astoria. Once again, I thrilled over tales of the voyageurs. Peter Stark maintains that many of them had been trapping all through the eighteenth century, originating from Port Royal. Sources of the River, Tracking David Thompson Across North America, by Jack Nisbet, is another excellent tale of unbelievable tenacity in the face of boundless wilderness. It was on that first trip to North Idaho that I read a roadside marker depicting Thompson’s journey. Perplexed, I thought, this can’t be the same David Thompson. I knew him from the old camp movie, for it was he who first mapped Canoe Lake and Lake Joseph in Ontario. Yet it was. I often tell people that it is possible to travel from Montreal to Lake Coeur d’ Alene by canoe and portage. I get a very blank and confused expression in return. David Hackett Fischer’s, Champlain’s Dream, is a detailed and masterfully written book depicting the founding of French Canada. He, too, was a great explorer. In reading Astoria, I learned of John Jacob Astor’s failed attempt at founding a colony in the Pacific Northwest. The idea was to establish a sea route from New York, to Hawaii, to Astoria, in what is now Oregon, to China and from there to London, and again to New York. The overland route from New York to Astoria would be established through the United States. The grand scheme became an epic and legendary disaster. Why do some colonies flourish while others fail? What was the difference between Port Royal, and Jamestown or Astoria? It is a fascinating question well worth exploring. In Astoria, terrible decisions were made on the overland route. The leaders kept going back to Astor’s dictates while the men of the Northwest Trading Company, the voyageurs used their instincts and ability to rely on the wisdom of the ages. Gleaned from the natives who had been here since time immemorial, they learned established canoe routes, and questioned dictates to boldly go where no man had gone before.

Champlain

How did I get here? Perhaps I followed my heart. I could have followed it right to Lake Coeur d’ Alene. Was it my destiny? That I cannot answer. I do know this, however. I have never been sorry. Not for one single minute. Our children grew to love and cherish this land. Every time I call the Coeur d’ Alene Casino, I am greeted with these words: Welcome Home.

A Bird in the Hand

helen-macdonald

I first heard about H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald when I learned it was a number one bestseller in the United Kingdom. Not knowing much about falconry, I thought I would order the book and take a look. I was not prepared to be utterly stunned by Macdonald’s deft craftsmanship. Her powers of description kept stopping me in my tracks. I would read a page or two and then pause; it was as if I needed time to digest the imagery.

H is for Hawk

It is after the terrible and sudden loss of her father that Macdonald decides to tackle the enormous challenge of adopting and training the fierce and unruly goshawk. The bird of prey she names Mabel isn’t having any part of it at first. What drew me into the story was the battle between a wild creature’s desire to be free, and a woman hurting and alone who accepts the challenge unflinchingly. Turning to the writing of T.H.White’s who in The Goshawk, describes his own triumphs and defeats, we learn about the level of patience the practice of falconry demands. Macdonald’s father taught her to be patient, and in accepting the challenge of taming Mabel, it is as if she has something to prove. It is her desire to show her father that she had not forgotten either his lessons, or the man himself, that drives her and compels her to persevere in the face of many cuts, bruises, frights and frustration. I imagine anyone in the throws of grief attempts to describe the experience, but I am at a loss to recall anyone as capable of getting to all the nuances better than Helen Macdonald.

“And it wasn’t until we were standing on Queenstown Road Station, on an unfamiliar platform under a white wooden canopy, wasn’t until we were walking towards the exit, that I realized, for the first time, that I would never see my father again.
Ever. I stopped dead. And I shouted. I called out loud for him. Dad. And then the word No came out in one long, collapsing howl. My brother and my mother put their arms around me, and I them. Brute fact. I would never speak to him again. I would never see him again. We clung to each other crying for Dad, the man we loved, the quiet man in a suit with a camera on his shoulder, who had set out each day in search of things that were new, who had captured the courses of the stars and storms and streets and politicians, who had stopped time by making pictures of the movings of the world. My father, who had gone out to photograph storm-damaged buildings in Battersea, on that night when the world had visited him with damage and his heart had given way.” Page 106

There are aspects of Mabel’s moods that mirror the wild panic grief can impose.

On the back jacket sleeve of H is for Hawk I read that Helen Macdonald is “a writer, poet, illustrator, historian, naturalist, and an affiliated research scholar at the department of history and philosophy of science at the University of Cambridge.

Macdonald uses her poet’s skill, combined with her naturalist’s eye to craft passages of the most beautiful description I have read in years.

“It’s turned cold: cold so that saucers of ice lie in the mud, blank and crazed as antique porcelain. Cold so the hedges are alive with Baltic blackbirds; so cold that each breath hangs like parceled sea fog in the air. The blue sky rings with it, and the bell on Mabel’s tail is dimmed with condensation. Cold, cold, cold. My feet crack the ice in the mud as I trudge uphill. And because the squeaks and grinding harmonics of fracturing ice sound to Mabel like a wounded animal, every step I take is met with a convulsive clench of her toes. Where the world isn’t white with frost, it’s stripped green and brown in strong sunlight, so the land is particoloured and snapping backward to dawn and forwards to dusk. The days now are a bare six hours long.” Pge 242
Our house on Lake Coeur d’ Alene is a lofty perch from which we view an endless array of hawks, ravens, eagles and osprey. They are mesmerizing. A visiting friend whose conversation had drifted off as he watched a circling hawk asked me this question: “How do you get anything done?”
“I don’t,” I answered.

This week the whole world has been sickened by the death of a favored lion named Cecil. More ghastly pictures come across our screen. The President of the United States has stated that something must be done about climate change. We can no longer do nothing while the delicate balance of our beautiful world is disrupted. The west is burning up. The Cape Horn Fire in Bayview, Idaho, a place I revere, ravaged swaths of a mountain forest. The scarred woods are eerily quiet. Even the yellow jackets have moved on. We are not aware of the gentle cacophony of life until we stand in the wasteland. We need our poets more now than ever. We need naturalists and writer’s who can give voice to our plight. H is for Hawk is much more than a pleasant summer interlude; it is a screech in a particular moment in time.