Elvis

It was a slow Sunday afternoon when some friends called up to see if we wanted to go to our small towns first of the summer community concert in the park that night.  Friends and neighbors would be around and a little culture wouldn’t hurt so it was “why not”.  It turned out to be Elvis…..

Brad Boice from nearby Harmony, Minnesota (naturally) was the star attraction that night. I had never heard of him but my wife knew the family name having taught some of his cousins in high school.  The story goes the Brad and some friends went to an Elvis impersonator show in Stewartville, Minn. One of his friends was unimpressed by the two Elvis wannabes and encouraged Boice to get up and sing. The other two had jumpsuits, but Boice had his voice. “I ended up getting a better reaction,” Boice said.

Boice, saw it as an opportunity to get back into music. The Harmony, Minn., native had sung with hard rock band Gemini from 1979 to 1987. Gemini would throw in a little Elvis between songs by Ratt and Mötley Crüe. After he got married and had kids, it was harder to find time for music.

Boice has always loved music. He has sung with his church choir and played tuba with the Chatfield Brass Band.  These days, Boice concentrates on Elvis. He watches old concert footage to capture the King’s signature moves. He listens to old recordings, trying to emulate his voice.  Boice has won many Elvis contests and performed throughout the tri-state area.  He has even starred on several Caribbean Cruise ships.

All in all it was a fun evening listening to Elvis.  It wasn’t Los Vegas but I guess I got some “culture.”….:)

 

A Love Affair with Birds

I came late to birding in my life after having giving up upland game hunting due to a defunct knee.  After an introduction to this new hobby by a good friend,  I also thought it was  an excellent opportunity to  take my big GSD for long hikes in the countryside.  And so it all began.

Now I even look for books on the subject.  A case in point is a wonderful new biography by Sue Leaf titled A  Love Affair With Birds.  I clearly remember my first successful outings in the 1960’s hunting pheasants, ruffed grouse and ducks.

 That’s approximately  how Dr. Thomas Sadler Roberts, one hundred years earlier had done his work;  gun and then, later, camera in hand,  he traveled  the state observing, collecting and describing birds and then finally writing, ” The Birds of Minnesota.” That two-volume set, published in 1932, is still considered the seminal and  definitive account of the state’s wild avian population.

 Sue Leafs biography of Roberts,    based on her nearly five years of research and interviews, describe him as a workaholic.  He kept his Minneapolis medical practice going, which included delivering lots of babies and using any spare time to do his birding.

 Roberts quit his medical practice at age 57 so he could devote more time to ornithology, although as Leaf points out, he never described himself as an ornithologist, instead calling himself a retired doctor.

 He became the first professor of ornithology (an unpaid position) at the University of Minnesota and helped create what would become the U’s Bell Museum of Natural History and devoted himself to educating aspiring classroom teachers about birds.

 Leaf’s book describes how this son of a privileged family from Philadelphia made Minnesota his home and excelled at medicine and ornithology at a time when the state was a magnet for white settlement and commercial development that altered the natural landscape that Roberts treasured.

Thomas Sadler Roberts, gone now for nearly 70 years, left a legacy of appreciation for our state’s natural history and bird life.

Anyone with an interest in birds, Minnesota’s natural history and learning about the fascinating  life of a singular doctor, author, curator, educator, conservationist and bird enthusiast will find this book a rare treat. If there is any downer at all to reading this great biography it is this – there is a sadness to being taken back in Minnesota’s history to a time when the passenger pigeon  still flew in our skies and other birds, now very rare or not seen at all,  were a common sight….

 

 

Caesar: Life of a Colossus

I do love the histories and drama of the classical world. Shakespeare, George Bernard Shaw, Robert Graves and many others have mined this era for its achievements and tragedies.  A strong sense of drama also sustains Adrian Goldsworthy’s  Caesar: Life of a Colossus.

Shakespeare’s dictator is a mere wisp of the man in Goldsworthy’s captivating biography. Caesar was born in 100 B.C. (though almost certainly not through the medical procedure that bears his name) into patrician privilege and violent times.

Goldsworthy, an independent military historian with several books on the Roman army to his credit, puts Caesar’s war exploits on full display, along with his literary genius. Contemporaries immediately recognized the general’s “Commentaries on the Gallic War” as a masterpiece, and Goldsworthy compares their style to Churchill’s, even if “the modern reader may sometimes balk” at its “catalog of unabashed imperialism, massacre, mass execution and enslavement” in a province that included most of modern France.  The result is an authoritative and exciting portrait not only of Caesar but of the complex society in which he lived.

Goldsworthy covers not only Caesars accomplishments as charismatic orator, conquering general, and powerful dictator but also lesser-known chapters during which he was high priest of an exotic cult, captive of pirates, seducer not only of Cleopatra but also of the wives of his two main political rivals, and rebel condemned by his own country. Ultimately, Goldsworthy realizes the full complexity of Caesar’s character and shows why his political and military leadership continues to resonate some two thousand years later.

Rare Photos Of Celebrities

The Troutbirders are taking a computer skills class and Yoga  all morning for two weeks. Plus, I'm reading The Life of Caesar , a rather thick book,  and then there are the usual spring yard chores. Needless to say I'm behind on my book reviews. In the meantime,  here is an interesting link from my cousin Terry in Idaho....  Which picture did you find especially interesting?

http://www.slideshare.net/guimera/rare-photos-of-celebrities

Gratitude

https://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?feature=player_embedded&v=nj2ofrX7jAk

Last Words

 

 

The World Turned Upside Down

“Listen to me and you shall hear, news hath not been this thousand year:

Since Herod, Caesar, and many more, you never heard the like before.

Holy-dayes are despis'd, new fashions are devis'd.

Old Christmas is kicked out of Tow

Yet let's be content, and the times lament, you see the world turn'd upside down.”

 Oliver Cromwell had banned the old Christmas celebrations at the end of the English Civil War as being too frivolous. The opening lines of a then popular ditty set the tone of protest against this religious fanaticism. Later, some say, the same song was played at another type of ceremony in a small, almost destroyed town, in the New World - Yorktown Virginia.

A British army was trapped and bombarded to distraction by American and French land and naval forces. In spite of victory after victory by the British, the Americans would not give up their struggle for Independence. Now the time had come for the Redcoat army to pay the piper.

A young man had been Washington's aide de camp for years. He yearned to lead men into battle. Finally he got his chance. Here pictured Alexander Hamilton Troutbirder leads the charge against British redoubt #10 in a daring nighttime attack. (Photo by Mrs. T.)

 

Unable to avoid destruction or escape, Lord Cornwallis surrendered his army. Except for Canada, the sun sets on the British Empire in North America.

 

It is said when the surrender ceremony takes place, the British army band plays an old song called The World Turned Upside Down. Don't just read history. Live it! Well..... at least in your imagination.

A favorite book of Troutbirders is: - Washington: The Indispensable Man by James Thomas Flexner. It is one of the greatest biographies in American literature.

42

 

We saw 42 last week the Jackie Robinson story.  It brought me back to the days when my dad took me to see the St. Paul Saints at Lexington ballpark. My Dad was a huge baseball fan and followed the sport very closely. The Saints and also Montreal were the Brooklyn  Dodgers Triple A farm teams. Robinson played briefly for Montreal before being brought up by manager Branch Rickey to the Dodgers where he was  the first black American to plays in the “majors.”  I followed the Brooklyn team as well for many players on the Saints team were eventually  promoted to the Dodgers.  In those days the world series was a really big deal and we were allowed to listen to the games in our elementary classrooms.

Jackie Robinson in baseball and Doak Walker, a college football All American,  were my sports heroes.  Pro football had not yet become Americas favorite game.  It would eventually  replace baseball, which  then was regarded as our national pastime.  I remain loyal to baseball to the present day and have little or no interest in any other professional sports. 

 42 was a great movie which  brings to forefront the courageous struggle Robinson had against the bigotry and overt racism of his time. Dodger General Manager Branch Ricky (played by Harrison Ford) sought and young college graduate and star athlete to break the color barrier. Jackie Robinson  proved to fit the bill. That is strong enough to not fight back against the abuse and yet able to prove by his skill that he belonged.   For younger generations,  the portrayal of some of that abuse in the film will probably seem quite shocking.  For others of us it will be sadly remindful of the racism  we probably saw and heard in growing up.

The Years of Lyndon Johnson is a biography of Lyndon B. Johnson by the  writer Robert Caro. Four volumes have been published, running to more than 3,000 pages in total, detailing Johnson's early life, education, and political career. A fifth volume will deal with the bulk of Johnson's presidency.

I just finished  the  fourth volume, in The Passage of Power, Caro covers Johnson's life from 1958 to 1964, the challenges Johnson faced upon his assumption of the presidency, and the magnitude of his accomplishments in the months after Kennedy’s assassination. 

Essentially Caro looks at  the acquisition and use of political power in American democracy, from the perspective both of those who wield it and those who are at its mercy. In an interview with Kurt Vonnegut, he once said: "I was never interested in writing biography just to show the life of a great man," saying he wanted instead "to use biography as a means of illuminating the times and the great forces that shape the times—particularly political power."  I think he accomplished the tast he set out of himself.  Caro, perhaps the premier writer of political biography ever has surely acommplished the task he set out for himself. I would desribe his work as "monumental."