An Age of Kings

In a number of posts, I have written about how my introduction to Shakespeare and English literature came through a BBC television series called "An Age of Kings." Televised first in England live in the late 1950's, they were shown in the United States during the winter and spring of 1961. After the initial series was over, I do remember seeing at least some of the episodes a few years later. Since then, however, they have been unavailable in any format - a period of almost 50 years.

As a result it was fantastic to read on the Shakesper e-mail list that the full 15 episodes are now available via DVD. Bless Hardy Cook for his work in maintaining this list, there was apparently a story in the New York Times last week, but I missed it. The news was so exciting that I immediately went to Amazon.com and ordered the full set which should be here in about a week. Of course, my next step was to send an e-mail to my cultural buddy DT, as expected his reaction displayed new levels of his feelings about Shakespeare. If I read the Amazon website correctly, John Barton's series on acting Shakespeare which has also been unavailable for some time, will be issued in June.

The Age of Kings series included some great actors early in their careers beginning with Sean Connery as Hotspur. To me he has always been the ultimate Hotspur, far better than Tim Piggot-Smith in the BBC version or Ethan Hawke in the 2003 Broadway hit. The only one who came close in my mind was Lex Shrapnel who played the part in the RSC productions we saw last winter in Stratford. In fact, Shrapnel was great in a variety of parts in the plays including Williams in Henry V, young Talbot in Henry VI, Part I, and Richmond in Richard III, but I digress. In the Age of Kings series, Robert Hardy (pictured above) was my introduction to Hal/Henry V, I remember his performance as creating a positive image of the character and I look forward to seeing it again. Pictured with Hardy is a young Judy Dench as Princess Katherine of France, long before she would go on play several other English queens.

I look forward to the arrival of the these DVD's and revisiting something that moved me almost 50 years ago and still does so today. I am sure it will be the subject of future posts.

Live and Learn

In the British television series "As Time Goes By," one of the story lines is that the male lead, Lionel Hardcastle is writing a book called, "My Life in Kenya." When the book is published, the
publisher, Alstair Deacon arranges a book signing at a London bookstore. In preparing Lionel for the event, he tells him that he has planted some people on the line, who will wink at him, meaning that they really don't want to buy the book, they are just there for appearances.

I probably should have thought of something like that for my book signing this past Saturday at the Town Book Store in Westfield. My sister and nephew were there to provide moral support and since we forgot our camera, my nephew saved the day with the picture to the right.

When this book came out, I contacted about a half-dozen or so independent bookstores in New Jersey about a possible book signing. I got two responses and this was the only one that came to fruition. I was there two hours, had three lengthy conversations and sold two books. When we got there, a man talked to me for a good 20 minutes, but he apparently thought I was going to give a talk and left without buying a book. Another man talked to Carol and I for some time, he said he wasn't that much of a baseball fan, but bought a book to support local authors - bless him!

Then just as we were thinking of ending it early, a woman came in, interested in her grandfather who played for the Brooklyn Tip-tops of the Federal League as well as (I think) the Phillies and the Yankees. The Federal League was a third major league that lasted for about three years, dying out after the 1915 season. I was able to give her some ideas on where she could find information about her grandfather and she very graciously bought a copy of my book.

I entitled this post, "Live and Learn" because that is what I am basically doing with this book. When "The Mutinous Regiment" came out, I was to busy to try to promote it much and I didn't want to get involved in selling them myself. Now with more time, I am trying different things to see what happens. Thus far the really productive approach is where I give a talk of some kind that builds interest in the book. To this point it has primarily been Civil War Roundtables, but I have some baseball talks scheduled and I think that will progress. I am attending the 19th century baseball conference at the Hall of Fame on April 18th and there will be a book signing for any authors attending at the bookstore so we will see what happens. In any event thanks to Anne Laird, the owner of the Town Book Store for the opportunity and we will continue to live and learn.

Best Seller # 2 - "The Yankee Years"

The second best seller that I finished this week was Joe Torre and Tom Verducci's account of Joe Torre's 12 years as Yankee manager. This is not a book I would have even considered buying, but after Paul Zinn bought it and read it, he was kind enough to loan it to me. Having read it, I have to say that I don't understand why Joe Torre did this and that I have lost a great deal of respect for him for having done so.

The shocking revelation of this book is that the Steinbrenners and their coterie didn't appreciate everything that Torre did in his years as Yankee manager, offering him a degrading contract that he had no choice, but to reject. If anyone reading this is not shocked by that revelation, neither am I - that was all very clear when it happened back in October of 2007. Since it was so clear then, there doesn't seem to be much reason for this book. I will say, however, that if what Torre wanted to do this to clearly tell his side of the story and publicly criticize the owners for that treatment, it wouldn't bother me at all. I greatly appreciated Torre's comments at the time ,criticizing the idea that any Yankee season that ended without winning the World Series was a failure. That philosophy shows a lack of respect for the game, something that is very important to me.

Unfortunately the book doesn't stop there, it seems to have two further agendas, to further praise Torre's record as manager and to get back at anyone else who wasn't part of his first teams of grinders. Why anything more needs to be said about how good a job Torre did as Yankee manager is beyond me, but apparently Torre and Verducci think so. What was really incredible to me how the book tries to quantify how many games better Torre made the Yankees in at least two seasons.

In a book with constant criticism of Brian Cashman for becoming too enamoured with statistics and forgetting in Torre's words that the game "has a heart," the authors try a similar approach to confirm Torre's contribution. I forget the specific season, but the book takes the Yankees statistics for that season and use Saber metrics to determine that the Yankees should have only one X number of games. Since they actually won about a dozen more than that, the difference is obviously due to Torre - "the game has a heart indeed!"

The criticism of Cashman goes hand in hand with that of Alex Rodriguez who is clearly the anti-Christ of this story. Cashman may have let Torre down and Rodriguez may have been a disappointment, but what is the point of Torre saying so in print. After all what made Torre so appealing as a Yankee manager was that he was above that kind of the thing, a star of calmness in the chaos of the Steinbrenner galaxy. There is an old locker room cliche that "what you say here, what you do here and what you hear here, must stay here." That kind of an attitude was what made Torre admirable - team first and all that kind of thing. Why he would go against that so dramatically is a mystery - unless, however, that in spite of what Torre says, it is really about the money. The book has some appeal as an account of life on the inside of a major league team, but frankly I don't think it is worth the time or the money.

Best Seller #1 - The Lost City of Z

I don't usually choose books by looking at the best seller list, but ironically, I have just finished two books that are well up there in today's New York Times Book Review. The first is David Grann's "The Lost City of Z," which I purchased based upon both the topic and the very favorable review in the Times. I made a similar purchase of Adam Cohen's "Nothing to Fear" and regretted doing so. The good news it that I read that book almost right away instead of putting it away for some future unknown date, but after reading it I realized that I just as easily could have waited and borrowed it from some library.

After that experience, I purchased "The Lost City of Z" with more than a little trepidation that it would end up with the same feelings of dissatisfaction. However in this case it wasn't just the favorable review it was the topic of searching for an ancient civilization that appealed to me. Whether it is Heinrich Schliemann's search for the Troy of the Iliad and Odyssey or H. Rider Haggard's novels such as "King Solomon's Mines," such stories or possibilities have always fascinated me. Especially from the perspective of an armchair explorer.

In this case David Grann tells the story of British explorer Henry Fawcett's obsession with finding a lost city in the depths of the Amazon jungle - a city he named "Z." Grann tells the story by alternating Fawcett's story with his own (Grann's) story of researching Fawcett. This is not limited to academic research in archives, but Grann's attempt to follow Fawcett's route on his last journey. Since Fawcett, his son, and another young man disappeared on that journey in 1925, there are really two searches - one to find out what happened to them, the other for the city of Z.

One thing that Grann accomplishes is to end any illusions anyone might have about the glamour and romance of jungle exploration. His description of the risks from dangerous insects alone was enough to make me wonder how any one survived such expeditions, even before worrying about other animals, starvation, and hostile natives. Some of these are repeated on Grann's own journey perhaps illustrating his own obsession, if not with Z, with telling the story.

As I read the book, I wasn't sure that it was a good purchase. After all how could Grann or anyone hope to find out what happened to Fawcett more than 80 years after he disappeared. Certainly neither he nor his companions could still be alive and it was equally unlikely that any traces of them could have survived that long as well. However after all his research and journeying, Grann reasons his way to the most likely explanation, one that is hard to refute - almost an application of Ockham's Razor.

On the larger issue of the city of Z, however, Grann ends up with something much more interesting, a satisfying ending to such a quest. An ending that suggests that one of the first challenges is such an enterprise is to be clear about what it really is that we are looking for in the first place. The ending brought the story full circle and made me glad not only that I had read it, but that I had bought it. I would recommend the book for anyone who has an interest in stories of discovery - especially reading them from the comforts of home.

August Folly

After finishing "Mary Barton," my second book in the Victorian Challenge, I decided to take a break and read one of Angela Thirkell's Barsetshire novels - "Wild Strawberries." As noted in that post I had started that book several times, but couldn't get into it. Once I did, however, I enjoyed it which led me to tempted to go on to the next of these 29 novels - "August Folly."

I gave into temptation and I am glad I did, thus far "August Folly" is my favorite of the half dozen or so that I have read to this point. The story takes place in the little village of Worsted which according to the map in my copy is in east Barsetshire almost at the opposite end of this mythical county from Rushwater Manor, the site of "Wild Strawberries."

The story focuses on three families, the Tebbens, Deans, and Palmers. The latter two families are related and are well off financially while the Tebbens live a middle class life, but struggle to do so. The events in the book take place in the summer and sort of revolve around an amateur production of a Greek tragedy - thus the picture on the cover. Like all of Thirkell novels the book is funny and contains "This England" moments typically subtle descriptions of the beauty of the English countryside.

I also like the literary references that are sort of planted in the book appealing to those who get them, but in no way insulting to those who don't. There are several allusions in this book to some of Thirkell's other novels, one of which concerns a bull being brought from the Leslie's home at Rushwater Manor which was a frequent topic in "Wild Strawberries." There is an incident where the bull momentarily threatens a young child and Richard Tebben intervenes to prevent the crisis from getting worse. Reluctant to tell his parents the full story, the Tebben cottage is overrun with people exaggerating the story including the number of bulls involved. When the really story is finally told, Thirkell notes that "the bulls in buckram dwindled to one." This is a reference to the great tavern scene in "Henry IV, Part I," when as Falstaff tells the story of being "robbed" the number of thieves in buckram grows exponentially with each sentence.

All of this is very enjoyable and at some level escapist, but as I noted in my post about "Wild Strawberries" there is a deeper side to Thirkell's writing. This is even more fully developed in "August Folly" where the author takes us deep into the minds of a number of the characters to understand their desires, fears and to some extent sadness and loneliness. This is especially true of Charles Fanshowe, a bachelor, an Oxford tutor and close friend of the Deans who spends part of the summer with them. Deeply a part of the Dean family, Fanshowe is more than a little lonely, but has a hard time coming to grips with the need to decide what he wants and then pursue it. I am not doing true justice to this, but my point is that Thirkell has created characters who are fully human and, therefore, sympathetic. In the past I have been critical of Jane Austen's work because every character gets what he or she deserves. The same can be said of Thirkell, but it doesn't both me anywhere as much - perhaps the explanation is her ability to create such sympathetic characters.

Now in spite of all Thirkell temptations, I will go on to "The Way We Live Now."

Going Back Home Again

Last Wednesday night I had the opportunity to speak about the 33rd New Jersey at the monthly meeting of the Phil Kearny Civil War Roundtable. The PKCWRT meets at the Wayne library - my family moved to Wayne when I was eight and I went through the Wayne public schools attending what was then Wayne High School in the early 1960's.

In addition to everything else that happened in the early 1860's, those were the years of the Civil War centennial. While I don't remember extensive media coverage at the time, those were the years when I became interested in the Civil War. I remember reading historical novels about Antietam and Gettysburg when I was a freshman and then moving on to Bruce Catton's "This Hallowed Ground" in American History through literature.

Since the Wayne library is literally across the parking lot from Wayne High School, this was a way of coming full circle. Over the years I also borrowed enough Civil War books from the Wayne library which added to the effect. It was nice to be back in Wayne, but it would have been nice to be with this group regardless of where they met. Joe Truglio, Bob Gerber, and Henry Ballone from this roundtable have been early and enthusiastic supporters of the New Jersey Civil War 150 committee and are helping move the whole process forward in very positive ways. I look forward to working them and another member of the group, Sylvia Mogerman as, we continue to work on this important anniversary.

The talk was well received and both Carol and I enjoyed the evening. My basic talk on the 33rd continues to evolve. I continue to use the opening to talk about the formation of the regiment and where the name "Mutinous Regiment" comes from. Recently I have substituted talking about the Atlanta campaign for an overview of the regiment's service. It works well, but I am still tinkering with it. If I can figure out the technical issues, I would like to think about using my computer to include pictures of some of the key battle sites, a case where a picture would well be worth a lot of words. It looks like I will have the chance to keep working on that aspect, before the program, I received another invitation this time for a group that meets at West Point - something I am really looking forward to doing.

New Jersey State Budget Hearings - The Senate

The New Jersey State budget works on a June 30th fiscal year. That means that the budget process begins with the Governor proposing a budget in February and March which the legislature has to act on by June 30th. Unlike other states there is no provision for delaying budget adoption or adopting a deficit budget so the June 30th deadline is hard and fast.

I have had a particular interest in the state budget ever since I became involved at the New Jersey Historical Society. NJHS does not receive direct state funding, rather it and other historical organizations apply to the New Jersey Historical Commission for grant funds. Since 2004 the Historical Commission has received its grant funds from the hotel/motel tax. This means that the funds do not come from the state income or sales taxes so that state residents pay very little if any of these costs. That would only be the case where state residents stay in hotels or motels in New Jersey.

The law did not mandate how much of this tax should go to history and the arts, allowing each governor and legislature to make that decision as part of the budget - to the extent the funds don't go for those purposes they can go to other state budget expenses. When the change was made a poison pill provision was added to the law. Under that provision if funding for history and the arts falls below a certain level, the tax then lapses. The purpose was to provide some minimal level of funding for history and the arts. The state FY 2010 budget presented by the governor proposes funding under the poison pill level minimum. Theoretically that means the tax would lapse, but apparently the administration will introduce something in the budget bill suspending or changing the poison pill.

Along with the rest of the history and arts community, I think this proposal is outrageous. So once again, I am involved in trying to get the budget changed. Each year we have had some success, how we will do in this climate is hard to say. Below is my testimony at today's state senate budget hearing at Montclair State, I will give more or less the same testimony to the assembly budget committee next week. I will have more to say about this, but this is an introduction.

"I am here to testify about funding for the Historical Commission’s grant program. As you know the proposed budget would cut funding for the grant program by almost $900,000. As you also know a cut of this magnitude will bring funding for the grants program below the legally mandated minimums.
The proposed cut comes at the worst possible time. This is true at many levels, but I want to focus on two aspects of the economic impact of the proposed cuts. However long the overall economy has been in recession, I believe the not-for-profit world in New Jersey has been in a recession for a much longer time. All sources of revenue for history organizations have been declining for some time. In response to that decline history organizations have been forced to down size their organizations, cut back on staff and, therefore cut back on programs.
The hard times and the resulting down sizing have continued to the point that it is no exaggeration to say that history organizations in New Jersey are on the brink of disaster. Expenses can be cut only so far before there is insufficient money to produce programs. Once that happens leaving only institutional maintenance, other sources of revenue will also dry up, putting some history organizations out of business perhaps for good. The loss of jobs will be one more blow to our state’s economy.
But this is not the only issue, a lack of financial support for history organizations means missing opportunities to help our state’s economy. History and other not-for-profit organizations do not return to health through cutting expenses. Rather they do so, by developing high quality programming that generates revenue, using that revenue to develop more programs, which, in turn generate more revenue and so on. This helps not only the history organization itself, but the economy both locally and across the state. At a time when financial circumstances will force many families to vacation closer to home, can we afford not to provide them with a less expensive New Jersey alternative?
Let me give just one example of what I am talking about. The 150th anniversary of the Civil War is just two years away. The commonwealth of Virginia has appropriated almost $3 million to plan their observations plus creating a government commission with state employees. We in the New Jersey Civil War community take this anniversary just as seriously, but we are taking a different approach. In developing that approach we have had a lot of help from the Historical Commission and, in particular, Marc Mappen. We have formed a not-for-profit volunteer group to lead in this effort. Our work has been endorsed by the Governor, but there will be no request for government funding for administrative expenses.
The Historical Commission’s grants program, however, could be a very important source of program funding to do things to help attract tourism and bring revenue to New Jersey. Insufficient funding of the Historical Commission will mean failing to take advantage of these opportunities. I ask you to restore the proposed cut in funding to the Historical Commission’s grant program. Please help New Jersey history organizations so that we can help New Jersey."