Lately if I have been in a mind to read poetry, it has been that of Rainer Maria Rilke. A collection of selected poetry was given to me as a gift awhile back, might have been Christmas; but I think that it is one of the only gifts that is still giving as much as the day I got it. I was not very familiar with Rilke before I received this collection but now he fascinates me beyond most. Coming on the scene in the late 19^th century he became one of many powerful transitional figures of the time, along with his mentor and friend Rodin. Rilke is able to paint his poems in such a beautiful way and communicate the goods. I made the mistake of reading one of his Elegies over lunch one time, and I spent the rest of the afternoon trying to come back down. Lines like:

Angels (they say) don’t know whether it is the living

they are moving among, or the dead. The eternal torrent

whirls all ages along in it, through both realms

forever, and their voices are drowned out in its thunderous roar.

have a tendency to put a hitch in your giddyup. It is easy in our time to scoff at anything that resembles a Romantic “troubled soul,” but if one is so inclined there is much to gain concerning our own troubles. It has been a wonderful benefit of picking up his Letters To A Young Poet. I like to do. I like to write music and what not, but still consider myself very much an amateur. And this collection is like having a renowned artist write me several letters. Even though it was written a century ago, young artists tend to be very similar in nature and problems. Its been a very useful tool in swinging around a few curves and decisions. Bottom line really is that, if you like poetry, you can’t go wrong with this guy: if you’ve read him, you can read him again; if you haven’t read him, read him.

-John P.

Mississippi conjures many different images in people’s minds.  Some people think about the wonderful authors and artists from here, some think of the Civil Rights movement, some people think of The Blues, some people think of beauty queens and lately we have all been thinking about heat and humidity.  This year though we have had three books published  about MURDER!   These are murders you might not know about even though when they occurred  they were national news but they are part of  local folklore to this day in their respective counties of Attala, Holmes and Jones.

One Night of Madness by Stokes McMillan

Stokes McMillan is fourth generation born and raised in Attala County, Mississippi.  His mother had collected together his father’s photos and articles about this crime but never had a lot of interest in it until 2001 when one of his own children wanted a copy of the award winning photographs his grandfather had taken of  the capture of the two killers.  Mr. McMillan decided to also give some of the more interesting information along with the photograph.  He read over the scrapbook and realized that this was a story that deserved to be told so he wrote One Night of Madness.

It’s 1950 and Mary Ellis Harris is struggling to care for her five children by sharecropping alongside her husband who loves to drink and gamble.  One night, Leon Turner, a white man her husband drinks with, corners her in her house and refuses to take no as an answer.  He is arrested for attempted rape and when he gets out of  jail comes back for revenge on the Harris family.  The scene at the Harris house is horrific and bloody and a manhunt led by the Sheriff of Attala County, Roy Braswell, with the help of Hogjaw Mullen and his tracking dogs ends in a shootout and the arrest of Leon Turner and two accomplices.  The trial began but not only where these men on trial but the State of Mississippi itself.  The eyes of the nation where watching  and when the controversial jury decision is made the public’s outcry for punishment is heard through out the United States.

The Time of Eddie Noel by Allie Povall

Allie Povall was 12 years old in 1954 in Holmes County where the events of The Time of Eddie Noel took place.  This is the story of how a black man, Eddie Noel, shot and killed a white honky-tonk owner, Ramon Dickard.  One of the largest posses in Mississippi history was formed and they hunted Eddie Noel.  Eddie Noel killed two more white men and wounded three others before disappearing into the the woods of southwest Holmes County.  This is the story of how a black man, a three time murderer, in Mississippi could beat the lynch mob, beat the posse, beat the system and avoid almost certain death?  Eddie Noel, though he confessed to the murders was never tried or convicted and he spent the last 22 years of his life living peacefully with family in Fort Wayne, Indiana.  Allie Povall interviewed many people, read newspaper accounts and court records and relied on his own memory of this event.  This story has almost reached mythic status in Holmes County but there are still those who will not talk about it for example Eddie Noel’s family in Indiana promised his mother that they would never discuss it outside of the family.  Allie Povall has done a great job in gathering this information to tell us a story of a time in Mississippi that was full of  bootlegging and moonshine, gambling and juke joints and the time of Eddie Noel.

The Legs Murder Scandal by Hunter Cole

In 1935, Ouida Keeton is arrested in Laurel, Mississippi for the murder of her mother, Daisy Keeton.  Ouida shot her, chopped her up and disposed of the body parts by flushing them down the toilet and burning them in the fireplace.  That is all but her mother’s legs.  She tried to dispose of them on a isolated country road but they were soon found by a hunter and his dogs.  After her arrest while police were interrogating her she incriminated her wealthy business man lover, W.M. Carter.  While this murder is almost completely forgotten today, it was touted as Mississippi’s most sensational murder of the time.  Hunter Cole through researching countless trial transcripts, courthouse records, medical files and endless newspaper coverage gives detailed accounts of the separate trials of Ouida Keeton and W.M. Carter and also reveals new facts that have been distorted by hearsay and misinformation about “Mississippi’s Lizzie Borden” throughout the years.

Moving is painful whether you’re moving across town or across the world. I recently moved across the neighborhood, which can be the worst sort, I think, because you’re fooled into thinking you don’t have to do much preparation, just run your car back and forth a few times right? Well if you’re not organized those “few times” turn into what feels like a few hundred.

One great thing about moving for a reader, though, is that you have the opportunity to get to know your books again. Those that have been gathering dust at the back of an overflowing bookshelf are brought again to your attention, and you are reminded of what you loved so much about them. These are a few I’m (re)reading:

The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell. I read a few chapters of this classic of anthropological mythology when I first bought it several years ago, and looking at it again, I’m coming across the margin notes and underlines I mulled over then, fresh(er) out of college with an interest in comparative literature and religion.

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I first read this beat up paperback for a class in literary theory in college. That semester ended up being too much for me, so I withdrew from the class to take it again a year later. I may have dropped it, though, just so I’d have to read the book again. One of my favorite books of all time, it too has lots of dog ears and underlines and notes from twice poring over it already. When I came to Mississippi from Florida two years ago, I didn’t bring all my books, leaving some in boxes with my family — ones I’d read or that were for school — but though I’d read it twice, One Hundred Years came with me to Mississippi because I knew I’d likely want to read it again.

Parrot and Olivier in America by Peter Carey.  Recently longlisted for the Booker prize, I’ve had a copy for months now, and now that I’ve “found” it I’m going to get started on it right away.  That, along with Eric Metaxas’s biography Bonhoeffer, are what I’m reading now. Bonhoeffer’s biography is flying off the shelves at Lemuria, and so far it’s thoroughly readable and fascinating. I’m not too familiar with Bonhoeffer’s life, other than knowing that he was executed towards the end of WW2 for his involvement in a plot to assassinate Hitler. I’m glad to find out more, and will have to keep an eye out for the theologian’s books as I unpack; I know I have a copy of the Cost of Discipleship in one of my boxes.

During the move, I read One Day, the charming British sensation by David Nicholls, which Quinn blogged about weeks ago. After long days of work followed by the physical labor of moving and cleaning, it was nice to fall asleep with Em and Dex. As I continue to unpack and organize and likely acquire several more bookcases, I know I’ll come across more books I’m thrilled to be reminded I own.

There are a lot of things to love about this bookstore: first editions in abundance, the First Editions Club, this blog is pretty cool, you can spend years investigating and getting to know the shelves, and we have some pretty awesome author events.  But I think that one of my favorite things about the store is the wealth of knowledge that walks around shelving, is busy on IBID or sits in the office. These people that work here know so much about books. I think it’s probably one of the most valuable things in the store. For most, they can help find a better book than one could alone….or at least more books and in a shorter amount of time.  Yesterday I decided I wanted to find a book that discussed the decline of small farms and the further push into the corporate run, government owned America. Since I couldn’t think of any, I thought it better to ask. I talked to Joe for about 3 minutes and even though the population of books on that subject is quite small, I found just what I was looking for.

The Art of the Commonplace is a collection of essays that offers a perspective on living that is quite different then the one that dominates our culture. It rests a greater portion of importance in being content and at peace where you are and placing effort into the soil and finding value in the crops that are harvested. He contrasts the efforts of the expanding Americans of the late 1700s with that of the native Indians. Citing the unquenchable  thirst for progress and success in even the first Americans. The essays are wonderfully written and are a pleasure to read, unlike a lot of essays that I have read that are quite rigid and blocked. I can’t wait to get deeper into this collection as I have not read Wendell Berry before and I think I am at a loss because of it. This bit is taken from the first essay “A Native Hill.”

“We still have not, in any meaningful way, arrived in America. And in spite of our great reservoir of facts and methods, in comparison to the deep earthly wisdom of established peoples we still know but little.”

His lines are full of good-thinking material because it is quite different from most anything that you hear today. I don’t follow politics really close; a lot of it strikes me as a bunch of foolishness. But I do know that it doesn’t seem that we are on course for a sustainable way of living. China seems to be a little better at the modern approach of “bigger, faster, and more of it.” I love America and I even think free market capitalism is alright, I think it is the pit of unbound greed that gets me. These essays are a pleasing insight that are a reminder that the way in which we live and our people have lived and what was thought as success for the past hundred years is not the only way people have lived and worked throughout histories and cultures.

-John P.

A Long Bright Future: The Very Good News about Living Longer by Laura L. Carstensen, Ph.D.

Broadway (August 2009)

Today there are about 50,000 100-year-old folks in the USA. By 2050, when I’m a hundred I will likely have a million peers. Can “old age”  be a long life? How many of us will grow old with physical fitness, mental sharpness, and financial independence? To grow older and make your own choices seems a good goal.

Long Bright Future is full of tips about how to make healthier lifestyle choices. It’s about consciously living a long life instead of being at the mercy of growing old and docile.

Defining our long life helps us to imagine what we want our wise years to be like: socially, financially, physically, and psychologically. Carstensen leads us to understand what might go wrong and what we can ensure by putting ourselves in the position to make informed choices. There is no reason for us to separate our life into artificial stages. Instead we can  put ourselves in the best position to enjoy life values throughout our entire lives.

Laura Carstensen (age 55) is the founding director of the Stanford Center on Longevity. She has given the baby boomers this guidebook as an action plan for living life’s later years with more happiness, better health, financial security, and a stronger awareness about choice and destiny.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about becoming an old man. Just recently I turned sixty. I’ve outlived my dad by 15 years and for the most part have had a fulfilled life. However, now as older age approaches, I’m focusing on the last third of my life and consciously trying to influence now what my future needs might be. Long Bright Future has helped me to form a perspective.