Missive #72

Read Will Rogers column 88 years ago: May 12, 1935

Following All the Pretty Horses in Cormac McCarthy’s Border Trilogy is a novel whose force of language is matched only by its breadth of experience and depth of thought. In the bootheel of New Mexico hard on the frontier, Billy and Boyd Parham are just boys in the years before the Second World War, but on the cusp of unimaginable events. First comes a trespassing Indian and the dream of wolves running wild amongst the cattle lately brought onto the plain by settlers — this when all the wisdom of trappers has disappeared along with the trappers themselves. So Billy sets forth at the age of sixteen on an unwitting journey into the souls of boys, animals and men. This book uses a lot more geography than just the ‘bootheel’ of New Mexico for the story setting. It covers an area from Reserve, New Mexico in the north to near Durango, Mexico is the south. From east to west; all the border crossings from Palomas, Chihuahua to Naco, Sonora, Mexico. What made it very enjoyable for me was the mention of the many places in that overall area where I have been. The story line is very similar to the first book in the Border Trilogy. There is also considerable character conversation in Spanish so be prepared to do translations if you do not speak the language. There is also more philosophical musing in this second book that there was in the first; that made it a more difficult read for me.

Having trapped a she-wolf he would restore to the mountains of Mexico, he is long gone and returns to find everything he left behind transformed utterly in his absence. Except his kid brother, Boyd, with whom he strikes out yet again to reclaim what is theirs — thus crossing into “that antique gaze from whence there could be no way back forever.”

What they find instead, is an extraordinary panoply of fiestas and circuses, dogs, horses and hawks, pilgrims and revolutionaries, grand haciendas and forlorn cantinas, bandits, gypsies and roving tribes, a young girl alone on the road, a mystery in the mountain wilds, and a myth in the making.

And in this wider world they fight a war as rageful as the one neither, in the end, will join up for back home. One brother finds his destiny, while the other arrives only at his fate.

An essential novel by any measure, and the transfixing middle passage of Cormac McCarthy’s ongoing trilogy, The Crossing is luminous and appalling, a book that touches, stops,and starts the heart and mind at once. — Book promo @ goodreads.com

I took a break from reading the two books that I have started and tried to do some coding. Spent about four hours on Wednesday and accomplished nothing other than learning that there were 4-5 ways to do what I wanted to do but none of them worked. Then yesterday I devoted a couple hours to the effort and finally got one third of what I want to work. Not completely finished with it but it is working.

What I am trying to do is change the web page for Books I’ve Read. I want that page to have thee buttons; 1)will list all the books I’ve read 2)will list all the books I’ve read by an author, the name input using a box and button 3)will list all the books I’ve read during a year, the year input using a box and button. What now works is #1 but I have not changed the Books I’ve Read page yet; I’ll do that when I get the other two boxes and buttons to work. But for now I’ve had enough coding so will go back to the two books!

This morning I went to Douglas, AZ. It was a shopping trip to get groceries at Walmart, which I rarely do, and also to visit the Wall of Faces in the Gadsden Hotel. The grocery gathering went better than I thought it would, got almost everything that was on my list, but it took a long time to do it.

The Wall of Faces exhibit was originally to feature the photographs and stories of hundreds of men and women from Douglas who served in the military during the Vietnam War Era. It has now been expanded to include ALL veterans from the Douglas area. My picture and uniform is included the display and I wanted to see them plus the rest of the exhibit.

Short-term U.S. government Treasury bills are now yielding over 5% … whereas Walmart bonds are yielding only a little more than 3%! An analyst on Fox Business this AM made the shocking claim that investors have more confidence in Walmart being able to repay its debt than our government!