Revisiting Longfellow with a Memory from Zimbabwe

I employed the poetry of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) as a kind of refrain in my novel Brookhaven. A main character is well known in his family for his lifelong love of Longfellow’s poetry and his ability to recite it from memory.  

What I didn’t realize or remember was just how long I’d been reading Longfellow’s poetry myself. That is, until a recent comment on a post at Tweetspeak Poetry popped up.

 

The comment first arrived as an email. It’s a standard notification that Tweetspeak writers get when someone comments on a post they’ve written. I read it and looked at the date of the post – Oct. 3, 2017, almost nine years ago. Had I actually resumed reading Longfellow that long ago?

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.

Some Wednesday Readings

 

The Neglected Genius of Hilaire Belloc – Joseph Pearce at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

Tools of the Trade – Kelly Belmonte on writing.

 

What-ifs and he Price of Beauty – Elliott Drago at Front Porch Republic.

 

Writer Reads: Jan Carson’s Few and Far Between – Andrew Roycroft at New Grub Street.

 

Why you must know your book’s genre – Nathan Bransford.

 

The Beautiful Ordinary – Kelly Keller at Story Warren on Hannah Coulter by Wendell Berry.

Looking Back at a Crazy Job

I’ve spent a few weeks reflecting on my incredibly short, and incredibly long, eight months with St. Louis Public Schools. What began with the strangest job interview I ever had, the weirdest first day on the job, and the ongoing chaos of every single day ended with a very quiet farewell.  

In previous jobs in corporate communications, I’d experienced periods of media blitzes and controversies. But I’d never experienced a job in which every day was a media blitz, every day was a controversy, and I had to work and publicly communicate in a highly political environment where it was difficult to know who was telling the truth, whose information was accurate, and who was trying to help or merely trying to gain an edge on an opponent. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.

Photograph: St. Louis Public Schools headquarters building by St. Louis Public Schools.

Some Wednesday Readings

 

6 Enjoyable Ways to Read Classic Novels –or Pretty Much Anything – Joel Miller at Miller’s Book Review.

 

Goodness Will Come Back for You – Lara d’Entremont at A Mother Held.

 

Of Steamrollers and Hummingbirds – Andrew Roycroft at New Grub Street.

 

Swan Upping on the Thames – Spitalfields Life.

The Scenes That Stick from a Chaotic Job

I worked as director of Communications for St. Louis Public Schools for eight months. It was the position I worked for the least amount of time in my entire career, the most chaotic job I ever held, and the one that likely remains the most vivid in my memory.  

Perhaps it was the political battles inside the district, the arrests at school board meetings, the ongoing protests, my boss getting doused with a pitcher of water by a member of the school board, the typical chaotic day of an urban school district. It might have been the constat media exposure, starting my first day (eight separate interviews on a teacher sick-out) and continuing until my last day. I did more media meetings and discussions in those eight months than the rest of my career combined.

 

A lot of scenes have stuck with me; a few even got worked into my five Dancing Priest novels. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.

Photograph of Headquarters by St. Louis Public Schools.

Some Wednesday Readings

 

Van Eyck: The Portraits – National Gallery, London.

 

Does Christian Fiction Exist? – Tessa Carman at Mere Orthodoxy.

Communicating Through the Chaos

If I had any doubts from the job interview, the first day on the job was confirmation. The next few months underscored it. If I could summarize it one word, my job as Director of Communications for St. Louis Public Schools was all about chaos.  

Every day was chaotic. Little if anything could be anticipated or planned for. I often looked at the office telephone (and my Blackberry; that was the phone we used) as the enemy. You answered a call, and your day instantly changed.

 

I learned that I wasn’t the only one dealing with chaos. The man brought in to take over the district’s finances (which were a train wreck; the district was not only technically but actually bankrupt) was a former corporate CFO.  He dealt with impossible tasks every day. His wife later told me that she worried most about public meetings – Board of Education meetings, town halls, outreach meetings – because anything could and often did happen. She would look for me making a statement on TV news, and then she knew her husband was okay.

 

The district had all the problems of an urban school system – money problems, crime, declining educational standards and test scores, dropping enrollments, school consolidations. An outside management firm had been brought in to try to transform the district; school closures, budget reductions (the communications budget was reduced from $1 million to $20,000, and that had been spent by the time I arrived).

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.

Photograph by Wayee Tan via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Wednesday Readings

 

Beyond the Modern Myths of Ancient Athens – Arlene Saxonhouse at Church Life Journal.

 

Winston Churchill, American Patriot – Michael Lucchese at Acton Institute.

 

“Malefactors of Great Wealth” – Burton Folsom at The Coolidge Review.

 

Writing My Novel on My Phone (and Through Grief) – Ros Hill at Writer’s Digest.

 

The Road Vanished Before We Reached Dinner – Riyanka Paul.

 

“The Declaration of Independence” by Bradley Birzer

I was on a multi-day business trip to Washington, D.C. I had a free afternoon, so I walked from the hotel to the National Gallery on the Mall. And then, for reason or reasons unknown, I walked across the street to the National Archives. And there it was – the original Declaration of Independence. 

 

Drafted mostly if not entirely by Thomas Jefferson, the Declaration is to America what the Magna Carta is to England. The statement of beliefs. The citation of grievances against an unjust ruler (also an English king, no less). The signatures.  

As Bradley Birzer points out in The Declaration of Independence: A Radical Experiment in Liberty, the Declaration is all these things. And it is more. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.

Some Wednesday Readings

 

Prudence vs. Fanaticism: On the American & French Revolutions – Russell Kirk at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

The art of translation: On Les Fleurs du mal, by Charles Baudelaire, translated by Richard Howard – David Paul at The New Criterion.

 

Short Story, Deep Treasures: Biblical Allusion in “Gift of the Magi” – John Savoie at Literary Matters.

“The Atlas of Independence” by Chris Mackowski

If I had a mental image of John Adams, it was of a rather dour individual who bridged the presidencies of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, whom my history teachers in high school and college seemed to find much more interesting. 

Then came the 2008 miniseries John Adams, with Paul Giamatti in the title role and Laura Linney as his wife Abigail. I almost skipped it, but we decided to watch it. And I began to understand that my teachers and I had all missed the boat on this major figure of the American Revolution.  I sought out some biographies and histories, and I discovered my understanding of the second U.S. president was seriously misguided.

 

It was with that improving understanding that I began reading Atlas of Independence: John Adams and the American Revolution by Chris Mackowski. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.

Some Wednesday Readings

 

Bob Dylan: ‘I’m a Religious Person’ Who Reads Scripture Daily – Stephanie Martin at Church Leaders.

 

Britain’s Great Self-Loathing Crusade – Matt Taibbi at Racket News.

 

Ghosts in the Field – Brian Miller at Notes from an East Tennessee Farmer.

The Strangest First Day on the Job I Ever Had

I felt more than a little apprehension. I was in morning rush hour traffic, driving to downtown St. Louis from the close-in suburb where I lived. It was something of a new experience. I hadn’t driven in rush-hour traffic since leaving Houston 25 years earlier. The apprehension wasn’t about traffic; I had stepped outside my career experience and accepted a job with St. Louis Public Schools. And I was early; the hours were 8 to 5, but I decided to be there by 7:30. 

Except for nine months at a newspaper straight out of college, my career had been exclusively corporate communications: employee communications, crisis communications, media relations, environmental communications, and speechwriting. Especially speechwriting. Even for the three years I had had my own consulting business, I worked for companies, doing mostly speechwriting. 

 

Corporations have their moments of craziness and crisis, but they pale in comparison to urban school districts. And yet, here I was, driving to my first day on the job at the largest school district in the state of Missouri, a district that had been in crisis for years and was now in hyper-crisis. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.

Photograph via St. Louis Public Schools.

Some Wednesday Readings

 

End Game at Appomattox – Mike Phifer at Warfare History Network. 

 

Millennials Tried Being Angry. It Didn’t Work – Samuel D. James at Digital Liturgies.

 

A Memo in the Wilderness: Why does the Church of England now sound like an HR department? – James Martin Charlton at the Critic Magazine.

"To Those Who Speak" by Luke Adam Hawker

Luke Adam Hawker is a designer who made the leap to full-time art in 2015. His background is architecture and design, and in his art, he works to connect places and people. His limited-edition prints can be found at several locations in London, including the Royal Opera House, St. Paul’s Cathedral, the Old Royal Naval College, and Battersea Power Station. 

Hawker has also published three books. Together (2021) is a graphic novel that turned into a surprise bestseller. The Last Tree: A Seed of Hope (2023) is a fable about a world without trees. This year, he published To Those Who Speak, a much more personal story that’s less a story and more of a non-fictional account with quiet, profound illustrations. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.

Some Wednesday Readings

 

Ceci n’est pas un Monet – Spencer Klavan at The New Jerusalem.

 

What AI Can’t Know – John Horvat at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

Brexit is not the cause of Britain’s woes – James Piereson at The New Criterion.

 

Gratitude, Not Glory: Why Lincoln Rejected Triumph at Gettysburg – Andrew Lang at The Coolidge Review.

“Brookhaven” and the Battle of Shiloh

For a very long time, no one in my father’s family – father, aunts, uncles, grandmother, or cousins – knew why the family Bible contained a death notice. The name was Jarvis Seale; the only thing the listing had was the date of his death. Who was this person? Why was he considered so important that my great-grandfather, who’d penned every entry in the records, had included him. My father guessed Jarvis might have been a distant cousin, or a close friend. 

It was only in the years I’d been doing reading and research for my historical novel Brookhaven that I discovered the answer, and then it was simply by happenstance. The key was the date of his death.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.

Some Wednesday Readings

 

What Pullman gets wrong about Narnia – Caleb Woodbridge at The Critic Magazine.

 

The Liberalism of George Smiley – Jake Meador at Mere Orthodoxy.

 

Chesterton’s Radical Sanity – Rachel Lu at Law & Liberty.

When I Discovered Latin American Literature

Yesterday, I received I Gave You My Silence, the new novel by Nobel Prizewinner Mario Vargas Llosa. Vargas Llosa died last year; this is his final work, published posthumously. 

When I saw the notice that it was being published. My mind moved back in time, some 40 years, to 1986. I was in a master of liberal arts program at Washington University in St. Louis, and I signed up for a fall seminar – The Latin American Novel. We would be reading novels by Garcia Marquez, Vargas Llosa, Manuel Puig (Kiss of the Spider Woman), and Carlos Fuentes, among others. The reading syllabus was challenging.

 

I don’t recall why I signed up for that particular course; others were available. My total reading experience in the Latin American novel was limited to one book – One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Perhaps that was the reason; Latin America has a vast literature, and I’d read very little of it.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.

Some Wednesday Readings

 

An Unknown Woman: how I discovered a hidden tragedy tied to Russia’s most famous painting – Vladimir Raevsky at The Guardian.

 

Did Edgar Allan Poe Invent Detective Fiction? – Thom Delapa at The Collector.

 

John Brown in Lake Placid – Evan Portman at Emerging Civil War. 

"The Prodigal of Leningrad" by Daniel Taylor

I’m trying to remember when I first became interested in Russian history. Most likely, when I was 10, and one of my Christmas presents (my mother knew me) was a Horizon Caravel book entitled Russia Under the Czars. I must have read it a dozen times. And I still have it. 

My senior year in high school, I discovered Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and his One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Cancer Ward, and The First Circle. In college, I took two semesters of Russian history, and I was glad I knew more about Russia’s past than most people. The professor was a great lecturer; he was also an unapologetic defender of the Soviet regime. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.

Some Wednesday Readings

Is Carney’s Davos sermon the way forward? – David Robertson at Christian Today.

 

Only Mozart – Joseph Sobran at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

How Holocaust Denial Became Mainstream – Simon Sebag Montefiore at The Free Press.

"Island Games" by Luke H. Davis

DI Gareth Benedict and his team are assigned to help police the Island Games, a sports event held every two years and attracting teams in some 13 sports from various islands, and not only those around the United Kingdom. This year, the island of Anglesey off the coast of Wales is the host, and teams are coming from as far away as the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic. 

The reader knows, before the police forces do, that the games have also attracted two assassins. We don’t know yet their intended targets, but we will. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.

Some Wednesday Readings

 

Learning to Dine with Sinners – Andrew Klavan at The New Jerusalem.

 

We’ll Catch Up Sometime – short story by Br. Seth Bauer at The Imaginative Conservative.

"John Fremont's 100 Days" by Gregory Wolk

The name John Fremont (1813-1890) evokes images of Manifest Destiny, exploration of the western United States, the first Republican candidate for President (18560, and the separation of California from Mexico. Less well-known is his very brief role in the American Civil War.  

For slightly more than three months in 1861, he was the commander of the U.S. Army’s Western Department, stretching from Illinois to the Rocky Mountains and headquartered in St. Louis. Those three months are now detailed in John Fremont’s 100 Days: Clashes and Convictions in Civil War Missouri by Gregory Wolk and published by the Missouri Historical Society.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.

Some Wednesday Readings

 

Love Is All You Need: Motive Power of Western Civilization – Bradley Birzer at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

All the Time I Thought Was Mine – Andrew Roycroft at New Grub Street.

 

Nutcracker Dreams – Jordana Rosenman at Front Porch Republic.

"A Month in Siena" by Hisham Matar

Hisham Matar won the Pulitzer Prize for biography for The Return, the story of his search for his father, who’d been kidnapped and presumably killed by the Libyan government. His first novel, In the Country of Men, won several recognitions and awards. Virtually every book he writes wins awards, including the National Book Critics Circle Award for his novel, My Friends, in 2025. 

There’s one exception, and it’s a gem of a story. 

In 2014 or 2015, Matar traveled to Siena, Italy, as something of a retreat or rest. He was still recovering from the intensity of writing The Return, not to mention the number of widespread accolades it received. Siena was meant to be a respite, and it was. He describes that respite in A Month in Siena, a non-fiction work about his own life, the churches in the town, and the artwork contained in those churches and the local museum. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.

Some Wednesday Readings

 

The Rise of AI Book Slop – Tim Challies.

 

The shame of Britain – Sebastian Milbank at The Critic Magazine.

 

Three Speeches That Savid the Union: Clay, Calhoun and Webster and the Crisis of 1850 by Peter Charles Hoffer – book review by Codie Eash at Emerging Civil War.

"Winston and the Windsors" by Andrew Morton

In late October, we were back at the St. Louis County Library. We had previously attended the talk by mystery writer Elizabeth George; this time it was the British writer, Andrew Morton. 

Morton became an almost-household name in Britain in the 1990s when he wrote not just “a” book but “the” book about Princess Diana – the one she agreed to do. Diana: Her True Story nearly toppled the British monarchy – or at least Diana’s revelations seriously damaged the institution. 

 

Morton has since written books about Monica Lewinsky, Madonna, David and Victoria Beckham, Tom Cruise, Angelina Jolie, and William and Catherine when they were still the duke and duchess of Cambridge. You might say he’s an A-List celebrity biographer.

 

But his more recent attention has turned from contemporary celebrities to those who are more historical. And that’s what we were there to hear him talk about –Winston and the Windsors: How Churchill Shaped a Royal Dynasty. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.

Some Wednesday Readings

 

15 Things a Writer Should Never Do – Zachary Petit at Writer’s Digest.

 

Elitism is good – Henry Oliver at The Common Reader.

Single Dads in Non-Fiction and Fiction

It was only coincidental. I read Joseph Luzzi’s In a Dark Wood: A Memoir (2015) and the next in my reading pile was Unconditional: A Novel by Stephen Kogon. Both books, one non-fiction and the other fiction, told the stories of young men suddenly finding themselves single fathers. 

Luzzi is a professor of Italian and teaches at Bard College in New York. In 2007, just as his lecture class was about to begin, he noticed a security guard come into the room. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.

"A Slowly Dying Cause" by Elizabeth George

It helped to have heard Elizabeth George speak in early October at the St. Louis County Library. She was doing a promotional tour for her new novel, and among many other things, she noted that Inspector Thomas Lynley would show up late in the story. 

And Inspector Lynley does indeed show up rather late for story billed as “A Lynley Novel.” A Slowly Dying Cause, the twenty-first in the Inspector Lynley series, doesn’t even mention him until about page 120, and he and his detective sergeant, Barbara Havers, don’t really start assuming a significant role until about the middle of the book.  

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.

“Marce Catlett: The Force of a Story” by Wendell Berry

Andy Catlett, whom we first met as a boy in an earlier novel by Wendell Berry, is now an old man. As old men are wont to do, he’s looking backward – at his life, his parents’ lives, and even earlier. And what he sees, far more clearly than he would have seen in his youth, is what shaped four generations of Catletts, including himself and his own children. 

It is a story, a story that happened to his grandfather, Marce Catlett, a story that happened in less than 24 hours but lasted more than a century. And it shows every sign of continuing to last. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.

Some Wednesday Readings

 

The Irish Tigers from Louisiana (and why they fought for the South in the Civil War) – Patrick Young at The Reconstruction Era. 

 

Life of the Mind & Heart at Hillsdale College – Daniel Sundahl at The Imaginative Conservative.

"Brookhaven" and the Pearl River Lumber Company

A reader of Brookhaven sent n email, asking if I modeled the McClure Lumber Company in the novel on the Pearl River Lumber Company. A great-grandfather had worked there, the reader said, and she wondered. 

That I had to research the Pearl River Lumber Company to respond to her should answer the question. Or, more briefly, no. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.

Photograph: Operations at the Pearl River Lumber Company about 1900.

Some Wednesday Readings

 

From Whitefield to Kirk: Revivals That Saved Nations – John Carpenter at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

We’ve Been Reading Dracula Wrong – Joel Miller at Miller’s Book Review.

 

Prime, a monastic hour – Brian Miller at Notes from an East Tennessee Farmer.

An Evening with Elizabeth George

“As long as the stories are there to be told, I’ll be writing.” – Elizabeth George. 

Last Friday, my wife and attended an author’s talk with mystery writer Elizabeth George at the St. Louis County Library. The library’s foundation maintains a robust author program, bringing in some 150 a year. 

 

It’s been some time (like more than a decade) since we last attended one of these, an evening with poet Billy Collins. That one had been packed with some 800 people; the program was free. I remember having to park across a busy highway at a shopping mall.

 

George is the author of the Inspector Lynley mysteries. We had been fans of the PBS series (2001-2007) with Nathaniel Parker as Thomas Lynley and Sharon Small Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers. Just recently, a new version has started on Britbox, with Leo Suter as Lynley, Sofia Barclay as Havers, and Daniel May’s as a perfect malevolent detective chief inspector and Lynley’s boss. We’re enjoyed the four episodes of the first season, including Daniel Mays as the character you love to hate. In fact, we finished episode four the night before we saw Elizabeth George.

 

I’ve read about half of the books by George, now numbering 21. She’s on tour promoting the book, A Slowly Dying Cause, set in Cornwall. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.

Some Wednesday Readings

 

Murders for October – Jeremy Black at The Critic Magazine.

 

I’m Leaving the UK – Ben Freeman at The Free Press.

 

Crime and no punishment in London – Mary Wakefield at The Spectator.

 

The American Bastille – Brian Kowell at Emerging Civil War.