T. Roosevelt on writing

You touch on one of what I believe to be the most serious obstacles in the way of doing good literary work in the present generation, when you speak of the press and bustle of city life, and especially of the tendency to write "timely" articles, and the like. It is not necessary to be a mere recluse in order to do good work as a poet, a novelist, or even as a historian or a scholar; but it is absolutely necessary to be able to have the bulk of one's time to one's self, so that it can be spent on the particular study needed. Nowadays it is rather difficult to get such leisure, and indeed it can be gotten only ba a man of some means and of great determination of character, if he has any widespread popularity.

Even more important and more harmful is the fact that the enourmous increase in the half-educated reading public, and in the half-educated caterers to this reading public, tends to divert every manh capable of doing good work from that good work; because as my own experience tends to show, one's literary work is very apt to be remunerated in inverse proportion to its value.

Theodore Roosevelt, in a letter to George Dewey, February 1898

Character and maintaining poprulation

An easy, good-natured kindliness, and a desire to be independent, that is, to live one's life purely according to one's won desires, are in no sense substitutes for the fundamental virtues, for the practice of the strong racial qualities without which there can be no strong races--the qualities of courage and resolution in both men and women, of scorn of what is mean, base, and selfish, of eager desire to work or fight or suffer as the case may be, provided the need to be gained is great enough, and the contemptuous putting aside of mere ease, mere vapid pleasure, mere avoidance of toil and worry.

I do not know whetehr I most pity or most despise the foolish and selfish man or woman who does not understand that the only things really worth having in life are those the acquirement of which normally means cost and effort. If a man or woman, thorugh no fault of his or hers, goes throughout life denied those highest of all joys which spring only form home life, from the having and bringing up of many healthy children, I feel for them deep and respectful sympathy; . . . But the man or woman who deliberately avoids marriage and has a heart so cold as to know no passion and a brain so shallow and selfish asto dislkie having children, is in effect a crimianl against the race and should be an object of contemptuous abhorence by all healthy children.

--Theodore Roosevelt, in a letter to Bessie Van Vorst, October 1902
Roosevelt was appalled by the European population trends of his time which led him to think that many of the nationalities were declining in numbers. GCS

What makes a man?

I was fortunate enough in having a father whom I have always been able to regard as an ideal man. It sounds a little like cant to say what I am going to say, but he really did combine the strength and courage and will and energy of the strongest man with the tenderness, cleanness and purity of a woman. He not only took great care of me . . . but he also most wisely refused to coddle me, and made me feel that I must force myself to hold my own with other boys and prepare to do the rought work of the world. I cannot say that he ever put it into words, but he certainly gave me the feeling that I was always to be both decent and manly, and that if I were manly nobody would long laugh at my being decent.

--Theodore Roosevelt, in a November 1900 letter to Edward Martin

great endeavors

As with many new things that I must overcome, it seems the hardest part is simply taking the first step. I find myself caught in a trance while I stand and stare at the mountain's steep snowy base. I'm looking for stairs covered in red carpet to lead me to the top. I want to prevail, but I do not want to cimmit the energy or suffer the pain that it requires to ascend the peak.

I picture myself standing on top of this mountain, shaking my walking stick in victory, looking back down at the springs of life and saying, "Yes, I crested another peak, that's one less mountain I must climb."

Peter DeLeo, Survive!, his story of crashing in the Sierra Nevadas and walking through the wilderness of ice and snow for thirteen days to reach civilization and send help for two friends at the crash site.

(I highly recommend this book. It's an amazing story. I started reading it at 9 p.m. Truly I couldn't put it down. I reached page 241, the end of the book, and looked at the clock. It was 5:30 a.m. I had stayed up all night reading DeLeo's story. When was the last time you did that?

Back In the Saddle

I apologize to those of you that visited my blog and found it interesting and worth a return trip.

It's been a while since I've put up new material. My excuse, worthless as it is, is that I was a first year teacher in Jacksonville's public schools and it took over my life. There's no way to get through the first year except to grit one's teeth and do it. There is so much to do--every lesson has to be prepared from scratch, which takes 2 - 4 hours each night, after being at school from 9 to 11 hours.

but now I'm a second year teacher, so I return to the blog with renewed enthusiasm.

Who am I? I write and publish novels. Two are in print: Rush Week and Tattered Flags. Rush week is about a college freshman pledging a fraternity. The guys in control of the frat don't want him. My hero is giving every type of discouragement they can think of--along the lines of brutal hazing.

Actually, Rush Week is a disguised account of my efforts to become a United Methodist minister. It was exactly like pledging a fraternity. 'Nough said.

Tattered Flags is about Boy Scouts doing a "good turn" in a Florida forest to clean up pollution. The environmentalists and media mistrust their efforts because they are Scouts and it was the Governor's idea to bring them in.

If you have interest, check out shoppow.com or amazon.com for Rush Week. As I get back to my publishing, I hope to get Tattered Flags in Amazon but it's not there yet. bn.com also has Rush Week.

that gives you some more insight into what I'm about and want to do. I tell stories to address the culture at large, and someday hope to sell enough books to have some influence in shaping America's values for this century.

And now for today's ponderable. It comes from Elizabeth Kostova, who took a fresh look at the Dracula legend in her book, The Historian.

WE have a proverb in Hungarian: "If a thing is impossible, it can be done."

I need to paste that one on my mirror.