Art Journal 52 - COURAGE (week 24)

Chelle, at Journal52, posts an Art Journal prompt each week. I'm jumping in on week 24 for 2014. Well, actually I cheated and posted a slightly older image on the Journal52 Flickr site that combined themes for Week 22 (Travel) and Week 23 (Passion.) That image can be found HERE.

The Week 24 theme is COURAGE. (Scroll to the bottom of the page to learn how I created this image.)

Mark Twain and Courage

I'm a big Mark Twain fan so I used his quote on courage. I admire his courage to write the truth about many things no one wanted to hear.

Most people know Twain as the creator of characters such as Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. They think of him as the quintessential American writer and think he lived his entire life in Hannibal, Missouri.

Yet during his lifetime, most people thought of him as a travel writer for his stories about a his first trip to Europe and the Holy Land in Innocents Abroad, his travels to the West in Roughing It, and other world travels in A Tramp Abroad and Following the Equator.

In fact, after the age of 17, he lived in Philadelphia, Washington, New York City, Nevada, San Francisco, Hartford and Redding (CT) and spent many years in Europe even when he wasn't on lecture tours.

In 1867 when he made his first trip abroad, many thought Europe was the most civilized and cultured area of the world and that Americans were nothing but country bumpkins. But Twain delighted Americans by poking fun at European culture and even found humor in the Holy Land.

My interest in Twain began when I read his novels as a preteen and teenager. But I became a Twain fanatic when I started to read his social commentary a few years later. Twain had the knack of poking fun at the human race, condemning us for our many unreasonable thoughts and actions, and making us laugh at ourselves at the same time.

Huckleberry Finn has been condemned in recent years over the use of the "N" word, yet Huck Finn was a controversial character as soon as the book was published, not for word usage or racism, but because Huck was the 1800's version of a juvenile delinquent and many (including Louisa May Alcott) thought the book would corrupt youth. Many libraries refused to carry it. Twain laughed it off because he knew people would have to purchase it if libraries didn't carry it.

Twain grew up in Missouri when it was as slave-holding state.* At that time, it was not only "normal" to think slavery was okay, it was good for the local economy, the churches used the Bible to justify slavery, and those who openly condemned it ran the risk of being tarred and feathered, if not run out of town. Years later, Twain married into an abolitionist New England family and grew to see the error of his childhood indoctrination.

Twain had started Huck Finn in 1876 and then left it untouched for several years. In the early 1880s, he traveled to the Mississippi River and saw that not much had changed for former slaves since the Civil War. When he returned to Hartford, he completed the novel set in pre-Civil War days. It was finally published in 1885.

His characters spoke as they would have then, and that included using the "N" word. Yet, when Huck traveled on a raft with the slave Jim, he realized that slaves had feelings just like white people, that they loved their families and were good and caring people. Yet Huck believed he would go to hell if he didn't turn in a runaway slave. He struggled with these opposing attitudes but eventually decided that he could not turn in his friend Jim and that he would just have to go to hell.  Twain was the first American writer who gave a black person a voice.

Twain wrote about almost every social issue of the day: advertising, rebellion, lying, greed, racism, money, government, rumors, war, morality, religion, grief, social customs, education, grammar, revenge, monarchs, nudity, fools... and much more.**

Twain often used humor to say what he really thought about a topic. He said, "Humor must not professedly teach, and it must not professedly preach, but it must do both if it would live forever." (as quoted in Mark Twain in Eruption)

Despite the humor, Twain was dead serious about important topics of his day. He had the courage to tell the truth, even if he had to cloak it in humor to make it palatable and to attract and hold people's attention. Most of his thoughts are as relevant today as they were during Twain's life.

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*Searching for Jim by Terrell Dempsey is an eye-opening account of slavery in Hannibal during Mark Twain's youth.  I learned a great deal that I didn't know about slavery from this book. Dempsey, a lawyer who lives and practices in Hannibal was helping his daughter with a school project at the local library when he ran across a wealth of information on slavery there. At that time, all the tourist attractions in Hannibal virtually ignored the fact that it had been a slave-holding area when the young Mark Twain lived there. (When I visited Hannibal in 2001, a play based on Huckleberry Finn, written especially for tourists, didn't even have the character Jim in it.) Dempsey decided to do more research which eventually resulted in his book.
 **Find thousands of authentic Twain quotes on hundreds of topics HERE.
Note the word "authentic." Just about every humorous thought or maxim that vaguely sounds like Twain might have said it has been attributed to him. Many cannot be confirmed as true Twainisms. However, if you click on my link, all the quotes you will find there have been verified as being said or written by Twain. That directory of Twain quotations was gathered by respected Twain scholar, Barbara Schmidt. Also see The Quotable Mark Twain by another Twain scholar, R.Kent Rasmussen.

(Disclosure about my footnotes: I have met and corresponded with Barbara Schmidt and know Kent Rasmussen and Terrell Dempsey, although none of them are close friends. All three do quality work, and my endorsement should not be tainted by my acquaintance with them.)
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How I created my image:

I scanned a piece of recycled paper and "tore" the edges with my mouse, added some depth and shading to it.

I scanned page one of a very old version of Huckleberry Finn, then inverted the colors and change it to a brownish tone for the background. After feathering the edges  I added this to a layer above the recycled paper.

I used a photo of Twain and reduced it to the very darkest and lightest areas to give it the appearance of a sketch or ink drawing, changed it to sepia and then did "hand-drawing" (with my mouse) to add shading and details that disappeared when I reduced it to lightest and darkest areas and added some texture. Twain's image was added to a layer above the book page.

Finally I added the quote using a script I thought to be reminiscent of the Victorian era in which Twain lived.

Recent Non-fiction Reads

I almost always have at least one actual book, one audio book on my iPod, and one book on CD in my car going at any one time.  I can read a good book in 2 days or linger over one for several weeks.  I currently have 16 items checked out on my library card, a combination of printed books, audio books, and DVDs.

Looking for a good non-fiction read?  Try these:

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The Canals of Mars by Gary Fincke (a memoir)
Gary Fincke, a writer and poet, was the Flannery O'Conner Award winner for short fiction in 2004.

Disclosure: I knew the author when we attended the same high school, although we weren't close friends.

Although I'm sure I would have loved this well-written memoir anyway, what made it doubly enjoyable was that I am the same age as the author and grew up in the same suburb of Pittsburgh. Therefore, many of the locations, happenings, and people were familiar to me. Because I didn't recognize any names near the beginning of the book, I thought the author had changed them, but later I recognized a name I remembered from high school and soon I was reading about many of my high school classmates as elementary, junior, and senior high-school students. 

The memoir is not a continuous story of the author's life but individual episodes from his boyhood, that are related by place and time 

I'm sure many readers will recognize the activities and youthful pranks typical of an era before children were confined to supervised activities 24/7, a time when youngsters roamed the local woods, made up games, and resolved problems between themselves without adult interference. It was an era when parents set high standards that none of us could fully achieve. Although I never met the author's parents, I recognized them in my own mother and father who envisioned the same kind of perfection for me as his parents desired for their son and whose impossible expectations resulted in varying degrees of conformity and rebellion. 

Find this and other Gary Fincke books on the author's Amazon page.

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Grant's Final Victory by Charles Bracelen Flood 
I high recommend this and the other books mentioned in this review.

I had recently read historian Geoffrey C. Ward's A Disposition to Be Rich about the author's great-grandfather, Ferdinand Ward, the man who swindled Ullysses Grant (as well as many others) of their wealth, bankrupting the Civil War general and former U.S. President in 1884. Ward, a charming con artist, ran what we now call a Ponzi Scheme, hoodwinking one and all into believing he was a financial genius. 

As a long-time Mark Twain aficionado, I was aware of Twain's part in publishing Grant's memoirs. Grant had been offered a 10% royalty on his proposed book, minus numerous expenses, but Twain offered him an advance and 20% of all sales. In addition, he promoted and sold the book by subscription with a choice of covers, which generated many more sales than would have been possible otherwise. 

It was recommended that everything be placed in his wife's name so that she would receive royalties after Grant's death. Eventually, Grant's wife was paid about $600,000 for Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant, the largest amount ever paid (up to that time.) More about the friendship of two great men of the 19th century can be found in Grant and Twain by Mark Perry which covers the struggle of Grant to complete his memoirs and Twain's struggle to complete Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Grant's Final Victory summarizes Grant's early life and the events that led to his bankruptcy at the hands of Ferdinand Ward. However, the bulk of the book tells the moving story of Grant's decision to write his memories and his struggle to complete his life story, centered on his Civil War experiences, before dying of throat cancer, so that he could provide for his family. Grant had difficulty walking after a fall months earlier. He could barely swallow water, let alone eat. He could speak only in a whisper or not at all. Yet he battled on, completing his writing mere days before his death. 

The Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant became an immediate best-seller and is still considered to be one of the best military memoirs ever written, sometimes compared to Caesar's The Gallic Wars.

 Find this and other Charles Bracelen Flood books on the author's Amazon page.

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Jesus Interrupted by Bart D. Ehrman 
Ehrman is the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor and Chair of Religious Studies and a professor specializing in the New Testament at the U. of N. Carolina, Chapel Hill. He is a fundamentalist Moody Bible Institute graduate. He was warned against furthering his education at Wheaton College because that Christian school was not "Christian enough." Later those at Wheaton warned him that Princeton's theological program was full of professors who weren't "real" Christians either.

This book is subtitled: "Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (And Why We Don't Know About Them)"

For over a century, Biblical scholars at seminaries have known and been teaching about the contradictions in the Bible and how it was written, yet it seems that as soon as ministers are ordained, they are afraid of imparting this knowledge to their congregations. Are they afraid believers will rebel? Are they afraid congregants will begin to doubt? Are they afraid of losing their jobs?

Ehrman expands on Biblical problems discussed in his Misquoting Jesus which explains how Biblical stories were first transmitted orally, then later copied by individual scribes. There was no standardized spelling. Sometimes one person read from a page and several scribes wrote from the oral reading. Some words were written incorrectly resulting in misunderstanding the intention of the text. Some were misheard. Mistakes were made, some accidentally and some to promote a particular view of an early Christian sect. In addition, the literacy rate was extremely low, so almost no one was able to read religious papers or texts.

No one knows who actually wrote the Gospels, the first four books of the New Testament.  The names Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were given to the books to give them the aura of authenticity. Many people believe they are first-hand accounts of Jesus's life, but they were written decades after Jesus's death and most certainly were not eye-witness accounts. It is unlikely that any of the disciples could read or write.  They spoke Aramaic while the Gospels were written in Greek. None are written in the first person. 

Some of the books of the New Testament were forged (claimed to have been written by someone other than the original writer) or misattributed. Scholars believe that only some of the books attributed to Paul were written by him. Besides great differences in style and word usage, several books espouse views in direct opposition to the views in other books that are believed to have been written by Paul. Paul never met Jesus, so most of his writings are mere opinions of what he thought Jesus believed.  

The books that make up the New Testament were chosen and put together in 367 CE ---centuries after the death of Jesus. Many religious texts were rejected. And of course, those chosen or rejected, where decided upon by a very human committee. 

Ehrman suggests that one should read the Gospels horizontally instead of vertically. That is, one should read each Gospel's story of a particular event (the resurrection for example) side-by-side, instead of reading each complete Gospel from beginning to end, and from the first to the last Gospel. That way, one sees the contradictions and impossibilities in the stories. I would even suggest one try to write a time-line of the individual events of those Biblical stories to determine what happened when and where.  Each Gospel has some differences, some minor and some major. The stories we know as the nativity, crucifixion or resurrection stories are really a compilation of the various stories in the four Gospels ---or sometimes three ---as all four do not relate all of the same events. 

Erhman used to believe in the Bible's inerrancy, but has since come to believe it is a very human book. He understands that the authors lived at different times in different places and each had a different opinion of what may have happened.  

Ehrman writes in an easy manner, making his in-depth scholarship accessible to a wide audience. He is not interested in convincing anyone to give up on religious beliefs, but rather to impart the historical information that has been left out of most Biblical studies or church sermons. Although the author is critical of the withholding of that information to the general public, he is respectful of religion and those who choose to believe. He hopes readers will fully understand and think about how Christianity began and grew based on historical evidence.

 Find this and other Bart D. Ehrman books on the author's Amazon page.

Mark Twain on Travel

Innocents Abroad, 1869

        “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime."

Although we usually think of Mark Twain as a novelist, during his lifetime Twain was known mostly as a travel writer for his many books on travel, including: Innocents Abroad, Roughing It, Life on the Mississippi, A Tramp Abroad, and Following the Equator.