Shelby Foote, Dip Pens, and Making Space to Slow Down

on June 2018 walk

"When asked why he wrote with a pen that required frequent pauses for dipping into a fresh supply of ink, the late Shelby Foote, noted novelist and Civil War writer, answered, 'It helps me slow down.'" --quoted in Working it Out, Growing Spiritually with the Poetry of George Herbert by Joseph L. Womack

The bee on the flower showed up to view only after I had downloaded the picture from my phone to the computer. If I had not slowed down first to take a walk, second to take the time to snap a photo, and third to take that closer look, I would have missed the unexpected detail.

Maybe that's what Shelby Foote (1916-2005) experienced when he wrote with an old fashioned dip pen. I'm sure, based on his list of published works, the exercise must have helped him capture extra-special details. Let his record stand: The Civil War: A Narrative in three volumes, along with six published novels, are among his published credits. I'm not thinking of going all the way back to dipping a pen in an inkwell, but I do like to start writing sessions with a prompt or two--often written by hand--to slow down and give the creative side space to kick in. In fact just the other day my oldest granddaughter (age 10) and I did a word association exercise to generate ideas for setting and character names needed for a writing project the two of us are working on together :-)

Additional quotes by Mr. Foote include:

"If you want to study writing, read Dickens. That's how to study writing, or Faulkner, or D.H. Lawrence, or John Keats. They can teach you everything you need to know about writing."

"And I'm a slow writer: five, six hundred words is a good day. That's the reason it took e 20 years to write those million and a half words of the Civil War."

And how about this one:

"A university is just a group of buildings gathered around a library."

Yep--and maybe just about any community as well. At least they should be. A good place to slow down anyway.

How's your summer going? Finding time to slow down? Maybe carving out enough time to get some writing done? What is your go-to-technique to slow down and capture that elusive thought?

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Hands, Hope, and Historic Lighthouses

Lake Erie June 2018

I hear lake water

lapping with low

sound by the shore...

I hear it in the deep

heart's core.

--William Butler Yeats

We went to Lake Erie last week to spend a few days on the shore, to play, to read, to explore. Stories abound with each trip a person takes, I guess, but my story features a light house, 77 steps to the top, a challenge, and--after the fact--a good laugh (seasoned with relief).

Marblehead Lighthouse

While the rest of the family went to nearby Cedar Point Amusement Park, my daughter and I, along with her two youngest kids, explored close-by villages and the historic peninsula housing the oldest lighthouse on Lake Erie: Marblehead Lighthouse in Marblehead OH.

Now if we had given it more thought in advance, would we have made the subsequent climb? In fact, after the fact, our famous words upon reaching the pinnacle were, "What WERE we thinking??!" But the attendant selling the tickets had said, "There's only 77 steps." 77? That's not too many is it?

And so, since the day was a beautiful one, and the view would be so dramatic from the top, we bought our tickets and entered this quaint, historic lighthouse. Did I mention we had a five-year old and a two-year old with us?

Lighthouse staircase

 The doorway yawned open. The narrow cast iron steps rotating up the spiral staircase beckoned. We each took the hand of a little one, and thus we started the climb. The five-year old was so good to help; we had her counting the steps. She's a pretty good counter after all. 'What step are we on now, Ceci?' 'Twenty-seven.' Later, 'Fifty-six.' and so on. It was the littlest one, though, that had the greatest sense of adventure. Little Miss Independent resisted holding her mother's hand. She wanted to do this all by herself. Can you say clash of wills??

All I could think of was, don't look down. Yet, climb we did. It was not Mt. Everest (although grandson called the loft in our condo overlooking the living room Mt. Everest!), but a mountain to conquer none-the-less.

Below staircase looking up

Ours was a small challenge, of course, next to those who made history in this lighthouse. Marblehead, built in 1821, served as a beacon, a guiding light, a source of aid and protection for over a century, from post-War of 1812 through the Civil War, and World War I. Benajah Wolcott, Marblehead's first keeper, was a Revolutionary War veteran. It is said that each evening during the shipping season, Benajah would climb the lighthouse (by way of wooden steps which preceded the cast-iron spiral staircase we climbed) to light its thirteen lamps (source) and then faithfully tend the light until the following morning. He kept records of ships that passed, noted weather conditions, and organized rescue efforts. When he passed away, his wife Rachel took over his duties--the first female lighthouse keeper on the Great Lakes. What a remarkable woman she must have been. The guide at the lighthouse told our group that in the early years lighthouse keepers would carry two four-gallon buckets of whale oil up the steps to keep the lights burning. Now that's a climb!

View of Cedar Point from lighthouse

The lighthouse keeper with the longest record was Charles Hunter (1903-1933). His tenure included the years of the Great War, with log entries reflecting the times: "War started in Austria, Belgium, England, France and Germany (source); and later: "Keeper and Assistant purchased each $100 Liberty Loan Bond." Local tragedies were also recorded: "Assistant found two boys frozen at Put-in-Bay." One log entry tied a local event and tragedy together: "Assistant planted a walnut tree, A Memorial to cousin killed in the war!" A grove of walnut trees stands today on the site, all testimony to that first tree planted.

The two brave lighthouse climbers

"I can think of no other edifice constructed by man as altruistic as a light house," George Bernard Shaw is quoted as saying. "They were built only to serve."  I didn't think of all of this while concentrating one step at a time, holding the hand of a five-year old up 77 steps and back down. But as I reflect on the experience, I think of all the feet that have climbed this monument, all the people who served others in connection with it and all the messages and images this lighthouse and others project: hope, harbor in the storm, helping hands, heart.

We survived our climb and can laugh about the adventure in retrospect. But we can also link hands with those who worked in obscurity, with little or no recognition, with a simple purpose: to reach out a hand to others. One generation to another. As one unknown source put it: "Don't forget that maybe you are the lighthouse in someone's storm."

That's just a glimpse of our summer so far. How is your summer going? Any words written, steps climbed, hands held, hope inspired? Have you visited any lighthouses? Let's share our stories.
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