Western Movies and Books

As does any genre, Westerns have their fans, from lukewarm to fanatic, or should I say rabid? At any rate, this is just my perspective on the genre and on my blog I’m expressing my own opinions.

Last weekend, I watched one of my favorite Westerns again. I’d mentioned it to my dad and describing it made me want to see it again. This time, though, I watched it with subtitles for the first time. My Name is Nobody is just plain silly and fun to watch. One of the interesting things about it is that the subtitles really aren’t necessary to enjoy the movie. Sure, they help fill in a few things, such as I thought Henry Fonda was a good guy, maybe a retired sheriff, and discovered instead he was a gunfighter. Little things like that. But they’re definitely not necessary to being able to follow the storyline, which is maybe why I like this movie so much.

This got me to thinking in general about Westerns.

There are very few Westerns I like. Try as i might, I can only come up with two titles. Most Westerns seem to be simple adaptions of the following algorithm:

     for * in $pointerToWesternBook do
          change $characterName
          change $horseName
          generate $randomNumber, 1, 6
          if $randomNumber > 3
               change $horseBreed
          else
               change $horseColor
          end if
          generate $randomNumber, 1, 6
          if $randomNumber > 5
               RideIntoSunset()
          end if
     end for
     print $newBook

I know that’s a gross simplification, but that’s just how most of the Westerns I checked out as a kid appeared to be. So for me, that’s how the majority of Westerns are written.

The two that I have really enjoyed reading are The Pony Soldiers by Edgar Rice Burroughs and Hanta Yo by Ruth Beebe Hill.

The Pony Soldiers is out of print and difficult to find. Searches for it will most likely point you to Apache Devil, also by Burroughs, but that is not the book I’m talking about. If you can find it, I recommend it. It’s a quick read.

Be warned, Hanta Yo is a big book and daunting at first glance. It’s well worth the read, IMHO, on several fronts: history, saga, and story flow, among others. Don’t be fooled by it’s physical appearance of being another War and Peace written on tissue-thin paper. It’s defintiely not like that at all and is far more readable. It also has a nice glossary in the back, at least my copy did, that helps with the various Sioux words used in the story.

As to Western movies, I honestly can’t think of anything other than the previously mentioned My Name is Nobody that I’ve ever wanted to watch again. It seems to me most recent “Westerns” such as Lone Ranger, Dead in Tombstone or the animated Rango are more movies set in the West than truly Westerns. They just don’t say “Western” to me like the old John Wayne movies, for example. Since the old John Wayne or Clint Eastwood movies don’t have the allure for me that My Name is Nobody has, I can’t help but wonder if that is because you don’t need the audio or if it means it’s the slapstick I enjoy and not the Western?

I kind of doubt that last. If that were the case, then I would be able to name a whole bunch of kung fu movies I should like simply because of that. But that’s a post for another day.

Back from Vacation

In case you don’t want to read this whole post, I’ve broken this down into identifiable sections so you can quickly find what you want in this longish blog entry. In order, those sections are: Vacation, Writing, Photography, Book Review, Astronomy.

Vacation

Simply put, vacation in July was wonderful. We didn’t spend a single weekend not on vacation in July.

First we went to Haines, Oregon, for the 4th of July, leaving the evening of the 3rd and returning the afternoon of the 6th. As usual we had “reserved seats” for the Parade on the 4th, courtesy of the Mayor. Some of us went to the rodeo while the rest of us lounged around the yard relaxing.

We had a horseshoe tournament, in which my team, FIFO, was promptly eliminated in the initial game and in the subsequent loser’s bracket.

The fairways on this golf course were simply a lane created by a riding mower.

We also enjoyed golf in his pasture course, which was surprisingly pretty good. I lost three balls in the weeds all over the place, due to the tall grass. The fairways, if you could call them that, were only the width of a riding mower. Despite all that, I still managed to turn in a decent score. I look forward to playing that course again and I don’t golf.

Each of the nine holes on this golf course had a cup represented by a toilet seat.

One of the best parts of all this was the breakfast burrito. These guys have a style all their own for making these and they’re delicious. Another delicious part was the salmon feed for supper. I’m not usually a fan of salmon, but the way these guys fix it on the BBQ, it could be served in any 5 star restaurant and hold its own. I ate more salmon that evening than I have in the last 8 years combined.

The house we stayed in at Coos Bay, from the back yard.

After that, the very next weekend we left for the coast. We stayed in a house near the Cape Arago lighthouse close to Charleston, near Coos Bay, Oregon. From our back yard to the private beach was 56 steps. I mean steps, not paces. By the end of the week I was going up and down that steep stairway pretty good, which pleased me no end, but the second oldest granddaughter…she was going up and down them like it was a flat surface, not even breathing hard. I’m getting old!

These are the steps from the beach to the back yard of the house we stayed in.

We used the house as a base camp, exploring quite a few of the local sights. I even discovered a couple of back roads that probably only the locals use with any regularity. The entire place was simply gorgeous, though we probably spent half our time on the beach exploring the tide pools and playing in the ocean. The only downside was the long drive there (11 hours) and back (14 hours). The drive back allowed us to visit several places along the Oregon coast such as The Devil’s Churn, the Devil’s Punchbowl, and have a late lunch at the venerable Sea Hag.

Then the weekend after returning from the coast we flew to Wendover, Nevada, with my dad, my niece, and her husband. I’ll admit that at the start I wasn’t enthusiastic, but I did manage to have fun anyway. I’m the kind of guy that doesn’t like to gamble with money, but I enjoy some of the games. I’m also the kind that is too analytical to truly enjoy playing for money. So, I watched the others play and enjoyed that as well as being with the group.

We toured the old Army Air Force Base where Enola Gay and the other first nuclear bombers practiced and then loaded up for the trip that resulted in the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagaski. There was a lot of history packed into that small museum and it was fun seeing all the various buildings that remained of that base way out in the middle of nowhere.

They also had one of the cargo planes used in the movie Con Air. We were able to go into it but it was kind of sad. It was a shell, all gutted out with no trace of it’s former glory other than the fading US Marshall and logo on the outside. Along with that they had the tower used with the movie Independence Day, only visible off in the distance.

Naturally we also saw some Hell’s Angels. I actually took a picture of the group with one member’s cell so he could be in the picture with his friends. The photographer in me, ya know? Hope the picture turned out since I wasn’t familiar with his phone’s camera operation. (Since I’m still here, I guess it worked. 😉 They had some really nice looking bikes, too, which made me miss my old Kawasaki KZ-1600B.

I managed to get a lot of reading in while in Wendover. If you don’t gamble, there’s really not much else to do once you’ve seen the museum and the salt flats. Other than ATV rides or the pool, that is.

Writing

Through the month of July, while I didn’t do all that much writing, I did manage to finish up Draft 1 (D1) of Ghost Ship.  I’ve done my initial pass-through of D2, pulling out the stuff I had crossed off, tweaking wording, and fixing a couple of typos. I’ve started on the second pass-through, where I’ll be focusing on story consistency (e.g. do I have the right number of people being mentioned), story flow, event flow, and general writing.

As is normal for me, I’m not happy with some of the events the way they played out. Yet, they provide some insight to the overall premise(?) of these short stories. I also introduce another recurring character, this time an antagonist. I’m pretty sure that character will be returning, but how and when I have no idea at this point. That may return to haunt me in a future story, but that’s the way this pantser rolls.

Along with some work on Ghost Ship, I also wrote out the premise for the next Pa’adhe story and a precis for a totally unrelated short story or novella. I’m not sure which of the two I’ll work on next, once I start sending Ghost Ship out to my Alpha and Beta readers. The next story will focus on Scarle, just as Restaok focused on Xinu and Dreamland focused on Cook. That will, I think, flesh out all the main characters in this series of short stories.

Except maybe the Captain. I’m fundamentally using the whole of the series itself to flesh out the Captain, but aside from The Pa’adhe there’s really no back story for him so maybe I’ll need to fix that in a future story. There’s definitely a bit of back story that needs to be told, which I can’t go into now without revealing too much of the overarching story driving the entire series. It definitely has to be told before the final story in the series is published since I can’t reveal that stuff properly in The Final Voyage. Yep, that’s the title of the last Pa’adhe story, and has been for a long time. It’s the half-written final Pa’adhe short story I’ve mentioned here and there on this blog.

I’m kind of thinking of doing the non-Pa’adhe story next, for a writing break. I’ve no idea if I will or not, but it is an idea I want to explore and think would be fun to write. But then, too, so is the Scarle story. Decisions, decisions.

Photography

As you’d expect, I did manage to do some photography while on vacation. Some of the pictures turned out quite nicely, I think. Others, not quite so well, but that’s the nature of photography and the reason I love digital cameras.

Over the 4th I took 718 pictures. Most dealt with vacation but I did manage to get a couple neat ones of the night sky there. The Milky Way and a couple of constellations came out rather nice. I also took some with my Galaxy Nexus’ camera which also came out nice.

The Milky Way from Haines, Oregon.

The week in Coos Bay resulted in 2,554 pictures. Not my usual output, but it’ll have to do. Quite a few of these are mini time lapse. All told, put together into a single time lapse of the vacation, I managed to squeeze a week’s worth of vacation into 5 minutes. That time lapse, though, doesn’t show half the stuff we did.

I was disappointed with one aspect of where we stayed. Our back yard actually faced pretty much North. Due to the curve of the land, the big windows’ view was straight out over the ocean which feels like it should be West, but no, that was basically North. That meant that the night photos I had hoped to take weren’t going to happen, no matter what. I did manage to get some nice sunsets against the lighthouse on the end of the bay, and some fun shots of the grandkids holding it or eating it. Other than that, everything else was pretty much the usual tourist schtick. Lots of snapshots, essentially. I’m ashamed of myself. 😉 Not all of it was, of course. I did take time to do some artistic work as well.

One of the grandkids on the beach.

Look at my lighthouse!

Sunset at the Cape Arago lighthouse, seen from the back yard.

Cape Arago lighthouse from the beach.

Cape Arago lighthouse from the back yard

Wendover was all on my cell camera. I debated taking my camera but in the end decided against it. I wasn’t sure what I’d be able to take pictures of, but figured I could always go back again if there was something I wanted to work on, photography wise. And of course, you can’t take pictures inside the casinos, which is where everyone spent most of their time. Even so, I think I got a few decent shots.

Last weekend, I went downtown and helped my daughter with a photography project based on the 50s-60s. I’m not sure what the project is, but it was a lot of fun and definitely some missed opportunities. The suggestion is to go do it again, now that we have an idea what photos she wants, and do it better. I don’t know if that’s actually going to happen or not and am waiting to find out. I did also get a really nice shot of the Nampa train depot. I need to get out more at night and go downtown, there’s a surprising lot of photo opportunity there, way more than I thought.

I was planning to go up in the Owyhees the night of the 12th, but that’s probably not going to happen. That night is when the Perseid Meteor Shower peaks and it looks like it would be a great night for it. I might still get up and go outside for a while in the early hours of the 13th, just to see what I can see from our deck.

Book Review

Actually, this is more of a series review. I mentioned above having got in some reading while in Wendover. Between Wendover and after getting home, I’ve read six of the twelve The Merlin Saga books by T. A. Barron.

The series seems to be rated as both Young Adult and Children’s fantasy/novel. It looked interesting and I like mythology, so I grabbed it when I had a chance and took it with me. I wasn’t expecting much from it, maybe just a nice, quick read.

The first book, The Lost Years, started out slow and I wasn’t sure I was going to bother reading the whole thing. However, after wading through the second chapter things picked up and I kept reading. The nice thing about taking a series with you is as soon as you finish one you can start the next.

I soon started skimming the first parts of the next five books, because the author was repeating in each book what had happened in the first book and how Merlin was talking about the lost years of his youth. Reading about Merlin telling him about the lost years in the first book was fine but by the third book I no longer read that part of each book, I just jumped for the Prologue and started reading there. I wonder if any readers read that section in every book? Personally, I thought it a waste of pages since there was nothing new there.

When I hit book 6, The Dragon of Avalon, it was a jolt in the reading flow. This book not only switched from being about Merlin, but also was very slow starting up, very similar to the first book in the series. I had to stick with it for a few chapters before I got into it as much as I had been with the previous five books. Even so, it’s a little of a disappointment. I started reading the series because it’s about Merlin and seemed to promise some Celtic mythology. This book only has Merlin as an incidental character. While the main character is interesting, and I’m curious to find out just what he is, it still disappoints for not having Merlin in a more prominent role, and also due to not having much to do with mythology, so far, other than having mythological characters.

I’m hoping book 7 will get back on following Merlin’s lost years.

Astronomy

Well, I’m not on Facebook and for those old enough to understand what I’m about to say, it’s apparently the new AOL. 😉 I know, you can find something like this on any social media. At any rate, what got me groaning was something astronomy related someone showed me on Facebook.

Remember the hoax about Mars being it’s closest in thousands of years and not being able to see it as close again for thousands of years? Even in the years after it was at its closest? Now there’s a similar post about the upcoming Perseids Meteor Shower peak this weekend.

It’s calling it a rare event. Much of what it’s saying is reasonable enough for the Perseids, but whoever put it out is pushing it as a rare event, which it’s not. It happens once a year, every year. Some peaks it has hundreds of meteors an hour, others tens. Like every other meteor shower, it varies, but also like most it’s predictable when it’s going to happen…and that is on a yearly basis.

I appreciate the idea of trying to get people out to see it, but calling it a rare event isn’t the way to do it. Indeed, when they find out it’s a yearly event, it might turn them off being interested in the night sky. Who knows? Maybe it’ll get some people interested and others disappointed.

At any rate, the Perseids peaks this 13th. The moon will happily be out of the sky during the peak times, after midnight on the 12th. The best time is to see it is probably in the hours of 3 AM to 5 AM on the 13th. I hope you go out and take a look. And if it’s awesome in the original sense of awe, call your family out as well. I plan to be out and take a look. I hope we both have a good view of a spectacular Perseids Meteor Shower.

Clear skies!

How to read a book

How to read a book

In my last post I mention what I want from fiction: escapism. Briefly, I described the reading experience I seek. Since then I’ve been thinking, usually involuntarily and at odd moments, about the reading experience.

Growing up, my favorite place was the library. I am a voracious reader, and especially love it when I can sit and read. I simply love to read and have since my youngest days. My parents potty trained me by parking me on the toilet and giving me books. In school, I almost always had my Reading textbooks finished in the first week or two. I would read a paperback on the bus. I would read during lunch at school. I was shy and reading gave me an escape.

In high school, I was caught reading a SF paperback in the back of the Reading class yet my grades in the class were up there. Happily, that teacher recognized my situation and after I showed by answering a quick quiz that I really had already read my Reading class book cover to cover, she invited me to join the speed reading class instead. Before the end of the school year, I was reading different books in the bus on the way to and from school.

At each school (I was an AF brat and we moved every 4 years) by the end of the first year I would have read all the SF in their library and also in the local library. Successive years I migrated to Historical, Fantasy and the Classics. In all my time reading, only three books have ever “defeated” me, by preventing me from being able to read them all the way through: War and Peace, The Satanic Verses, and a hefty physics tome I attempted when I was 11. War and Peace defeated me because it spent so much time describing the most miniscule detail about clothes, etc. that I got bored with it. With The Satanic Verses, the opening scene was simply so jumbled and incoherent that I could not get into the book at all. The physics book, well, I just wasn’t ready for it as I didn’t have the necessary math background to fully understand everything I was trying to read. I’d have to design that nuclear powered starship later.

I present that background so that you might see my “credentials” as a reader.

I respect that as I was going through school, Reading and eventually Literature classes were more focused on “understanding what the author was trying to say”. I appreciate the training I gained from those classes but see them as separate from reading. Those classes are more appropriately called “literature appreciation” classes, I think, as they teach you to appreciate the authorship and wordsmithing. Of course, in kindergarten and elementary school they teach you how to read the words and make sense of them. But once you have that down, it’s pretty much a focus on “what’s the author doing? Why is he saying this?”

I have several friends who say they enjoy reading, yet seem unable to discuss a book without discussing how they liked the author’s approach to this or that trope, or how well developed his philosophy is, or how the book is so representative of an idea, or how it so well tells the story of, for example, class struggle.

I have never belonged to a book club that meets to discuss books. Maybe that’s how they all talk and express their delight with the book. Yet, while I can just as easily discuss with them that type of analysis, I sometimes can’t help but wonder if they ever read for pleasure.

Or is it the case that no other author writes simply to tell a story?

The vast majority of my reading is, and obviously I speak only of fiction here, for the purpose of escapism or simple enjoyment of a good story. I don’t care and I don’t look to see what theme the author might be writing about. All I care is that it be a good story, I’m not out to analyze the book. To me, a book is simply the author’s way of telling me the story he or she wants to share. Good versus evil, personal crisis, class struggles…they’re all just world building foundations or backgrounds for the story. Nothing more, nothing less.

That reading approach of mine, just reading for the sheer pleasure of it, at times also makes it difficult for me to grok the furor around various books. To focus on just three, The Golden Compass trilogy, the Harry Potter books, Stranger in a Strange Land were all good reads, good stories. Sure, I can see parallels between entities in The Golden Compass if you want to draw them. Harry Potter introduced magic to a lot of young kids. Stranger in a Strange Land might have been an exploration of society and how we’re all linked together.

So what?

Each of those books, read just for enjoyment and a good tale, is just that: a story with which to kick back and escape reality for a bit. Maybe the author really was, no matter what they publicly state, presenting some hidden agenda. Let them. Kids, properly raised and taught to think, can tell the difference between reality and fiction despite what revered authoritarian figures might think. There are other books with just as close parallels between real entities, they give you a world pre-built if you base your stuff on them. If you want to scrutiny every word in a story for hidden meanings, hidden agendas, conspiracies, or whatever, in some ways I pity you. Understand, I’ll defend your right to read that way, but I can’t see how you can truly enjoy reading a story that way.

I realize much fiction of old was used to teach a lesson. In some ways, I acknowledge that is part of the responsibility of being an author. That’s what our legends and mythologies are for, in the end: to present a way of life that we should look up to and strive to emulate and to present those lessons in a way that captivates the listener or reader. They’re present those lessons without teaching to kids and people that might not sit still for a dry lesson. But they’re also meant to entertain, to fire our imaginations, to get us excited about the participants. That, to me, is the driving force to being an author.

We still need, appreciate, and want such heroes and heroines. We love stirring fights where right beats might and the hero wins out in the end. At least in the West. But we don’t need to dissect every story we want to read. Not every story we write has to have an ulterior agenda, hidden or otherwise.

Some stories are just that: stories to entertain. All of them can be simply read for escapism.