Literary gadfly Stephen Hartshorne writes about books that he finds at flea markets and rummage sales.

These wire sculptures are a birthday present from my brother Shady.

I got these cool wire sculptures for my birthday from my brother Shady. They’re designed to fit on a wall mount, and you can change the sculptures and make new ones. I like these faces.

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Harold and I got great seats for the UMass-Duqesne game

My friend Harold and I have been going to the UMass basketball games, so we’re hardcore fans, but everybody agrees Chaz Williams is one of the most exciting players in college basketball. He’s listed at five-foot-nine, but he’s actually about five-six and he tears around the court as if the other players were standing still.

Chaz Williams is one of the most exciting players in college basketball.

In the most recent round of the NIT, UMass was behind Drexel by 17 points and Drexel was coming up the floor and Williams just snatched the ball away from a Drexel player (‘Gimme that!’) took off, pulled up short (he almost always drives to the hoop) and drained a three. Nothing but net. UMass came back and won by four. Before that they beat Mississippi State in double overtime.

Williams is listed at 5' 9", but he's actually about 5' 6".

These photos are from the first-round game against Duquesne.

UMass will play in the semifinals March 27 at Madison Square Garden.

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Erastus Salisbury Field

Let’s hear it for the Comparative Breakfast Club! The whole point is you don’t have to have any special news, you just say what you had for breakfast. I got the idea from a play John Alsop and I staged at Groton School called The Feast.

I have a video conference on Tuesdays with my friend Vince in California, which I really enjoy and I had my regular Wednesday morning chat with my brother Shady – a bagel guy – and he said, “Happy Birthday” and I said, “Oh yeah!” Turns out it’s my 60th birthday. I thought of sitting with my father when my mother went off to a nursing home specializing in dementia. It was time. He looked at me and said, “It’s our 60th wedding anniversary.” These big days creep up on you.

Anyway, I had big plans for today. After my oatmeal with ground flax seed, cinnamon and sliced banana, I was off (in my 1997 Honda named Claire) to the Springield Museums to see the paintings by Erastus Salisbury Field. He’s one of the subjects of a series of biographical profiles I’ve been working on for far too long. Like the rest of my subjects, he is nothing if not fascinating. But don’t take my word for it, google his name for images and you’ll see what I mean.

At first you’ll notice he’s the kind of guy who can’t really draw hands. And like many itinerant artists trying to make a living in those days, he used prepared backgrounds and inserted the faces, giving his subjects a cartoony look. But then you enter his cartoon universe, and you’re entranced. It’s an entree into the mind of a true visionary. And he lived right up the street from me! His pictures are worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, so apparently he was doing something right.

Erastus Salisbury Field, Historical Monument of the American Republic

His Historical Monument of the American Republic, an enormous canvas, is the centerpiece of their collection, and it is prominently displayed beside his other great works including Grant Visits India and The First Plague of Egypt and Ulysses Sets Sail. This man’s mind contained the world. And he had two versions of the Garden of Eden, one with a naked figure of Eve and one without. That’s practical.

A member of the museum staff told me she saw something new in the Historical Monument every day. It’s a work that’s meant to commemorate the achievements of the young republic in gaining indepence and eradicating the great evil of slavery – Erastus was a fervent abolitionist – but its very design includes skyscrapers and elevated trains — a remarkable vision of the future in 1876.

Erastus Salisbury Field, known to the local children as Uncle Ratty, had an 80-foot canvas on rollers that he would set up in the Hubbard’s barn and take them on a trip around the world back in 1880. Moving pictures, what a crazy idea!

The Garden of Eden

Erastus Field might have been lost to the ages were it not for the efforts of his great-niece and a museum curator named Mary Black. They gathered his works from attics and barns and put on an exhibition at the Springfield Museums. Mary Black also worked for Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia and made two videos about Field.

But when I went to the Sunderland Library, they didnt’ have a single book about Erastus Field, just the two Mary Black videos. Well today that was remedied. I bought two copies of Mary Black’s book on the Field Exhibition and presented one to the Sunderland Library.

Then I took a 12-mile bike ride on my bike Bullwinkle. Then I realized it was my 60th birthday (again) and I hopped on my scooter named Camilla, not named after Prince Charles’ Camilla, but after my grandfather’s friend Camilla, of Froggy and Camilla, and went and got some Stolichnaya vodka to mix with this raspberry lemonade that my housemate found a case of. And, all in all, it has been a delightful evening.

I am getting old, but at the same time I’m joining an exclusive club known as the sexegenarians, otherwise known as “those whom the gods do not love.”

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It is well known that Abraham Lincoln and his wife Mary Todd consulted a medium after the death of their son Willie, who died at the age of eleven. The medium they consulted was Mrs. Cranston Laurie, the wife of a statistician in the Post Office Department.

Lincoln also consulted Mrs. Laurie’s protege, young Nettie Colburn, later Mrs. William P. Maynard. In her book Was Abraham Lincoln a Spiritualist? (Philadelphia, 1891), Mrs. Maynard relates that  she was invited to the White House by Rep. Daniel E. Somes of Maine:

“A servant, who was evidently on the watch for us, quickly opened the door and we were hurried upstairs to the executive chamber, where Mr. Lincoln and two gentlemen were awaiting our coming. Mr. Lincoln gave an order to a servant, who retired, and a moment later Mrs. Lincoln entered. I am satisfied by what followed that she was summoned on my account to place me more at ease than otherwise, under the circumstances, would have been the case.

“Mr. Lincoln then quietly stated that he wished me to give  them an opportunity to witness something of my ‘rare gift,’ as he called it, adding, ‘You need not be afraid, as these friends have seen something of this before.’

“The two gentlemen referred to were evidently military officers, as was indicated by the stripe upon their pantaloons, although their frock coats, buttoned to the chin, effectually concealed any insignia or mark of rank.

“One of these gentlemen was  quite tall and heavily built, with auburn hair and dark eyes, and side whiskers, and of decided military bearing. The other gentleman was  of average  height, and I somehow received the impression that he was lower in rank than his companion. He had light brown hair and blue eyes, was quick in manner, but deferential toward his friend, whose confirmation he involuntarily sought or indicated by his look of half appeal while the conversation went on.

“We sat quiet for a few moments before I became entranced. One hour later I became conscious of my surroundings, and was standing by a long table, upon which was a large  map of the Southern states. In my hand was a lead pencil, and the tall man, with Mr. Lincoln, was standing beside me, bending over the map, while the younger man was standing on the other side  of the table, looking curiously and intently at me.

Somewhat embarassed, I glanced around to note Mrs. Lincoln quietly conversing in another part of the room. The only remarks I heard were these: ‘It is astonishing,’ said Mr. Lincoln, ‘how every line she has drawn conforms to the plan agreed upon.’ ‘Yes,’ answered the older soldier, ‘it is very astonishing.’ Looking up, they both saw that I was awake, and they instantly stepped back, while Mr. Lincoln took the pencil from my hand and placed  a chair for me.

“Then Madam and Mr. Somes at once joined us, Mr. Somes asking, ‘Well, was everything satisfactory?’ ‘Perfectly,’ responded Mr. Lincoln; ‘Miss Nettie does not seem to require eyes to do anything,’ smiling pleasantly. The conversation then turned, designedly I felt, to commonplace matters.

“Shortly afterwards, when about leaving, Mr. Lincoln said to us in a low voice, ‘It is best not to mention this meeting at present.’ Assuring him of silence upon the question, we were soon on our way…”

I found this passage in a 1959 paperback (Garrett Publications) called True Experiences in Communicating with the Dead edited by Martin Ebon.

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I gather up the bark and wood chips as I go through my woodpile from Lashway Logging. I get twenty or thirty of these baskets every year. I throw a bunch of it in the stove and make a log fire on top of it.

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There’s no greater challenge than trying to sculpt the sublime contours of the human form. For my medium, I chose tag sale clothing and plastic grocery bags. It takes a lot of them.

Sculpting the sublime contours of the human form

You have to know how much is too much.

And how much is way too much.

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Giant skeletons with double rows of teeth have been found all over North America and throughout the world.

I went to a lecture about by Jim Vieira, a stonemason from Ashfield, about stone chambers in New England. The notice I saw mentioned a similarity to a stone structure in Ireland, and I was hoping to hear at last about an Atlantic connection in the prehistory of America. I got a lot more than I bargained for!

Vieira is a member of the Northeast Antiquities Research Association, and he has made a study of stone structures around New England, and he has found that many of them use such enormous stones and are put together with such enormous amounts of labor that they simply cannot be colonial root cellars. And there are so many of them that they can hardly be the ‘follies’ of a few eccentric stonemasons in the Colonial Period.

Plus there are accounts from the first settlers describing stone structures that were here when they came. Plus they all have entrances oriented to the same positions of the sun and moon.

When you take this together with the marvels of engineering achieved by the Mound Builders of North America, it seems pretty clear that someone was here before the tribes that met the first Europeans settlers, because these tribes were not in the habit of moving around 14-foot slabs of granite.

Vieira doesn’t profess to know who made these stone chambers, but he adduces a mountain of evidence to show that the current view of North American history is going to be turned on it’s head fairly soon.

Because the stone chambers are only the beginning. There is lots more evidence that is even more astonishing. At this point Vieira asks his audience to bear with him and keep an open mind. See there’s also this race of giants…

Okay, okay. It sounds like the lost continent of Atlantis and the aliens who built the pyramids, but remember we’re talking to a very practical man. He’s a stonemason and he’s from around here. And the evidence comes not from some esoteric set of scrolls in the library of a Tibetan llama, but from the annual reports of New England cities and towns!

I had no idea how many there were — hundreds and hundreds! These skeletons are seven to nine feet tall, some even taller, and they have double rows of teeth, all of them! Many are buried with copper armor or jewelry.

You hear legends of a race of giants in cultures all over the world, and I always thought people found some dinosaur thigh bone and thought it was from a giant human. But these reports from New England (and many other places around the world) are of intact skeletons.

Abraham Lincoln wrote about the race of giants and George Washinton found one of the giant skeletons at Mount Vernon. Closer to home, an enormous skeleton with double teeth was found here in Gill Massachusetts. Just google giant skeletons or double teeth and you find reports from all over North America and throughout the world.

Needless to say, I am agape and anxious to learn more about this ancient race of giants.

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A nimble English ship blasting away at two clumsy Spanish galleons

I’m really enjoying The Armada (1959) by Garrett Mattingly. It’s a great story, of course, an epic, and Mattingly really does a superb job with it, giving telling portraits of the characters and adding lots of interesting details. I guess that’s why it won the Pulitzer Prize.

One of that most amazing things about the story is how incredibly stupid Philip II of Spain was. In his belief that he was carrying out the will of God, he refused any and all practical advice from people who knew what they were talking about and apppointed a commander with no naval or military experience because of his noble birth.

Of the 30,000 soldiers and sailors who set out with the Armada, only 10,000 survived. They say every single family in Spain lost a son. Many died in battle, of course, but most of them died from disease.

And what an inspiring figure is Good Queen Bess rallying the troops at Tillbury — and the crafty English sea dogs, Drake and Hawkins, getting the weather gauge on the Spanish fleet, harrying them along the Channel and blasting lots  of them to smithereens.

Then the famous “Protestant Wind” finished off the supposedly invincible Armada, smashing them on the northern coasts of Scotland and Ireland. A few Spaniards landed in Ireland, took over small castles, regrouped, and got back aboard the few remaining ships,  only to be shipwrecked again with total loss of life.

Did you know that Scotland’s West Highland terrier and the Isle of Man’s Manx cat both swam ashore from the Spanish Armada? That’s not in the book; I just found it googling around.

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North Sugarloaf Trail

Here’s another offering from Steve’s Clumsy Videos.

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