Monday, November 20, 2017
The Story Is Where Author And Reader Meet
By: Donovan Baldwin
This morning, I posted a quote, on a social media site, from one of my favorite stories.
Got me to thinking.
As much as the quote meant to me, there are many people who just wouldn't "get it".
Not their fault.
They might not be familiar with the story, or, it just might not be of interest to them.
The second reason I cannot talk about, as only they could know why.
We get to who we are by winding pathways, and trying to re-trace and "correct" someone's past is a thankless, thoughtless, and intrusive, action.
However, not being familiar with the story can be changed by becoming familiar with it. Often, however, it is the meeting of two stories, the author's, and the reader's, that give value and meaning to a quote or excerpt.
Take this line from Robert Louis Stevenson's, "Treasure Island".
"Israel was Flint's gunner."
Spoken at one of the more dramatic moments of the story, and fraught (love that word) with meaning for the knowledgeable reader, It can be totally, in fact, less than, meaningless for those not "in the know".
In the story, Flint was an infamous pirate captain. Israel Hands was his master gunner, and now is a mutineer aiming a cannon at loyal crewmembers.
Even with that, the reader has to be ready to believe in pirates, mutiny on the high seas, and the search for lost treasure to appreciate the moment.
I was, as a boy, and, now, as a man, I guess, I still am.
Got me to thinking.
As much as the quote meant to me, there are many people who just wouldn't "get it".
Not their fault.
They might not be familiar with the story, or, it just might not be of interest to them.
The second reason I cannot talk about, as only they could know why.
We get to who we are by winding pathways, and trying to re-trace and "correct" someone's past is a thankless, thoughtless, and intrusive, action.
However, not being familiar with the story can be changed by becoming familiar with it. Often, however, it is the meeting of two stories, the author's, and the reader's, that give value and meaning to a quote or excerpt.
Take this line from Robert Louis Stevenson's, "Treasure Island".
"Israel was Flint's gunner."
Spoken at one of the more dramatic moments of the story, and fraught (love that word) with meaning for the knowledgeable reader, It can be totally, in fact, less than, meaningless for those not "in the know".
In the story, Flint was an infamous pirate captain. Israel Hands was his master gunner, and now is a mutineer aiming a cannon at loyal crewmembers.
Even with that, the reader has to be ready to believe in pirates, mutiny on the high seas, and the search for lost treasure to appreciate the moment.
I was, as a boy, and, now, as a man, I guess, I still am.
Labels: Captain Flint, donovan baldwin, fiction, mutineers, pirates, Treasure Island
Monday, October 09, 2017
Growing Up As Part Of A Neighborhood...
By: Donovan Baldwin
In 1945, at the end of World War II, my dad started work at the Pensacola Naval Air Station, while I was busy being born in Atlanta, Georgia.
He found a home for us, Mom, my sister, and me, and brought us down to Florida six weeks later in a 1939 Ford, I believe.
We lived in an area called Warrington, which lay between Pensacola, and the Naval Air Station.
Warrington had a grocery, a drugstore, a hardware store, shoe repair, a barber, a gas station, and other amenities.
Dad drove to work through the shopping area daily for the next 30 years.
We moved three times over the next four years, but, in 1949, my parents bought the house I lived in for the next 20+ years. I went to school in Warrington. We shopped there. All my friends, until high school, lived there.
People in the drug store, the grocery, the gas station, knew me as "Mr. Baldwin's boy". I had identity and community.
I think that is one of the finest gifts I was given, with health, and a good education...that feeling of being known and identified as part of a neighborhood, a community, for all the years of my childhood and youth.
So many kids today don't get to know that.
Always sure of myself as "Mr. Baldwin's boy", I also got to be Tom Sawyer, running off with Huck Finn on the Mississippi, or sometimes Jim Hawkins, aboard the Hispañola, at sea in search of treasure, with adventurers and pirates.
I did try to build a raft. I climbed trees and sat in them staring out at the bay, dreaming of Treasure Island, and listening to the waves, and, for the voice of Long John Silver.
I got to be a boy, living among friends before "growing up"...or did I ever really grow up? Sometimes I wonder.
He found a home for us, Mom, my sister, and me, and brought us down to Florida six weeks later in a 1939 Ford, I believe.
We lived in an area called Warrington, which lay between Pensacola, and the Naval Air Station.
Warrington had a grocery, a drugstore, a hardware store, shoe repair, a barber, a gas station, and other amenities.
Dad drove to work through the shopping area daily for the next 30 years.
We moved three times over the next four years, but, in 1949, my parents bought the house I lived in for the next 20+ years. I went to school in Warrington. We shopped there. All my friends, until high school, lived there.
People in the drug store, the grocery, the gas station, knew me as "Mr. Baldwin's boy". I had identity and community.
I think that is one of the finest gifts I was given, with health, and a good education...that feeling of being known and identified as part of a neighborhood, a community, for all the years of my childhood and youth.
So many kids today don't get to know that.
Always sure of myself as "Mr. Baldwin's boy", I also got to be Tom Sawyer, running off with Huck Finn on the Mississippi, or sometimes Jim Hawkins, aboard the Hispañola, at sea in search of treasure, with adventurers and pirates.
I did try to build a raft. I climbed trees and sat in them staring out at the bay, dreaming of Treasure Island, and listening to the waves, and, for the voice of Long John Silver.
I got to be a boy, living among friends before "growing up"...or did I ever really grow up? Sometimes I wonder.
Labels: donovan baldwin, Florida, growing up, Long John Silver, Pensacola, Tom Sawyer, Treasure Island, Warrington
