Another for the bucket list

A shot from the front porch of the Station Inn at Cresson, Pa., by the noted railroad photographer J. Alex Lang, taken from the hotel's web site. Click for larger view.

One of my enduring passions is staying at old railroad hotels by the side of the tracks where one can sit on the front porch with a camera and long lens and watch the trains go by while debating the relative merits of this locomotive model and that with fellow rail buffs all the livelong day.

This is generally a pastime for old-guy trainiacs, but spouses often come along and discuss choo-choo widowhood among themselves. Trainwatching ("trainspotting" in Britain) is a hobby for a certain kind of person, one who is not exactly a Luddite but perhaps an aficionado of a historic old technology kept alive with modern innovation.

In my particular case railroad hotels are a fine place to get some writing done -- I'm actually more productive in a small room by the tracks that I can leave from time to time to watch a fast freight go by. The thunder of locomotives and the aroma of diesel exhaust somehow inspires me. (Don't ask how.)

My preferred railroad hostelry is the Izaak Walton Inn at Essex, Montana, on the transcontinental High Line of the old Great Northern Railway (now Burlington Northern Santa Fe), reachable on Amtrak's Empire Builder from Chicago to Seattle. (See here, here and here).

I've also taken the Southwest Chief to the newish Depot Inn at La Plata, Missouri, on the Burlington main from Chicago to Los Angeles. (See here.)

Last weekend the New York Times' travel section reported favorably (although with barely suppressed amusement) on another rail buff's favorite, the Station Inn Bed & Breakfast at Cresson, Pennsylvania, on the old Pennsylvania Railroad (now Norfolk Southern) main line from Pittsburgh to New York City.

One can get there from Chicago by taking Amtrak's Capitol Limited to Pittsburgh, laying over for a couple of hours, then boarding the Pittsburgh-to-New York Pennsylvanian and debarking at Altoona, where one can rent a car for the 18-mile, 21-minute drive back down the line to Cresson. Alternatively, the time-challenged can fly to Pittsburgh and rent a car for the 100-mile, 2-hour drive to the hotel.

Gonna do it next spring. The Lady Friend wants to go, too.

Reality catches up to fiction

On page 111 of my 2003 novel Season's Revenge appears this paragraph from the Porcupine County Tribune of October 24, 1932:

SIX FINNISH PEOPLE
LEAVE FOR RUSSIA

Mr. and Mrs. Simon Talikka, Mr. Arthur Weser and sons Arthur Jr. and Elmer, and Heinrikki Heikkila, who have lived at Greenfield for several years, left Thursday for Kontupohja, United Soviet Social Russia.

A farewell party was given for them at the Farmers' Hall at Greenfield Monday evening.

The paragraph was reproduced nearly verbatim from the October 24, 1932, issue of the Ontonagon Herald, the actual weekly paper of the Upper Michigan county that is the model for Porcupine County in my mystery fiction. All I altered was the real name of the paper and the real name of the town, Green. I added a fictional character, Heikkila, to support a subplot of the novel.

That subplot involved the historical reverse migration of more than 10,000 struggling Finnish farmers from Upper Michigan, Minnesota and Ontario to Karelia, a Finnish-speaking Soviet province next door to Finland, during the Great Depression. Most of the farmers were never heard from again, presumably having perished during the Stalinist purges of the late 1930s. Many of their American properties were abandoned for taxes and sold to greedy land speculators -- giving rise to a possible motive for murder.

This morning I sat down at the computer to the following e-mail:

Dear Mr. Kisor,

I was shocked when reading your book Season’s Revenge when I came across the section that talked about Karelia and Simon Talikka, Mr. Arthur Weser and sons Arthur Jr. and Elmer, and Henrikki Heikkila, who have live at Greenfield for several years, left Thrusday for Kontupohja, United Social Soviet Russia.

The reason why I was shocked is because your fiction story as it relates to Karelia was more non-fiction to me. You see, I have been searching for decades trying to find out what happen to my missing relatives that went to Karelia from Green, Michigan. They are: Simon Talikka, Mr. Arthur Wesa (your book says Weser), and sons Arthur Jr. and Elmer, and Eero. I find your story of them more than coincidence. Simon Talikka and his wife took in (unofficially adopted) Arthur’s boys shortly after Olga died (Arthur’s wife). Arthur also lost a very young son named Onni.

I pray that you might have some information (letters, news paper articles, etc) of my missing relatives. My family was from Green, Michigan, not from the fictitious Greenfield noted in the story. After Simon Talikka and Arthur Wesa and the boy’s went to Karelia sometime around October 29, 1932, we lost contact with them in 1936. According to Mayme Sevander's book titled "Of Soviet Bondage" has a listing of "Vesa, Arthur; from Green, Mich. US 1931." in Appendix 5, titled Wartime Labor Camp Victims. This suggests that they may have become victims of Stalin's purges.

The last time anyone heard from Arthur and the boys was in a letter written by Simon Talikka in 1936. Simon writes; "At this time he was no longer living in Karelia, but rather in a different area of Russia working in a gold mine. Wesa [Arthur] stayed with his boys in Karelia. They are working there in the woods. Young Paavo [Walter Kytöneva - Wesa] is a teacher in Tunkua.” [Tunkua is a town in the northern part of Karelia]. This was the last piece of solid evidence that Arthur and the 3 boys were still alive.

Thank you for your time and would appreciate any help you can provide.

Respectfully,
Kevin Levonius
Gilroy, California
Cell (408) 710-6606
e-mail kevin@levonius.com

Accompanying the e-mail was a reproduction of a listing of the members of the Wesa family (also with their mother's maiden name, Kytöneva) who had emigrated to Karelia -- and three photographs:



Left to right: Onni, Eero, Lauri, Paavo and Viljo.










Arthur Kytöneva-Wesa









Olga Kytöneva-Wesa

I had to tell Mr. Levonius that I had no further information on his family, but that I would post his letter on this blog in the long-shot hope that someone researching the Karelia period who might know what happened to the Talikkas and the Wesas would discover it during a Google search.

Agincourt and the Whiskey Rebellion

Family lore, especially legends about heroic and illustrious forebears, gives us a sense of rootedness. But just because a story has been handed down through the generations doesn't make it true.

For a century or more, one branch of my family has taken enormous pride in the belief that its first American ancestors arrived in this country from Northern Ireland in 1770, settled in the Monongahela Valley and fought in the storied Whiskey Rebellion of 1791-94 against arbitrary federal taxation of alcohol.

Now my brother, a retired professor of economics and a trained researcher, has discovered two strong bits of documentary evidence suggesting that the family did not get to this country until 1798, far too late to have participated in the Whiskey Rebellion.

Such are the vagaries of oral history, of unsupported memory. We don't, as a rule, remember things as they actually occurred; we tend to remember events the way we want them to have happened.

These musings are spurred by an article in today's New York Times suggesting that the Battle of Agincourt, fought on this date 584 years ago, may not have been the impossible victory against overwhelming 1-to-5 odds that Britons have celebrated for nearly six centuries, helped along by these stirring lines from Shakespeare's "Henry V":

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

Indeed Agincourt was a great win for the English against the French, some modern historians now say, but involved closer to 1-to-2 odds (and maybe less) than literary posterity has claimed. Like my brother, the revisionist historians have taken a hard look at actual documentary evidence -- in the case of Agincourt, military and tax records -- and come up with a different truth. It isn't what traditional historians and popular dramatists have said it was all these centuries.

Why is this stuff important? The Times article points out that the recent discoveries have led to a "new science of military history" that today's generals in Afghanistan and Iraq are carefully consulting in making their command decisions. If he who ignores history is doomed to relive it, so is he who relies blindly on national myths.

It's great to believe stirring stories, but it's better to have the truth.

Soaring cliches

Film critics are like sportswriters; all too often they reach for a peach and grasp a chestnut instead. In their reviews of the new, almost universally panned movie about Amelia Earhart, many of their cliches sound either like third-rate Saint-Exupery or cribbed from 1940s comic books about intrepid birdmen.

"Soar" and its ilk were a sad favorite:

"Mira Nair's unfocused direction never allow[s] Hilary Swank's performance as legendary aviatrix Amelia Earhart to soar." -- Lou Lumenick, New York Post

"A film that should have soared . . .Like her subject, the filmmaker gets lost in the clouds." --Betsy Sharkey, L.A. Times

"Amelia goes airborne but never fully soars." -- Claudia Puig, USA Today

"The result is verisimilitude without engagement — a risk-taker's story told entirely without narrative risk — and a movie that consequently never takes flight." -- Bob Mondello, NPR

"A director can do only so much with a script . . . that feels like it’s on the runway, waiting, even when it’s up in the air." -- Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune

"Most of all, Earhart wanted to be able to fly free as a bird above the clouds . . ." -- Ray Bennett, Hollywood Reporter

One writer scored a trifecta:

"Though this traditional story about a defiantly nontraditional woman doesn't always soar, it fits Hilary Swank, its producer/star, like a jumpsuit. . . . Earhart came to love Putnam, nicely played by Gere as the wind beneath her wings." -- Carrie Rickey, Philadelphia Inquirer

(This is just ignorant. In real life aviation jumpsuits, or coveralls as they are properly called, are hardly form-fitting but loose, baggy and grease-stained. What's more, wind does not make wings fly.)

Furthermore:

"The onslaught of cliches brings the movie down in flames." -- Peter Travers, Rolling Stone

"To say that Amelia never gets off the ground would be an understatement; it barely makes it out of the hangar."— Justin Chang, Variety

Some images were just puzzling:

"Trying to import feeling into the movie's stilted dialogue is like trying to fly a plane blindfolded." -- Sam Adams, A.V. Club

"Amelia Earhart's disappearance is one of the great mysteries of the 20th century. 'Amelia' clips its wings." -- Stephanie Zacharek, Salon.com

(Wing-clipping keeps chickens from flying, but in aviation it increases an airplane's maneuverability.)

"Amelia is the Mack truck of flight. Heavy and lumbering, it delivers the goods, but there's not an ounce of magic in the thing." -- Rick Groen, The Globe and Mail

(How did Mack trucks get in there? Why not an Airbus or a 747? They lumber, too.)

Some images did seem fresh:

"Swank rides the thematic turbulence like the star she is." -- Ty Burr, Boston Globe

"The next generation of American women grew up in her slipstream." -- Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

And there was some sharp wit:

"With any luck this biopic of Amelia Earhart will also vanish without a trace." -- J.R. Jones, Chicago Reader

"Amelia Earhart is still missing." -- Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal

Whoops!

Newspaper corrections columns sometimes raise suspicions that the papers are trying to cover up their really egregious screwups with a smokescreen of trivial "skinbacks," presenting an illusion of journalistic candor and honesty.

Case in point is this from yesterday's Los Angeles Times:

"Bear sighting: An item in the National Briefing in Sunday's Section A said a bear wandered into a grocery story in Hayward, Wis., on Friday and headed for the beer cooler. It was Thursday."

I'm so glad that's been cleared up. Now I can get on with my day.

(Thanks to Regret the Error for the tip.)

Meanwhile, in today's Washington Post, pundit George F. Will commits the run-on sentence of the week:

"Three years before Rep. Wilbur Mills, the Arkansas Democrat who then chaired the Ways and Means Committee, had his fling with a stripper named Fanne Foxe, a.k.a. "The Argentine Firecracker" (Mills joined her on stage at Boston's exquisitely named Pilgrim Theater, which specialized in what Time magazine primly called "ecdysiast exhibitions"; this was after he had a fracas with Ms. Foxe that provoked her to jump into Washington's Tidal Basin across from the memorial to Thomas Jefferson, who really believed that democracies could behave rationally), he decided to seek the Democrats' 1972 presidential nomination."

Umm . . . Maybe someone stole the period from Will's keyboard.

Nook e-books?

Gales of blogosphere laughter greeted yesterday's announcement of Barnes & Noble's new "Nook" e-book reader, and justly so.

"What you readin', bud?" says one straphanger to another.

"A Nook e-book."

"A what?"

If you don't get it, ask a teenager. Or a dirty old person.

Let's face it. Anything with "ook" is never going to be a good name for an e-book reader. Imagine:

Cook e-book? Only for chocolate chip fans.

Eook? What?

Fook? Please.

Gook? Korean War combat vets might go for that, but nobody else.

Hook? Fisherfolks?

Jook? What?

Iook? What?

Kook? Is Edd Byrnes remembered anymore?

Look? For kids and illiterates.

Mook? Sounds like a Spike Lee role.

Oook? What?

Pook? For stuffed-animal juveniles.

Qook? E-books for Inuits.

Rook? Beginning readers.

Sook? Does that mean anything?

Took? Steal this book!

Uook? Can that even be pronounced?

Vook? Already coined for e-books with video components. (It won't last.)

Wook? Chewbacca might read this.

Xook? Sounds like a cloud computing website.

Zook? Enough already.

Wonder how much Barnes & Noble paid the marketing firm that came up with Nook.

Up-to-the-minute (?) news

The revelation in today's New York Times that commuter railroads around Manhattan cheat on their timekeeping is a shocker, shocker, shocker.

For years, says the Times, the 7:55 has been the 7:55. Now we discover that for years on secret employee timetables it has been the 7:56, simply to give sprinting commuters an extra minute to make the train.

This is dismaying. Train times used to be sacrosanct, a source of national pride. You could set your watch by the express as it departed the depot. Now the old Timex might be a full 60 seconds off, ruining all your careful calculations. That three-minute egg might in fact be a two-minute one; no wonder it's so runny.

On the other hand, there is always another hand, and it's not the one that counts off the seconds.

Amtrak (which admits it fudges on departure times but won't reveal which ones and where) shamelessly pads its arrival schedules.

An example:

The westbound California Zephyr is carded to depart Chicago Union Station at precisely 2 p.m., arriving in Naperville, the next stop, at 2:34 p.m. The eastbound Zephyr is scheduled to call at Naperville at 2:23 p.m., arriving at Chicago Union Station at 3:30 p.m.

Why the 19-minute disparity over those 28 miles?

That "slop" is built into the schedule to allow a train running late to "make up time." It doesn't, really. It can't run any faster than trackage rules allow. The only thing that's being made up is the "facts."

No need to bash the railroads for playing fast and loose with the truth about time. The airlines do the same thing.

At least in America, where close enough is good enough.