The Robin Hoods

Ok, I have 30 minutes, so I have to make this quick. Please, forgive any spelling or errors of logic which may occur because of this time constraint.

There are tons of "Robin Hood" books out there, written over a course of several centuries. I've read two of them, and I've noticed quite a difference.

The two I've read are by Howard Pyle, and Henry Gilbert. The Howard Pyle book dates from 1884, but the version I have comes from the 1950s. I believe this is the classic - the one most of the movies and such are based on. The Henry Gilbert book dates from 1912, I think, and I believe my copy is from the 1950s or 1960s. It has the same characters and I suppose the same basic plot outline as the Pyle book, but it tells the story in a very different way.

The first chapter in each book is titled "How Robin Became An Outlaw" or words to that effect. That's about the only thing the chapters have in common. In the Pyle book, Robin is a teenager (I think) , and he is basically goaded and embarrassed by some of the king's foresters, and kills one of the King's deer right in front of them, just to prove he was a good shot. Thus he became an outlaw, and this happens right at the beginning of the story. In the Gilbert book, Robin is a few years older (say 24 or so) and would never be so rash. He has "outlaw" tendencies with a strong social conscious, but he doesn't become one until he kills a knight who was bothering the maid Marian. (I think). This doesnt occur until pretty deep into the chapter, and before the chapter is over, Robin is leading what amounts to a slave revolt.

So, in the Gilbert book, people get killed, sometimes in quite personal and gruesome ways. An arrow to the throat, a knife plunged into a chest, people burned alive, that kind of stuff. The characters seem to have a lot more depth to them, and the language is harder to understand (even though its over 20 years newer than the Pyle book).

They both are historical fiction of a sort - starting out near the end of Henry II's reign. He dies and Richard the Lion Heart becomes king and immediately takes off on a Crusade to the Holy Land, leaving the the kingdom to his brother John, who was not a nice person, apparently. (Personally I doubt that Richard was a nice guy too, but that's just me) . In Gilbert's book there is still an "institutional" memory so to speak, of the good old days before the Normans, the days of Edward the Confessor, when many of the present day serfs may have had land holding ancestors, land confiscated by William the Conqueror & his son, Willaim Rufus. It gives a pretty brutal picture of what a Feudal society was like. I eat this stuff up. I love it. I love the history and the language.

The Pyle book ends with Richard's return and Robin swears fealty to him. The Gilbert book ends with Robin's death - by the hands of one of the Sheriff of Nottingham's daughters - long after the sheriff was "removed" from office. Robin & Marian were married, but she had died earlier from a plague of some sort.

They're both good. I prefer the Gilbert version.

Made it with a minute to spare, including an impromtu interruption to take to dog out for a short constitutional.

Abraham Lincoln vs. A Valdese Blogger

Abraham Lincoln said: For those who like this kind of book, this is the kind of book they will like.

A Valdese Blogger said: An item isn't sold until it sells.

I don't think I need to draw a map here.

The Cemetery in Kentucky

This is part of the cemetery near Hindman, Kentucky where my mother is buried. Her grave is a little behind where I took the picture.

The cemetery has been around awhile, but it is still fairly new as far as I'm concerned. I can remember when there was a house here, and corn and stuff like that. This is place is prime bottom land. Mom probably passed this place 10,000 times in her life, and I'm sure I've driven by it hundreds of times. Most of that time it was a farm, or at the very least it had very large gardens. But now it's a cemetery and my mother is buried there. Who knew.

Strange Things.

I've noticed odd things, especially on the side-bar of this blog. My weather widget went away. I provided it as a convenience to all the multitudes who sit around and wonder what the weather in Valdese, NC is, and suddenly it is nowhere to be found. Now, I have a clock underneath the title for the weather display, which has to be confusing. The script for it is still there, it just isn't displaying. It's been that way for some time, I was just using the systems engineer's tried and true method of dealing with problems - ignoring it and seeing if it corrects itself. Apparently, not this time.

Also, I stuck a counter on the blog, and that too has ceased to function.

Also, for the longest time I could not see the icons (avatars?) of whoever was following this blog. Now I can. So in this instance ignoring the problem seems to have worked.

I mainly use firefox and/or opera and sometimes they have different issues.

So I don't know what's going on. Eventually I'll take some sort of action and see if I can't get things working again. No need to rush.

In the mean time - a beautiful fall day here in the mid south. Sunny, hardly a cloud in the sky. Warm enough most of the day to walk around without a jacket, but it's cooling off quite nicely (sarcasm here, I don't like cold) this evening.

Stuff Around The House #14

This is number 14 in my never ending series of stuff around the house. These are some objects placed on a shelf behind where I sit when working on the computer. Some of the stuff was put there on purpose, other things just ended up there. The Russian on the box means "bird" - it had a metal windup bird in it.

I received an award

I received an award from Heather the other day.  Its the first award anyone's given me and I was caught off guard.  I appreciate it, but still I stared at it for awhile.  And thought about it for awhile longer. This is what I do, even if it does not come out in whatever I write.  I tend to think about things.  Not important things so much, just things.

So anyway, if I understand correctly (a big if), I'm supposed to list 7 things about myself and pass it on.  I don't know about passing it on - I mean who am I to give someone an award?  Most blogs I read are a lot more involved & require a lot more work & insight than mine does.   I don't feel qualified, so I may pass on that part of it.   (Pass on passing it on.  I was reading this over and that struck me as humorous).

But anyway - here's 7 things about me anyone who reads this may or may not know.

1)  I am 6 feet 2 1/2 inches tall, more or less.  For the rest of the world that's 1.88 meters, give or take, I reckon.  I'm going on what a conversion program tells me, I'm not fluent in metric.  I have basic conversational abilities in metric, I could go into a metric restaurant & get something to eat, find my way around a metric town without too much problem, buy some metric groceries perhaps, but I'd have problems with metric dialects or regionalisms.  I know miles per gallon pretty well, but kilometers per liter just freaks me out.   At any rate,  I'm  taller than average, but not freakishly so....1.88 meters sounds small to me, but I'm sure that's just my provincialism showing through.

2) I spent 7 interesting years in the US Army.  Looking back on it, I had a complete disconnect between what my job was, and the extreme amount of danger the tactical portion of it could have placed me in, given the right conditions.  Being young & inexperienced probably had something to do with that.

3) I'm conflicted about whether I'm a dog person or a cat person.  I have one of each.  And even though Pickles the Dog gets more words in this blog than does Snowchief the Cat, Snowchief has been around for about 17 years now, and is much more affectionate than Pickles.   Pickles is more "needy" than Snowchief, but that's only because Snowchief couldn't give a flying you know what about what you think about anything.  He's a cat.

4) In 1990 I bought an entry level Saab 900 3-door hatchback, and proceeded to put over 250,000 miles on it during the next ten years.   I miss that ol' Saab.

5)  I have a sense of humor, sometimes it shows.

6)  My favorite book is "Life: A User's Manual" by Georges Perec.  Its translated from French into English, and I feel a bit lesser for the fact that I cannot speak or read French.  I hate depending on translators, 'cause you have to depend on them for all the nuances & cultural references and stuff.   I have tons of trouble with Kafka, more than any other author on earth just about.  I just have trouble following his stories and logic, and I've always blamed myself, my own limitations.  But what if its the translator, not me?  Yeah, that's the ticket.   Dumb ol' translators.

7)  I'm married to Patti Anne, sometimes referred to as Miss Patti.    

Pickles & Me Walking Home

Just a lazy Sunday afternoon in Valdese.