Rob Baker > Recent Status Updates

A Scrabble friend calls the author from an airport in Greenland, excited because he had a real-world sighting of a little-used Scrabble word:

"'I spotted a sign nailed to a tree. In big letters, it said 'Umiaq for Rent!'

"'You're kidding me!' I was as excited as he. This was a word nerd's version of people seeing the image of the Virgin Mary on a piece of toast or a tree stump" (12).

"Some people thought I had been brain damaged; some thought I was crippled; some thought I was blind. It seemed as if I were not hurt enough. People wanted it to be more" (146).

"Many years after that summer, I met a woman on a bus who asked if I was MIchele McBride. I said, 'Yes,' and she started to scream, 'Why did you live and my son die?'" (142).

"Through the fire and its aftermath, I learned that disaster does not breed those strong, jolly, humble heroes that we read about it newspapers and books. Real survivors experience anger, panic, jealousy, guilt, self-doubt -- all those feelings people never like to talk about, but which are as important and as powerful as bravery" (ix).

"...in which the tantalized hero does not move to act at all--the tiniest impulse toward amplitude or self surrender, let aloneintriuge or adventure, peremptorily extinguished by the ruling triumverate of Sanity, Responsibility, and Self-Respect, assisted handily by their devoted underlings: the timetable, the rainstorm, the headache, the busy signal, the traffic jam, and most loyal of all, the last-minute doubt" 15

"His celebrated blend of sympathy & pitilessness is nowhere more stunning than where the bemused isolate steels himself to be carried away, only to discover that his meticulous thoughtfulness has caused him to wait a little too long or that acting with bold and uncharacterisitic impetuosity, he has totally misjudged what had somehow managed to entice him out of his manageable existence and has made everything worse"

Our latest book club read....and my first Philip Roth book.

"Everything undeniably true struck me as transparently false as soon as I wrote it down, and the greater the effort to be sincere, the worse it went" (8).

5/26/1805: Lewis first sees the Rocky Mountains:

'When I reflected on the difficulties which the snowy barrier would probably throw in my way to the Pacific... it in some measure counterbalanced by the joy I felt in the first moments I gazed upon them.

As I have always held it a crime to anticipate evils I will believe it a good comfortable road until I am compelled to believe differently' (227).

On Nov. 4, 1804, at Fort Mandan (North Dakota), Lewis and Clark met a French-Canadian trader, Toussaint Charbonneau. He was hired by the Corps as a translator.

He had two wives. One was 15 and pregnant. She had been kidnapped by a Native American tribe and taken from her home near the Rocky Mountains, and made a slave, then lost in a card game to Charbonneau.

Her name was Sacagawea.

On Aug. 20, 1804, the only member of the Corps of Discovery to die on the journey succombed to appendicitis.

They held a ceremony for him and buried him at a site they named Sergeant Floyds Bluff in modern Sioux City, IA.

They also visited his gravesite nearly two years later on the return trip.

"On Aug. 12 (1804), at 5:00 p.m., what Clark called a 'Parrie Wolf' appeared on the bank and barked at the passing keelboat. The captains had not previsiously seen this animal, or read anything about it...

The animal was a coyote. Lewis and Clark were the first Americans to see one" (153).

Capt. Lewis "looked up to see a blanket of white coming down the (Missouri) river. He went to the bow to stare down into the water. The keelboat and the white whatever-it-was came together. It turned out to be a sea of white feathers, over three miles long and seventy yards wide".

The feathers came from a flock of white pelicans covering several acres on a sandbar, preening themsevles in their summer molt.

At 3:30 pm, on May 21, 1804, "to the cheers of crowds on the bank, the expedition set out. As the keelboat turned her bow into the stream, Lewis and his party cut themselves off from civilization. There would be no more incoming letters, no fresh supplies, no reinforcements, nothing reaching them until they returned.

The captains expected to be gone two years, perhaps more. Lewis and Clark were as free as Columbus"

To this day, there are Osage orange trees growing in Philadelphia (at 4th and Spruce Streets) and the Univ. of Virginia (at Morea, a guest house) that grew from cuttings Lewis sent to Jefferson.

These were the "first natural-history specimens from west of the Mississippi".

The Native Americans valued the wood of the Osage orange for making bows and would "travel many hundreds of miles in quest of it" (127).

"Malaria was the most common disease in the country...like hard work, it was just a part of life. No one knew what caused malaria...Lewis thought of mosquitoes as a pest, not a threat.

Nor did he ever learn how to spell his enemies' name. His usual spelling, was 'musquetoe'. Clark was more inventive; he had at least 20 variations, ranging from 'mesquetors' through 'misqutr' to 'musquetors'" (113-114).

"On the morning of September 13 (1803), Lewis saw another natural-history phenomenon: passenger pigeons flying over th eriver, north to south, on their migration. They flew in such great flocks they obscured the sun" (112).

In 1803, it was thought that mastadons might still inhabit the West.

"On June 19 (1803), Lewiss had written to William Clark, 'one of the most famous invitations to greatness the nation's archives can provide'.

It is a critical document. It launched one of the great friendships of all time and started the friends on one of the great adventures, and one of the great explorations of all time" (97).

In 1801, newly-elected President Jefferson made Lewis his secretary. Lewis lived in the president's house. Note: It started unofficially being called "The White House" around War of 1812 and was officially titled this in 1901 by T. Roosevelt.

"Lewis's quarters were in what became the East Room. It contained almost no furniture and was damp, cold, drafty, and depressing. Abigail Adams had hung her wash in it" (63).

As a young ensign in 1795, Lewis got drunk, argued with another soldier and challeneged him to a duel. This was illegal, so he was court-martialed.

Though Lewis was found innocent, he was transferred to another company, where, he met Captain William Clark, who was four years his senior.

"So the partnership of Lewis and Clark, destined to become the most famous in American history, began..." (46).

Lewis had to undertake massive studies before setting out on the great exploration:

"Between (the summer) and December of 1802, Jefferson gave Lewis a college undergraduate's introduction to the liberal arts, North American Geography, botany, mineralogy, astronomy, and ethnology" (77).

Jefferson proposed a cross-country exploration a few times before the famous one came about, including in 1792. Lewis, then 18, volunteered, but Jeffereson rejected him for being too young.

Instead he sent a Frenchman, André Michaux, who made it as far as Kentucky when Jeffereson learned that Michaux's goal wasn't exploration but war with the Spanish, so recalled him.

Thus the project was delayed another decade.

Wonder what Thomas Jefferson would think of e-scooters?

"Jefferson, believing that the taming of the horse had resulted in the degeneracy of the human body, urged the young to walk for exercise.

Lewis took his advice and became a great hiker, with feet as tough as his butt...According to Jefferson, the young Lewis hunted barefoot in the snow" (30).

"The (Lewis) family coat of arms was 'Omne Solum Forti Patria Est', or 'All Earth Is to a Brave Man His Country'. (An alternate translation is 'Everything the Brave Man Does Is for His Country').

My great-aunt had painted a small image of the Lewis coat of arms with this Latin quote under it. Growing up, I remember it hung in our family home and memorizing the phrase, but never knew what it meant until today :)

"The (Lewis) family coat of arms was 'Omne Solum Forti Patria Est,' or All Earth Is to a Brave Man His Country' (An alternate translation is 'Everything the Brave Man Does Is for His Country')" (20-21).

My great-aunt had painted a small image of the Lewis coat of arms with this saying on it. It hanging in our family home when I grew up. I could always remember it, but never really knew what it meant until today :)

Merriwether Lewis is an ancestor of mine (not direct, he had no children). My brother and I enjoy visiting Lewis and Clark sites when we're traveling. High time I read this book. It's been sitting on my shelf forever.

"Big snowflakes are tumbling down, one at a time, as they've agreed in advance to take turns."

"The strong unlikelihood of a given event is moot once that event has nevertheless transpired."