Dueling Points of View

 

I’m trying something new with my current work. I had already completed the story of a twelve-year-old girl crossing the Isthmus of Panama with her family while heading to the California gold fields in 1850. However, Across the Isthmus is aimed at middle-grade girls, and I wanted to do something similar for boys.

The female protagonist in Across the Isthmus has a fourteen-year-old brother, so I am challenging myself by trying to write the same basic story from his point-of-view. Nobody sees the same events in the exact same way, and one POV character may concentrate on entirely different matters than another does. Still, if both narrators are reliable, shared scenes should contain a lot of similarities. Finding the right balance between “facts” and “perceptions” is a challenge, especially when it comes to dialogue.

Most stories (including mine) need dialogue to keep them interesting, and, of necessity, both books share some dialogue. As in real life, the two characters are unlikely to both remember the conversation word-for-word, but the contents at least should be close (again, given that they are reliable narrators). But when the characters don’t remember it the same, how much variation can I get away with?

That wouldn’t be a problem if I could be sure that the two books would have no common readers. They are being written for different audiences—one for girls and one for boys—but that is no guarantee that the same person won’t read both. I don’t want a reader to say, “That wasn’t what it said in the other book,” but I also don’t want the reader to toss the second book aside as unrealistic because the two characters have such great memories that they remember the conversation (and the facts) exactly the same way. This is a real dilemma that I am struggling with as I write.

The challenge is to find the line between making the stories different enough to account for the two points of view but similar enough to show them experiencing the same circumstances.

These types of challenges make writing hard work.

But they are also what makes it fun.

__________

The photo at the head of this post shows an 1850 painting by Charles Christian Nahl titled “Der Isthmus von Panama auf der Höhe des Chargres River” (“The Isthmus of Panama at the Height of the Chargres River”).

Following Lewis and Clark

 

Roland and I just returned from a cruise on the Columbia and Snake Rivers, following part of Lewis and Clark’s route. Actually, I’m not sure “following” is the right word, since we started closer to the end and moved backwards. Or maybe it is, because they used the same route to return to St. Louis.

The photo shows the confluence of the Snake (on the right) and the Columbia (on the left). Lewis and Clark came up the Snake to the Columbia, which they followed to the Pacific Ocean.

Most people don’t know that their mission was a failure. That is to say, they failed in their first objective, which was to find a water route from the Missouri River to the Pacific Ocean. They failed for the simple reason that no such route exists.

In a broader sense, though, the mission was a huge success. The Corps of Discovery, as it was officially called, mapped its way from St. Louis to the Pacific, making friends with the Native Americans and recording new plant and animal species along the way.

It was a success in another way, as well. The men suffered much hardship, but in a day when explorers had a high death rate, only one man died, and he had a burst appendix. That may be because of the medical information the expedition carried in its library of books on plants, animals, and medicine. The next photo lists the contents of the traveling library.

I thought about trying to write a middle-grade historical novel about the expedition, but the youngest member of the Corps of Discovery was probably about seventeen or eighteen and I’m not sure how well I would be able to portray him to a younger audience. Besides, I have lots of other plot ideas vying for my time.

Still, I may reconsider someday.

Ringing Merrily

 

I mentioned two weeks ago that my mother played in a handbell choir at her local retirement center. My daughter and son-in-law also play bells. Since I can read music, it seems logical for me to play bells, too, but I lacked confidence.

When I sing in a choir, everyone in my section is on the same note. If I make a mistake, it is usually covered up. Playing handbells is different since there is only one person on each note. If someone messes up there, it’s more obvious. And I was scared that my mistakes would stand out.

Then our music director lost several of her handbell choir players at the same time, and she was desperate for replacements, so I let myself be talked into joining.

In my old age, I’ve become more willing to practice. I mentioned two weeks ago that I practiced the piano as little as possible, and even though I enjoyed violin more, I didn’t practice that as much as I should have, either. But with bells I practice regularly at home.

The photo at the top of this post shows my practice setup. I place my music on a stand on the kitchen peninsula and use homemade but soundless “bells” as I play. The “bells” are actually part of a children’s game to catch a ball in the cup, and I colored their handles to match the colors that I use to mark the notes on my music. Since there are often many bells playing at once, assigning each of my notes a color makes it easier to pick them out when I play.

You may wonder what good it does to practice with soundless bells. The main point is to count and learn when to play which bell and also whether it is a normal ringing motion or something else, such as shaking the bell or tapping it on the table. And since my few notes don’t make a melody, the sound made by playing just my bells without the rest wouldn’t help, anyway.

I was very nervous when we started in September, and I still am. I make plenty of mistakes, but they are getting fewer, and I was satisfied with my performance on two of the three pieces we played on Easter. Everyone had trouble with the third one, and misery loves company, so my mistakes didn’t devastate me.

Still, I look forward to the day when my confidence is high and my mistakes are minimal. Until then, I guess I’ll just keep muddling along.

For the Love of Singing

 

I have sung in choirs most of my life. I spent most of my growing-up years in DeTour Village, Michigan, in a small school without a choir, but I sang in the junior choir at church as soon as I was old enough. Then, when I reached high school, I moved up to the adult choir.

In those younger days, the only year I didn’t sing in a church choir was when Daddy took a sabbatical to Edinburgh, Scotland. There we visited around from one church to another, so I didn’t have a church home. Fortunately, however, the school I attended had a choir, and I passed the easy audition and joined it. So I still got to sing.

Just before my junior year in high school, we moved to Lake City, Michigan. I continued to sing in the adult choir at church, but I was glad to see that Lake City High School had a chorus. I sang in it my junior year but was unable to continue for my senior year. That was because, as a small school, it only had one physics class, and it conflicted with chorus. It was a hard decision, but I was adamantly on the college prep path, so I chose physics. Fortunately, I still had senior choir at church to fill the void.

For two of my high school years, Mama and I sang in an area choir that met for a month or so each year to rehearse and perform Handel’s Messiah. When I say an area choir, I mean that it included several communities and we had to drive a ways for rehearsals and the performance. Unfortunately, I can’t remember if that was my freshman and sophomore years when we lived at DeTour Village or my junior and senior years when we lived at Lake City. I’m also not sure whether we did the Christmas or the Easter section of the Messiah, although I think it was the Easter one.

I sang in the college chorus my freshman year at Hope. The next step up was a more elite choir that required auditions, and I didn’t make it. Obviously, I wasn’t destined to make my living as a singer, although that wasn’t my goal, anyway. I just wanted to sing, so I joined the choir at the church I attended regularly.

From then on, I always sang in my church choir except for a several-year period when I was taking graduate courses that conflicted with practice. But as soon as I could return to choir, I did.

My vocal range is quite good, and I have sung both alto and soprano. I prefer soprano, but there have been years when more altos were needed, and I obliged. Even when I sing soprano, though, I keep up with my alto. I usually sing soprano on the first and last stanzas of hymns and alto on the middle ones. Caroline picked up the practice from me when she was young.

I am on the far left in the picture at the top of this page. The photo was taken by our choir director, Karen Foote, on January 14, 2024. The temperature was seven degrees below zero that morning, and Karen’s mother said the choir would never show up to sing at the 8:00 a.m. service. Karen took the photo to prove her wrong. (The only people who were missing had already notified Karen they would be absent for other reasons.)

Some day I’ll have to give up choir. It may be because my voice gives out but is more likely to be because my knees do. I dread the day I am no longer able to climb the steep stairs to the choir loft.

But I will never stop singing.

The Wagner Inheritance

 

Last week I talked about the travel bug that my family got from my father, so its only fair that I give my mother equal time. She passed down her love for music and some of her musical ability. I don’t say all of it, because she was a better musician than I am.

My daughter Caroline also benefited from Mama’s musical inheritance. Caroline sings in her church choir and in other choirs whenever she has the chance, and she directs the chime choir at her church.

I grew up with music. Both my parents loved classical music, and Daddy picked the hymns we sang at church, but he couldn’t carry a tune. It was my mother who provided the real inspiration for my own love of music.

Mama also grew up in a musical family, although she didn’t realize it at the time. Apparently Grandpa Wagner had learned to play the French horn at one time but gave it up before he got married. He didn’t give up the bones and the mandolin, however. He wasn’t a performer but often played them at home.

Most of the Wagner siblings learned to play an instrument, and they all enjoyed singing. Mama’s secondary instrument was the piano, but her primary one was her voice.

As an elementary school teacher, Mama taught music in her own classroom. Eventually she found herself learning to conduct and leading choirs. She was the choir director at most of Daddy’s churches although she never replaced a willing volunteer who was already there when they came.

When my brothers and I were children, Mama gave us two kinds of music lessons. I called one of them “alto lessons” because she had us read and sing the alto on hymns while she played the entire harmony. I enjoyed the alto lessons, which were really her way of teaching us to read music.

She also gave us piano lessons, and that was a mistake. Not the piano lessons themselves, but that she was the one who gave them. The church organist gave piano lessons, and I would have learned better from her.

Although Mama was a decent piano teacher, there were two problems with taking piano lessons from her. One was that she didn’t have much time to teach us during the school year. Most of our lessons took place during the summer, and in the meantime I forgot much of what I had learned.

The other problem is that I was taking lessons from my mother. If I had taken lessons from Mrs. Stevenson, I would probably have practiced more in an attempt to impress her. But Mama was Mama. She was going to love me regardless, and I felt no need to impress her.

One of my biggest regrets is that I didn’t spend more time learning to play the piano. I can pick out a melody and play simple pieces, but I wish I had learned to do more. Maybe I should try learning more now, but I don’t seem to have the time.

I did put a little more effort into learning violin (with a teacher who wasn’t Mama), although I didn’t practice that as much as I should have, either. Unfortunately, although I loved the instrument, it didn’t love me. Dexterity is important for a violinist, and my fingers just wouldn’t cooperate.

Mama continued with her music after my parents retired. She even picked up a new instrument by joining the handbell choir at their local retirement center. And she always sang in choirs even when she wasn’t directing them. That’s her on the far right in the picture at the top of this post, singing in the choir at the church my parents attended in Holland, Michigan after Daddy’s retirement.

And I followed in those footsteps, as I will discuss in next week’s blog post.

The Page Travel Bug

 

My father had the travel bug, and he passed it down to his children and grandchildren. Or to most of his grandchildren, anyway. My son, John, was a disappointment.

After John left home, he took very few trips, and all of them were within the U.S. So I was pleasantly surprised in 2023 when he decided to go to Greece with my brother Gordon and my niece and nephew.

But let me go back and explain where the bug came from.

It started with my father, Oliver Page. Before Daddy was married, he traveled to the Middle East and taught at a private school in Amman, Jordan. He returned on sabbatical when he was a family man, and we lived there when I was six and seven (with my birthday occurring in the middle of the eight-month trip). When we reached England, and on our way back home, we worked our way across Europe seeing the sites until we reached (and after we left) Amman. While living there, we took advantage of weekends and holidays to travel around the area by foot (hitchhiking) or bus.

We had been back in the states for three years when Daddy decided to take another sabbatical with his family, this time to Edinburgh, Scotland. We sightsaw through England on our way there and in Europe during our spring break.

Other years, we traveled around the continental United States or to Mexico or Canada. Daddy got a month of vacation each year, and he made the most of it.

Daddy and Mama continued traveling after my brothers and I left home, but I wasn’t usually with them.

Roland didn’t travel much while growing up, but I soon infected him with the travel bug, too. While Caroline and John were young, we took international vacations to Germany, Mexico, Great Britain (England and Scotland), Canada, and the Middle East (Jordan, Egypt, and Israel), as well as traveling around the continental U.S. The photo at the top of this page is from our 1998 trip to the Middle East with my mother, my brothers, and my niece and nephew. (Daddy was 88 and too infirm to go with us.) Roland isn’t in the photo because someone had to take it.

During our time as empty nesters, Roland and I have continued to travel extensively. At first we traveled mostly in the U.S. (often to states where Roland had never been, but also to Alaska and Hawaii where I hadn’t been either), but we have done 14 international trips since the children left home, with two more booked and others under consideration.

Caroline and Pete are also experienced international travelers, but, as I mentioned at the beginning of this post, I despaired of John.

Then he went to Greece. Still, that could have been a one and done.

Fortunately, it wasn’t. John and Christina just returned from a delayed honeymoon trip to Italy. (Delayed only in the sense that they were married in September.) I don’t know if she urged him into it or if he was as interested in going as she was.

In any event, I hope that my entire family now has the travel bug.

How the Old Masters Saw Easter

 

Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

The picture at the beginning of this post was painted by Carl Heinrich Bloch in 1881. It is a very typical Easter image, showing Jesus emerging from the tomb and being worshiped by angels. This is a logical depiction since Revelation makes it clear that angels worship the risen Christ.

There were many witnesses to Jesus’ resurrection after the fact, meaning that they saw the living Christ in the flesh. There is no record of human witnesses to the actual resurrection, however. The closest we come to that is in Matthew 28:1-6, but even there it appears that the soldiers guarding the tomb and women who came to give Him a proper burial saw an angel of the Lord rather than THE angel of the Lord (which is the term used to refer to Christ himself).

Here is the Matthew passage, quoted from the ESV.

Now after the Sabbath, toward the dawn of the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb. And behold, there was a great earthquake, for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning, and his clothing white as snow. And for fear of him the guards trembled and became like dead men. But the angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified. He is not here, for he has risen, as he said. Come see the place where he lay.”

This painting (circa 1700) by Noël Coypel is probably meant to depict the Matthew account. As mentioned above, there is no evidence that human eyes actually witnessed Jesus rise from the dead, but I like the way the painting shows the power of Jesus’ resurrection.

I’ll end this series with “Three Marys at the Tomb,” painted by Peter von Cornelius sometime in the early 1800s.

Both Mark and Luke mention that three women came to the tomb, but only two of them were named Mary. Regardless of their names, however, women were the first to hear the good news, and they hurried off to tell the others.

I want to be that kind of witness.

Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

__________

These works of art are all in the public domain because of their age.