A Prolific Author

 

Many churches celebrate October 31 (or the Sunday before) as Reformation Day—the anniversary of Martin Luther nailing his 93 theses on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany. The church door was the town bulletin board, so he probably chose that spot for practical reasons rather than as an act of defiance.

Although October 31 is the day chosen to commemorate the start of the Protestant Reformation, that was just one day. Like most movements, the Reformation began gradually and gained momentum as it went along. And part of that momentum came through Luther’s writing.

Luther was a prolific author who wrote hundreds of books and articles during his lifetime, many of which are still in print. He also translated the Bible into German to make it accessible to the less-educated populace. You can read more about that in my June 27, 2016 post. 

And to repeat the ending from that post, Luther wouldn’t have taken any credit for his writings. He would have said, “Ad Dei gloiam” (Latin) or “Zu Gott die Ehre” (German).

To God be the glory.

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The photo shows the study at Wartburg Castle where Martin Luther translated the New Testament into German. I took the photo during a 2016 trip to Germany.

The Missing Ingredient

 

Two weeks ago I attended a nephew’s wedding. We weren’t sure we were going to make it because the location could only be accessed by crossing a railroad track. A freight train was stopped at one of the two entrances, and we had no way of knowing whether the train was long enough to block the other entrance, too.

Fortunately, we were stuck behind other cars also headed to the wedding. Eventually the front one turned around, the next one followed, and so on. I assume that somebody in the front car heard via cell phone that the other entrance wasn’t blocked. In any event, we followed, too, and we made it with a few minutes to spare.

The bride is a geologist whose previous job involved environmental work on Lake Michigan, so she wanted to hold the ceremony in a gazebo overlooking it. The weather cooperated, and the traditional secular ceremony went well. But I was disappointed because it was missing what I consider to be the most important ingredient in any marriage. There was no mention of Christ.

Congratulations Mike and Amanda. I wish you a long and happy marriage. But even more, I wish you a Christ-centered one.

That’s what helps the best marriages survive.

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I didn’t get any photos of the ceremony itself because there were too many heads in the way, so the one at the top of this post was taken by my daughter, Caroline Camp Ill.

Travel Isn't Just for Fun

 

Actually, travel can be just for fun. That’s the purpose behind Roland’s and my international vacations, although they are educational, too. But when I’m researching a book, it is serious work. And I usually get the story idea first and then do the traveling for research. This time it may have worked the other way around.

I just returned from a trip to Pennsylvania for a cousins’ reunion. It was a good time, and we enjoyed each other’s company. But while there, I began to wonder whether it was fodder for a story. The battle itself has been worked to death, but there is less about the civilians who lived in town or on local farms and were caught up in those events. I have ideas for two other books to write first, but Gettysburg is on the list of settings to think about.

The second day of the reunion centered more on the Amish. We drove around an Amish area in the morning and saw several typically Amish sights, including two schools with children out playing. Then in the afternoon we went to a production of David at the Sight and Sound Theater.

I’m not tempted to write an Amish story, however. That was done well by Beverly Lewis and followed by a flood of other authors, some better than others. I don’t see a need to join them.

But I haven’t ruled out Gettysburg.

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The first photo shows a section of the Battle of Gettysburg Cyclorama, which is a painting by Paul Phillippoteaux. It was painted in the 1880s to depict Pickett’s charge during the third day of the battle. The second picture is an Amish school during recess (or maybe physical education), taken from the window of the car I was riding in.

No Travel Logs, Please

 

Last week was filled with a cousins’ reunion and a nephew’s wedding. I will write about them in the next week or two, but for now I am reprinting a post I wrote for the Indiana Writers' Consortium blog on June 3, 2015. 

No Travel Logs, Please

In March, I attended IWC’s Paper Fields workshop and took two sessions on travel writing from Kenneth Tressler. One of the points he made was that travel magazines don’t want travel logs.

Consider these two opening paragraphs.

Our trip to Utah began on September 2, 2014 with a flight into McCarran International Airport at Las Vegas, Nevada.

or

As I stood in the middle of the Sevier Desert, I drowned in the bleakness and isolation of the parched terrain. How could 8,000 Japanese Americans live crammed together in this one square mile of desolate landscape without losing their sanity? Yet, somehow, they did just that.

Both openings are true, but I’d rather read—and write—the second one. Good travel writing is creative non-fiction and should tell a story. Yes, give pertinent information about the trip, including your favorite places to eat and stay along the route. But don’t bore your audience. Write the story you would want to read if it were written by someone else.

Good travel writing also proves the cliché that a picture is worth a thousand words. Consider this picture, which I took through the windshield while driving along U.S. 89 in Utah. (No, I wasn’t behind the wheel.)

I could have said that the blue sky accentuated the red rock formations striated with tans and browns. Or I could have used many more words in an attempt to describe the landscape. But the picture says it better than I ever could.

Travel magazines want photos to go along with the story. So if you want to sell an article about your trip, take along a good camera. For use on the Internet, a cell phone might do. But if you want to submit a feature article to a print magazine, you need a camera with high resolution and interchangeable lenses.

As you vacation this summer, go ahead and take the logbook along. It’s good for notes that aid your memory.

But it makes a terrible travel article.

Workshop Poetry

 

I was going through some old papers and found a haiku and a tanka that I wrote at an Indiana Writers’ Consortium workshop held at Gabis Arboretum on June 8, 2018. Since they were just on a handwritten sheet, I thought I’d preserve them here.

Haiku:

Blue heron flying
Green stagnant waters below
Blue heron swimming

Tanka:

Fairies dance about
Unseen among their houses
Hiding from the eyes
Of curious school children
Who still believe in fairies

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I don’t have a photo of a blue heron, but the one at the top of this post shows a juvenile yellow-crowned heron that I saw in Costa Rica earlier this year.