Two brothers argue about place

 Julian Tennyson, at 23, walked and cycled around Suffolk.

It was 1938, and the great-grandson of the famous poet was hoping to write a guidebook about rural county that was not overrun by tourists. He had a strong sense of place and looked at all aspects of it: the natural history, of course, but also the towns, farms, churches, language and fairs.

His Suffolk Scenes was published in 1939, the year the war broke out, breaking off his literary career.

Capt. Tennyson eventually was shipped to the Far East, where he had a wonderful argument with his younger brother Hallam. Here’s Ronald Blythe’s account:

 

When he (Julian) was stationed in India he was urged by his brother Hallam to try and drop is English attitudes and ‘to read Kalidasa, to study the Vedanta, and to do anything that might help him to understand the soul of the country he was in,” but, says Hallam, ‘He replied very briefly … saying that he was fully taken up with thinking and reading about the things he loved at home, that he had no interest whatever in the East and did not want to go any further East than East Anglia in the future.

 

One brother wanted to understand the world and the other wanted to understand the shire.

They seem to me to be kindred spirits. Both were concerned with a sense of place. They differed on whether the broad view or the deep view of place is best.

Both are essential, so I don’t think one view could be best. Whichever you choose, it would be deficient in a way.

But over a long life, I have wanted to see the world and have wanted to know the county. I’d have loved to have heard that argument.

• Ronald Blythe’s essay “Julian Tennyson and Suffolk Scene” was collected in Field Work; Norwich: Black Dog Books, 2007, pp. 140-3. The quotation is on p. 141. 

Deer ticks and preferred habitat

 I saw a photograph of workers dragging large pieces of cloth — picture a ragged shirt or coat — through stands of Japanese barberry. The workers were collecting deer ticks for the Minnesota Department of Agriculture.

Researchers have found high concentrations of deer ticks in stands of Japanese barberry.

Ironically, deer don’t eat Japanese barberry, deterred by the plant’s sharp spines. The plant is a recent arrival in North America. Gardeners planted it as an ornamental. It has been thriving in the wild for at least 40 years.

Why are deer ticks attracted to Japanese barberry?

It roots from its stems, forming thickets, which shelter mice from predators. The theory is that the ticks follow the mice.

I wish I could interest scientists in the question of what other plants — particularly those in the Georgia Piedmont — attract ticks.

I think ticks prefer blackberry canes. My hypothesis is that they have evolved a preference for a plant that berry-eating animals, including me, will eventually blunder through, looking for a snack.

Of course, it could be observer’s bias. It could be that I see more ticks on blackberry canes because I love blackberries. But I’ve gotten interested in the question and have been looking for ticks on other plants on the forest floor. I think the question is worth testing.

Perhaps the research has been done, and I just can’t find it in the literature. Were I in charge of a couple of graduate students, you know what we’d be doing.

A law to revive the Good Old Days

 In the Middle Ages, the wool trade made parts of England rich. Flocks filled the fields. Many houses had looms. The fabulous wool churches were built with the wealth.

But commercial goods tend to run in cycles. Bust follows boom, and by the reign of Charles II people looked back on a Golden Age.

In 1666, political leaders decided to Make England Great Again by promoting the wool trade. Parliament passed laws requiring that the dead be buried in woolen shrouds.

The original law had to be amended a couple of times — it was hoped that terrifying fines would force unenthusiastic shroud consumers to comply.

The law was dumb and ineffective. 

The laws being passed today in the United States are dumb. We can marvel at the transcendental levels of stupidity at play.  But we can’t pretend dumb laws are a new thing. This kind of thing has a long history.

The writer’s jump start

 Lydia Davis discusses John Ashbery’s notion of the poetic jump start in an article in Harper’s.

Davis’s article is about why writers write, and she says some intriguing things about why she writes. But her remarks on Ashbery’s notion of needing an occasional jump start stole the show for me.

Ashbery had poets he turned to when his batteries were low. These poets were not necessarily major influences on his work. They were helpful because Ashbery could see what each was trying to do. He could see how each had tried to achieve his or her aims. When Ashbery looked at what each of these poets had done, he found it easier to get back to his own work.

That’s the poetic jump start. Is there something similar for those of us who don’t write poetry?

Here are a few examples of stories and books that interest me:

• Guy Davenport and Bernard Malamud wrote some stories about historical characters. The stories are so deeply researched it’s hard to tell where fact ends and fiction begins. Davenport’s story “John Charles Tapner” is an astonishing example.

• Montaigne’s Essays are an attempt by one writer to figure out what he really thought about things. It was an investigation into what was on his mind.

• Eric Hoffer’s The True Believer is an example of what can happen if a writer doggedly investigates a question that interests him. Hoffer started with the question of how mass movements begin. He kept researching as new questions arose. Hoffer would have been fascinated by the mass movements that are undermining this country today.

• The Rev. Gilbert White’s The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne is an example of a book about a place. Many other writers — including Nan Shepherd, Aldo Leopold, David George Haskell, Ronald Blythe, Robert Macfarlane and Roger Deakin — have written books about places that I admire.

I could go on. But the point is that when I have an idea that interests me, it sometimes helps to have a model.

I’ve heard musicians say that they listen to music, not looking for something to imitate, but looking for something they might want to sample or riff on. It’s a similar idea.

The moral of the story: When you find kindred spirits, keep up with their work.

• Source: Lydia Davis, “Demanding Pleasures: On the art of observation”; Harper’s, July 2025. It’s here:

https://harpers.org/archive/2025/07/demanding-pleasures-lydia-davis-observation/

‘The technique by which the god is sought’

 The phrase is Nan Shepherd’s. Since it makes sense to me, I suppose I’m a theist in some way I don’t understand.

My problem is this: I make it a practice to walk in natural places. I walked through the pine forests of East Texas, along the marshes of Galveston Island and beside the creeks of the Hill Country. When we moved to Georgia, I got settled by getting into the woods, rather than joining the Newcomer’s Club.

Recently, I found myself recommending walks through the woods to a friend. As I was talking, it struck me that I really do believe this: Walking in the woods or in a marsh or in a desert is healing, although I don’t understand how that could be.

I know exercise is good for you. I know that seeing beautiful plants and wildlife can lift your mood. But that’s not what I was talking about when I recommended a walk through the forest to my friend. It wasn’t what Nan Shepherd was after in her countless treks through the Cairngorms. Here’s what she said:

 

I believe that I now understand in some small measure why the Buddhist goes on pilgrimages to a mountain. The journey is itself part of the technique by which the god is sought. It is a journey into Being; for as I penetrate more deeply into the mountain’s life, I penetrate also into my own.

 

• Source: Nan Shepherd, The Living Mountain; New York: Scribner, 2025, p. 108.

Thinking ahead to the 250th

 It appears we are going ahead with plans for the 250^th anniversary of the country, despite the campaign to undermine the country itself.

Perhaps in planning next year’s celebrations we could use a quotation from H.L. Mencken as our motto:

 

Liberty, if it means anything at all, means that body of rights which the citizen reserves to himself, even as against the government. … Thus a conflict is set up between the rights of the citizen and the power and security of the government. In so far as the citizen prevails the government is weak, and in so far as the government prevails the citizen is not a citizen at all, but a subject.

 

The powers claimed by the current occupant of the White House reduce citizens to something less.

• Source: The quotation is from an article H.L. Mencken wrote for The Chicago Sunday Tribune in 1926. I found it mentioned in notes in Library of America’s “Story of the Week.”

https://storyoftheweek.loa.org/2010/09/nature-of-liberty.html

Failure to grieve

 Elise Boulding, a sociologist and Quaker activist, got her finger on the country’s central problem: a “failure to grieve over its shortcomings.”

It’s a country that exterminated the indigenous people and stole the land; kidnapped and enslaved Africans because it wanted an exploitable source of labor; asked people of Japanese descent to fight in World War II while imprisoning their families in camps. The list of shortcomings is long — if you pay attention. Boulding is right that most Americans simply don’t.

It’s the Fourth of July, and instead of a celebratory day, I’m thinking of a somber day, a day to grieve over failures. I think, given the circumstances, that’s the place to start.