The world is turning ...

I often wondered if Neil Young took the title of this album from Nevil Shute's 1957 book, set in the aftermath of a nuclear apocalypse. This album has the same post-apocalyptic feeling as Neil and friends got high on "honey slides" and sang of lost friends, loves and an impending sense of doom, as evoked in his "Revolution Blues" which notes his brief association with Charles Manson, which he mentions in his autobiography, Waging Heavy Peace.

Neil opts for a casual tone in his book, moving back and forth in time in his first effort at penning his thoughts in prose. He notes that it was his father, a Canadian journalist for the Toronto Globe and Mail, who told him to write each day, so what you get is a journal of moments arrived at in a haphazard way befitting his nature. I've been sharing passages with my son, who has become a big Neil Young fan himself, grooving out to his hardest stuff with Crazy Horse, like Arc-Weld. I particularly enjoy the passages where Neil talks about his relationships with his two sons.

Most critics point to Tonight's the Night, which directly followed the loss of two of his closest friends, Danny Whitten and Bruce Berry, as his darkest and most inward focused album, but there is something even more haunting about On the Beach, with its wider array of acoustic instruments lurking in the background, as Neil digs into his soul to find the words to express his confusion with the times and his stormy relationship with Carrie Snodgress.

Like so many "hippies," Neil was watching that feeling that propelled the 60s fade away and a new era being born in the Age of Nixon. He was uncomfortable with his growing celebrity and the types of persons that came into his circle. You can imagine him and his closest friends around a fire on Topanga Beach playing these songs into the early morning hours.

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O Pioneers!

It is hard not to think of Nebraska without thinking of its greatest writer. Here is a marvelous piece by Capote, Remembering Willa Cather . I remember seeing a stage production of O Pioneers! and being deeply moved by its raw emotions. I had read My Antonia before, and soon found myself hooked, like Capote was by the simple elegance of her prose and the way she was able to evoke so many feelings through her characters. Much of it came from the fact that she had lived those experiences herself. Her father dragged the family from Virginia to Nebraska in 1883, when it was still a young state, settling in the town of Red Cloud. named after one of the great Oglala chiefs. Red Cloud was still alive at the time, living on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, in the aftermath of the "Great Sioux Wars" of 1876-77. I don't know whether Cather took any interest in the famous chief, although it is hard to imagine not. Upon his death in 1909, he was eulogi

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

Welcome to this month's reading group selection. David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908. At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades. Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society. I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran. Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, noting the gro

Colonel

Now with Colonel Roosevelt , the magnum opus is complete. And it deserves to stand as the definitive study of its restless, mutable, ever-boyish, erudite and tirelessly energetic subject. Mr. Morris has addressed the toughest and most frustrating part of Roosevelt’s life with the same care and precision that he brought to the two earlier installments. And if this story of a lifetime is his own life’s work, he has reason to be immensely proud. -- Janet Maslin -- NY Times . Let the discussion begin!

Dispatches from Vilnius

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