The Other World

 Astoria

[Wednesday, December 21, 2005] 8:40 a.m. All right, Joseph, I’m ready if you are.

 You’re ready but you’re nervous. We’re functioning on the theory that you’re getting some things wrong, remember, and can correct yourself later. But you’re also getting some things right.

All right. Always a struggle for me, and not just for me.

No. Well. You’ve always assumed that I went west and stayed there, or, more recently, that I went west and bounced back east. But in fact that’s just your natural tendency – anyone’s — to see another’s life as more simple than it is. That’s eliminating the cross-purposes, and the back-and-forth that makes life really. Think of your own life. To tell it is to falsify it because all anyone can do is lay out a few lines, and the other lines are as if they didn’t exist. But things that aren’t talked about, scarcely are thought about, may be as important as coloring, as flavoring, as what is talked about. Can’t be helped. I liked cats as much as you do – but that doesn’t mean we ought to spend a lot of time talking about cats. You understand. Of course, if we did happen to start talking about cats probably it would illuminate as much as anything else would.

Continue reading 6 – Oregon

[Still Tuesday, December 20, 2005]

1:20 p.m. Having transcribed and sent. A friend says if I have a middle initial it will make things easier. “Thaddeus” immediately pops up before I can fairly ask the question. I see there was a Joseph T. – in the 7th battery, Indiana Light Artillery – one of three initials that appear for that battery. But you have said none of the units are right.

Yes I have said you are on the wrong track. You came closest when you speculated about the 50th U.S. But first let’s talk some more about my time in the west, the high point of my life before the crusade.

You were pretty opinionated, weren’t you; pretty downright and forceful. [This because I gave an uncharacteristically blunt and even harsh characterization of what the Civil War was about, to one of my very good friends who is an ex-reb.]

Went with being a New Englander. We weren’t much for sugar-coating. Continue reading 5 – West to Astoria

[December 20, 2005] An odd thing is that Marching Through Georgia is insisting on mutating into a refrain of “..marching through – Boston.” What the hell? No reason I can think of, and certainly nothing I consciously intended. While we were marching through – Boston??

8 a.m. All right Joseph – Mr. Smallwood? – you’ve begun something of interest to a lot of people. I sure hope you’re there to continue! Continue reading 4 – North on the river

[On Sunday, December 18, 2005, I wrote this: “Instead of addressing the guys in general, perhaps I’ll try it this way: David, please put me into direct touch with Joseph Smallwood.” That’s all it took. (David, by the way, was a journalist whose life spanned about 30 years in the 19th and another 30 years in the 20th century. His is one of the oldest influences in my life, and one of the first that I investigated.) I don’t know why so many years had to go by before thought of contacting Smallwood (or anybody) in this simple, straightforward way.

[The only additions I have made to this record — which will extend a long way — is that I have added titles such as “how I came to follow Lewis and Clark.” As we go along, you will see me interacting with Joseph, and later with others. Bear in mind, this is something that you can do as well. Okay, on to Joseph’s story.] Continue reading 3 – Going West

Marching Through Georgia

For some reason I went looking on the Internet to try to pin down Joseph Smallwood’s Civil War service in the Army, interrupting the work I thought I was doing. And one day I googled “Marching Through Georgia” lyrics and found a site that also played the tune. Neither tune nor words did I know. Why did I go looking for them? I found myself sitting at the computer singing the words, with tears in my eyes, not knowing why. Continue reading 2 – Marching Through Georgia