Rinker Buck, Life on the Mississippi: An Epic American Adventure
(New York: Avid Reader Press, 2022), 397 pages including index and an essay on sources titled “Acknowledgments). Audible Book by Simon & Schuster Audio, read by Jason Culp and is 15 hours and 21 minutes long.
This isn’t the first Life on the Mississippi I’ve read. I read another one. You probably heard about it. Mark Twain’s book with the same title which I read decades ago. Buck gives credit to Twain’s work,. Published later in his life, Twain elived his younger years as a pilot on the Mississippi as he traveled once again down the river.
Buck also gives credit to Harlan Hubbard’s Shantyboat: A River Way of Life. When I lived in Michigan, a neighbor had a copy of that book in his “Shack” on Cedar Creek. Whenever we were out at there, if I had a few free minutes, I’d pull it down and read. Hubbard and his wife journeyed down the Mississippi in the 1940s. Another mention in the book are the paintings of George Caleb Bringham. This reminded me of seeing his collection in a show at The Met in 2015. Visons of this show, titled: “Navigating the West George Caleb Bingham and the River,” ran through my head as I read. Yes, I enjoyed Buck’s story and all his tangents. The book begins with the building of his boat. We then travel with him down the rivers. He launches on the Monongahela River, south of Pittsburgh. At Pittsburgh, he picks up the Ohio River, and floats it West to the Mississippi. From there, he makes his way down the Big Muddy to New Orleans.
As Buck takes the reader down river, we learn about his own life. He’s a pilot who as a teenager, with his brother, flew across country. He also reenacted a wagon train journey along the Oregon Trail. We also learn of his mother’s recent death at an old age. The hours on the water give him much time to ponder her life and what she instilled into her children.
Lessons from the River
But this book isn’t just about personal stuff. Throughout the journey, we learn about the history of this great inland waterway. Buck introduces us to the flatboat, which were first floated down the river in the late 18th Century. By the early 19th Century, it was an industry. Farmers in Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee built boats. They load them with produce (or bourbon, the liquid form of corn) and floated to New Orleans. There, they often sold their boats for lumber, often for more than they had in them, before making their way overland back home.
Buck doesn’t shy away from the negative side of life along the river. I never knew the river’s role in the Trail of Tears. Many of the Native Americans from the lower reaches of the Tennessee River were floated on flatboats from their homeland to a location along the Mississippi. There, they debarked overland to the new Indian Territories.
However, I did know the role the river played in moving slaves south to the cotton and sugar plantations along the Mississippi in the 1840s and 50s. By this time, the flatboats had mostly given way to the steamboats. Having chattel slaves on the boats showed America the ugly side of slavery, as depicted in Harriett Beecher Stow’s novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Stow spent time along the river earlier in her marriage, giving her an insight into the ugly side of our nation. Today, huge barges carry grain to the port of New Orleans and shuttle coal between mines and mills along the Ohio. And a series of locks and dams control the river’s depth and make navigation possible year around.
In addition to learning about the river, we also gain insight into Buck’s crew. They frequently turn over as various members came aboard as others returned to their homes and jobs. Some came back for multiple sections, but many just serve a week or two aboard The Patience. Mostly, the crew got along, but there were also some tensions which comes upon living on a tight wooden boat he built for the trip. His boat also had a motor, which would be necessary these days as he had to maneuver around large formations of barges. Telling the story of leaving the Ohio for the Mississippi is exciting. He had to dodged huge fleets of barrages on the three rivers.
Overall Review
This is one of the books I listened to on Audible, but also checked out a hard copy from the library so I could check things and see the maps and photos. While I enjoyed the book, it seemed to me Buck spent more time discussing the Ohio River than the Mississippi. The latter is now less wild and has been engineered into more of a straightaway with rock banks protecting the channel. While he dug into the history in places like Natchez, the reader gained less insights into other places like Vicksburg and Memphis. Despite this, I enjoyed the trip.
Jonathan T. Pennington, The Sermon on the Mount and Human Flourishing: A Theological Commentary
(Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2017), 236 pages including index, footnotes, and sources.
Between February and mid-June, , I preached 17 sermons on the Sermon of the Mount. In addition to three commentaries on Matthew (Doug Hare, Robert Gundry, and Fredrick Dale Bruner), I depended heavily on this theological commentary. While preaching, I mostly read the commentary sections of the book. Afterwards, I went back and read the opening chapters, which I found enlightening.
Pennington’s thesis is that there was a conversation in Second Temple Judaism between the Hebrew people and the Greco-Roman world. This makes sense. The Jewish community was dispersed throughout the region during this time. Furthermore, those living in what had been ancient Israel were under the control of the Greeks and then the Romans.
Matthew wrote in Greek. Pennington follows his use of language and ties it to Greek philosophy. Jesus (and the Bible), like the Greeks are interested in how humans might flourish. The Sermon on the Mount begins with the beatitudes, which is often translated as “Blessed be the,” but the word there could also be translated as “Flourishing.” It’s a word with no good English equivalent. He suggests that Jesus, like the Greek philosophers, desire humans to flourish. Of course, there are other aspects to Jesus teachings. This includes his focus on our relationship to God and the eschatology found within in the Sermon. Pennington also links the sermon to the rest of Matthew’s gospel.
The Sermon also falls within the genre of Hebrew wisdom literature. Pennington suggests this conversation between philosophy informs Jesus’ teaching.
I enjoyed this book and while I spent 17 weeks focusing on Jesus’ great sermon, I feel I could spend many more weeks digging deeper into it.
Carrie Fountain, The Life
(New York: Penguin Poets, 2022), 91 pages.
I enjoyed Fountain’s presentation at Calvin’s Festival of Faith and Writing and picked up this book at the Festival. I was also enamored with her when she complimented me on the sound of my voice as she signed her book. It doesn’t take much to impress me. But I am also impressed with this book and look forward to reading more of her poetry. At the Festival, Fountain said she attempts to write a poem every day. “Most are not good, at least at first,” she admitted. . In time she returns to some of those poems and craft into a work to be published.
These poems are tender. Most deal with her children and a few with her husband and family. She captures the essence of life at different intervals which makes for fascinating reading. Furthermore, her poems also bring in a dialogue with the divine, who gives us life and this world to enjoy.
