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Richard T. Denker
6 Oakwood Lane
Crystal Lake, Illinois
Telephone 195
1-6-64
Dear Nancy, Bob, and Julie,
Peg wrote yesterday answering most of your questions and left me with a few. We have been getting “Archaelogy” magazine for many years (but no ‘Anthropology’), published quarterly, subscriptions $5.00 per year – Business Mgr., 100Washington Square East, New York 3, New York. It is a little on the technical side but we still find it very interesting.
We also get “Natural History” magazine which is very good also, published 10 times a year, $5.00 per year. Publication office – The American Museum of Natural History, Central Park West at 79th St., New York, NY 10024.
The most fascinating magazine we get is “Horizon” – starting in 1964 it will be published quarterly at $16.00 per year (Till now it has been 6 copies at $21.00 per year). If you haven’t seen it it (maybe you get it already), it has a hard cover for keeping, like a beautiful book with many fascinating illustrations & a wide, wide range of articles. Here is the Index for Nov. ’64 for instance:
HISTORY
Byzantium: The Other Half of the World
Great Confrontations: Cortez & Montezuma
ART & ARCHITECTURE
Magpies Nest In a London Mansion
Side Street Painter or shopping with Sivard
Obeying the Law
ARCHAEOLOGY
The Enigmatic Urn
Shapes from the Ancient Earth
THEATRE
Tyrone Guthrie: The Artist as man of the Theatre
POETS & WRITERS
Poetry’s False Face
A Seizure of Limericks
THE CHANGING WORLD
In the light of the sum
Poker and the American Character
From “Bully” to “Vigah”
The Perils of Leisure
BASS NOTE
How to Buy a Tuba
110 pages 10” x 12”. If I had to choose one magazine for well rounded stimulating articles, this would be it.
We still get SR of course and I enjoy it but I must admit I certainly don’t get a chance to read and digest all of the issues.
About good records to get, you mention Mahler, if you don’t have Mahler’s 4th Symphony, get it. Reiner & the Chgo. Phil. Have a good stereo recording and I understand Medgelberg & the Amsterdam Symphony have an excellent recording. One album we have enjoyed over the years is the Richard Wagner Chorale on Capitol ‘Folk Songs of the Old World’ – 2 records. For something different try Carl Orff’s ‘Carmina Burana’. For modern American music based on folk themes try Copeland – ‘Rodeo, El Salon Mexico, and Danson Cubano’ on Mercury Stereo SR90172.
We also enjoy very much ‘Mark Twain Tonight’ with Hal Holbrook and ‘Poems’ – Robert Frost.
We have many folk songs and ‘old time’ songs records which the kids really enjoy – especially sitting around in the evening with the lights out. One which the boys and I have really enjoyed and from which they and I have learned much about a now forgotten page in our History is ‘The Great American Bum – and other Hobo and Migratory Worker’s Songs’ sung by John Greenway on Riverside RLP 12-619.
Records we received this Christmas included Brahms – A German Requim which Peggy has wanted for quite a while and a complete HMS Pinafore which the whole family is enjoying plus The Smothers Brothers ‘Think Ethnic’ an engaging take-off on Folk songs.
Books this Christmas “Countryman’s Journal” by August Derleth, “A Guide to Bird Watching” by J. J. Hickey, and “A Change of Climate” by Jay Williams.
Our “Friday Review” group has taken ‘Utopias’ as our subject this year. Peg and I lad off in September with my report on “From Utopia to Nightmare” by Chad Walsh which traces the changing course from Plato to the present day “Anti-Utopias” such as ‘1984’ and ‘Brave New World’. Peg talked on “Communistic Societies in the United States” by Nordhoff which detailed the various attempts in the 1800’s to achieve a communal society. In December we heard a report on Huxley’s ‘Island’ which is one the few Utopian rather than Anti-Utopian novels in recent years. By the way, I , I should say we, still enjoy a re-reading every few years of a book you gave me during the war – “Islandia” by Austin Tappan Wright. It is really a wonderful, wonderful book.
We are all engaged in dreaming and planning a cabin for a lot we bought on Lake Superior, on Squaw Bay near Cornucopia, Wisconsin (see enclosed map). Beautiful sand beach, one of the Apostle Islands on the Horizon, the land solid white birches with a few pines and firs with about a 20 foot drop-off to the beach. A sand bar about 125 feet off shore makes the water plenty warm for swimming. The water is so pure you can use it as drinking water. We also were all set to buy another piece about seven miles away which had rock cliff dropping down to a stone shelf at water level with a regular ford coming into the land about 40’ and 20’ wide but we were very disappointed to learn that the afternoon I left there with an “Offer to Buy” agreement for Peg and I to sign, someone came in and offered to buy not only that piece with 165’ frontage but the adjacent 240’ piece which we could not afford to and the owner accepted the other offer. I was sick. Anyway there is a lot of additional property not even on the market which I hope to explore this summer to try and find something similar. Anyway, this whole thing started in August when the four older boys and I took a trip up there and through the upper peninsular of Michigan. I saw this area for the first time in my life and fell in love with it on sight. Peg and I were able to get back a month later for two days to look at various pieces for sale and her reaction was exactly the same. I’ve been up twice since to try and decide on which piece, and as I said we have now bought the one piece which is the piece we will build on. It’s too far – 400 miles – for weekends so it is really rather unpractical but sometimes you have to go on emotion rather than safe practicality. We intend to spend the month of August there (I can’t spare that much time from business so I will just be there the first and last weeks and I am sure we will spend some long weekends in spring and fall up there. We also think of how beautiful it would be for a week at Christmas time. You, Bob, and Julie will certainly have to come and see it. Will advise if we have the cabin ready for August. Love, Dick
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