Massacre Time

It's annoying to me, though I shouldn't be surprised by it anymore. And yet, I do still experience surprise when it happens. 

What am I talking about? The number of times a movie or TV series has promoted itself as being about an actual massacre that occurred on United States of America soil and that I, before encountering the dramatization of the historical event, knew little or nothing about said massacre. We all know how blood-strewn American history is (as is history everywhere really, so let's not get on the United States too much about that), but how come so many massacres happened that I didn't know about? Well, as I said, one reason is I should be better read about all aspects of American history, and a second reason of course is because these events are the ones they don't teach you about in school. Or they certainly didn't when I was going to school decades ago.

What's prompted my thinking on this particular subject is the new Netflix series American Primeval. It came out on Netflix in early January, and I paid no attention to it with so many other things on to watch. But a few people recommended it to me and I decided to try it, and what do I find out but that the germ of the story derives from real historical incidents in the US; namely, the Utah War that lasted from 1857 to 1858 and specifically, the Mountain Meadows Massacre, which occurred from September 7th, 1857 till September 11, 1857. The series condenses the massacre into one day, but it does get into the core of what set the massacre off. It was a mass killing of about 120 members of a wagon train from Arkansas that was heading west -- the Baker-Fancher wagon train -- and it was perpetrated by Mormon settlers along with some Native Americans. The Mormons actually tried to use the Native Americans as kind of cover, to avoid being blamed for the massacre, but that didn't work. By 1859, the US federal government was involved in investigating what had happened, and these investigations lasted years. It's a quite interesting story, if somewhat horrific, though that horrific quality is, I suppose, no different than so many events from US history.

American Primeval doesn't get into the aftermath of the massacre and it mixes fictional characters with real ones (the frontiersman Jim Bridger, Brigham Young, the Mormon enforcer Wild Bill Hickman), but it captures without any reticence the brutality of the old West. It's nothing new to see at this point, but it's compellingly done, mixing the personal drama and struggles of the characters with the larger historical picture. And, as I mentioned, I found it fascinating as yet another example of an event from US history (the Mountain Meadows Massacre and its backdrop of the Utah War which involved Mormons, Native Americans, the US military, and numerous unaffiliated people just trying to live their lives and survive), that I knew nothing about beforehand. I couldn't help but start reading up on the period once I started watching the show. 

So what are some other examples of massacre movies that led me to the history books to learn more about the events depicted on a screen? Here's a few, all of which prompted me, when I learned about them, to shake my head and berate myself a little bit for my historical ignorance.

Soldier Blue, from 1970, a revisionist Western about the 1864 Sand Creek Massacre in the Colorado Territory, in which US Army soldiers killed and mutilated anywhere from 70 to 600 Native Americans, mainly women and children. Directed by Ralph Nelson. Stars Candice Bergen and Peter Strauss. The film uses the massacre as an obvious allegory for the Vietnam War. Now I knew like anyone does about the way Native Americans were killed en masse during the "settling" of the West, but this particular event, investigated afterwards by the US government just as the Mountain Meadows Massacre was, I didn't know about. Nor that it happened during a series of events, in 1864 and 1865, called The Colorado Wars. Utah Wars. Colorado Wars. I guess I'll have to do a study now and see which states in the country don't have a war in the past linked to their name.

Rosewood, the John Singleton film from 1997, that depicts the 1923 Rosewood massacre in Florida. Not part of a "Florida War", but merely the destruction of a black, fairly self-sufficient town by a white mob, the whole thing set off by accusations that a white woman who lived nearby had been assaulted by a black man. The final result: a mob of whites in the hundreds scoured the countryside looking for the alleged culprit, and in the process, they burned nearly every building in Rosewood and killed not a few people. If nothing else, we can give the marauders credit for doing a thorough job in the burning department: after these events, the town of Rosewood ceased to exist. Ving Rhames, Don Cheadle, and Jon Voight are all in the film, and Singleton does put in some anachronisms, but the movie essentially tells the story of what happened. 

Watchmen, from 2019. As anyone who watched this great series knows, its first episode depicts the Tulsa race massacre, a two day event that took place on May 31 and June 1, 1921. What set this one going was when a black 19-year-old shoeshine guy was accused of assaulting a white 21-year-old woman who was an elevator operator in a Tulsa building. Everything escalated from there, and the white Tulsa residents wound up fighting and shooting back and forth with black residents. Eventually, the white residents organized themselves and destroyed the prosperous Greenwood District in Tulsa, wiping out 35 square blocks of that neighborhood. Greenwood had been one of the wealthiest black communities in the United States until that point, known also as the "Black Wall Street". This event I did know something about before seeing Watchmen, but the immediacy of that episode prompted me to delve deeper into my reading about it.

Finally, Little Big Man, from 1970, Arthur Penn's adaptation of Thomas Berger's novel. It goes without saying that I did know all about The Battle of Little Big Horn before seeing this movie, and there have been many movie depictions of that event, but I include this one to end things on a upbeat note. The truth is, whenever I think of this movie and its (yes, somewhat skewed) depiction of the demise of General Custer and his cavalry forces along the Little Bighorn River at the hands of Lakota Sioux, Northern Cheyenne, and the Arapaho tribes, I can't help but smile. As massacre movies go, call this one a feel good film.

Listen to Audiobooks at As Fast or Slow as You Want

 by

Scott D. Parker

A couple of weeks ago on NPR, I ran across an article entitled “Is there a right way – or wrong way – to listen to an audio book?” and I gave it a read. The article spotlights a TikTok video from Audible where various celebrities discuss their preferred speed of listening to content.

What surprised me was the number of folks who think 1x (i.e., normal) speed is the only preferred method. One person even commented “I think people who go real fast are - I don't want to say psychopath, but...” I have to admit it irritated me.

I am an avid listener of audiobooks and podcasts. Of the 34 books I got through in 2024, 31 of the were audiobooks. Basically, if there’s a book I want to read, I see if there’s an audio version first. When the guys from my SF book club make their picks, I instantly download the audiobook. Side note: I love when my friends pick the books because I can download the audio and just push play, having never read the book description, a habit I call Reading into the Dark.

When There's Not Enough Time

When it comes to those SF books, sometimes they're long and, depending on what other book I may be listening to, there may not be enough days in the month left to finish the assigned book. If the book is not good, I pull the rip cord and just stop listening. But for those books I'm enjoying yet I'm running out of time, it's time to bump up the narration. I ended up listening to the most recent novel, Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie, at 1.4x. Fast enough to hear and digest everything but also speedy enough to complete the novel.

When The Narration Is Slow

Sometimes, an audiobook narrator makes a decision to read the book slower than I'd like. My default is about 1.2 to 1.25x. This is a nice, natural pace for my brain and ear. It has the effect of shrinking the silences between sentences.

Sometimes, the faster tempo of my listening brings a little bit extra to the experience. There have been more than a few books in which a faster narration lends itself to more punchy dialogue, especially for those romances with two witty characters. 

The Always-Natural Narrators

Scott Brick is my favorite audiobook narrator. Whenever I get a book with him--like Brad Meltzer's novels and histories and the works of Clive Cussler--I listen to Scott naturally.

Ditto for celebrities who read their own work. Dave Grohl, Henry Winkler, Ron and Clint Howard and, as of this week, Alton Brown. I know how they sound and I want to hear them naturally.

You Read More Books

When you speed up narration, you finish books faster. And then you can read the next book. Who doesn't like that?

This Shouldn't Even Be a Thing

When we buy a book or download an audiobook, that piece of content is now owned by us. It has left the writer's keyboard and brain and become either an ebook, a paper book, or an audiobook. 

And we readers and listeners can do with that product whatever we want. When I read, I annotate like crazy, especially non-fiction. I underline passages and make notes in the margins. Heck, I even do that for ebooks.

Plus, readers read at all different speeds, so there's no natural 1x speed of reading. So there shouldn't be a "norm" for audiobooks. 

You consume at the speed you want, and don't let anyone say anything differently. 

The Drunken Version?

By the way, all this talk of bumping up the narration leads to another question: anyone ever slowed down an audiobook to 0.5 speed? It's kind of fun. The narrator sounds drunk, something I learned while listening to The Ralph Report podcast (where host Ralph Garman slows down rants by co-host, Eddie Pence, to make Eddie, a non-drinker, sound drunk). 

Anyone want to hear a "drunk at the end of a bar" tell you a story?

The Monthly Reset and Dodging Curve Balls

By

Scott D. Parker

 

A few weeks ago, I wrote about giving yourself the grace to start, stop, and then restart a habit. That was just after Quitter’s Day 2025.

 

Today is 1 February 2025. It’s been thirty-one days since New Year’s Day. How are you habits coming along? How’s that new story or book working out for you?

 

I picked up an older story sitting at around 10,000 words on 1 January and, as of yesterday, I reached achieved a hair more than 21,000 new words. Not quite the pace I imagined as I opened my laptop early on New Year’s Morning—I frankly expected at least 31,000—but those are 21,000 new words I didn’t have. So that’s a win and I’ll proudly wave the flag.

 

It’s important we celebrate our victories, both large and small, because things can change your life in the blink of an eye. Like it did for me this past week.

 

My day job changed our in-office policy from hybrid (in office Tuesday through Thursday; work from home on Mondays and Fridays) to the full five days in the office. Naturally, after three-plus years of that kind of working routine, everyone is having to adjust.

 

But aside from the disruptions and the adjustments and the very obvious blessing of still having a job, a silver lining appeared.

 

On my WFH days, I would always each lunch and play games (backgammon and Yahtzee; 3 games each) with my wife. Now, I truly miss those times, but I quickly realized that with me being in the office, I have two additional hours of writing. It doesn’t easily equate to the missing time with the wife, but my writer self can be two hours more productive.

 

Now, fellow writer, we face a new month, one with a nice and even twenty-eight days. What are your goals for this month? Mine is quite simple: forge ahead on the novel and write at least 21,000 new words. And, like I always say, if you’ve fallen off the writing wagon, all you have to do is the simplest thing possible.

 

Start.