{"id":12629,"date":"2013-10-02T22:00:37","date_gmt":"2013-10-03T02:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/capitalcitiesusa.org\/?p=12629"},"modified":"2024-12-04T17:59:50","modified_gmt":"2024-12-04T22:59:50","slug":"less-traveled-by","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/capitalcitiesusa.org\/?p=12629","title":{"rendered":"Less Traveled By"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"02<\/a>Linda Burton posting from Concord, New Hampshire <\/i>\u2013 Two men, born on different coasts, in different centuries. What do they have in common? Robert Lee Frost (1874-1963) began life in San Francisco; Kenneth Lauren Burns (b 1953) in Brooklyn. But each chose New Hampshire as a place to live, and work, and grow; New Hampshire put its stamp on them. And from New Hampshire, they reflected the world back to us; interpreted in ways both simple and profound. Robert Frost was a poet; in his lifetime garnering more than forty honorary degrees, four Pulitzer Prizes, and one Congressional Medal of Honor. Critic Randall Jarrell said of him \u201cno other poet has written so well about the actions of ordinary men.\u201d Biographer Lawrance Thompson wrote that Frost\u2019s poems are \u201ccharged with an intensity of cherishing.\u201d And perhaps the greatest accolade is this \u2013 Frost\u2019s poems are part of the curriculum in every class on American literature. How many young souls found their life purpose bolstered by the line \u201cI took the road less traveled by\u201d? Did \"02<\/a>filmmaker Ken Burns come across that line when he was a young student? I don\u2019t know; but Burns has certainly lived his life and gone about his work in ways unlike any other. His documentary films have brought him (so far) twenty-five honorary degrees, twelve Emmy Awards, two Oscar nominations, and a Lifetime Achievement Award. From his first documentary in 1981 (Brooklyn Bridge<\/i>), Burns\u2019 films have mesmerized the public. David Zurawik wrote \u201cBurns not only turned millions\u2026onto history with his films, he showed us a new way of looking at our collective past.\u201d Burns\u2019 father-in-law said his work was \u201can attempt to make people long gone come back alive.\u201d Besides New Hampshire, what else touched the lives of these men? I decided to dig a little deeper.<\/p>\n

I spent a delightful afternoon at the Robert Frost Farm in Derry, New Hampshire, where Randee Martin and Alex Fowler filled my ear with story after story of the man, and his family; \"02<\/a>pointing to the very ground he plowed as a farmer, and the stones in the fence back in the woods (Mending Wall<\/i>). Frost didn\u2019t\u00a0last long\u00a0as a farmer, I learned, he preferred teaching, and writing, although he identified closely with the rhythm of the farmer\u2019s life.<\/p>\n

How did Robert Frost, born in San Francisco, get to New Hampshire? That California birthplace was a quirk; Frost\u2019s father William Prescott Frost Jr was born in New Hampshire and studied at Harvard; his adventuring spirit led him to San Francisco, where he worked as a journalist, and became \"02<\/a>editor of the San Francisco Evening Bulletin<\/i>. Robert was eleven when his father died of tuberculosis and the family returned to New England; William had dictated that he was to be buried there. After the funeral, Robert\u2019s mother Isabelle began teaching in Salem Depot, New Hampshire; thus began Robert\u2019s rural lifestyle.<\/p>\n

You can read the chronology of Robert Frost\u2019s life here, http:\/\/robertfrostfarm.org\/chronology.html<\/a>; it lists where he lived and where he worked in his 89 years, his marriage and the birth (and death) of his children; it tells of his publications, and his awards. It was 1924 when he won the first of \"02<\/a>four Pulitzer Prizes for the book New Hampshire: A Poem with Notes and Grace Notes<\/i>. He won additional Pulitzers for Collected Poems<\/i> in 1931, A Further Range<\/i> in 1937, and A Witness Tree<\/i> in 1943.Vermont claims Frost too; he lived and taught there at various times and in fact, is buried there, in the Old Bennington Cemetery, along with his wife and the four children who preceded him in death. Frost\u2019s first books were published when he lived in England; he also studied and taught at Harvard and he taught at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. How did he view the importance of New Hampshire in his life? In 1938, as part of the Federal Writers\u2019 Project, he wrote:<\/p>\n

\"02<\/a>Not a poem, I believe, in all my six books\u2026but has something in it of New Hampshire. Nearly half of my poems were written in New Hampshire\u2026I lived\u2026in Salem, Derry, Plymouth, and Franconia\u2026from my tenth to my forth-fifth year….Most of my time out of it I lived\u2026on the edge of New Hampshire, where my walks and vacations could be in New Hampshire. My first teaching was\u2026in the southern part of Salem\u2026.Four of my children were born in Derry\u2026.My father was born in Kingston. So you see\u2026it has been New Hampshire with me all the way.<\/i><\/p>\n

Robert Kyle Burns was a graduate student in cultural anthropology at Columbia University when son Ken was born in 1953. Ken\u2019s academic family moved frequently; they lived in France, they lived in Maryland, and they lived in Michigan, where Robert Burns taught at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor; Ken\u2019s mother Lyla died as a result of breast cancer \"02<\/a>when he was eleven. Ken was a well-read child, preferring history to fiction; when he received an 8 mm movie camera for his 17th<\/sup> birthday, he used it to shoot a documentary about an Ann Arbor factory. He left Michigan after high school, and headed for Amherst, Massachusetts, and a newly founded alternative school \u2013 Hampshire College \u2013 where he studied under photographers Jerome Liebling and Elaine Mayes.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been a fast-moving journey since he graduated from college in 1975. In 1976, he moved to Walpole, New Hampshire, where he and Roger Sherman, Buddy Squires, and Larry Hott founded Florentine Films. The company is still headquartered there; each of the four works independently under the Florentine Films \"02<\/a>name; Florentine Films often works with other organizations to produce films. In 1977 Ken began work on adapting David McCullough\u2019s book The Great Bridge<\/i>, about the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge; his feature documentary Brooklyn Bridge<\/i> was released in 1981 and ran on PBS; it earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary; Ken was 28 that year. Ken then went on to make several other award-winning films, including The Shakers: Hands to Work, Hearts to God<\/i>; The Statue of Liberty<\/i> , also nominated for an Oscar; Huey Long<\/i> , the story of the turbulent Southern dictator; The Congress: The History and Promise of Representative Government<\/i>; Thomas Hart Benton<\/i> , a portrait of the regionalist artist; and Empire of the Air: The Men Who Made Radio<\/i> .<\/p>\n

\"02<\/a>Were you one of the 40 million people who followed The Civil War<\/i> series in 1990? It was the highest-rated series in the history of American Public Television at the time; Ken was director, producer, co-writer, chief cinematographer, music director, and executive producer. He did the same for the series Baseball<\/i> in 1994, which attracted 45 million viewers. The West<\/i> was released in 1996; Lewis and Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery<\/i> in 1997; Frank Lloyd Wright<\/i> in 1998; The Story of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B Anthony<\/i> in 1999. Historian Stephen Ambrose said of his films \u201cMore Americans get their history from Ken Burns than any other source.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"02<\/a>What makes his films so watchable? Many have told stories of the Civil War, and baseball. What is there about a Ken Burns film that holds so many viewers in its grip? Some give credit to a technique called The Ken Burns Effect; it\u2019s his signature style of cutting rapidly from one still picture to another in a fluid, linear fashion, then pepping up the visuals with first-hand narration gleaned from contemporary writings, and spoken by top stage and screen actors. He also frequently uses simple musical leitmotifs; causing one critic to note, \u201cOne of the most memorable things about The Civil War<\/i> was its haunting, repeated violin melody, whose thin, yearning notes seemed somehow to sum up all the pathos of that great struggle.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"02<\/a>Go to the Florentine Films site http:\/\/www.florentinefilms.com\/ffpages\/F-frameset.html<\/a> for a complete listing of Ken Burns films; you\u2019ve probably recently seen The National Parks<\/em>,\u00a0and\u00a0The Dust Bowl<\/i>; watch for The Roosevelts<\/i>, and Vietnam<\/i>, in the works. Aged 60 now, he doesn\u2019t show signs of stopping. I didn\u2019t visit Walpole, although a volunteer at the Vermont State Information Center bent my ear for a while telling about his daughter\u2019s work with Ken on several films during her student days. \u201cDoes he live in Vermont?\u201d I\u2019d asked then. \u201cOh no,\u201d was the answer, \u201che lives in New Hampshire. But that\u2019s just across the river there.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"02<\/a>So what connections, other than their New Hampshire residence, did I find? A few things caught my attention \u2013 both had well-educated parents and both lost a parent when they were eleven. Both went to school in Massachusetts; both lived in Europe for a time; both, oddly enough, lived in Ann Arbor with connections to the University of Michigan \u2013 Robert Frost taught there; Ken Burns\u2019 father taught there. Both had ordinary jobs in their early days; Robert delivered newspapers and worked in a shoe factory; Ken sold records in a music store. Both first attempted what became their life\u2019s work in high school \u2013 Robert wrote his first poem; Ken made \"02<\/a>that 8 mm movie about a factory. And both developed techniques for their work that were beyond the norm; Frost\u2019s work was considered \u201cat the crossroads\u201d with regard to traditional form, idiomatic language, and ordinary subject matter.\u00a0What came to be known as the\u00a0\u201cKen Burns Effect\u201d was a dramatic and surprising new style.<\/p>\n

Did the environment of New Hampshire, where individualism is prized, lead these two men to take the road less traveled? Or just allow it? I cannot say if either is true, but I do know this: New Hampshire is fiercely proud to claim them.<\/p>\n

Robert Frost Farm, Derry, New Hampshire, 603-432-3091, http:\/\/robertfrostfarm.org\/<\/a><\/p>\n

The Frost Place, Franconia, New Hampshire, 603-823-5510, http:\/\/frostplace.org\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Florentine Films, Walpole, New Hampshire, http:\/\/www.florentinefilms.com\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Ken Burns America, http:\/\/www.pbs.org\/kenburns\/<\/a><\/p>\n

I shall be telling this with a sigh, somewhere, ages and ages hence. Two roads diverged in a wood and I \u2013 I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference. The Road Not Taken, Robert Frost, 1920<\/i><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Linda Burton posting from Concord, New Hampshire \u2013 Two men, born on different coasts, in different centuries. What do they have in common? Robert Lee Frost (1874-1963) began life in San Francisco; Kenneth Lauren Burns (b 1953) in Brooklyn. But each chose New Hampshire as a place to live, and work, and grow; New Hampshire […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4587,1734],"tags":[2798,2806,2804,3096,2793,2802,2809,2794,2801,2071,2805,2796,2771,2807,2795,2797,2325,2800,2803,2808,2792,2799],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/capitalcitiesusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12629"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/capitalcitiesusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/capitalcitiesusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capitalcitiesusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capitalcitiesusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12629"}],"version-history":[{"count":44,"href":"https:\/\/capitalcitiesusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12629\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12632,"href":"https:\/\/capitalcitiesusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12629\/revisions\/12632"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/capitalcitiesusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12629"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capitalcitiesusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12629"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capitalcitiesusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}