"Yesterday"

 Yesterday, I finished the non-fiction book Robert Frost a life by Jay Parini. Growing up in Middlebury Vermont, we heard lots of stories about Frost and his life and visits to the area. Although he died in 1963 when I was only six, the influence of his poetry has inspired me my whole life.

Before I talk about the book, which happens to be my 36th book of the year, reaching my goal, I want to mention a few things.

First, there is a great Nature Trail located off of route 125 in Ripton Vermont. I have stopped and taken many pictures along this trail through the woods of Vermont wilderness. There are usually lots of flowers and plants, a running river, birds and butterflies, and just beautiful Vermont skies.

Across from the Nature walk, there is a small picnic area that has a bathroom, or should I say an heated outhouse. Did you know that Robert Frost was born in San Francisco California in 1874?

There are multiple trails to follow and they have a map at the entrance to the trails. There is plenty of parking when I have gone in past years.

A sign at the entrance; sorry it is of such poor quality.

Second, Frost was such a regular at the Breadloaf Writers' Conference held in the summer, that he bought a home near the campus. Breadloaf campus is part of Middlebury College, and also along Route 125 in Ripton. Just a few miles away is the Middlebury College Snow Bowl where I spent countless days skiing the slopes when I was a kid.

From the trails, you can see the Breadloaf Mountain. It looks like a loaf of bread...

When I was at UVM, my girlfriend Wendy gave me a book of Robert Frost poems. I still like to read through it and now having read the biography, I have a better understanding of the connection between poems and Frost's life. The trails have many poems on wooden poles throughout. One of his less familiar poems...

And one of my favorites...

You can take the trail less traveled...

There is a river running through the trails. It is named the Middlebury River.

Third, I still visit Middlebury as much as I can and on my visit last year I was able to attend a group of townies at Steve's Diner which was being torn down. That is Steve in the check-shirt in the foreground. Surprisingly, after not living in Middlebury for over 40 years, I still knew probably a third of the people there. I wrote about this visit in a BLOG post last year.

Well, one of the speakers, and a regular at the diner, was the writer Jay Parini. I read his novel The Last Station, about the final days of  Leo Tolstoy. A film was made of the book starring Christopher Plummer as Tolstoy and Helen Mirren as his wife. The book is great but I have not seen the movie. (A little trivia, Plummer's daughter Amanda attended Middlebury College. She is a movie star too)

Parini also writes Biographies and this is the book I just completed.

He has also written biographies of John Steinbeck, William Faulkner, and Jesus.

The book on Frost is long and very informative, and Parini does analyze many of his poems. I would call it an immersive book. My cousin Keith tried reading it but gave it up because he felt it was too detailed. And I will admit that I almost stopped, but when I got into the flow of his writing, I really enjoyed the story of the life of a great man who happen to be a poet. I give the book a 3.0 (Great).

One final note. Have you heard of Lucinda Williams, the singer and songwriter? She wrote Passionate Kisses, made famous by Mary Chapin-Carpenter, and her breakout album was  Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, which I own.  She was born in Lake Charles Louisiana and has always lived in the Deep South. Her father was the poet Miller Williams.

In 2023, Williams released her autobiography titled Don't Tell Anyone the Secrets I Told You: A Memoir.  In that book she says that she had missed Woodstock, "But I got to witness a cool literary scene. Most summers in the 1960s, we would travel to Middlebury Vermont and attend the Breadloaf Writers' Conference, which is like the Woodstock of Writers' Conferences."

About Title

"Yesterday" is a song by the English rock band the Beatles, written by Paul McCartney and credited to Lennon–McCartney. It was first released on the album Help! in August 1965, except in the United States, where it was issued as a single in September. The song reached number one on the US charts. It subsequently appeared on the UK EP Yesterday in March 1966 and made its US album debut on Yesterday and Today, in June 1966.

McCartney's vocal and acoustic guitar, together with a string quartet, was essentially the band's first solo performance. It remains popular today and, with 2,200 cover versions, is one of the most covered songs in the history of recorded music. "Yesterday" was voted the best song of the 20th century in a 1999 BBC Radio 2 poll of music experts and listeners and was also voted the No. 1 pop song of all time by MTV and Rolling Stone magazine the following year. In 1997, the song was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. Broadcast Music Incorporated (BMI) asserts that it was performed over seven million times in the 20th century.

"Yesterday" is a melancholic ballad about the break-up of a relationship. The singer nostalgically laments for yesterday when he and his love were together before she left because of something he said. McCartney is the only member of the Beatles to appear on the track.