Memory ... Summer 2005

Yesterday, I posted on my blog "Daily Doggerel" (link) a few pictures I'd taken on July 21, 2005, in and around Red Cloud, Nebraska. One of them shows Joyce and me standing near the girlhood home of writer Willa Cather (see above), whom I was chasing around various places that summer because our "summer reading" (for juniors at Western Reserve Academy) that year was Cather's Nebraska novel My Ántonia, 1918. I hadn't read a lot of Cather, so I was spending the summer reading her complete works--and visiting sites that had been important to her.

Before the Nebraska trip with Joyce, I'd already driven (alone) to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to see where she had lived when she was teaching in a high school (that building still stands, too--and, yes, I saw it). I'd also gone to Back Creek, West Virginia (near Winchester), the area where she'd been born; both her family's home and her grandparents' home (not far away) are still standing.

After Red Cloud, Joyce and I drove out to Ketchum, Idaho, to see some Hemingway sites: the home where he killed himself, the restaurant where he ate his final meal, etc.

But this is not a summary of our literary visits. No, that picture perched atop this post--a picture I'd not really looked at very closely in quite a while--gave me pause this time. And here's why ...

On June 5, 2005, just about six weeks earlier, I had undergone prostate cancer surgery at the Cleveland Clinic: a prostatectomy (the removal of the gland). The surgeon's hope--hell, my hope--was that the procedure would cure me.

It didn't.

In subsequent years (as I've posted here now and then) I've undergone two rounds of radiation, a course of immunotherapy, and I'm now on some pretty powerful meds that have permanently altered my life. Trelstar, for example (a quarterly injection), killed my libido (it suppresses testosterone, the food of prostate cancer), sapped my energy, gifted me periodic "hot flashes," made me vulnerable to bouts of depression, etc.

Anyway, I was determined, in 2005, that I would not let my recent cancer surgery prevent me from living the way I wanted to. Although during the time of the Red Cloud trip I was wearing, well, liners to prevent post-surgical dripping, although I was still feeling a little bite where the surgeon's knife had bitten me, although I was dealing with my evanescing sex life, I was still ... hopeful.

And so we drove around Nebraska, around Idaho--and in subsequent years we made many other "literary" trips all over the place, spent an early-August week in Stratford, Ontario, for the Stratford Theatre Festival (about fifteen consecutive years we did that). But Time and Age and Illness began to win the wrestling match that I, deluded, had thought I was winning.

So ... I look at that picture now ... I see on my face, in my posture, a determination to appear "normal." Still in control.

I would go back to WRA that fall, would teach Cather's novel and Hamlet and The Great Gatsby and other works I loved. And for a few years I thought I'd actually won the battle.

Until my PSA (Prostate Specific Antigen) began rising again. By late 2009 it was high enough that my oncologists recommended a course of radiation ... and so began my journey down the road I am still traveling. I'm stumbling more now (literally and metaphorically)--finding it more difficult to deal with the increasing darkness--but as that photo shows, I still can hold close that human being who keeps me sane (most of the time), who keeps me (moderately) hopeful, who has shown me for nearly a half-century the vast dimensions of Love.

***

Thought I'd show you the whole house--and the historical marker outside.

Happy Birthday, Open Door Coffee Company!

Five years.

Which, of course, simply cannot be. But--like many other things which apparently cannot be--it not only can be but is. It was just about five years ago that the coffee shop on the corner of Main and Clinton Streets here in Hudson opened its doors. A blessing of my life ...

For a number of years before they opened, I'd been sort of coffee-shop-hopping. Our long-time hangout--Saywell's Drug (which occupied the space next door to OD)--had closed in 2005. So ... I'd migrated to Coffee on Main, just down the block.

It closed.

So I went to Caribou—only a couple of blocks from our house. Did so for a few years.

It closed.

So I started walking each morning to Bruegger's Bagels--about a half-mile from our house.

But quit when Hattie's Cafe opened in the space now occupied by OD.

It closed.

Back to Bruegger's.

Then the Open Door Coffee Company arrived, and I've been there ever since. I love the place for all kinds of reasons ...

• They've integrated into the space a lot of the stuff from Saywell's (which, to be fair, Hattie's had also done): the soda fountain, some wall hangings, other things.
• They have great coffee.
• They bake their own goodies right on the site.
• The hiring is superb--just some of the greatest young people have worked/are working there.
• They attract some of the most interesting customers in town. The "early-morning" folks are great coffee-companions.
• They reserve a small table for me each morning.
• The owner (Deborah Pinnell) and her son (Nigel, a gifted musician) work there. I'm proud to know them both. They brew kindness and humor along with the coffee.
• I feel at home.

So ... I'm urging them to stay in business, right there, until Mr. G. Reaper arrives at my door in earnest. (He has been lightly knocking, then--at least for now--going away.)

Going there each morning--and, okay, for a while each afternoon--has become one of the great pleasures of my latter years.

So ... Happy Birthday, ODCC!

Link to their website.

Not the Best Idea ...

It wasn't the best decision I've ever made, as subsequent events would certify.

Yesterday, visiting our son and his family for a Memorial Day cookout, I impulsively asked my 14-yr-old grandson, Logan, if he wanted to pitch some Wiffle Ball to me out in the back yard.

Did he ever! He's a pitcher--and a good one--on his summer team, and the thought of whiffing his grandfather must have seemed even better than the sourdough bread he'd just eaten. (I won't say where that bread came from.)

So ... out to the back yard we went. I loosened up a little with the plastic bat while Logan arranged the other particulars--a home plate, etc.

After a few errant tosses, he grooved one, and I nailed it--liner into left-center. Possible double.

But ...

... I felt myself stumble a little during the follow-through--a little reminder of my Old-Man Vertigo--a gift from my age, from my medications. I dismissed the feeling.  I can handle this!

No.

A few more pitches--friendly debates about the strike zone--then ...

Logan grooved another one.

I swung ferociously. I missed. I was immediately on the ground, my head arriving first to greet Mother Earth with a jarring thud! My glasses went somewhere. And I lay there, momentarily stunned. It had happened so fast, I'd had no time to throw up an arm to break the fall.

Family gathered around. Our daughter-in-law (who teaches at the Nursing School at Kent State) asked me some questions--What year is it? Etc. I answered them. Struggled into a chair they'd brought out to the yard. Felt like a fool.

I became the pitcher for a couple of minutes. Watched while Logan nailed my offerings.  Then headed slowly inside, carrying with me some realizations:

• My Diamond Days are over.
• Wiffle Ball is too much for me.
• I must never do such a thoughtless thing again.
• I want to play baseball.
• I want to be young and healthy again.
• That ain't gonna happen.
• I want it to happen.
• That ain't gonna happen.
• I want it to happen.
• That ain't...

You know ...

I woke up this morning with sore ribs (where I hit the ground?), with a bit of a bruise on my forehead, with a bit of redness on my nose (where my glasses were knocked from me), with a bit of sorrow (okay, a lot of sorrow) about Career's End.

In Love with Sleep

Morpheus, god of dreams

At various times in my life I have loved being asleep. In the whirlpool of adolescence, on weekends, I could easily sleep till noon--except for those times when Dad decided I needed to help him with some chores. And even during the school week, I would sleep till the last possible moment. Dad had an old school bell that he would ring in the morning, a bell whose piercing peals were designed to urge us upward (out of bed) and downward (to the breakfast nook), where we could have a "family breakfast." Dad, who'd grown up on a farm in Oregon, must have thought my brothers and I were aliens--spoiled ones, at that, as we sullenly and silently slurped our cereal in the morning.

Later, a teacher, I couldn't sleep in, of course--except on Saturday and Sunday. So on weekends I would crash long hours. I think my record on a Sunday was about 3 o'clock in the afternoon. After I got married, for a while, Joyce and I both slept late on weekends.

Years went on ... and I remembered something my dad had once said when, absolutely flabbergasted by the habit of both Dad and Mom of getting up and going around 5 a.m., I'd asked him why? And he'd replied, "When you get older, Son, you'll see."

Hah! No way!

Way,

The older I got, the easier it grew to get up early. The last decade or so of my teaching career, I was generally the first one in the building--by 6-ish. I got a lot done in those quiet, uninterrupted hours.

Retirement.

And I'm still getting up early, about 5:30 most days, every day hearing Dad's prediction from a half-century ago. I've found that my most productive hours are in the morning, and if I don't get some things done then, it's unlikely--no, impossible--that I'll get them done later in the day.

Very late in his life, Dad spent a lot of the day sleeping in his easy chair and, later, in his wheelchair. Once I asked him if it bothered him, sleeping so much. And his reply: I like being asleep because in my dreams I'm young again.

Dad had been a great athlete (football, track, baseball), and I hope Morpheus was kind to him, that Dad got to dream all the time of running and leaping and doing whatever-in-creation-he-wanted-to-do. He'd earned it.

And now, in my mid-seventies, I'm once again finding the profound appeal of sleep. I know, you see, that Bad Things Are Coming. Sure, I've always known this in an intellectual sense (everyone dies, etc.), but now I'm experiencing it in a very personal sense. Just in the last couple of years I have lost dear friends, former students, family, ... And much more (and much worse) hovers on the horizon, glimmering with dark light.

So I guess I've figured: If I can just stay asleep, none of those things will happen. And so I nap. And go to bed early. And in some ways hate the waking, the waking that will carry me, inevitably, one step closer to all that I now dread.

Sunday Sundries, 228

1. HBOTW [Human Beings of the Week]: Friends from Hiram High School days (I graduated in 1962), who on Facebook have helped me, over and over again, to reconstruct things I was trying to remember. This week--Tina Dreisbach and her husband (Paul) and Ralph Green helped me remember some things about music class in, oh, 1958! Facebook has its Dark Side--but, also, the Force surges there , as well!

2. I finished just one book this week--but it's a long one: Killing Commendatore (2017, 2018) by Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami (I obviously read the book in translation!), a novel I'd decided to read because I saw in some review somewhere that it had connections to The Great Gatsby, which I greatly enjoyed teaching for a decade at Western Reserve Academy.

There are connections (but we'll get to those in a moment), but there is also an auctorial connection: Murakami translated Gatsby into Japanese a little over a decade ago, and he has said that the novel had a tremendous influence on his own writing.

Okay.

In Commendatore, we have a narrator who lives near a mysterious very rich guy, a very rich guy with secrets (and a mansion), a very rich guy who wants to get close to someone he loves (sounding familiar yet?), a very rich guy who befriends the narrator (who's a successful portrait painter who now wants to branch out a bit).

But Commedatore is a novel much more weird than Gatsby (which, of course, has its own weirdness--green lights among them). Near the narrator's house is a shaft into the ground where weird stuff happens (and it sometimes serves as a portal); we have a spectral creature, the Commendatore himself, who appears and who has connections with some kind of parallel universe; we have a teenage girl (with connections to the Gatsby character--connections of which she is not aware), a girl who takes a painting class with the narrator, a girl who gets involved with him (no, not that way).

In the end we have a story about loss, about loneliness, about art, about the supernatural, about finding your metier, about the weirdness of life and its (sometimes) incomprehensibility, about coincidence, about love.

I read the book very slowly, about ten pages a night just before beddie-bye (it's nearly 700 pp long)--and they were ten pages I really looked forward to, pages that flew by each night. And, later, I would lie in the dark ... and wonder. And listen for the sound of a distant bell. (Read the book--you'll understand!)

3. We've started streaming on PBS the latest available season of Unforgotten, a series from the UK about a police unit devoted to solving old cases. It stars the wonderful Nicola Walker as the lead detective. This current season begins when some bones are found near a highway construction project. Whose are they? What are they doing there?

Last night we watched one of the most moving scenes I've ever seen on television--the cops discover the identity of the victim--and notify the family. I'll say no more. If you emerge dry-eyed from those moments, you'd better have your pulse checked ... are you even alive?

Link to some video.

4. No movie this week. We were going to go see Booksmart last night, but the thunderstorm warnings spooked me, so we stayed home and read and streamed instead. I wasn't really crazy about going to see it--but the reviews have been pretty good. Will probably still give it a look-see.

5. I used the word bailiwick this week--and immediately wondered where it came from. Checked it out. Learned ...

• It dates back to the 15th century--to Middle English--and initially referred to the jurisdiction of a bailiff--or other authority. Wick meant a village or hamlet. So ... bailiwick was the jurisdiction of a bailiff. Now, of course, we use it conversationally to mean "a person's area of skill, knowledge, authority, or work."

6. Last Word--a word I liked this week from one of my online word-of-the-day providers ...

     - from wordsmith.org (a bit naughty--so it goes)

skitterbrook (SKIT-uhr-brook)

noun: A coward.

ETYMOLOGY: From Dutch schijtebroek (literally, shits his pants), from schijten (to shit) + broek (pants). Earliest documented use: 1652.

USAGE: “The royal skitterbrook’s advice to the remnants of his army, still holding out in castles and towns along the borders, was terse and characteristic: ‘Let each man look to himself. Expect no help from me.’” Thomas B. Costain; The Conquerors; Doubleday; 1949.

I Know a Green Cathedral

Imagine this: an 8th grade boy, still somewhat fresh from Oklahoma, sitting in a music class at the Hiram (Ohio) Local School (RIP), and the class is singing "Green Cathedral."

Imagine this: that boy has a high soprano voice, a voice that some (earlier) teachers found so pleasing that they let him sing solos; one he still remembers, decades later, is "School Days," performed for parents one evening at some school function back in Oklahoma.

Imagine this: that boy likes the song "Green Cathedral"; he finds it emotional, and he's always liked Mother Nature.

Imagine this: that boy, now in 8th grade, is in the middle of a turning point in his life: his voice is changing; he's no longer a soprano; he's not really anything right now--he sounds more like a crow than any other creature.

Imagine this: that boy has tears in his eyes--right there in the classroom--as he realizes he will never again be able to sing the way he used to; he mouths the words, not wishing to startle those near him with his corvine cawing.

Imagine this: sixty years have passed, and, driving down a tree-shaded street with his wife, he begins to sing "Green Cathedral" in the rough baritone he's had since 1958; it astonishes him, how he remembers almost all the lyrics.

***

And so ... into the house I go to google "Green Cathedral." I discover right away that other bloggers and Internetties have searched for it too, have found a few things. Here's a link to a video of someone singing the song. (The lyrics in the video are slightly different from those I remember--from those published elsewhere--see below.) And here's more--a choral version.

Caught in the clutch of nostalgia, I plunk down $10.98 to buy the sheet music online. One day, those who survive me will find it, will wonder What on earth?

And--somehow (I am positive this will happen)--the music will commence, and my soprano voice will answer their questions.

Lyrics:

I know a green cathedral, a shadowed forest shrine,

Where leaves in love join hands above and arch your prayer and mine;

Within its cool depths sacred, the priestly cedar sighs,

And the fir and pine lift arms divine unto the pure blue skies

In my dear green cathedral there is a flowered seat,

And choir loft in branched croft, where songs of bird hymns sweet;

And I like to dream at evening, when the stars its arches light,

That my Lord and God treads its hallowed sod,

In the cool calm peace of night.

The Old Man and His Umbrella

As I’ve gotten older, my habits have changed. Some of my New Ways are pure Old-Guy cliche.  I take naps. I go to bed early. I find myself using this introductory adverbial clause: When I was young ... Or I find various ways to complete this incomplete sentence: My parents never would have put up with ...

You know ...

I also worry about things I never worried about before. When I wake up, will I remember who I am? Should I buy a new sweater? (I mean, what if I’m not even here when next fall rolls around?!) Should I really try to go upstairs with both hands occupied? Shouldn’t I make sure I have one hand free to grip the banister? Where did I put my glasses? (Oh, I’m wearing them!) Didn’t we already stream this episode?

But perhaps the most patent sign of my galloping senescence is this: No rain catches me sans umbrella.

My dad called an umbrella a “bumbershoot”—an expression that goes back to 1876, the year Custer died on the Little Big Horn--and according to the OED, it’s principally an Americanism formed by combining a version of umbrella with parachute.

I never carried one as a young man. Bumbershoots were for, you know, Old Guys. When it rained, I ran. Held something over my head. (Did you see that video the other day on FB of a woman holding her baby over her head as she hurried through the rain?)

Years passed. I slowed down. I began to see the wisdom of the bumbershoot. I now have one in each of our two cars. We have several stuffed in a stand near our back door. And—as I type right now at the coffee shop—there is one hanging on the chair on the other side of my little table. (Oh, and I always have a little collapsible one in my backpack.)

Why?

There’s a chance of rain this morning.

I check my Weather Channel app every day, and if there’s a 20% chance (or more) of rain, then I’ve got my bumbershoot with me. No exceptions.

And, of course, most of the time (from 80% on down) I don’t need it. I kid myself that my preparation is why the rain has not come. I sometimes even tell puzzled (younger) people the same thing—people who wonder why I’ve got an umbrella with me—the sun is out, for Pete’s sake!

When I pass by, they probably nod knowingly at each other (if there are two) or one another (three or more) and think (or say): Old Guys are weird!

And so we are--weird, it's true. But also dry.

Face Disgrace

My face is getting better, thank you.

A couple of weeks ago I went to see my dermatologist to endure my semi-annual facial blasts with his ready can of Reddi-Freeze (or whatever it's called). As I reported on Facebook then, I looked, afterward, as if someone had peppered me with a pellet gun. Forehead, nose--both featured red dots that, first, oozed and, second, scabbed over.

When the scabs fell about a week later (with some impatient assistance from me), I realized I should have waited a few more days to Let Nature Take Her Course.

Picky, picky.

Anyway, as a result of my impatience, a couple of them have scabbed over again, and I am right now trying to restrain myself. 

TMI?

Hey, no one is forcing you to read this post, right?

My face has been a Reddi-Freeze war zone for, oh, fifteen years or more. I'm paying, I know, the price for running around in boyhood and young manhood, enjoying Old Sol, who was simultaneously delighting and damaging me.

But, hey, I'll never get old, right? I'll never have to Pay the Price!

Actually, when I was a kid, I don't remember that there were a lot of concerns about Old Sol. Being in the sun was healthful--you know, Vitamin D and all? A tan meant you were looking good.

Unfortunately (Fortunately?) I do not tan. Never have. I burn-and-peel. Increase my number of facial freckles--at least, so it was in youth. (I'm not sure if there's any scientific basis for this more sun = more freckles, but it certainly seemed so to me.  Kind people told me freckles were "cute"; truthful people--i.e., bullies--said otherwise.)

Anyway, decades later, as I've said, I make semi-annual visits to the dermatologist. I've had one skin cancer surgery (forehead--a squamous cell--a dozen years ago--I looked like Frankenstein's creature for a couple of months), but mostly it's just been blasts of Reddi-Freeze.

I'm actually grateful for the stuff, despite the ... inconvenience afterward. (The doctor always jokes about it, just before releasing into my face the breath of Boreas [Greek god of North Wind and winter--think: Aurora Borealis]. He asks me if I've got any modeling gigs coming up. Ha, ha.) It stings--okay, hurts--for a few minutes.

Then the waiting, the impatience, the impulsiveness that brings another week of waiting ...

Anyway, I don't have to squint too much right now when I look in the mirror--or make sure the light is low--or ask Joyce how I look (she always lies, bless her). Things are better.

And I can relax a little, find comfort in the knowledge that it's nearly a half a year before I go see Dr. Boreas again.

Some Things Just Don't Stick ...

our old and oft-consulted copy

I've had this problem all of my (sentient) life: There are things I learn--and then promptly forget. Things with language and usage. Things I have to look up every damn time I must use them (because I can't think of a good way to avoid them).

Here's an analogy. I used to stutter all the time (in boyhood). Gradually, the problem has diminished--though not disappeared, I'm afraid. I have learned all the stutterer's tricks--e.g., avoiding words that I know (from sad experience) trigger it, thinking before I talk (always a problem for us humans, right?). But there are still times, still words that frustrate me. Statistics is one word I just cannot utter without some major effort. I won't tell you what those other words are, for I know you: You will contrive ways to get me to say them so that you can enjoy my stuttering! (Oh, aren't we all bullies at heart?)

There are also words whose spelling I just can't seem to remember--and they're not even difficult words. But I still have to look the damn things up--though spell-check is, in some ways, a savior. Here's one: truly. Does it have an e or not? (Nope--just checked.) Here's another: believable. (Does it have an e after the v? Nope--just checked.)

I know, I know: By this time I should have created some mnemonic device to help me remember. I just haven't. Deal with it.

And then there are those words and phrases whose meanings and uses I have to check every damn time I write them for public consumption.

Here's a troublesome pair (for me): may and might. Is there a difference between I may go to the game and I might go to the game? Some usage books/sites say that may indicates something more certain--might, less so. Others point out that might is the past form of may (I might have done it ...).

So ... what to do? Mostly, I avoid the construction (the stutterer's strategy). But I just now checked my Harper Dictionary of Contemporary Usage (1975--not too contemporary!), and Wm. and Mary Morris (the authors) confirm the use of might for "greater doubt" than may.

Anyway, I tread carefully with this one.

And here's one more pair that can confound: a while and awhile. The Morrises (see above) remind us that awhile is an adverb and a while is a noun phrase. So ...

• We will linger awhile. (Awhile modifies the verb linger.)
• We will linger for a while. (While, now a noun, is the object of the preposition for.)

With such expressions as a while ago, the Morrises suggest substituting a month ago, a year ago, demonstrating that while should not be joined with a in such constructions.

So, now that I've written about these things, surely I will always remember them?

Nope.

Just as I will always stutter when I try to say statistics.

Sunday Sundries, 227

1. AOTW: Okay, this is hardly egregious ... but ... a woman's shopping cart blocked the entire aisle--while she was in an adjacent aisle on her cell having a Grand Old Time. She needs a cell ... in a jail!

2. I finished just one book this week, but, hey, it was a long one: James Fenimore Cooper's The Deerslayer (1841), which I (possibly?) read many years ago--can't remember. And the reason I can't? Because I read the Classics Illustrated version so often in boyhood. So, did I read the comic and the book? Or just the comic? Wouldn't want to be asked that in court.

Cooper wrote five novels about Natty Bumppo (called, variously, Deerslayer, Hawkeye, Pathfinder, etc.), and The Deerslayer tells us about some adventures in his young manhood, and we witness the first time he kills a human being (a Huron). (Oh, and as I mentioned in an earlier post, Cooper actually wrote Deerslayer last in his sequence of novels.)

In this novel we see the aspects of Deerslayer's character: absolute frankness and honesty, racism (even though Chingachgook, a Delaware, is his best friend, he nonetheless believes in the superiority of whites), his fortitude (captured by the Huron, he willing submits himself to their torture--which never really quite comes off because of ... well, don't want to spoil it for you). He's also a crack shot, as a couple of Huron sadly learn moments before they die.

Cooper's sentences and paragraphs are a real tangled wood; you have to be ... patient ... willing to deal with it. But there are some rewards for the pruning and hacking your mind must do.

Oh, and we also see Deerslayer reject the advances of a young woman who, we are told, is flat gorgeous. He just doesn't love her--and he doesn't want to hurt her. (What a guy!)

Well, in future weeks I'll be writing about the other novels as I travel through them. Next is The Last of the Mohicans, which I have read (more than once): Hiram College, Kent State grad school.

3. Last night we drove down through the Cuyahoga Valley, checked out the blue herons nesting on Bath Road, then up to West Market Plaza, where I got some varieties of flour and rice at Mustard Seed Market, a scone and a Diet Pepsi at Panera, and two new books at Barnes & Noble: Ian McEwan's latest novel (Machines Like Me) and vol 2 of the proposed 3-volume bio of Mark Twain by Gary Scharnhorst.

Another name for our evening: Nerds' Night Out!

4. We're happy about the new episodes of Shetland available for streaming, and Unforgotten, too. We never really got hooked on Game of Thrones, but I wish all well who are waiting for tonight's final episode.

5. My sourdough starter went nuts in this warm weather. I mixed the bread dough before we went to Panera (breakfast) and the grocery stores, and when we got home, about two hours later, this is what I found:

In the winter it's usually not even reached the rim of the bowl by the time we get home!

6. Last Word--a word I liked this week from one of my online word-of-the-day providers:

     - from Oxford English Dictionary

aginer, n. A person who is against something; one who opposes a proposal, course of action, point of view, etc. Also more generally: a person having a habitually negative attitude; one who opposes any change as a matter of principle. Cf. againster n.

Forms:  19– agginer,   19– ag'in'er,   19– aginer,   19– aginner.

Origin: Formed within English, by derivation. Etymons: English agin, again prep., -er suffix1.

Etymology: <  agin, regional and colloquial variant of again prep. (compare forms at that entry) + -er suffix1.

 U.S. colloquial.

1905 Westminster (Philadelphia)  8 Apr. 6/2 We [sc. the Presbyterian Church] have not been an ‘aginer’ for a year past. We are ‘for-ers’: for the Church: for the home.

1944 Post (Morgantown, W. Va.)  9 Feb. 6/2 A grab bag for all the aginners in the country.

1953 Sun (Baltimore)  27 Aug. 85/2 Clare Hoffman..rallied some die-hards from both parties against it... The committee's disapproval was pure, instinctive obstructionism. Clare is a natural ‘ag'in'er’.

1990  P. Taylor See how they Run  i. 20 On election day..many more people voted ‘against’ than ‘for’—a pattern that has become the norm in presidential elections... Jeane Shilling..captured the ‘agginer’ mind-set exquisitely.

2005  C. Shirley Reagan's Revol.  xi. 244 Wallace... had always been just an ‘aginner’ and never really proposed solutions to the problems he identified in America.

Oreos

Okay ... one more. Another post about a diet staple from my early years ...

My mother loved chocolate--in just about every form. The only exception I can think of? The chocolate-covered insects "someone" once gave to her.  Something about a chocolate-covered grasshopper just put her taste buds in sleep mode. (Not mine--I kind of liked the chocolate mixed with the crunch.)

Her other favorite food was salmon. My older brother once found (online?) a huge piece of chocolate in the shape of a salmon. She loved it. I think it strengthened her already firm belief in heaven.

When we were growing up, we always had some Hershey's chocolate syrup in the house--mixed with the vanilla ice cream for dessert (not Dad--he wasn't all that fond of chocolate--not sure why--but it was his only failing as a human being). In our day it came in a can.

And, now and then, Mom would bring home a package of Oreos and dole them out (to us--not to herself) as if they were pieces of eight.

But it turns out she was bringing home the Oreos more regularly that we'd suspected. My younger brother, ever the food explorer, found that she was hiding bags of them in the pressure cooker, which she stored in a low cabinet behind a bunch of other stuff. (We rarely used the pressure cooker; thus ...)

My brother eventually revealed the secret to me (After how long? I've often wondered), and we quickly realized we had a Golden Goose. Mom could not complain that her stash of Oreos had diminished because then she would have to admit that she'd had a stash!

On the Dark Side: We couldn't eat too many of them because if (say) we ate an entire package, then Mom's anger would trump her caution, and our treasure trove would disappear. So ... a delicate balance.

I ate Oreos in pretty conventional style, separating the two chocolate halves, scraping the icing against the edge of my lower teeth until the white sweetness was (mostly) gone, then eating the halves. Rapidly.

Mom always ate them slowly, judiciously--as if speed of eating somehow affected the caloric intake. (Dad did the same thing with dry roasted peanuts--one of his favorites. He would eat one, two, at a time--so ... prudent. Of course, he would consume the entire jar in a single sitting.)

Anyway, I liked Oreos--though I was not an addict like my mother. I pretty much liked every kind of cookie, though, as I think about it, I believe peanut-butter cookies were my favorite. (Oh, no! This means yet another post on this topic!)

Velveeta

Okay, one more. Velveeta ...

Some of you (sad) (regular) visitors to this site know that I've been doing a desultory series of posts about food staples from my boyhood. You've already read (surely!) about my fond memories of Bisquick, hot dogs, Kraft Dinner, etc. And now ... another. Velveeta.

I don't remember any other cheese (product) in my early boyhood home though, later, when Dad and Mom became more sophisticated and drank wine before supper, I think they also had some exotic cheese around--like Swiss and Tillamook Cheddar (my dad's favorite--it's from Oregon, his birthplace, his idea of heaven).

But for us boys? Nuttin' but Velveeta, which came in a yellow brick (I feel a song coming on---follow me?) and required a device to slice off the sort of chunk your recipe (or hunger) required. We had the kind you see pictured below--but not nearly so ... fancy. A frame, a wire. That was it.

And what were the uses of Velveeta? Grilled cheese sandwiches, hot dogs (small slices of cheese inserted in a cut in the hot dog), cheeseburgers, veggies (Velveeta melted and poured on top). And, of course, just random slices to ingest when there was nothing more appealing in the house (like Oreos--but we'll, uh, get into them in a subsequent post).

I have to say I loved Velveeta--believed (for far too many years) that it was the best cheese in the world, none of which I'd ever tasted, of course. When I left home to begin my teaching life (fall of 1966), I still bought it regularly, and after I was married (December 1969), the tradition continued: Joyce had also grown up with it--and loved it.

Then, gradually, it disappeared from our shopping list. I'm not sure why. But we haven't bought any for decades.

The other day, doing our weekly grocery shopping, I looked for some--but did not find, in our local Acme, any of the yellow bricks I remembered. There was some pre-sliced and -packaged Velveeta available, but, somehow, it just didn't seem right to buy it. I wanted to travel the familiar yellow brick road, not venture a journey down some road that just wasn't right, you know?

So, I will look elsewhere. And if I find it, I will probably buy some. Just to see. Just to taste. Just to put on a grilled cheese--just one more time.

Unless, of course, I like it ... and then what?

* The official list of Velveeta ingredients is as follows: Milk, Water, Whey, Milk Protein Concentrate, Milkfat, Whey Protein Concentrate, Sodium Phosphate, Contains 2% or less of: Salt, Calcium Phosphate, Lactic Acid, Sorbic Acid, Sodium Citrate, Sodium Alginate, Enzymes, Apocarotenal, Annatto, Cheese Culture.

Sunday Sundries, 226

1. AOTW--Oh, have tailgaters been bothering me lately. I know ... I know ... I'm being a jerk by going only five mph over the posted speed limit, so you have every right--don't you?--to get as close to my rear bumper as you possibly can in the (vain, vain, vain) hope that I will speed up. Your hand gestures are equally (in)effective. (And it's not hard to lip-read in my mirror the things you  are saying to me.) Sometimes I wish I had one of those cars James Bond drove--with a missile-launcher I could employ for these AOTWs.

2. I finished one book this week--and started reading a series, too.

     - I've been a reader of books about George Armstrong Custer since I was a boy--when my parents (alarmed that I was reading only comic books and the Cheerios box) subscribed to a little book club for me--Landmark Books (by Random House). I actually read some of them--though the one about Martin Luther was a bit ... much ... for the Me of Then. One of my favorites was Custer's Last Stand by Quentin Reynolds (1951--I was 7 that year), a book I read multiple times.

In subsequent years I've read most (all?) of the major books about Custer and the Last Stand--and I still have a shelf lined with them.

I've been to the battlefield several times, to his birthplace (New Rumley, Ohio) several times, to the town in Michigan where he lived (Monroe--several times). Etc.

Anyway, so when this new book appeared--The Other Custers, 2018, by Bill Yenne--I knew I had to buy it (I did) and consume it (I did). Although the focus is on his family--ancestors, relatives, siblings, descendants--it is hard for Yenne to ignore Autie (the family name for G. A. C.). It's somewhat like describing the sparrows at an aviary--while a golden eagle is swirling around your head.

Still, I learned a lot. I'd known that Autie was not the only Custer to die at the Little Bighorn (several did--including a brother). But it was satisfying to read the stories of all the others in his family and to hear about descendants that are now alive. (One wrote the Foreword--George Armstrong Custer IV.)

So ... a good book for Custer-freaks (like me)--not so sure about general readers. Yenne is a thorough, determined writer--though not always a--what?--graceful one.

     - I've launched myself on a not-so-little reading project, something I'd hoped to do for a long, long time but have just never managed to do: read James Fenimore Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales--all five of them. I believe I've read only The Last of the Mohicans, though, in boyhood, I read multiple times all five of them (in Classics Illustrated comic-book form!).

As many of you know, the novels all feature a character whose birth name was Natty Bumppo, a young man raised by the Delaware, a man who, as he moves through his life, earns other names: Deerslayer, Hawkeye, Pathfinder, etc. Cooper follows his hero from young manhood to his death--but he did not write the novels in the order of his hero's age; in fact, Deerslayer (written about his youth) was the last to appear.

But I am reading them in the order of the hero's age. The chart below--stolen from the Web--shows the original dates of publication, but the books are listed in the order I'm reading them.

• The Deerslayer (1841)
• The Last of the Mohicans (1826)--yes, I'm going to read it again
• The Pathfinder (1840)
• The Pioneers (1823)
• The Prairie (1827)

I've got all of the titles contained in two volumes published by the Library of America, and I should finish Deerslayer by the end of this week (all are long and wordy--and Mark Twain famously pilloried Cooper, as I'll discuss a bit in a later post).

3. We had a great Mother's Day yesterday--brunch at an Indian restaurant here in Hudson (Jaipur Junction) with our son, daughter-in-law, and two grandsons, then back to our place for cards and gifts and laughing. Stories rolled around the room like bowling balls. And memories of mothers gone ...

By the way, I wondered how old my grandmother Dyer had been when she died in 1960. I checked. She was only 67, seven years younger than I am now. I was a sophomore in high school when she died, and I'd thought she was ancient.

Perspective ...

4. Last Word--a word I liked this week from one of my online word-of-the-day providers ....

     - from Oxford English Dictionary

autoschediaze, v. intransitive. To do something hastily and without preparation; to extemporize, improvise.  (Rare) [AU-toh-SKEDJ-iz]

Forms:  18– autoschediaze,   19– autoschediase.

Origin: A borrowing from Greek. Etymon: Greek αὐτοσχεδιάζειν.

Etymology: <  ancient Greek αὐτοσχεδιάζειν to act or speak offhand, extemporize, to act, speak, or think unadvisedly <  αὐτοσχέδιος personally near, hand-to-hand, offhand, improvised ( <  αὐτοσχέδον (adverb) near at hand, hand-to-hand ( <  αὐτο- auto- comb. form1 + σχεδόν near: see schediastic adj.) + -ιος, suffix forming adjectives) + -άζειν, suffix forming verbs from nouns or adjectives. Compare earlier autoschediastic adj., autoschediastical adj., autoschediasm n.

1852  T. De Quincey in Eclectic Mag.  May 34/2 To auto-schediaze, or improvise, is sometimes in effect to be forced into a consciousness of creative energies, that would else have slumbered through life.

1894 Contemp. Rev.  65 187 Youth appears to autoschediaze, as a rule; to write by aid of chic, rather from a deep foundation of literary knowledge.

1933  J. N. Ruffin Celebrated Crown Trial  iv. 102 Taking advantage of the time while the clerk was hunting for a document, [Demosthenes] autoschediased. 

Old Song Stuck in My Head ... Again

Nat King Cole
1919-1965
(he was born the same year as my mother)

This has happened before--I have posted about it before. And here we go again ...

The other night (why?) I started remembering (some of) the lyrics to a song whose title I couldn't have told you without the gift of Google. All I could remember: (1) it was from my youth, (2) it contained the phrase that Sunday, that summer.

I thought Johnny Mathis had sung it--so I checked him out first--and he did. But when I saw the list of other performers who had recorded it, I knew it hadn't been Mathis I'd remembered. It was Nat King Cole. And it was called "That Sunday, That Summer." (See, I had remembered the title!)

Released on August 31,1963 (I had just completed my freshman year at Hiram College), the song (written by Joe Sherman and George Davis Weiss) would rise to #12 on the Billboard chart on November 2, 1963--just nine days before my 19th birthday!

If you check out this link--and listen--you will see how much popular music has changed since I was 19. Oh, sure, there was lots of rock-n-roll by then (Elvis, Buddy Holly, et al, ; Beatlemania had already commenced), but every now and then a mellow, wistful song like Cole's would rise on the charts.

Link to Cole performing the song.

I've got to confess: Right now, listening, I have tears in my eyes. And not because it takes me back to 1963 (though it does do that), but because it expresses exactly how I feel about the day I met Joyce--that summer of 1969. The song's wish is mine, as well. And will be until I can no longer wish at all.

**

If I had to choose just one day

If I had to choose just one day

To last my whole life through

It would surely be that Sunday

The day that I met you

Newborn whippoorwills were calling from the hills

Summer was a-coming in but fast

Lots of daffodils were showing off their skills

Nodding all together, I could almost hear them whisper

"Go on, kiss her, go on and kiss her"

And if I had to choose one moment

To live within my heart

It would be that tender moment

Recalling how we started

Darling, it would be when you smiled at me

That way, that Sunday, that summer

Newborn whippoorwills were calling from the hills

Summer was a-comin' in but fast

Lots of daffodils were showin' off their skills

Nodding all together, I could almost hear them whisper

"Go on, kiss her, go on and kiss her"

If I had to choose one moment

To live within my heart

It would be that tender moment

Recalling how we started

Darling, it would be when you smiled at me

That way, that Sunday, that summer

If I had to choose just one day

Kraft Dinner Meets Marcel Proust

Last week I did the first of what has turned out to be a (short) series of posts about staples of my boyhood diet. Campbell's Tomato Soup--Kraft Dinner--Bisquick--Hot Dogs--and a few more are on the way. (Link to that earlier post.)

And last night for supper I mixed up the first batch of Kraft Dinner I've had in well over forty years. It's not all that hard (as many [most?] of you know): boiling water, mixing a little milk, a little butter, a package of God-knows-what that comes in the Kraft Dinner box. Below, you see the "arrangement" as I photographed it last night before posting it on Facebook (quite a few "likes" and comments, by the way--not all comments positive, either). Some friendly Friends offered modifications of the recipe, modifications that sounded pretty good, actually. But I was determined to re-create the Past.

So ... I followed the directions, though I made a little spill from the envelope of "cheese" (or whatever it is). I served the mixture on a plate alongside the grilled turkey-and-cheese sandwich I'd prepared, as well. Joyce, by the way, I could not convince to add a little pile to her salad supper.

And at the first bite--and you can ask Joyce if this is true or not--I said, in my finest Proustian prose, "That takes me back" (a saying that was simultaneously one of my dad's favorites and my mom's most dreaded).

I really did have a Proust-and-madeleine moment--a gustatory gust of wind that swept me back to early days in Enid, Oklahoma--and beyond--when we often had Kraft Dinner. (We were ever on what Dad called an "austerity plan.") It was one of my favorite side dishes--hell, it was one of my most favorite meals. (And, later, it kept me alive during my early years of teaching when money was mostly a rumor.)

But--let's keep it 100, shall we?--the nostalgia lasted only about two bites, and then my stomach began its protest: What in the hell are you doing? it barked at me. I tried a few more bites, and Mr. Stomach became downright rebellious. One more bite of that, he growled ominously, and I can't be responsible for the consequences. And I knew that consequences, in this case, meant, well, the next step beyond eructation. I believe the proper medical term is upchuckery?

Joyce looked at me with a mixture of alarm and, well, something veering very near moral superiority.  "Are you all right?" she asked.

"I'm okay," I lied. And I ate not another molecule of it.

Before it disappeared down the disposer in the kitchen, some of it found its way into Joyce's mouth--she, too, had grown up with it, and, memoirist that she is, she had to give it a try. I should say here that her stomach was in concert with mine (in more ways than one), and, like me, she was both glad and sad that she'd tried it.

I know there are myriads of people out there who love Kraft Dinner--who swear by (rather than at) it. And all I can say is, "Good for you." Tastes are not universal; opinions are not uniform (in case you haven't noticed).

I loved it once; I don't love it anymore. It's that simple, that complicated.

But ... I am profoundly grateful that I tried it, for those few early moments were priceless.

And today--so far--my stomach has forgiven me--though I know I'm on probation.

Hot Dogs

Okay, one more ... hot dogs ... another staple of youth--and somewhat beyond.

When I was a kid, my mom invariably boiled them for lunch. (In later years, Dad grilled them outside.) Our dog at the time, Sooner, loved the hot-dog water, which Dad would put out for him after we ate. I can still see/hear Sooner as he lapped that hot water--slurp, Yip, slurp, Yip ... Oh, the pain of pleasure! The smell and taste were so overpowering that he simply could not wait until the water had cooled a bit.

I was a Ketchup Guy in boyhood, morphing into a Mustard Guy later on.

I continued to boil hot dogs in my early years alone, before I was married. (Sadly, I had no Sooner to lap the water ... but I could hear him nonetheless.)

And when I married Joyce (December 1969), hot dogs continued to be a staple. One of our first counter-top appliances was a little toaster-oven, and we sometimes cooked the dogs with it--splitting the dogs and adding some pieces of Velveeta, which dutifully melted.

Later on, we learned about the great kosher hot dogs available at the West Side Market in Cleveland, and we would drive there now and then to buy a few thousand of them.

Even later, we tried turkey or chicken hot dogs. Not the same--but passable.

We haven't had hot dogs in quite a while--our diets proscribe them. So it goes--another Glory of Aging.

But every now and then, the urge surges, and I'd really like one (or five). But can't. And so I must console (and entertain) myself with memories of eager Sooner, lapping and yipping.

Sooner, August 1958--
a post-prandial rest?

Sunday Sundries, 225

1. HBOW [Human Beings of the Week]: For the umpteenth time, our friends, Bill and Pat Eldredge, took Joyce and me to dinner last week--along with their daughter, Tammy, who, long ago, was in one of Joyce's English classes at Western Reserve Academy. (Joyce also taught their son, Bill.) The Eldredges have been so kind to us over the years--taking us to Tribe games, inviting us over for parties and dinners--just being so kind, thoughtful ... human. It has been one of the privileges of my life to know them.

2. Joyce and I--who haven't seen a film in about a month (a rarity for us)--decided to go to Kent last night to see Long Shot, a putative romantic comedy with Seth Rogen (a lefty journalist) and Charlize Theron (Sec of State of the USA)--two people who have known each other since childhood (she used to babysit for him).

I laughed a few times--as did Joyce--but for the most part it was a cliche collection (including the wise black friend whose  job is to support the white lead; the homely and crude doofus who somehow attracts the bright, beautiful woman, etc.). Just about every convention of the genre came trotting out, did a few lame tricks, slinked back into its doghouse.

And when the writers couldn't think of anything funny, they substituted something gross (pooping in a handbag +  a moment that will remind older viewers of There's Something about Mary, 1998).

The more I've thought about the film, the less I've liked it.

Theron decides to run for President; the current one (a pale parody of D. Trump) has decided to step down ... and things get complicated as she tries to work on a Green agenda ...

But ... good popcorn, great company. (link to film trailer)

3. I finished a couple of books this week ...

     - The first was the new novel by Siri Hustvedt (Memories of the Future), a story set mostly in the late 1970s when a young college graduate from Minnesota goes to NYC to try to write a novel. She makes an odd assortment of friends (including something like a coven of witches), who call her "Minnesota." We get excerpts from her novel, from the journal she kept--plus some scenes in the present (including some anti-Trump passages uttered by her aged mother).

Hustvedt (married to another of my favorite writers, Paul Auster) is an extraordinarily bright and literate and knowledgeable writer (her essays and nonfiction are difficult--and stunning), and her intelligence brightens every page in this novel. Scattered throughout are some gems ...

• "... we are always somewhere and that somewhere is always in us" (26).
• "Every story carries inside itself multitudes of other stories" (66).
• "My mother's brain has lost the stretch of now ..." (110).
• "We often remembered what never happened" (306).

And on and on. Oh, and Hustvedt brightens this text here and there with some of her original drawings.

Oh, and she alludes to an Emily Dickinson poem I'd never seen before. Check this out! (I'm a-gonna memorize it!)

I saw no Way — The Heavens were stitched —

I felt the Columns close —

The Earth reversed her Hemispheres —

I touched the Universe —

And back it slid — and I alone —

A Speck upon a Ball —

Went out upon Circumference —

Beyond the Dip of Bell —

     - The second was a book I took a long time to read--10 pages here, 25 there: How to Behave Badly in Elizabethan England: A Guide for Knaves, Fools, Harlots, Cuckolds, Drunkards, Liars, Thieves, and Braggarts (2018) by Ruth Goodman, one of the world's great authorities on the everyday lives of the Elizabethans (of all ranks in life).

It's all here: the "rules" of duels and swordplay, excessive eating and drinking, bodily functions, offensive speech ("a turd in your teeth" and "kiss my arse" are a couple of goodies, eh?), postures, clothing, etc. I loved it. As Goodman points out, the long-ago folk were much like us in some ways (no gas at dinner--bad form) and very unlike us in others.

Any Shakespeare Freak (like me) should read this one!

4.We're about to finish streaming (via Acorn) the TV series Wire in the Blood based, in part, on the ten Tony Hill/Carol Jordan novels of Val McDermid (which I've started reading), a writer I learned via friend Chris is a woman (I was thinking Val Kilmer and the like; it's a good thing, by the way, to learn, now and then, that you're ignorant).

5. Last Word: A word I liked this week from one of my online word-of-the-day providers ...

     - from Oxford English Dictionary

anthomaniac, n.

A person who is (excessively) passionate or enthusiastic about flowers.

Origin: Formed within English, by compounding. Etymons: antho- comb. form, -maniac comb. form.

Etymology: <  antho- comb. form + -maniac comb. form, after anthomania n.

 Somewhat rare.

1841  H. Smith Moneyed Man  II. x. 321 The intense love of flowers that has procured for me the kindred title of an anthomaniac.

1856  W. C. Bryant Let.  23 June (1981) III. 388 Julia is an anthomaniac, and overwhelms me with ever-blooming roses, verbenas, and a dozen varieties of the clematis.

1991 Sunday Mail (S. Australia)(Nexis) 3 Feb. A progressive garden party..will be held on February 28, giving ‘anthomaniacs’ the opportunity to view some of Christchurch's best private gardens.