Tuesday, December 31, 2019

Resolutions



Resolutions
New Year’s Eve, 2019

It’s time for resolutions now—
The end of one more year.
So gather up your weaknesses
And draw them very near.

Examine them! Identify
Each one that holds you back.
Look for its varied cracks and flaws—
And plan your new attack.

Reject them all! Yes, banish them!
And purify your ways!
And maybe they will stay away
For—who knows?—several days?

Our love of overeating? Well,
It’s hard to conquer that.
We stop it cold—for several days—
And then that love of Fat

Comes back with its friend Sugar to
Assail our feeble wish
That we could just ignore dessert
(My very favorite dish!).

And exercise? Let’s hit the club!
Let’s heave and sigh and sweat!
And then go home and hit the fridge—
Perhaps a cigarette?

And cruelty? We’ve sent it off
To some far distant land—
Until we find we need it—so
We keep it close at hand.

Those other self-destructive things
That we have sworn to end?
We learn that on the Road of Life
They’re just around the bend.

So will we be a failure just
A few short days from now?
Oh, no, we are just human—
So we’ll struggle on somehow.

Our struggle will continue with
Our demons and our foes—
And we’ll keep trying, failing—
But persisting to oppose

What we well know are weaknesses
That make us less than we
Could be if we could liberate
The best in you and me.

So—greatest luck to all of us
As one more year arrives—
A time to hope and to resolve
That just our best survives.

And when the next year’s evanesced,
We’ll face ourselves again.
My fondest wish for all of us?
We’re better than we’ve been.

Monday, December 30, 2019

2500

Honestly, post #2500 on this site was yesterday, but I didn't want to "disturb" Sunday Sundries, so I put it off until today.

That's right: I have posted something 2500 times on this blog. The first was back on January 6, 2012, and I titled it (stolen from a chapter title from Dickens' novel David Copperfield) "I Am Born." Sounds a wee bit pretentious now, as I think about it. (Link to that first post.)

As I've said here before in these 100th anniversary posts, I thought, when I started, that I would be writing a lot more about education than I have. After all, I spent about forty-five years in classrooms--most of it in a middle school but also in a college-prep school, colleges.

But I retired from public school in January 1997, from prep-school teaching in June 2011. So my little boat of informed opinion is drifting farther and farther away from the mainland. In other words, I don't really know what I'm talking about. Oh, every now and then I find some education issue to post about--but more and more rarely.

Instead, I find myself squarely in two venues: the present, the past. I talk about things I'm reading, things I'm thinking about, things I've been doing. Or I shift to the past tense and sort of do the same thing: write about things I've read, things I've thought about, things I've done.

You've probably noticed that I don't post much about politics. It's mostly pointless. Readers aren't going to change their minds about political issues because of what I've written, and all such writing does, I've sadly discovered, is alienate people I care about. So ... let the young and the restless (another title I'm stealing, this time from that soap opera) carry on with the political debates.

Besides, I'm older now. And I remember (to my shame, actually) that when my father was my age (75), I summarily dismissed his political opinions. What could that old guy know? (That old guy who grew up in the Great Depression, served in both theaters in WW II, was recalled to active duty during the Korean War--though he did not go overseas--etc.?) So, I realize that my time in the bright sun of political contention has passed.

I do believe that the country is sailing right now down a river of fire, and I hope everyone comes ashore and puts the damn thing out. Together. I have a son and two grandsons who have lives to live ...

Another custom I exercise on these 100th-anniversary posts is to check the number of "hits" on the site. I don't really care about the number; I'm writing for myself, mostly (to clarify my own thinking), and for my family. A very personal posterity.

[PAUSE WHILE I LOOK AT THE DATA.]

558,939 total hits/2500 posts = 223.5756 hits/post

Not terrible, not awesome. Surprising, actually, that there are 223 people out there every day (plus a part of another person) who visit the site each day. Kind of humbling.

Anyway, I'm going to keep at it. I no longer worry if I don't post something every day. Something moves me, I write; something doesn't, I don't.

Sensible, eh?


Sunday, December 29, 2019

Sunday Sundries, 257


1. AOTW: A parking-lot AOTW this week. This morning. Grocery store, We were about to head home, slowly backing out. I saw a car parked behind us. Just sitting there. I was halfway out when the AOTW honked loudly, declaring that HE was going to leave first. I had to pull back into our slot and wait for the AOTW to drive off to AOTW Land.

2. I finished just one book this week--a 2009 collection of short poems, Sestets, by Charles Wright (1935-),  who has won the National Book Award, the Pulitzer Prize, and served as our Poet Laureate in 2014-15. (Not bad.)

A sestet is a six-line poem--and it's a term I have most often associated with sonnets, the fourteen-line poems often divided into an "octave" and a "sestet." But as Wright shows us here, it can also mean a stand-alone six-liner.

So why did I buy this book?

On May 25, 2015, Wright's poem "It's Sweet to Be Remembered" was featured on Writer's Almanac. I liked it--memorized it.

It’s Sweet to Be Remembered
by Charles Wright

No one’s remembered much longer than a rock
is remembered beside the road
If he’s lucky or
Some tune or harsh word
uttered in childhood or back in the day.

Still how nice to imagine some kid someday
picking that rock up and holding it in his hand
Briefly before he chucks it
Deep in the woods in a sunny spot in the tall grass.

I rehearse this one four times a week while I'm walking home from the coffee shop in the morning. But then, recently, I began to "lose" part of it. I had no copy. I knew I could easily find a copy online (as I just did, pasting it in above), but I decided I wanted to read more of Wright, so I ordered the book, Sestets, in which that poem originally appeared.



(BTW: the poem is a sestet--each line begins with a capital letter, so the lower-case lines belong with the previous capitalized line.)

And I took a while, reading the book in leisurely fashion. The poems--many of them--are "dark." Wright was just about my age in 2009 when he wrote them, and I can tell you that in your mid-seventies there is a lot more "darkness visible" than there is earlier on. ("Darkness visible," by the way, comes from Milton's Paradise Lost--part of his description of Hell--and later became the title of William Styron's 1989 volume--a wonderful book--about his own battles with clinical depression.)

So ... death, loss--these are common throughout. And I am not in the least surprised.

Think I'll buy some more Wright ...

3. On Friday we finished the 2nd (and apparently final) season of Fleabag on Amazon Prime. Wow. Written by (and starring) Phoebe Waller-Bridge (whom we first saw hosting SNL earlier this year), the stories feature a young, somewhat untethered woman. She's sexually active (to say the least!), has an up-and-down relationship with her sister; her father is getting re-married to a repellent woman; her best friend has died; her cafe is struggling. She meets a young, handsome priest, and ...



Watch the show. I've read online that Waller-Bridge has said there will not be a season 3. She feels the story is, in a sense, over.

I'm glad. And I'm not.

3. We didn't go to the movies this weekend, though we have tickets already for New Year's Eve: We're going to see Little Women.

We've both been interested in the Alcotts--have seen their home and graves in Concord, Mass. Have read a lot. Looking forward to it.
4. I spend a lot of time in Open Door Coffee Co., and because "my" table is near the register, I can hear people giving their orders. And I've noticed in recent years that most people no longer say, "I'd like a decaf latte ..." Or "I'll have a ..."

No, it's now, "I'll do a ..."

Not sure when/how that I'll-do-a started. But, Old Guy that I am, I don't like it!

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

     - from wordsmith.org

amaxophobia (uh-mak-suh-FOH-bee-uh)
noun: The fear of riding in a vehicle.
ETYMOLOGY: From Greek hamaxa (wagon) + -phobia (fear).
USAGE: “The poor woman is scared to death ... Anne must have seen the same thing in her rearview mirror. ‘Great,’ she said just loud enough for Mary Helen to hear, “not only are we driving Miss Daisy, but we are driving Miss Daisy with amaxophobia.” Carol Anne O’Marie; The Corporal Works of Murder; St Martin’s Press; 2003.




Saturday, December 28, 2019

A Fifteen-Year Journey of Fear

It was a little over fifteen years ago--on November 30, 2004--that my family physician, conducting the routine (and much beloved) prostate exam, told me she'd "felt something" and wanted me to schedule an appointment with a urologist. She said it was probably nothing--but still.

So I made an appointment--and he felt the same thing. Advised a biopsy.

Which was far, far, far from being the most pleasant experience I've ever had. That occurred on January 11, 2005.

On Monday, January 18, I got a call. Positive. I had prostate cancer.

Like many other people who have never had the disease, I wasn't all that worried. I knew some people (my own father among them) who'd had it; I knew men who were clear for years after their initial treatment. I didn't realize then that all cases are different--that Patient A's experiences cannot predict Patient B's ... or C's ... or ...

My Gleason score (a measure of the intensity of the disease) was mid-range. A 6 (on a ten-point scale), so the surgeon at the Cleveland Clinic said it would be no problem to wait to have surgery in June, after school was out. (I was teaching English at Western Reserve Academy at the time.)

And so I cruised along. Moderately worried. Trying not to think about it.

On Thursday, June 9, Joyce and I were up very early (about 4:45 a.m.) to drive down to Taussig Cancer Center near University Circle in Cleveland.

Where I had a prostatectomy--removal of the prostate gland. Post-op, the surgeon told me, once I'd emerged from the fog of anesthesia, that things had gone well. No apparent problem.

Then ... a few days later ... an apparent problem.

The post-op pathology had shown I actually had a Gleason score of 9--about as high as you can get. He advised, a little bit down the road, some radiation therapy.

And so the journey commenced--a journey that continues to this day. What you need to know is that I'm no longer curable. All they can do is retard the progress of the disease.

Which they have done with two different rounds of radiation, a number of different meds (some--Lupron/Trelstar--having profound effects on my life), immunotherapy.

I am now seeing an oncologist at University Hospitals (Seidman Cancer Center--closer than the Clinic--more convenient), and I see him quarterly. I get a Trelstar injection quarterly. I get an injection of Xgeva (for bone strength) every two months. I get regular bone and CT scans.

I get regular blood tests to measure my PSA (Prostate Specific Antigen). I really shouldn't have any PSA (my prostate gland is gone), but prostate cancer produces the antigen, as well, so if there's a number, well, that means the cancer is active.

Mine is; it's moved into my bones.

My PSA--after immunotherapy and my most recent radiation treatment--has dropped, but my most recent PSA test (a few weeks ago) showed a small rise.

Here we go again.

I struggle not to think about it most of the time. I'm trying to do the things I love, trying to be with the people I love, as much as possible. I don't want fear to immobilize me.

Still ... there are times ...

I see my oncologist again in about a month, and before that I will have a series of scans to see if the cancer is spreading--and where--and to what extent.

Joyce's calm presence beside me through all of this has been like breath itself. Like the wings of hope.

Thursday, December 26, 2019

A Little Bit Crazy?



Every now and then we all do things that some disinterested observer might categorize as Crazy. (I say "we all" because I'm not condemning merely myself--but all of you! A common form of self-protection.)

In early January this year, for example, I decided I was going to send to my family--wife Joyce, son Steve, daughter-in-law Melissa, grandson Logan, grandson Carson--a daily text with a little doggerel I'd written based on the word-of-the-day that appeared that day on the 365 New-Words-a-Year (page-a-day) tear-off calendar that I'd given our son and his family for Christmas (Joyce and I each have one, as well--hers upstairs, mine down).

Pretty soon I established the routine ...

  • Early each morning, downstairs to do some chores (unload the dishwasher, etc.), I would tear off the previous day's word and look at the new one.
  • I would let it bounce around my head as I prepared to walk over to the coffee shop.
  • Before I went, I wrote a rough draft.
  • At the coffee shop I would do some light editing (if necessary--and it almost always was), then text it to everyone.
My routine also involved some "rules" that I never violated.
  • I would never look ahead on the calendar; I always did the doggerel the morning of.
  • Okay ... never is a bit strong because, you see, on the weekend the page shows two words--Sat. and Sunday. So, on the weekend I got a little break, and I'd write two and earn thereby a day off. (Though I wouldn't text the Sunday word until Sunday.)
  • Throughout the year I assembled a notebook--with dividers labeled by month--and in that notebook I would Scotch tape two calendar pages alongside the doggerel for that day.

I had some problems a few days--not with writing that doggerel (that stuff flows out of me like ... well, never mind) but with illness. But I continued with the project, all year.

Here are a couple of samples of the "quality" of the verse:


January 14
The ginger cookie wished that he
Could turn into a ginger man.
He asked his parents, GINGERLY,
If this, indeed, was nature’s plan.

“Well, some of us are men,” said Dad.
“And some are women,” added Mom.
“And it,” she added, “would be sad
If you were eaten by some Tom

Or Susan or by someone who
Did not leave time for you to grow
Into a man. I’d cry boo-hoo.
But that, I’m sure, you surely know!”

But he grew up—became a man.
And no one ate him, first or last.
For he could run—and so he ran—
And folks can’t eat what runs too fast!

August 7
Did you CONNIVE to steal the ring?
The one that powers everything?

The one that you have known since birth
Can change the course of Middle-Earth?

Oh, Gollum, you are such a creep—
Your slippery ways cause loss of sleep!

But we’ve found you a special room
Within the bowels of old Mt. Doom!


I had not told our son and his family that I was assembling this notebook, and on Christmas Eve, when they were here for food and frolic and presents, I waited until the last gift had been opened and told Steve to look under the couch. Where he found the notebook. (See pic above--and one at the bottom of this post.)

And thus Steve, et al. had yet more confirmation that the Old Man is, well, you know ...

Oh, because I wanted to give them all the words on Christmas Eve, I worked ahead, writing all the doggerel for December 25-31. But I asked them not to look ahead in the book; I'd be texting each day as usual.

And one final question: Will I do this again in 2020?

As I sit here, I'm not sure.

But ... I did give them a 2020 calendar ...

Monday, December 23, 2019

Christmas Eve Prep--Underway!

Ready for the family arrival on Christmas Eve

When you get older, you start earlier (in about every way). So for the past few weeks Joyce and I have been getting ready to host our son and his family on Christmas Eve here at our Hudson home.

In weeks past I have made the white fruitcake (from my grandmother Osborn's recipe), the "tree-bread" (inspired by the ones my mother used to make), the cornbread and sourdough bread we'll have with our meal.

Joyce has been wrapping, wrapping, wrapping--and has done the vast majority of the shopping, online and brick-and-mortar. She has planned the meal (which I'll tell more about post-meal). She has already set the dining room table (see pic at the top of this post).

Today, I'm going to start fussing with another old family recipe--my grandmother Osborn's steamed pudding (with hard sauce--a substance, butter and powdered sugar--that surely rivals the most alluring illegal drugs). Tomorrow, it will bubble away above the double-boiler for three hours, and when we eat it, our teeth will instantly form cavities. (Oh, is it sweet!)

When son Steve and his family arrive (mid-afternoon), we will have some tree-bread, then settle around the table. We'll sing "Joy to the World" (which my family has done my entire life) and, pre-dessert, collectively recite "A Visit from St. Nicholas"--which we forgot to do last year. I first memorized that poem back at Adams Elementary School in Enid, Oklahoma (reciting it to some patient parents at some kind of holiday gathering at school), and it's pretty much remained in my head ever since. Well ... I confess ... I rehearse it on T-Th-Sat at the health club when I'm walking my mile of laps around the indoor track.

Then we'll adjourn to the living room--and the (gas) fireplace. The weather forecast informs me that fireplace heat will be superfluous--but we'll do it anyway ("the fire is so delightful" and all that). We will open gifts, will ooh and ahhh; we'll pause midway (or so) to rot our teeth with steamed pudding + hard sauce.

And then it will be over. They will gather up their things (always, always, always forgetting something!), then head back to their home in Green, Ohio, and Joyce and I will do a little clean-up, then fall into bed, full of gratitude, full of food, full of the knowledge that this may be the last year we'll be able to do the Full-Meal-Deal Holiday Dinner and Celebration.

We hope not, of course. But Time doesn't give a damn about our hopes.

Stopping now--must go to the kitchen and fuss with pudding-prep. Can't wait to feel the rot in my teeth tomorrow!

Sunday, December 22, 2019

Sunday Sundries, 256



1. AOTW--I have three stellar candidates this week: two guys who roared by me on my right in a lane that was closing ahead of them, another guy who passed me on a double-yellow line because of my offensive driving (I was going 40 in a 35). But, instead, I think I'll give the HBOTW of the week to my son (Steve), my daughter-in-law (Melissa), our grandsons (Logan and Carson) for the wonderful dinner for us they hosted on December 20, our 50th wedding anniversary. A great meal at a local restaurant here in Hudson (Downtown 140). An evening of kindness and generosity--an evening to remember.

2. Last night, Joyce and I drove over to the Cinemark in Cuyahoga Falls to see Queen & Slim, a very troubling film about a young couple--on their first date--stopped by a policeman. A shooting ensues, and our couple is off on a kind of Bonnie-and-Clyde (they're mentioned in the film)/Thelma and Louse escape, a huge pursuit. The young man and woman are black; the policeman is white.



The chase takes us into their lives--and into the lives of some strangers along the way.

I won't tell you if they escape or not--but I will tell you that it's one of the most disturbing films I've seen in a long, long, long time.

(Link to film trailer.)

Joyce and I were both surprised during the final credits to see that James Frey was involved (he came up with the story idea, apparently)--the same James Frey who was assailed for faking material for his memoir A Million Little Pieces (2003), a book Oprah had selected for her book club before she discovered he'd fabricated some events for it. Then she invited him back on her show and eviscerated him.

Wonderful performances by the varied cast.

3. I finished one book this week--Ian McEwan's 2005 novel, Solar. (I'm trying to catch up some McEwan I've not gotten around to reading.)

The novel focuses on the life of Michael Beard, a physicist who's won the Nobel Prize but whose career has slumped and whose personal life is beyond a mess. He's been married multiple times; he's had multiple affairs; he's losing control of his weight (understatement); he commits a couple of egregious acts--one civil, one professional.

And just as things are apparently looking up for him (he's deeply involved in the climate-change movements and seems to have make a major breakthrough in a remedy), things, as Yeats said, fall apart.

McEwan is a master of getting us to care about a scumbag. He writes this in the third person--but intimately so. We are inside Beard's head much of the time. (I won't say we're inside his heart because he doesn't seem to have come equipped with one that functions all that humanely.)

And even at the end--when all his past is catching up with him--we kind of pity the fool.

As, of course, we pity ourselves. McEwan knows perfectly well that most of us are flawed--sometimes quite flawed--and that all of us slip into sleep with Rue and Shame competing for attention in our memories. And so ... we can relate to Prof. Beard, even as we despise what he's done, what he's doing.

4. As I've written here before, we're streaming season 2 of Fleabag on Amazon Prime, and this one is sometimes (often) difficult to watch. Our young "heroine," played expertly by the writer of the series, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, cannot control herself. She lies, steals, has sex with a wild promiscuity, betrays, etc.



Yet ... we like her. She often turns to the camera and makes a face--or says something witty--asides that only one character, so far, has even noticed--though he can't seem to figure out what she's doing.

Anyway, in season 2 our Fleabag is in a "relationship" with a priest ... and where will that go? Hmmmmm.

She has a sister, by the way, who's as disturbed as Fleabag--though in much different ways. The sisters' relationship, for me, is one of the highlights of the series.

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

     - an odd coincidence this week: two word-a-day services had the same word yesterday--halycon--on the same day--but they dealt with different meanings of the word ...

          - from dictionary.com (which emphasized the common meaning of the word)

halcyon[ hal-see-uhn ]
adjective Also hal·cy·o·ni·an  [hal-see-oh-nee-uhn] , hal·cy·on·ic  [hal-see-on-ik] .
calm; peaceful; tranquil:
halcyon weather.
rich; wealthy; prosperous:
halcyon times of peace.
happy; joyful; carefree:
halcyon days of youth.
of or relating to the halcyon or kingfisher.
noun
a mythical bird, usually identified with the kingfisher, said to breed about the time of the winter solstice in a nest floating on the sea, and to have the power of charming winds and waves into calmness.
any of various kingfishers, especially of the genus Halcyon.
(initial capital letter) Classical Mythology. Alcyone(def 2).
ORIGIN OF HALCYON: 1350–1400; < Latin < Greek halkyṓn, pseudo-etymological variant of alkyṓn kingfisher; replacing Middle English alceon, alicion < Latin alcyōn < Greek

        - from Oxford English Dictionary (which emphasized a less familiar meaning)

halcyon, n. and adj.
[‘In classical mythology: a bird, usually identified as a kingfisher, which brooded around the time of the winter solstice in a nest floating on the sea, charming the wind and waves into calm. In later use also (chiefly poetic): a kingfisher, esp. the common kingfisher, Alcedo atthis.’]
Etymology: <  classical Latin alcyōn (also halcyōn: see note) a mythical bird identified by the ancients with the kingfisher, believed to nest on the sea <  ancient Greek ἀλκυών, in the same sense, of unknown origin; perhaps a Mediterranean loanword.


Compare Middle French, French alcyon, denoting the mythical bird (2nd half of the 13th cent. in Old French as alcion; in Middle French also as alcione, alchione, halcion, halcyon).
In manuscripts of Pliny the spelling varies between halcyōn and alcyōn; elsewhere the word is generally written alcyōn. The spelling of the Greek word with ἁλ- (hal-) probably arose from a folk etymological derivation <  ancient Greek ἅλς sea (see halo- comb. form1) + κύων conceiving (present participle of κύειν to be pregnant: see cyesiology n.), connected with the fable that the halcyon broods upon her nest floating on the calm sea in the ‘halcyon days’.


Adopted in scientific Latin as the specific name alcyon (Linnaeus Systema Naturae  (ed. 10, 1758)  I. 282), in the genus Alcedo, and later as the genus Halcyon, replacing Alcedo (see quot. 1820-1 at sense A. 1c).
N.E.D.  (1898) also gives the pronunciation (hæ·lʃiən) /ˈhælʃɪən/; this is the usual pronunciation in dictionaries from the late 18th and early 19th century.
 A. n.
 1.
 a. In classical mythology: a bird, usually identified as a kingfisher, which brooded around the time of the winter solstice in a nest floating on the sea, charming the wind and waves into calm. In later use also (chiefly poetic): a kingfisher, esp. the common kingfisher, Alcedo atthis.
a1393  J. Gower Confessio Amantis(Fairf.) iv. l. 3123 Hire briddes yit..Of Alceoun the name bere.
1545  G. Joye Expos. Daniel  Ep. Ded. f. 2 Thei saye that in the..coldest tyme of the yere, these halcions making their nestis in the sea rockis or sandis, wil sitte their egges and hatcheforth their chikens.
1585  J. Higgins tr. Junius Nomenclator  55/2 Alcedo, alcyon,..a winter birde commonly called the kings fisher.
c1592  C. Marlowe Jew of Malta  i. i How stands the wind? Into what corner peers my halcyon's bill?
1616  W. Browne Britannia's Pastorals  II. i. 17 About his sides a thousand Seaguls bred, The Meuy, and the Halcyon.
a1649  W. Drummond Poems(1656) 161 Makes Scotlands name to fly On Halcyons wings..Beyond the Ocean to Columbus shores.
c1750  W. Shenstone Elegies  v. 22 So smiles the surface of the treach'rous main As o'er its waves the peaceful halcyons play.
1769  J. Wallis Nat. Hist. Northumberland  I. 321 The Alcyon, or King's-fisher..is not unfrequent on the shady banks of our larger rivers, and deserves notice for its beauty.
1819  J. H. Wiffen Aonian Hours(1820) 104 The brilliant halcyons..fluttering upon azure wings, appear Loveliest above secluded waters.
1878  E. De Amicis tr. C. Tilton Constantinople(ed. 4) 98 Halcyons come and go in long files between the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmora; and storks sit upon the cupolas of the mausoleums.
1880  G. Smith in Atlantic Monthly  Feb. 200 The halcyons of literature, art, and science were floating on the calm and sunlit sea.
1982  W. Golding Moving Target(1984) 176 Would I were a halcyon flying over the flowers of foam.
2001 Classical Q.  New Ser. 51 522 Likewise the Alcyones. In this myth Ceyx and Alcyone are changed into halcyons.
 b. North American. The belted kingfisher, Megaceryle alcyon. Now rare.
1790 Coll. Voy. round World  V. xi. 1805 We found the halcyon, or great king-fisher, having fine bright colours.
1802 R. Brooke's Gazetteer(ed. 12) at P. William's Sound The birds found here were the halcyon, or great kingfisher [etc.].
1907  ‘N. Blanchan’ Birds Every Child should Know  xiv. 208 (heading)  Belted Kingfisher. Called also: The Halcyon.
1916 Condor  18 4 At Prince William's Sound were seen the White-headed Eagle, the Alcyon or great Kingfisher, the Hummingbird, and a small land bird evidently the Golden-crowned Sparrow.
 c. Any kingfisher of (or formerly of) the genus Halcyon or subfamily Halcyoninae, native to parts of Asia, Australasia, and Africa; also (in form Halcyon) the genus itself.
1820–1  W. Swainson Zool. Illustr.  I. text to Pl. 27 The species now formed into the genus Halcyon appear entirely excluded from the American continent.
1829  E. Griffith et al.  Cuvier's Animal Kingdom  VIII. 690 The primary distinction in the external structure of Halcyon and Dacelo rests in the form of the upper mandible of the bill.
1901  A. J. Campbell Nests & Eggs Austral. Birds  559 The New Zealand Halcyon..is allied to our Halcyons.
1995  M. L. Rosenzweig Species Diversity in Space & Time  vii. 185 New Guinea..boasts five other species of Halcyon.
2006 Auk  123 487 The phylogeny supports splitting Todiramphus from Halcyon.
 2. A period of calm, happiness, or prosperity; (as a mass noun) calm, tranquillity. Also: a period of calm or pleasant weather; spec. = halcyon days n. 1. Usually in plural.
1567  W. Salesbury in  tr. Testament Newydd  Ep. Ded. sig. aijv I beseeche almyghtye God,..that we..may toward God..demeane our selfes in such wyse that his iustice abrydge not these Halcyons and quiet dayes.
1647  J. Trapp Comm. Evangelists & Acts  (Matt. ix. 15) Our halcyons here are but as marriage-feasts, for continuance.
1654  J. Trapp Comm. Psalms  ii. 4 By this means the Church had an happy Halcyon.
1747  S. Richardson Clarissa  II. i. 4 Tis well one of us does [want courting]; else the man would have nothing but halcyon.
1844  R. W. Emerson Ess.  2nd Ser. vi. 113 These halcyons may be looked for..in that pure October weather, which we distinguish by the name of the Indian Summer.
1915 Mixer & Server  15 Oct. 58/1 If ever the world is enwrapped in a haze that mellows with its softness the harsh edges of earthly existence, it is in the month [sc. October] whose halcyons never fail.
2013  M. Leibovich This Town  xii. 311 He partook of a beer-soaked bus tour of Iowa that harked back to his cornfield halcyons of '08.
 B. adj.
 1. Of a period of time: characterized by peace, happiness, prosperity, or success; (of a situation, condition, state, etc.) calm, tranquil; carefree.
Now often with overtones of nostalgia.
Recorded earliest in halcyon days n. 2. For the semantic motivation of this sense, see halcyon days n. 1.
1570 Prayer  in  J. Foxe Serm. Christ Crucified  sig. T.ij It hath pleased thy grace to geue vs these Alcion dayes, which yet we enioy.
1596  C. Fitzgeffry Sir Francis Drake  sig. B6  Pure Halcion houres, Saturnus golden dayes.
c1660  J. Evelyn Diary  anno 1638 (1955) II. 21 Fortifications (a greate rarity in that blessed Halcyon tyme in England).
1705  M. Pix Conquest of Spain  v. 71 No darkning Cloud threatned our Halcyon State.
1797  A. M. Bennett Beggar Girl  VI. i. 51 All, therefore, was halcyon with Mrs. Woudbe.
1841  I. D'Israeli Amenities Lit.  II. 27 Peace and policy had diffused a halcyon calmness over the land.
1890  E. Phillips Lost in Adirondacks!  ii. 44 Her tender mind roamed back in silent memory to her halcyon childhood in the sunny South.
1943 Mansfield (Ohio) News-Jrnl.  22 July 5/1 It was a halcyon summer scene and its peace and beauty lifted the heart.
2000 Independent on Sunday  6 Aug. (Culture section) 3/1 The halcyon heyday of the nouvelle vague, when new works by Godard, Truffaut, Chabrol and the like benefited from the ultimately short-lived xenophilia of British distributors.
 2. Of or relating to the halcyon or kingfisher. Now chiefly literary.
In earlier use chiefly in figurative contexts, esp. with reference to peace and tranquillity (cf. sense B. 1). With quot. 1608, cf. the superstition that a dried specimen hung up would by its position indicate the direction in which the wind was blowing.
1608  W. Shakespeare King Lear  ii. 76 Bring oyle to stir, snow to their colder-moods..and turne their halcion beakes With euery gale and varie of their maisters.
1693 Reply to Reflector(new ed.) i. 16 We will bear the Reproach, of having a particular Devotion for the Church of England, whose Halcyon Wings have never yet bin dipt in Blood.
1781  H. Downman Poems to Thespia  xxii. 85 With thee Peace builds her Halcyon nest.
1864 Temple Bar  July 482 Glasgow and Preston have turned out rich stuffs and fairy-like fabrics, glowing with halcyon hues.
1951 Hudson Rev.  4 10 Pliny recommended dried and pulverized halcyon nests as a ‘wonderful cure’ for leprosy.
2010  W. L. Idema in  tr. Butterfly Lovers  31 Hairpins were often decorated with pearls and halcyon feathers.
Compounds

 halcyon blue n. and adj. (a)n. a brilliant blue colour resembling that of the plumage of a halcyon or common kingfisher; (b)adj. of this shade of blue; = kingfisher blue n. and adj. at kingfisher n. and adj. Compounds.
1787  J. Whitehouse Poems  88 Those eyes of halcyon blue.
1922  E. Blunden Bonaventure  xxvi. 164 The air was cold and lucent; the water halcyon blue.
1975 Financial Times  17 Nov. 3/2 A pretty backdrop of halcyon-blue Aegean.
2007 Daily Record(Nexis) 2 Mar. 39 Available in four metallic colours—black, aluminium, grey or halcyon blue—the car also sports half-leather upholstery.




Wednesday, December 18, 2019

Addendum to "Too Old for an Accident?"




Yesterday, I did a little post here about how an insurance company (from whom we'd bought an accident policy a couple of decades ago) notified me the other day, via snail-mail, that since I had recently turned 75, I was no longer eligible for the coverage. A nice-knowing-you kind of letter.

I remarked to Joyce that it's ironic that they covered us during the years we were driving all over the country--but not now that we drive only all over the county.

And yet ...

We have had very few car accidents in our lives, and not one was our fault. Well, one is questionable. I-80 near Iowa City, ice storm, couldn't stop, joined a big pile-up in, oh 1971 or so. No injuries. Minor car damage.

Since then (I'm not sure of the chronological order) we've had several:

  • On three different occasions (three different drivers, three different years) someone from our across-the-street neighbor's drive has backed out and hit our car (three different cars), parked right in front of our house. (We no longer park there--took only three hits to convince us.)
  • Once, a few years ago, we were sitting at a stoplight--Fishcreek R. and Rt. 91 in Stow, less than three miles away from our house--when a car, hit by another car out on 91, spun into us. Broke Joyce's sternum.
  • Last year, less than a block from our house, a guy approaching the intersection from our left neglected to stop at a four-way stop and T-boned us out in the intersection. Totaled our car. Bruises for Joyce and me.
So ... maybe those insurance companies know something?

As I now know something--or, rather, have had something once again confirmed: Insurance companies are interested in profit, not in protection.

One quick story. In 1990 when Joyce was selling her parents' house in Firestone Park in Akron (her father had died; her mother was in an Alzheimer's unit), a squirrel fell down the chimney into the basement and proceeded to wreak havoc down there.

Joyce's father had dutifully paid his premiums for decades.

But--as the agent (feigning sorrow) informed us--a squirrel is, you know, a rodent--and the policy excluded rodent damage. So sorry about that ...

Yeah.

Tuesday, December 17, 2019

Too Old for an Accident?



A couple of decades ago I bought via American Express an "accident insurance" policy. It didn't cost all that much per month (about $10), and Joyce and I were doing a lot of traveling then--almost all by car.

To Massachusetts to see my parents and brothers, all over the country visiting literary sites and places related to the research we were doing (she, John Brown; I, memoir stuff)--these were the sorts of journeys we made. Oh, and a favorite: up to Stratford, Ontario, for a week each summer to see plays at the Stratford Theatre Festival. So ... it just seemed to make sense to buy the policy. Get clobbered on the road--survivors profit.

The deduction from my Amex account was automatic--around the 9th of each month.

But this month the 9th drifted by--the 10th--the 11th--12th, 13th, 14th, 15th. No deduction. I was about to email Amex to find out what was happening.

Then a letter arrived yesterday: "... you have reached the age limit for coverage under this Policy." (Yes, they capitalized policy.)

I turned 75 on November 11--"the age limit."

It's odd, really: We do very little traveling now. A movie, a mall, the grocery store, the health club. About the most extensive jaunt we make is down to Green, Ohio, to visit our son and his family. According to Google Maps, that's 25.1 mi away. Or up to Cleveland for a play production a few times a year.

And that's about it. I haven't flown in quite a few years; Joyce hates flying and has rarely been aboard a plane in our half-century together. Emergencies only.

So ... at a time when we're traveling less, we have no more accident insurance.

The calculations at the insurance company must reveal a darker truth: Old guys are more likely to get in an accident even though they are driving less. (There's probably some truth to that?)

Anyway, this is yet another instance of the you're-old-now information (confirmation!) that I'm getting from my junk mail, from my spam email, from my junk phone calls.

Oh, and, of course, from my traitorous body.

Sunday, December 15, 2019

Sunday Sundries, 255



1. HBsOTW: I've got to say that the past few weeks it's been the check-out personnel at the two grocery stores we patronize in town--Acme and Heinen's. The patience and kindness these people have shown with customers (many of whom are solid contestants for the AOTW Award) during the twin mania of Thanksgiving and Christmas--oh, and throw in some Browns games for good measure. I wouldn't last five minutes in such a position.

2. Last night Joyce and I drove to the Hudson Regal Cinema to see Knives Out, the mystery film with Daniel Craig as a clever PI (with a Southern accent!) who likens his skill to what's described in Pynchon's novel Gravity's Rainbow; both Craig's character and another say they know the book--but neither has read it! (Get in line ...)
In some ways, it's a conventional whodunit--rich family, a contested will, a murder (suicide?), innocent people who look guilty, guilty people who look innocent--a plot and situation out of Agatha Christie. Virtually all of the characters are humorous caricatures of annoying types of human beings--most of them sharing one trait: greed.

But ... some naughtiness mixed in, some heated family debates about Pres. Trump (unnamed but obvious), some thorough surprises (especially as we near the end), some good laughs.

Great cast: Craig, 90-yr-old Christopher Plummer, Chris Evans, Jamie Lee Curtis, Michael Shannon, Don Johnson, Toni Colette, and many others--notably, Ana de Armas, who plays the nurse attending Plummer's character.

Joyce and I both enjoyed it a lot--in a full theater auditorium.

Link to film trailer.

3. I finished one book this week, the newest novel by the prolific Joyce Carol Oates--My Life as a Rat (2019). (I did a post last week about Oates' career--and my long enjoyment of her--so I'll not repeat any of that here.)

Knowing Oates' work as I do, I would not have been surprised to read in the novel about an actual rodent--but, no, it's the story of a young girl near Niagara Falls, NY, a girl who discovers early on that she's got some ... problems ... in her life. Abusive older brothers ... a teacher who goes all Bill Cosby on some of his female students ... etc.

So what does she do with this knowledge? How to balance the very human desire to just "get along" with the ethical/moral dilemmas of doing what's right?

Oates tells the novel from the point-of-view of Violet Kerrigan, whom we follow from early girlhood to her mid-20s.

The men in the novel--virtually all of them--are (a) abusive, (b) intimidating, (c) threatening, (d) sexually intrusive, (e) violent), (f) unforgiving, (g) clueless about the lives of women, (h) all of the above. In fact, there's not a man we can even mildly admire until quite near the end of this 402-page novel.

I like how sly Oates--though the point-of-view remains constant--sometimes slips easily from 3rd to 2nd person to 1st person. "... at school, your friends have begun to avoid you" (52) "At school I tried to hide" (107). That sort of thing.

Anyway, another dazzler by Oates, whose works have, over the decades, entertained/shocked/informed/dazzled me.

4. We're still streaming bits of "our" shows for about an hour each evening before Lights Out. Right now, here's our list:

  • Waking the Dead
  • Shakespeare and Hathaway
  • Upstart Crow
  • Fleabag
  • Jack Ryan (well, just me on this one; I watch bits of it while waiting for Joyce to join me. Just finished season 2 this week)
  • a Netflix stand-up by Michelle Wolf
  • I've also (see Jack Ryan) been re-watching The Ice Harvest, a 2005 thriller co-written by Richard Russo. (Link to film trailer.)  Starring John Cusak and Billy Bob Thornton. It's on HBO.

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

     - from dictionary.com

Brobdingnagian[ brob-ding-nag-ee-uh n ]
Adjective: of huge size; gigantic; tremendous.
Noun: an inhabitant of Brobdingnag (from Gulliver’s Travels)
a being of tremendous size; giant.


Saturday, December 14, 2019

Pale Blue Dot



I miss Carl Sagan (1934-96). I used to read his books as soon as they appeared--well, the ones  he wrote for a "general reader" like me; I didn't exactly major in astrophysics. I enjoyed seeing him on talk shows (Johnny Carson had him on a lot, as I recall--more than two dozen times says a trusty website--link to it). I watched and learned so much from Cosmos, a thirteen-episode series he did on PBS in late 1980.

In the summer of 2001 I read his novel, Contact (1985), as I was preparing to return to teaching at Western Reserve Academy. (I had retired from public school in 1997.) The entire school population was going to read the novel--though I don't recall that we really did much with the book during the year.

my copy

And then Carl Sagan was gone. Pneumonia, a result of a battle with a terminal bone-marrow disease.

One of his books that I most enjoyed--and was even occasionally stunned by--was The Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space (1994).

my copy
In that book--early on--is a picture that stuns me to this day. It's a photograph taken by Voyager, far out in the massive emptiness of space. And if you look carefully toward the upper right corner of this image, you will see the "pale blue dot." Planet earth.

I used to show my WRA students this photo, but as I sit here, I cannot for the life of me remember why. Some related literary passage we were discussing? Some writing assignment? Beats me.

What stuns me about this photograph, of course, is our tiny presence in the vastness--the darkness--of space. Here we all are, on this tiny blue ball, spinning around in the black. And what have we been doing? Hating one another, killing one another, damaging (destroying?) the atmosphere, plundering the planet, acting as if our personal concerns are so freaking important.

We've lost perspective--if we ever really had much of it.

That photograph should remind us that we're all here together, that our dot of a home is fragile, that we need one another, that we need to commit to learning how to live in peace (and gratitude) with people who aren't like us, how to protect our pale blue dot before our greed and ignorance make it uninhabitable.

Carl Sagan reminded us of such things--over and over he spoke of them. We need to attend to his echoes.