Toothsome

not mine--in case you're wondering

Oddly, that word toothsome means "agreeable or pleasant"--or "sexually attractive." It goes back to the sixteenth century, when dental care was not exactly what it is today, so (I'm guessing now) that people who had lots of teeth left were sexually attractive. (In the Middle Ages, by the way, they sometimes used crow's dung to fill cavities.)

But I use the word toothsome in a more literal sense today: I have a 9:30 dental appointment, my first since the arrival of you-know-what.

I'm expecting things to be very safe there. I've gotten several texts from them: I will wait in the car until I'm called in; I must be wearing a mask when I enter. (I'm guessing that I will not wear it during my exam!?!) I'm guessing that the personnel will be wearing PPE of the highest quality. They may adorn me with some things, too.

As you may know, Joyce and I do not go out much--just to the grocery store once a week to pick up our online order (someone brings it out to the car, puts it in the trunk); I walk to Open Door Coffee twice a day (morning and afternoon) to pick up a carryout coffee (and, yes, I am a Masked Man--unlike many people I see along the way). Joyce has been to CVS, I to Marc's--both of us setting new Olympic records for shopping swiftness. (Our medals are in the mail, I presume.)

Oh, we also go to Szalay's Farm & Market on Fridays after supper for yet another swift trip for a few things we love. (So far, it hasn't been difficult there to avoid the Maskless Ones.)

That's about it.

Except for medical things. I've thrice been to Seidman Cancer Center (twice to University Circle, once to Beachwood/Chagrin). Lots of safety protocols there. And Joyce has been to a medical facility, as well.

So that's about it.

Until today.

I will pause here and will finish the post when I get home--letting you know what went on

PAUSE.

All went fine--all as I'd predicted: few in waiting room (socially distanced), all masked; PPE on all the employees.

Went through the cleaning, etc. No problems. (Though that whirring cleaner does tickle certain parts of my gums--hard to resist a chortle.)

Good news: They don't need to see me again till January.

And so--between now and then--I will, indeed, remain a toothsome dude!

The More You Read ...

... the Less You Know.

I've written about this before, but I want to modify what I've said a little bit. Yes, the more I read, the more I encounter things I have not known--like other writers, like other books, like (well) other worlds of information and imagination out there.

I found this especially true when I was reading about writers who ended up in biographies I was writing: Jack London, William Shakespeare, Edgar Poe, Mary Shelley. Every time I read something by these people--or about these people--the more I discovered I needed to know. "The long and winding road ...."

I first encountered that long-and-winding-road idea a number of years ago when writer Russell Banks was in Hudson to talk about Cloudsplitter (1998), his novel about Abolitionist John Brown (who, as you probably know, grew up in Hudson--and whose story Joyce has written about in her forthcoming book for the University of Akron Press, Pursuing John Brown: On the Trail of a Radical Abolitionist--link to info about it).

Anyway, Banks talked about how he was finding the research for the book just about endless, and then he said something like this (not a direct quotation): "As a novelist you have to stop researching at some point and start writing." (Joyce has also found this to be true.)

So ... the more you read, the less you know ... the more you realize you need to know ...

BUT it's also true that the more you read the more you know--the more often you can enjoy, in a private way, something you are reading that alludes to--or in some fashion uses--what you already know.

I was thinking about this just this morning as I neared the end of Gail Godwin's newest novel, Old Lovegood Girls (2020), a novel about two women--Merry and Feron--who meet in a (fictitious) junior college, Lovegood, and who, off and on, remain connected for the rest of their lives. (I'll write in more detail about the novel in my blog next Sunday.)

Both Merry and Feron, by the way, are published writers--Feron has several novels; Merry, some stories (though she basically "retires" from writing when she gets involved in her family's tobacco-growing business).

In a passage this morning Feron, talking with her agent, mentions Ian McEwan's novel Amsterdam, which won the Booker Prize in 1998. It's a book in some ways about the sin of Envy--and it's a book I finished not all that long ago (I was on a journey through all of McEwan's books).

So ... when I read that passage this morning, I perked up, felt smart for a moment, then moved on to some things I didn't know about and realized There are some things I really must read!

Sunday Sundries, 283

1. AOTW: The feral cat in our neighborhood that is stalking our chickadees and their wee ones, who are occupying a birdhouse on our front porch. I know: It's just instinct. But I wish people who were feeding that cat would full-on adopt it and take it indoors.

2. I finished streaming the recent film Eighth Grade, 2018, about a lonely girl, Kayla, who struggles through her final days of (guess which grade!). (I especially enjoyed this because, as many of you know, I taught in a middle school for about thirty years.) There are some very painful scenes (one involving a predatory high-school boy), and the single father who's rearing Kayla is a saint beyond words. She mostly treats him as if he were irrelevant, boring, intrusive. Which he manifestly is not.

Some fine insights into that world (okay, and a few cliches and shortcuts, too). And I liked how they didn't really romanticize/idealize Kayla: She has complexion problems, among other things, though she also comes across as bright and clever. Available to stream on Amazon Prime. (Link to film trailer.)

3. I finished three books this week--two of which were on my bedside pile (I attack each of them about 10 min/night). I'll deal with those two first.

     - One was A High Wind in Jamaica (1929), a novel by Welsh writer Robert Hughes and made into a film with Anthony Quinn, 1965. (Link to film trailer. As I watched the trailer, I had no memory of having seen the film.)

The novel tells the story of some children in Jamaica, where a hurricane destroys homes, etc. So they are being shipped back to England (whence they came). While aboard that ship, some pirates approach and take over, and the children go aboard the pirate ship.

And lots of things happen involving the kids--some violence, some hints of something more. They eventually end up back in England, but the law is very interested in what happened and tries to draw the stories from the children.

One Facebook friend told me that he'd been assigned the book in 10th grade, and another told me she'd loved it. Well, no one ever assigned it to me, and I can't say I loved it, though it was fun to read--and very surprising at times.

     - The second I finished from my Night Pile was co-written by former Harmon School Jaguar and Aurora High Greenman (-person?) Cori McCarthy (now going by Cory), who's been writing YA novels for a number of years now. (Her new one is her sixth, I believe--and a yet another one is on the way, too.)

Her latest--Sword in the Stars (2020)--she co-wrote with her partner, Amy Rose Capetta, and is a sequel to Once and Future (2019--also co-written). Both are novels based on the King Arthur stories--and so much else (including Star Wars and Tolkien.)

The writers take us up and down the zipline of the legends--back to the Middle Ages (and earlier), forward to the distant future when the principals are involved in, well, a star war.

One of the characters' goals is to end the cycle--to find lives that they can live together and not have to keep rebooting. Merlin is especially endangered: As he proceeds, recall, he grows younger, and here is actually a young boy for a while.

The authors also transform the characters over the ages--including gender and sexual orientation. I found this a liberating way to look at the story.

As I said, there are allusions to some famous tales from our time, and McCarthy/Capetta also slyly allude to their own. Near the end, Merlin is organizing a library on a planet--a library featuring Arthurian tales. And he mentions "a pair of twenty-first century authors"--and he describes the dust jacket for Once and Future (343).

And I loved this thought going on in Merlin's head: "... stories were never just a string of pretty words on a page or attractive strangers on a screen. They climbed inside your head, reordered things. Tore up parts of you by the roots and planted new ideas. / Magic, really" (344). Indeed.

     - The 3rd book I finished this week was the first novel (first book, really) by Alice Adams (1926-99), whose complete stories I recently read. This novel--Careless Love (1966)--is about a woman in San Francisco, a woman with a number of failed relationships in her history, a woman struggling to find Love--and having a hard time doing so.

Much of the novel deals with her relationship with a man from Spain (a married man), who, of course, strings her along with promises of divorce. Things fall apart. But Daisy (our heroine) proves more resilient that we thought. Near the beginning, Adams writes, that Daisy "lived for love. She could imagine no other career" (13).

Very similar to Adams' short stories: the struggle of men and women, self-loathing, the intricacies of friendship, the various agonies of life.

The song "Careless Love," by the way, has been around since the 1920s. But I detected no direct references to it in the novel--though there probably were, and they slipped by me! (Link to song performed by Bessie Smith.)

4. Well, I've called our clock-repair guy to come out to pick up our antique cuckoo clock (which belonged to my great-grandfather) and an antique mantel clock we bought about 40 years ago. Can't wait to get them back--and hear the sounds!

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

     - from Oxford English Dictionary--a word we ought to bring back? It's obsolete now.

† satisdiction, n. The action of saying enough.

Origin: A borrowing from Latin. Etymons: Latin satis, dictiōn-, dictiō.

Etymology: <  classical Latin satis enough (see satisfy v.) + dictiōn-, dictiō saying (see diction n.), after satisfaction n.

Obsolete. rare.

1647  N. Ward Simple Cobler Aggawam  14 They desire not satisfaction, but satisdiction, whereof themselves must be judges.

1662  S. Fisher Bishop busied beside Businesse  i. 69 We find little that is much thank-worthy, and not so much as Satisdiction to our Satisfaction there (be it where it will be).

Our AC Is Working (at last)

We've got our AC back! It had clunked off a few weeks ago, and although we have an annual service contract with an HVAC company we really like--and have used for decades--they were so jammed up with requests that it took a couple of weeks for a service tech to get out here.

Meanwhile, last week, we had a Warm One, and, lying upstairs, sweating in the dark, I was reminded of boyhood in the Southwest, in Oklahoma and Texas, where no one I knew had AC. It was, however, available in the movie theaters (adding to the attraction)--I remember the signs out front: IT'S COOL INSIDE!

I don't really remember seeing any penguins sitting near me in the old Sooner theater as I watched Hoot Gibson or Johnny Mack Brown or Bob Steele or those other B-movie cowboys on those Saturday mornings and afternoons, but I do remember the delight of escaping for a few hours the unforgiving Oklahoma heat.

There were definitely no penguins at our house. We had some standing fans downstairs, a few little desk fans here and there (they would rotate--back and forth), but on hot summer nights there was nothing we could really do but sweat and try to sleep.

When the weather first turned summer-hot, Mom would no longer use all the bedding for her, Dad, and her three sons. Just a bottom sheet. Nothing else--we needed nothing else. Windows wide open. All of us praying for a breeze.

Sometimes, Dad (and the neighbors, as well) would use the garden hose to water down the roof just before nighty-night, Steam rose.

Cars had no air-conditioning, either, though I remember that my grandfather Osborn, in his Hudson Hornet, had some kind of device in his window that seemed to help. It looked somewhat like the one below. Looks like some kind of James Bond weapon, doesn't it?

But we never had such a thing.

Joyce and I did not have air-conditioning in a car until the mid-1970s when we had one installed at Sears. It was all right--though it took up a lot of space and made some racket.

We did not have AC in our house until we got a window air-conditioner in the mid-1970s, Once, adjusting it in the window of our second-story bedroom, I carelessly allowed it to slip off its ledge and fall to the ground. Damn! I went down and got it, placed it (carefully) back in the window, turned it on ...

It worked!

We did not have full-house until the early 1980s.

And going to school in the Oklahoma spring and early fall? Brutal. All the windows fully raised, each breath of breeze as precious to us as to those long-ago sailors motionless in the doldrums.

When I began my own teaching career in the fall of 1966, there was no air-conditioning in our Aurora Middle School building--just large windows, which, on hot days I raised as high as they would go--and thought about Enid. Fortunately, my classroom was on the west side of the building, so if a breeze came, we got it

It was not until 1974, when the new Harmon Middle School opened, that I taught in a building with AC. But it often chose the hottest days of the year to take a nap. I kept a large floor fan in my room, selfishly aimed toward myself.

In the final years of my career, after I'd retired from public school teaching, I taught for ten more years at Western Reserve Academy, which lies only a few blocks from our house. (In most weather I walked or rode my bike.)

But the main classroom building had no air-conditioning--except in the administrative offices (just a coincidence I'm sure). So on hot days--more (hot) flashbacks to Enid, windows wide open, urging a vagrant breeze to wander our way. Sometimes teachers just gave up and took their classes outside, where the kids sat in the shade of a maple tree and pretended to pay attention.

So ... we'd had no AC for a few weeks here, and one of the things I'd forgotten about wide-open windows is how noisy it is, even on our relatively quiet street. People talking (loudly) on their front porch, dogs barking, pedestrians (some of them, uh, a bit affected by something they'd drunk) stumbling by, sharing words of wisdom (?) in voices loud enough to awaken a sleeping kraken, sirens, and those persistent birds that seemed determined to keep the sun here by screeching, determined (hours later) to awaken it with more of the same.

So ... when I switched that sucker on last night, closed the windows, heard the Sounds of Silence, felt, surging up through the system, breath cool enough to satisfy even a fussy penguin, I went to sleep almost immediately--and gratefully.

Yesterday, a Farewell ...

Yesterday I retired from doing book reviews for Kirkus Reviews.*  I've been doing them since March 1999, and they now total more than 1550.

I realized, you see, that I cannot predict how I'm going to feel in the ensuing months as my cancer treatments intensify, and I do not want to accept an assignment that, perhaps, I won't be able to fulfill.

My friend Ron Antonucci started me on my book-review career. At the time I met him, he was a librarian here in Hudson, and he was also editing a publication called Ohio Writer--and he asked me one day if I'd do a review for him. I did. Then I did a few more.

Ron was also reviewing for Kirkus, and he recommended me to them. They sent me a book to review. I did it. They sent me another one. I did it. And soon I was a "regular." Kirkus is published on the 1st and 15th of every month, and I think I've had at least one review in every issue since March 1999.

All reviews are anonymous, by the way--though all the names of the reviewers are listed in each issue.

I do only nonfiction for Kirkus--history and memoir mostly (though every now and then I get a book about baseball or music)--and I have to say that, otherwise, I probably would not have read about 90% of the titles they send me--but I'm almost always glad, afterward, that I did. (Some exceptions, of course--principally memoirs by celebrities!)

When I was teaching at Western Reserve Academy (2001-11), I would do one title a week during the school year, more in the summer. And I realized I had to set up a routine if I was going to get all that work done.

So here's what I did. First thing every morning (at the coffee shop!) I would read 100 pp of the text--and take notes (oh, do I take notes!). I would plan to finish the book on Friday, then go home that day and write the review (while all was still fresh in my head). If the book was 300 pages (or so), I would start reading it on Wednesday; 400 pages; on Tuesday. Etc.

The reviews are each about 310 words--no matter how long the book is. So, I have had to write 310 words about 150-pp books, about 750-pp books. And everything in between.

I am proud to say that I never missed a deadline--hell, I was even reading at the Cleveland Clinic when I was recovering from prostate surgery in 2005! I read beside my sleeping father when he was dying in 1999. And in all other sorts of situations. I always had this feeling, you see, that my mother--a most organized woman--would know if I messed up. Couldn't have that!

And I did mess up now and then (I guess I have to confess that I'm a human being?)--getting a fact wrong, misquoting something. When those things happened, my editor would share with me the annoyed email from a writer--or his/her publisher. That was always fun.

But that happened only rarely--which is why, of course, that Kirkus has continued sending me titles.

Lately, those titles have been coming in electronic format--and I kind of like that: It's easier to keep an iPad open than a paperback!

I have only two books left; I will finish one tomorrow--the other next Friday. And that will be that.

I wrote to my editor yesterday to tell him about my decision--and the reasons for it. And he sent back a very kind note about my service for them.

More eye-dampness as a result.

Kirkus, by the way, led to another, related, gig with the Cleveland Plain Dealer, and I did several hundred reviews for them until they basically shut down their books pages a few years ago. Oh, have I missed doing those!

It seems impossible to believe that I have reviewed for Kirkus for twenty-one years. The same span as from my birth through college graduation. Oh, am I old!


*Kirkus is a publication aimed at libraries, bookshops, collectors, and the like. Anyone can subscribe to it--and they have a robust online presence, as well.

Another Trip to Seidman Cancer Center

Seidman Cancer Center
University Circle
Cleveland, Ohio

As I posted here a couple of weeks ago (link to that post), I recently underwent some tests at the Seidman Cancer Center (University Hospitals) in University Circle. I had some bloodwork and a full-body nuclear bone scan.

Well, the numbers have come back, and I have met with my new oncologist (my former one has left the state), and it’s good news/bad news.

My metabolic panel was fine. But my PSA (Prostate Specific Antigen) has risen too much to make anyone very happy. My score on February 25 (my last test) was 1.58 (it had crept up from a low of 0.29 on July 10, 2019), and this time it was 5.12. That means one thing: the cancer is awake and active again.

Just a quick reminder: My prostate cancer has metastasized into my bones, and I really should have no PSA since a Cleveland Clinic surgeon removed my prostate gland in June 2005. But prostate cancer also secretes PSA—and that’s how we know it’s active again.

My bone scan also showed some activity—nothing too comprehensive right now. But still … spots on my spine. (In 2018 I underwent a series of radiation treatments on some other spots there.)

Yesterday morning (Tuesday) Joyce and I drove down to Seidman in University Circle, where we saw the many changes the facility has made due to COVID-19. Spacing of chairs—everyone masked—temperature taken at the door—etc.

I had to fill out endless paperwork (new oncologist and all), but I know that all that information is in the UH system: I’ve been a Seidman patient for quite a while now. Oh well: Although annoying, it kept my mind off ... darker things.

Anyway, Joyce and I were very pleased with the new oncologist—informed, patient, warm, concerned. Treated our questions with respect. Not in a hurry to get somewhere else. 

But, as I said to Joyce on the way home, it's clear now that my road is getting shorter.

He’s recommending a new drug regimen (Xtandi is the drug--link to info about it), one that could have some more unpleasant side-effects (including making worse my dizziness). And if that regimen doesn’t work—or when its benefits begin to wane (as they inevitably will)—next comes chemo. Not the most pleasant of treatments--as some of you know firsthand.

And depending on what happens in my spine (where the cancer now appears to be mildly active), I may have some more radiation, too.

I know—and have known for a long time—that all these treatments I've undergone are merely temporary. They merely delay the inevitable. My body, so far, has done a good job of battling this Thing, but the Thing will eventually win. Sooner? Later? No one’s really sure.

I have tried hard to give myself a chance. I don't smoke or drink. I eat healthful food (in moderate amounts). I exercise as much as I safely can. My dizziness has made my former, fairly rigorous, routines impossible. But I still walk about a mile each day, ride our exercise bike about three miles each day. All this has worked pretty well for fifteen years.

But now I'm about to enter a new phase. In all likelihood, as I said, I'm about to experience some side-effects that will be even more unpleasant than the ones I'm already dealing with. And, as I also said, I'm realizing that the road I'm on is not endless--long and winding though it's been.

But I do know I’m in the good hands of a fine physician who works in a very good place, so all I can do is follow his recommendations, endure what I must endure, hold fast to Joyce’s hand—and to the hands of my son and his family.

And keep doing what I love for as long as I can.

A Gloomy Post for a Gloomy Day

Dad and I at my wedding to Joyce,
December 20, 1969
Concordia Lutheran Church
Akron, Ohio

Here in Hudson, Ohio, today it's dark and dour. Rain is heavy in the sky, and there's little doubt that it will--when it's inconvenient for most people--empty the clouds on us.

It doesn't help my mood.

Yesterday, as you well know, was Father's Day, and as I've gotten older, I find myself more and more affected by days that celebrate those whom I've loved and lost--my grandparents, my parents, uncles, cousins, in-laws (oh, were Joyce's parents wonderful to me!), and on and on and on.

Father's Day was a tough one for me this year. I think of my father all the time, of course, but yesterday I was nearly overwhelmed by memories of him--and of my own all-too-rapid approach to that precipice, where, once Time and Health have shoved me over, I will transform into Memories for others as I hurtle toward ... let's not get into that!

I've written about my dad a lot here, and I'm not going to repeat all the stories--but just a quick reminder. The second oldest of a dozen children (nine boys!) growing up on a farm in north-central Oregon, Dad as a teenager lost his own father. A high-school track and football star, Dad, born in 1913, spent his youthful years dealing with the Great Depression, World War II (he served in both Europe and the South Pacific), the Korean War (he did not go overseas, thank goodness).

Somehow he managed to work his way through college--and grad school (earning an Ed.D. at the University of Oklahoma with the help of the G. I. Bill)--to meet my mother in Enid, Oklahoma, and to go on to have an academic career, whose pitiful income he supplemented with weekend gigs as a preacher (he was an ordained minister, Disciples of Christ). He also stayed in the Air Force Reserves, and after his death in 1999, Mom continued receiving his pension until her own death in 2018.

Animals loved Dad. I saw squirrels eat out of his hand. Birds land on his finger. Feral dogs that would have devoured me for a snack, lick his hand, tail wagging, "smile" formed on the snout that looked to me as if it belonged to an angry timber wolf.

He supported all three of his sons--the three of us as different as if we'd grown up on separate planets in separate galaxies, in not-even-parallel universes.

Not for one second in my life did I feel he didn't love me--even when the Old Hairbrush came out to remind my bottom that it was the seat of one who had done something ... punishable. (Didn't happen often--but was invariably deserved.)

Among the most difficult times in my life? Going out to see them in their final home in western Massachusetts, where I witnessed Dad's entire decline: cane-walker-wheelchair-bed. It was just so unbelievable to me that this man, this quondam superior athlete, was now lying on his back, unable to do a single thing that he had once loved to do. Yet even near the end he could laugh; tears could form in his eyes when he saw his family.

Dad had a gorgeous tenor voice and back in Enid had made some records of some religious songs ("Teach Me to Pray," "The Lord's Prayer"). We played the latter at his funeral, at our son's wedding, at Mom's funeral, and in the pews his three sons sat there, dissolved in memory. Lost in loss.

Dad's been gone more than twenty years now (he died at age 86 in 1999), and that alone seems impossible. I remember that when my mother called to tell me, I had just come back from jogging a few miles. Devastated, I went upstairs and told Joyce, then into the shower where I sank, sobbing, to the floor.

I could do that right now--sink to the floor. I still feel his loss with a piercing agony.

And so, yesterday, I spent a lot of time in bed, resting, trying to sleep, weeping.

And then, after supper, our son, his wife, and three sons came for a "porch visit," and I recovered, partially.

As those of you who have lost dear parents know full well, there is no full recovery. Nor do I want there to be.

Sunday Sundries, 282

1. AOTW: I see many of you--every day. You are the ones who, at the stoplight or stop sign, ignore that wide white line painted on the road, in your lane--that white white line right in front of you whose message is: STOP HERE; DO NOT GO FARTHER INTO THE INTERSECTION. Oh, how many times have I seen an entire row of cars have to inch backward so that a large, turning semi has room to turn. And why did it need more room? Because some AOTW had ignored that wide white line, had moved into the intersection, even just a little ...

2. I finished one book this week, the amazing 2020 novel Hamnet by a writer I'd not read before--Maggie O'Farrell. (Oh, but I am going to read more, you can bet!)

This novel tells the story of the life and death of Hamnet Shakespeare, the Bard's son who died at age 11 in 1596. (A few years later came that play you've probably heard of--Hamlet?)

Very little is known about the boy: He was a fraternal twin (Judith was his twin sister); we know when he was christened (right after birth was the custom), when he died ... that's about it.

But O'Farrell does a superb job of creating the boy's world--Stratford-upon-Avon and environs--the home where he grew up (still standing)--the family dynamics.

But even this required a lot of research and imagination on O'Farrell's part. The Bard, as you no doubt know, left few records of his life. But O'Farrell fills it all in so artfully, so naturally, that, reading,  I was continually thinking: Yeah, that's probably what happened--makes a lot of sense.

The story takes us back and forth. We meet the teenage Will, sort of at loose ends, not getting along with his father, a glover, and having no interest in pursuing that career, roaming around.

He takes a tutoring gig (Latin!), where he meets the woman, six years older than he, who will become his wife, Ann Hathaway (or Anne or, as O'Farrell calls her here, Agnes--which is how her name appeared on one extant document).

And then we shift to the year Hamnet died.

Back and forth ...

As I said, O'Farrell explains so effortlessly (and naturally) the unknowns about the Bard: What did he do after he left school? Why did he go to London in the first place? What caused Hamnet's death? What happened to the letters the Bard wrote back to Stratford? And so on.

We also get a full portrait of Agnes, who has some ... unusual ... abilities and skills.

Anyway, by the end (which I had not really seen coming) I was awash in you-know-what when we reach the final scene--about which I will tell you nothing!

3. I've almost finished streaming Eighth Grade, that 2018 film about Kayla, an eighth-grade girl near the end of the school year. She lives alone with her father, who tries so hard but just can't seem to connect with her. (She dismisses him continually, reminding me of my own Dark Days in 8th grader.)

Kayla tries hard at school--not in her schoolwork (about which we learn virtually nothing) but in her social life. But the alphas don't really pay much attention to her; she also posts online videos now and then--but gets no hits or shares.

She has a thing for an odd boy, but ... what will happen?

And, in a school-arranged visit to the high school with her classmates (a "shadow day"), she seems to connect with the girl who is her guide ... but how will that turn out?

Available on Amazon Prime ... I should finish it early this week.

BTW: The girl who plays Kayla (Elsie Fisher) is wonderful--kind of plain, kind of an engaging personality, able to turn her affections on and off, relentless in her pursuit of ... happiness?

4: Thanks to a suggestion from our friend Chris, Joyce and I have been working our way through the nine seasons of Waking the Dead, a British crime drama about a cold-case unit. They're always having to respond to the discovery of some decomposed body (or bodies), at which, of course, we get many good, close looks.

An interesting set of regulars on the show--all with their various "issues," of course. Sometimes we like the show; sometimes we hate it. But ... most revealing sign of all? ... we keep watching. We're now in Season 8. But, oh, can the images be grim!

5. Last week, on Facebook, I posted a pun about the word figment. For your pleasure (?) I've reproduced it below ...

... can't find it, but it went something like this ...

FIG: It was just something in my imagination.
PLUM [later]: Did you understand what Fig meant?

Anyway, I realized I didn't know--or didn't remember--anything about the origin of figment. So I looked it up. It comes from the Latin figmentum (something made or feigned). Makes sense.

But, you know, I don't think I've ever read or heard that word except with reference to the imagination.

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

     - from wordsmith.org

henotheism (HEN-uh-thee-iz-uhm)

noun: Belief in or worship of one god without denying the possibility of others.

ETYMOLOGY: From Greek heno- (one) + -theism (belief in god). Earliest documented use: 1860.

USAGE: “Of course, it is certainly easier and more economical to please a few gods rather than many, so henotheism slowly superseded polytheism, from which monotheism was a small, albeit logical step.”  Frank Luger; Lebenswert; Lulu; 2019.

Misty

an image from the Internet

Last night, after supper, Joyce and I drove down into the Cuyahoga Valley to Szalay's Farm and Market to pick up a few things.

There had been some (mild) storms in the area, and the roads were wet--the Cuyahoga Valley National Park was lush. And as we descended to the river, we saw thick mists rising from the roads, from the farmland and forests. 'Twas gorgeous.
.
And so I did what I just had to do, you know? I started singing that old song "Misty."

I didn't get too far--though I did actually remember quite a few of the lyrics. (From Joyce's expression I couldn't tell if she was touched that I was singing--or relieved that I'd stopped.)

I guessed, as we talked about the song, that it was Nat King Cole who'd done the version I remembered.

But, no, I just checked: It was Johnny Mathis. (Link to video of song.) And I see that Ella Fitzgerald released a version, too. (Here's a link to her performance.) Others have done it, too (including Frank Sinatra)--as you can quickly discover on Google and YouTube.

BTW: Just to show you how times have changed: When I started typing "Johnny Mathis" into Google, it suggested, instead, that I wanted "Johnny Manziel."

I see on Wikipedia that pianist Erroll Garner wrote the music in 1954 (and recorded it)--with lyrics added later by Johnny Burke, who wrote them at Mathis' request. It reached #12 on the charts--and sold a couple million copies and became, says Wikipedia, Mathis' "signature song"--which makes even more egregious my failure to identify the singer performing in my memory.

Mathis released "Misty" on September 14, 1959. I was about to turn 15 and had just begun my sophomore year at Hiram High School. It quickly became a standard at our soc hops and dances.

I had a number of passions in 1959 (schoolwork was manifestly not one of them*), including basketball, girls, baseball, girls. My voice had recently changed from that of a Vienna Choir Boy to something a little more like a warthog in agony (okay, not quite that bad), and I was involved in a lot of activities at school--band (cornet), choir (!), various clubs, and school plays.

In fact, when Mathis released the song, we Hiram Huskies were already in rehearsal for Masquerade in Vienna, an adapted version of Johann Strauss' light operetta Die Fledermaus (The Bat).

I had somehow acquired the male lead and was playing Dr. Falke, who, I see in my copy of the old program, was "a notary, with a flair for dramatics." Hmmmmm. The operetta begins with Dr. Falke waking up in the woods where some waggish friends have abandoned him.

I vow revenge--I sing a solo ("Yes, Tis I!")--and off we go.

I have one grim memory of that production. The director--the wonderful Mrs. Ruthana Dreisbach--had contacted Aurora High School (eleven miles away) about our bringing the show over there; they agreed; we performed it for a school assembly in the afternoon on the gym floor in the old Aurora High, the building which would, by 1966, become the Aurora Middle School, where I began my teaching career--and where I, too, would direct productions on that gym floor (the first in the spring of 1967).

I fiercely ignored the audience that day. I had played basketball and baseball against some of them, and I imagined those guys sitting on the bleachers, crafting insults they could deliver later that year when we ran up and down the basketball court--or when I stepped up to bat.

When I started teaching in Aurora, I was worried that some unpleasant echoes of "Yes, 'Tis I!" would still be reverberating in that gym. They were--but only I, apparently, could hear them.

Anyway, the mists were beautiful last evening down in the Valley--and the memories here have actually caused a different kind of mist to begin to rise ...


* I just looked at my sophomore grades: for the year I had a C+ average in Latin II, B+ in English.

My Boyhood Board (Bored?) Games

I've been streaming via Amazon Prime the film 8th Grade (2018)--have been depressed, amused, annoyed, and entertained by it--and one of its frequent (even dominant) images is that of the smart phone. All the kids have them; all the kids use them--all the time. I just saw one scene last night when our heroine, a shy but clever 8th-grade girl, Kayla, was talking with two alpha female members of her class, out in the hall at school; the entire time, the two alphas stared at their phones, basically ignoring Kayla, who feigned being unfazed.

(I'll write more about this film when I finish it.)

8th Grade got me to thinking about the games from my own boyhood--not just the outdoor biking and baseball and basketball and staying out till the streetlights came on and avoiding fights and looking for girls and finding them and pretending I wasn't interested in them, even though I was, but our indoor games and activities when I  had to go inside because there was a blizzard or tornado outside.

We had only a single black-and-white TV set when I was a kid--Dad-controlled--and we were not allowed to turn it on during the day--except on Saturday because, you know, cartoons and Hopalong Cassidy are essential.

So we played card games (Old Maid, Crazy Eights, Authors, for example--that last one would be popular today, eh?) and board games (Scrabble--at which my grandmother Osborn was a WHIZ), checkers, some inept chess, etc. Our Osborn grandparents, who lived close by through most of my boyhood, had some games they kept for us, including, I think, Chinese checkers, and a game with some kind of Indian (India Indian). Pacheesi! I just remembered. (No, I didn't: I Googled.)

cards from Authors card game

But around Christmas in 1952 (I had just turned 8) we were living in Amarillo, Texas, because the Air Force had called Dad back to active duty (Korean War--fortunately, he did not go overseas). He was stationed at Amarillo Air Force Base (1942-46, 1951-68), where he served as one of the chaplains.

That Christmas of 1952 we were out at the base (where I loved to go) for some kind of gift giveaway for the kids, and we got a board game called Finance and Fortune.

When we opened it, we immediately saw that it was a version of Monopoly--cheaper, of course. And simpler (was it?).

eBay has a bunch of them--various prices--nothing too oppressive.

As I sit here now, I don't remember much about the rules--looking at the pic, though, you can see its resemblance to Monopoly.

Trusty Wikipedia says it was released in 1932 (a bit of Depression-era fantasy, eh?) before Monopoly (1935) and, indeed, was that celebrated game's "predecessor." The rules for Finance and Fortune are also in the Wikipedia entry, but after reading a few lines, I got bored and quit. (Where's my iPhone?) So ... if you're interested ... check it out.

This brings me back to 8th Grade. Fairly early in the film Kayla is invited to an alpha girl's birthday party (arranged via the parents--not the alpha). The alpha is wealthy: big house, swimming pool. After they all swim a bit, they gather around the alpha for the opening of presents. She opens a few "in" presents (given by other alphas)--and then it's Kayla's gift, which turns out to be a card game, a game that Kayla, embarrassed by the frosty reaction, says is "really fun" (or words to that effect).

More cold reaction, and Kayla goes in the house, phones her dad, says, basically, "Get me outta here!"

Oh, those boring card and board games!

But, as I said, they were what we had available in 1952, and we played them with eagerness and passion (and, in my case, anger when I was losing). And then I would go read a Western I'd signed out at the library.

So, this was how I spent my leisure time in the days before multiple TV sets, the Internet, smart phones, social media, etc.

And so are we Boomers better off than today's youngsters?

Just different, I guess.

But I'm really glad this digital world was not dominant in my boyhood. I couldn't have resisted it. I never would have read a book ... or hurled checkers pieces across the room in a loser's rage ... or played Finance and Fortune.

And--sad, sad sad--this blog post would not exist!

Feral Argument

We have several feral cats in the neighborhood, and, now and then, we tremble for the birds in our yard, birds that we see the cats stalking. Joyce is especially fond of a chickadee that has recently made its home (or resting place?) in a little birdhouse she hung on the wall on our front porch. One of the cats has noticed it, too--but so far it has been unsuccessful in its attempts to dispatch the little bird.

This morning, early, as I was getting up, I heard yowling outside. Not mewing. Not purring. Yowling. You've probably all heard it--it reminds you, at first, of angry infants.

I looked out our bedroom window (we're on the second floor), and saw not some brawling infants but two of our local feral cats facing off on the sidewalk out front. They were only inches from each other, frozen, except for an occasional tail flick (one would do it, followed by the other).

And, oh, the sounds! If I may translate:

• Cat 1: If you come any closer, I'll kill you!
• Cat 2: If you come any closer, I'll kill you!

Flicker. Yowl. Flicker. Yowl.

It went on for a while. Neither attacking. Neither moving. Neither yielding. Eyes locked. Both puffing their coats to increase the illusion of size--and, thus, of danger.

I got tired of watching and headed off to do my morning chores (unload the dishwasher from last night, etc.) When I got back upstairs (oh, about ten minutes later), I looked outside and saw they were gone.

No blood on the sidewalk--no puffs of fur--no corpse(s)--no displays of memorial flowers--no ...

I've seen both cats later on this morning--neither seems injured--or diminished--or cowed (can a cat be cowed?) (can a cow be catty?).

BTW: Cowed goes back a long way. Shakespeare used it in Macbeth, 1606 (?), near the end, when Macbeth learns that Macduff was not of woman born (something like a cesarean, instead). And Macbeth, who recognizes this sort of birth as part of the witches' prophecy, cries:

Accursed be that tongue that tells me so,

For it hath cow'd my better part of man! (5.8)

Anyway, I'm not sure what caused the cat-confrontation. Perhaps both were set on the chickadee, and there's just not enough to share? (Not that cats or other creatures are good at sharing--they really need some kindergarten, some Sesame Street.)

But what got me the most, I guess? The ugly yowls each was emitting. It was haunting.

And thought-provoking. In those two feral cats I saw our country--fiercely divided, threatening, yowling at the other, neither yielding, neither considering even the possibility of compromise--the possibility that the other side might, you know, have something worthwhile (or true) to say, neither listening to the other, each assailing the motives of the other, each imputing to the other some vile behavior, each firmly attached to conspiracy theories, neither really caring what the other has to say ...*

Later, I bet those cats went back to their phones and posted some nasty memes on Facebook. And got lots of Likes. Maybe a few Hearts.

*Don't get me wrong--we don't compromise with racism, with homophobia, xenophobia, misogyny, etc. But can't we agree on anything that will help advance and improve this country? If not--'tis hopeless. And the yowls we hear are the opening salvos of another civil war.

A Song Knocking About in My Head

It's happened again.

From some unidentifiable source--for some unfathomable reason--a song popped into my head late last night. I remembered only a few words of it ...

Knock three times on the ceiling if you want me.
Twice on the pipe ...

That's all. I could not remember who sang it--or when--but I do know this: Every time I woke up last night--every single time--those fragments of lyrics popped up into my head like a grinning creature in Whac-A-Mole, a grinning creature that escaped me every single time.

So ... this morning ... Google to the Rescue!

Performers: Tony Orlando and Dawn (see pic at the top of this post)--at the time, though, they were just "Dawn": Tony Orlando had not emerged to take the spotlight. The others in Dawn at the time were Toni Wine and Linda November.
Composers: L. Russell Brown and Irwin Levine
Released: 1970; it would become #1 in the USA (January 1971) and in numerous other countries.
Lyrics: see bottom of this post

In 1970 I was in my first year of marriage, living in Kent, Ohio (323 College Court), with Joyce; I was driving twelve miles each morning to the old Aurora Middle School (102 E. Garfield Road) to teach 7th grade Language Arts. I listened to the car radio, going and returning, so I'm pretty sure I heard that song every day at least once. It was everywhere.

It's kind of a catchy thing, you know? Not very deep. Not very ... angry ... or even passionate. (Link to video.) A guy living upstairs from a woman he's ... uh ... obsessed with (too sweet a song to be creepy?). It's sung to her, asking her to let him know if she wants to meet him ... and she can let him know by knocking three times on the ceiling; if the answer is "no," well, she should knock twice on the pipe.

Tony Orlando, by the way, was born the same year as I: 1944--though he's about seven months older (and, yes, he's still alive, still performing). (As I am.) (Not.)

He and Dawn had a TV variety show on CBS--1974-76: The Tony Orlando and Dawn Show. The group broke up in 1976 after the show went off the air.

I'm not sure why this what's-that-song? stuff happens to me now and then (always at night, of course--when my phone and computer are off). Is there some insidious rogue area in my brain that, every now and then, decides to disturb my sleep? That sends into my consciousness the (partial) memory of something that doesn't really matter? But that nonetheless drives me batty the rest of the night as I struggle to access that part of my memory labeled Stuff That Doesn't Really Matter but Which You Must Remember Right Now or You Will Sleep Only Sporadically the Rest of the Night?

And so I ask, "Mr. Darwin, what possible evolutionary advantage did this cerebral quirk grant to me and my fellow sleep-troubled humans?"

Maybe it kept us safe at night? Restless, we would not be as vulnerable to, you know, prowling, hungry flesh-eaters?

Okay, but there were times last night, trying to sleep, when I would have preferred to become a tiger's late-night snack.


Lyrics to the song:

Hey girl what ya doin' down there

Dancin' alone every night while I live right above you

I can hear your music playin'

I can feel your body swayin'

One floor below me you don't even know me

I love you

Oh my darling

Knock three times on the ceiling if you want me

Twice on the pipe if the answer is no

Oh my sweetness

Means you'll meet me in the hallway

Twice on the pipe means you ain't gonna show

If you look out your window tonight

Pull in the string with the note that's attached to my heart

Read how many times I saw you

How in my silence I adored you

Only in my dreams did that wall between us come apart

Oh my darling

Knock three times on the ceiling if you want me

Twice on the pipe if the answer is no

Oh my sweetness

Means you'll meet me in the hallway

Twice on the pipe means you ain't gonna show

I can hear your music playin'

I can feel your body swayin'

One floor below me you don't even know me

I love you

Oh my darling

Knock three times on the ceiling if you want me

Twice on the pipe if the answer is no

Oh my sweetness

Means you'll meet me in the hallway

Twice on the pipe means you ain't gonna show

Our Yelping Times

I've been thinking lately about how the Internet and social media have empowered us all in some striking ways--some of which are positive. Research now is so much easier than it used to be. When I was writing books about Jack London and The Call of the Wild in the 80s and 90s, I had to go places--to libraries and archives to see the photographs and documents I needed.

One example: I went to the special collections in the Bancroft Library at Berkeley (Calif.) to see their Klondike and Jack London photos. This meant an airplane ticket, a car rental, some motel nights, etc. And it was not long after that before all those photographs were online; I could have examined them on my iPad at the coffee shop. (And saved a few bucks in the process.)

But we're all aware, of course, of the Dark Side of the Web--the speed-of-light spreading of falsehood, of slander, of sinister things, of rage--all over the world. Of course, goodness spreads just as quickly but somehow seems far less interesting to us than scandal and defamatory assaults on individuals and institutions.

Also employing these digital assassination tools are sites that allow anyone--and I mean anyone--to comment on, well, just about anything. Qualifications to criticize be damned.

You can go online and trash your physician, your teachers, your local restaurants, a book you read, a concert you attended--hell, just about anything. (All anonymously, of course.) You can use the same sites to praise people and institutions--but who reads that? Or wants to read that? Far more fun to see someone/something shredded rather than reassembled.

As a long-time book-reviewer (I published my first in 1999 and since then have done nearly 2000 reviews for Kirkus Reviews and the Cleveland Plain Dealer), I have, of course, noticed how the opinions of the traditional (i.e., qualified) reviewers in the arts have declined in recent years--surrendering to the opinions of noisy others (who may or may not be qualified).

During the years I was growing up, I enjoyed reading in the newspapers (remember them?) the commentaries on the sports pages (about the only pages I read back then), commentaries offered by writers clearly competent and experienced.

Later (more ... mature!), I loved reading reviews of books and films and plays and concerts and ... My older brother, who'd loved and studied classical music from earliest boyhood, later became the classical music critic for the Boston Globe for about thirty years. No doubt in my mind: I'd grown up in the house where he lived; I knew what he'd done to prepare for such a gig (though he wasn't really preparing for it in the traditional sense--he was just loving and learning and learning and loving classical music).

I was a desultory reader in my school days (though I did read Moby-Dick in high school study hall--but I also read trashy Westerns in that same study hall). But a high school teacher (Mr. Brunelle) and a couple of college professors (especially Dr. Abe Ravitz), tightened that light bulb in my head that was so loose it only flickered--and I soon became the Insane Reader that I am now.

Over the years, though, I learned to decline to review books that I felt incompetent to evaluate. (I did this only a couple of weeks ago, in fact.) Authors, I know, crave critics who know what they're talking about (though, of course, most of them, at least now and then, despise what some critics think and say).

The Internet now is awash with opinions about books--many (most?) of them by people whose only qualification is that they have an opinion. (We're not even certain that they've actually read the book.) Amazon, for example, allows anyone who registers with them to post reviews. And I've been approached more than once by writers who asked me to post an Amazon review for them. (I've done so only once--and only because I really admired both the writer and his/her new book.)

As a result, book pages and sections in major newspapers have declined--probably permanently. (There are, of course, numerous other reasons for the fall of newsprint.)

Lots of people have observed (in numerous contexts) about our "snowflake society"--about our current capacity to melt--and then boil--rapidly. Teachers of literature, it seems, must now issue "trigger warnings" lest some sensitive student be offended by, oh, some crazy guy trying to kill a poor white whale. Save the whales!

But hell, I've learned that one of the great joys of reading is encountering things that make me uncomfortable. That's one way we learn, you know? We come across something confusing or disturbing; we think about it; we learn, finding a place to fit it into our evolving conception of the world.

But not these days, I guess. Instead we insist on banning all discomfort. Sticking to what we already know and already think.

And so it was, last night, reading The Mirror and the Light (2020) the third volume of Hilary Mantel's superb trilogy about Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII, et al., I was jarred upright by this (the point-of-view is Cromwell's):

"But he thinks, no, none of us can stand anything. Scrape our skin, and beneath is an infant, howling" (286).

And these days--too often (far too often)--the howling infants drown out the reasonable, thoughtful adults.

Sunday Sundries, 281

1. HBOTW [Human Being of the Week]: Deborah Pinnell, owner and manager of Open Door Coffee Company, has been so kind to me over the years she's been in business here--including (and especially) during Pandemic Time. Pulling open that coffee-shop door in the morning (and afternoon!) is one of my great pleasures ...

2. I finished one book this week--the third of Christopher Moore's three comic volumes about the Pocket the fool and his huge and fairly dim apprentice, Drool. This one--The Serpent of Venice (2014)--is a wild one (even more so than the other two).

When the novel begins, Pocket is grieving for the loss of his wife (a famous Shakespearean character whose name I won't supply here--in case you want to read these novels). Pocket has gone to Venice, where Moore promptly weaves together the plots and characters of The Merchant of Venice, Othello, and even, I guess, The Creature from the Black Lagoon (that 1954 film) and the 2017 Oscar-winner, The Shape of Water, which, of course, appeared several years after Moore's novel. (Link to some Creature video.) Oh, and we even get a breath of Macbeth. And a cameo by Marco Polo.

Pocket finds himself embroiled in some of the most famous scenes from those plays--though Moore supplies lots of naughty (and funny) dialogue and actions--including some serpent-sex. (And, yes, there's a serpent in the canals of Venice!)

Technically, Moore shifts from 1st to 3rd person, drops in lines from some other plays (Julius Caesar; Henry VI, Part 2; Hamlet; The Taming of the Shrew); there are no doubt others, but I remember these. Oh, and he employs a Chorus, as well (who's nearly as naughty as Pocket!). And Jessica (from Merchant) decides she wants to be a pirate (a cliched one--think: that guy in Dodgeball).

As usual in these novels, Moore's plot does not resolve like the Bard's--and sometimes we are glad, sometimes not. I leave it to you to decide on this one ...

3. This week, in the evenings before Joyce joins me in bed, I've been streaming bits of a film (via Netflix) called Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life (2016)--a title that appealed to me for a variety of reasons (for one: I taught in a middle school for about thirty years).

The story is fairly simple: a very creative young man is stifled in a school that cares only about standardized tests. Running the school are a couple of rigid authoritarians--who, of course, aren't all that swift but use a rule book that's as thick as Infinite Jest. There's a Good Guy teacher who "understands." A girl with whom our hero gets involved. A bully. A loving mother. The loving mother's doofus boyfriend (Rob Riggle).

The filmmakers employ animation from time to time--taking the boy's drawings (or imagination) and then filling the screen with animated versions thereof. I enjoyed those parts.

The plot is absurd--but, hey, it's satire, not Grim Realism.

Three guesses: Do the boy and his friends emerge victorious? (Link to film trailer.)

I'm gonna watch 8th Grade next--a film out a year or so ago.

4. Had a short porch-visit last night with our son and his family (minus the older son); they'd driven up from Green, Ohio, their home. Good to see them--it's been a couple of weeks ... all of us masked and socially distanced! And, of course, all of us armed with cameras that none of us thought to use.

5. I actually went into our Acme Fresh Market yesterday (while Joyce waited out in the car for our online order to come out)--had to get a couple of things not available from their website. Well-organized in there--Plexiglas between the customers and the cashiers--all employees masked--most patrons masked (not all, however). Got out of there pretty quickly--after thanking the employees I saw for what they're going through (no fun to work in a mask all day, for certain).

6. We're enjoying a series on Acorn TV--Dead Still--a new series that takes place in the later 19th century and involves a photographer who specializes in taking photographs--lifelike ones--of the recently deceased. Sounds grim, I know--but it's actually very entertaining. Link to some video.

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

     - from Oxford English Dictionary

pandemain, n. White bread of the finest quality; a loaf or cake of this bread.

Etymology: <  Anglo-Norman pain demeine, pain demaine <  pain bread (see pain n.2) + demeine (see demesne n.), after post-classical Latin panis dominicus (from early 13th cent. in British sources), panis de dominico (late 11th cent. in a British source).

It is uncertain whether the following should be taken as showing the Middle English or the Anglo-Norman word:

1327  in  H. E. Salter Mediaeval Arch. Univ. Oxf.(1921) II. 175 Walterus de Dunsterre habet I payndemayn Bastard.

1378  in  H. T. Riley Munimenta Gildhallæ Londoniensis(1860) III. 424 Etiam cum uno payndemayn.

1417  in  H. T. Riley Memorials London(1868) 644 [White loaves..called] painman.

Now historical.

 

c1390  G. Chaucer Sir Thopas  1915 Whit was his face as payndemayn [v.r. a peyndemayne], Hise lippes rede as rose.

c1440 Sir Degrevant(Thornton) (1949) 1409 (MED) Paynedemayne [v.r. Paynemayn] preualy Scho fett fra þe pantry.

a1450  in  T. Austin Two 15th-cent. Cookery-bks.(1888) 11 (MED) Kytte fayre paynemaynnys in round soppys, an caste þe soppys þer-on.

a1475 Liber Cocorum(Sloane) (1862) 40 (MED) Take floure of payndemayn, and make þy past With water.

?a1500 Nominale(Yale Beinecke 594) in  T. Wright  & R. P. Wülcker Anglo-Saxon & Old Eng. Vocab.(1884) I. 788/32 Placencia, a payman.

a1525 Coventry Leet Bk.  300 To wit, ccc paynemaynes, a pipe of Rede wyne, a dosyn Capons of haut grece.

c1530  A. Barclay Egloges  ii. sig. Kiii Incresyd is thy payne, Whan thou beholdest before thy lorde payne mayne.

1973  C. A. Wilson Food & Drink in Brit.  vii. 241 The best white wheaten bread..was in the Middle Ages called wastel bread..or pandemain.

Compounds:

†pandemain-baker n. Obsolete rare

1454  in  H. Nicolas Proc. & Ordinances Privy Council(1837) VI. 226 William Brynklowe, yoman paymenbaker.