“In spite of all the learned have said ...”

Philip Freneau

Philip Freneau (1752-1852) was a journalist and poet in the early years our country was forming. And, oh, by the way, I once wrote an undergraduate paper about him back at Hiram College (1962-66) and am surpassingly grateful that some copy of that paper is not swirling around on the Internet. If you read it, you’d know why I feel that way.

He wasn’t a great poet—or even a very good one—but because he was one of our earliest, he is still anthologized.

One of his poems (“The Indian Burying Ground,” 1787) I’ve memorized—principally because of that research paper I wrote decades ago. (Link to poem.)

Most of that poem doesn’t have anything to do with what I want to write about today, but the first two lines do—here they are:

“In spite of all the learned have said, / I still my old opinion keep ....”

Sound familiar—not the exact words but the message? It could very well be the mantra of much public behavior in our country these days—not just “live” behavior but on social media, as well.

There are a tremendous number of people out there who have come to reject “the learned,” who reject the research and the findings that the learned have advocated.

Part of the problem is that the learned so often publicly disdain lesser educated folks. So many of the learned have earned the noun/adjective elitist. We have forgotten that, in a democracy, we are all equal—if not in knowledge, in humanity.

Though we all have different knowledge, skills, and experiences, the elitists often seem to have forgotten the value of so many other people’s labor and knowledge to the welfare of our country. Elitists sometimes sniff when they ought to sing their gratitude.

One result of this has been that many in our country reject “all the learned have said” in favor of what they think—or what they hear on our wildly divergent social media and news sites.

And, by the way, our media have always been divided. From the earliest days of our country political opponents have published their own newspapers, published egregious distortions (and lies) about the other side.

Anyway, I’ve always tried to value people for what they know, not disdained them for what they don’t. I listen to the mechanics who work on our car, the lawn service crew who work on our lawn, the kind people making my coffee, the man who delivers our mail. And on and on.

Just as I, Back in the Day, wanted folks to listen to me when I talked about teaching English in a middle school (which I did for about thirty years). We need to listen to those who know.

My Facebook friends are about as diverse a list of human beings there could possibly be. I don’t agree with what all of them say, but I try to hear it. Try to understand it.

I don’t argue online. (It’s pointless, isn’t it?) And one principal reason is this: I love my former students (who compose about 90% of my Friends list), so I try to listen—and understand.

This is one of the reasons that our current, volcanic society is so depressing to me—people screaming in public meetings, people doubting the work of people in highly specialized fields, people who have decided that anything they hear that they don’t agree with is “fake news.”

Anyway, I am not long for this world, but as long as I am here, I will listen to my oncologist, to my other doctors, to my many friends who practice occupations that I know so little about.

Maybe—if we listen more, respect those who know things we don’t—we will never again write poems that begin with “In spite of all the learned have said.”

Yes, we are all equal but we must rely on the various talents and knowledge of people who are very different in superficial ways from us.

Writers Who Disappear

 

The evanescence of popular writers is the damndest thing. And as I’ve galloped toward senescence, I’ve seen it occur, over and over in my lengthening life.

Today, for example, having lunch in our family room, I noticed a couple of shelves of books by Ed McBain (see pic above). Who reads him anymore? Who even knows his name? He was once very popular.

Evan Hunter lived from 1926 to 2005 and wrote under some pseudonyms—including McBain. He wrote scores of books—it seemed that one was coming out every few months. He used numerous pseudonyms (check them out on Wikipedia). He also wrote screenplays, plays, etc.

As McBain, he wrote a couple of series that got me hooked: the 87th Precinct (about a group of cops), as Matthew Hope he wrote books with clever folklore-related titles, like There Was a Little Girl and Mary, Mary). I gobbled them up like bon-bons.

But I couldn’t read them all—there were too many. But I did buy a lot.

Later, after Hunter died, we were downsizing, and we tried to sell his books (all first printings).

Ha!

No one, it seems, had ever heard of him. Or cared to own—or read—what he had published.

And that’s when I began to notice that fictioneers like him—but also “serious, ” “literary” writers whose names, perhaps, still resonate—wrote books (I am guessing) that are not all that frequently read—not the way they used to be.

Norman Mailer, Saul Bellow, Thomas Berger, Gore Vidal, and numerous others—their books used to fly off the bookstore shelves and flap over to my house—as they did to the houses of countless other readers.

I could be wrong (I kind of hope I am), but I haven’t heard anyone talk about these writers in a long time.

Of course, I don’t get out much ... too much to stream ...

Middle Child

 

The new novel by Jonathan Franzen—Crossroads—arrived the other day, and I’ve dived into it. (I generally love his work.) 

So far—I’ve read only about 100 of its nearly 600–it deals with things so familiar to me: the 1960s and the related anxieties (Vietnam, civil rights, assassinations, etc.), high school and college popularity dramas, life in a minister’s family—a life that includes three children.

Of the middle son, Franzen writes, that “by his own rational assessment, he was the one child in the family with no rightful claim to a room of his own, being neither the oldest nor the youngest ...” (20).

I was the middle child in our family with three boys: One is older by three years; the other, younger by four.

I guess I displayed in boyhood some evident symptoms of “the middle-child syndrome” (maybe I still do?), but I don’t recall feeling a lot of resentment. We were/are so different from one another, you see.

My older brother was a reader, a lover of classical music, a winner of scholarships and academic honors. (He and my younger brother were both high school valedictorians; I was not.) He played the piano with great talent.

I was more interested in sports and spent my days playing games, specializing in basketball and baseball—doing very well in both in our tiny Hiram High School. I also liked music and played principal parts in our school musicals. I had nowhere near the musical knowledge of my older brother—or his musical talent—but I got by. I don’t recall being jealous of him—but proud at his piano recitals, where he had the honor of performing last.

My younger brother loved sports, too—but also reading and doing well at school. (His musical talent was, well, not impressive.) He ended up going to Harvard, where he also earned his Ph.D. in history. With some friends he later formed a company that writes and publishes business histories.

My older brother went to Hiram College (as I did), but while I was coasting along, he was working hard and earned his way into Harvard, too, for grad school. He worked for a while toward his doctorate, too—got very close—then got the opportunity to be the classical music critic for the Boston Globe—and that’s how he spent the rest of his career.

And I? I got into a grad school program, got no scholarship money, and ended up teaching in a middle school—a career I loved. I earned a doctorate at Kent State, where I met Joyce (also a grad student), and, fifty-two years later, we are still married, and there has never been a more fortunate man than I.

And so, yes, I am the middle child, but I mostly admired rather than resented my brothers. How could I not?

Now, as life is winding down, I am grateful for my family (I was so fortunate—wonderful parents and other relatives), so spectacularly grateful for Joyce and her wonderful family, so humbled by it all.

I won the SuperLotto, it seems—not the one that delivers millions of dollars but the one that delivers a lifetime of happiness—and gratitude.

“One’s Erring Fingers”

 

  

I’ve started reading my way through some of the novels by Dawn Powell in the two Library of America editions edited by my FB friend Tim Page.

In the second novel in the first volume—Come Back to Sorrento (1932)—I was struck by a bit of a sentence: “one’s erring fingers” (208).

It reminded me of ... me.

The quotation refers to a piano player—as if I needed a reminder  of my own “skills” on that instrument. I took lessons throughout my boyhood and adolescence, rarely practiced, as was quite evident to anyone who ever heard me play.

I still remember the puzzled look on the face of my high school basketball coach when I told him I had to miss a practice because I had to play in a piano recital that evening. It was the reaction he’d have had if I’d told him I was going to be orbiting the earth that night.

I played one of Beethoven’s German dances—loud and impressive (but not that difficult a piece)—and got a nice response from those in the small crowd who didn’t know much about music.

It was my swan song—the last recital of my career. I cared far more about basketball, and my older brother played infinitely better than I.

No, what resonated with me about that quotation was typing. I took typing in high school and did very well. We had our weekly timed tests, and because of the bells on the machines everyone could hear how everyone else was doing. I really sought to be the first each week whose bell rang. Often I was.

And, oh, has that skill served me well throughout my life. College and grad school papers, dissertation, handouts for my classes for my teaching, etc.  Probably the most useful high school course I ever took.

In my latter years (now) I occasionally lose (because of my balance problems) my ability to type accurately or swiftly, mostly because of my disobedient right hand. When things are going well, I can still type fairly accurately, fairly swiftly.

But when they’re not going well it takes quite awhile to complete a single line. I mis-hit keys like crazy. And it frustrates the hell out of me.

Even as I type this post, I’m having a few problems—not like my worst days, but not like my good ones, either. Lots of backspacing and correcting. 

Oh, and don’t get me started on my penmanship!

Discouraging Word

 

The other day my Merriam-Webster page-a-day calendar put up a word I didn’t really want to see: senescence = the state of being old : the process of becoming old.

How insensitive of them!

When I was a kid, all adults were old—from my teachers in their 20s to my great-grandfather in his 90s. Just various versions of old.

Earlier today I posted a “memories” pic from Facebook. It shows my dad in line to march into baccalaureate at Hiram College, spring of 1966–the year I graduated from that college. He was 53–twenty-three years younger than I am now.

He was about to head off to Des Moines, Iowa, to begin another career: He would be a dean at Drake University; my mom would begin her career as a professor there (she had only recently completed her Ph.D. at the University of Pittsburgh).

I thought both of them were old.

(I, by the way, was about to begin my teaching career at Aurora Middle School, just eleven miles west of Hiram.)

I didn’t feel old for a long, long time. And, like many other younger people, I figured it probably wouldn’t happen to me. How could it?

I felt young into my early 70s. I was still going to the health club 5-6 days a week, exercising vigorously—exercise bike, running/walking laps, rowing machine, weights. Prancing around the locker room like, well, like a 53-year-old man. Like my dad back when.

I was 61 when I first developed prostate cancer. Had the surgery, and since then have had two rounds of radiation, immunotherapy. And I still went to the health club—still did pretty much whatever I wanted to do. Going on trips, to the movies, to the mall (remember them?) ...

And then I couldn’t. My balance deteriorated (probably because of the stiff anti-cancer meds I’m on). For a while I rode our exercise bike here at home, but even that became unsafe—I felt at times as if I would fall off. I knew I had to quit.

I use a walker now and then around the house—and always when I go out (which isn’t often: just for medical appointments, mostly).

I don’t drive anymore. Which means I can’t do the errands I used to carelessly do—grocery store, post office, etc. I can’t go to the coffee shop I love here in town—Open Door Coffee Co. I tried once some months ago. Took a fall. Haven’t been back.

I used to do most of the cooking. And you know about baking bread (which I can do only rarely now—on “good” days).

All of which puts a tremendous burden on Joyce, who never complains even though she has her own health issues to contend with. I was more than blessed when our paths crossed in the summer of 1969 at Kent State.

Anyway, reading this over, I see that it’s turned into just another Old Guy’s Story—you know, King Lear raging in the storm.

But I am not King Lear, nor was meant to be.

Instead, I’m just a mortal guy who fooled himself for decades into believing he was immortal.

And the reminders are coming fast that I’m not.

Like a recent word from Merriam-Webster, probably chosen by some young, immortal guy.

Vaccine

Yesterday morning Joyce drove me over to a nearby CVS to get the Pfizer booster for Covid. I had registered online and had an appointment time, so I wasn’t too worried.

The site was busy but not overflowing and very well-organized.

Entering right behind us was an older couple and their daughter (this I learned a bit later). I was on a walker; he wasn’t.

Although I was inside first, they took an alternate route to the back, presumably accelerated, and reached the check-in area ahead of me. Did I detect a slight smile on their faces as they got in line.

I was ticked. I would not have done that.

They started filling out paperwork, and I needed to sit down. My dizziness is no joke.

I’ve been getting vaccines my whole life—and booster shots. I remember how excited we all were when the Salk polio vaccine arrived: That disease had been the terror of my boyhood. (Later, I remember the Sabin oral vaccine, as well.) In 1956 I remember lining up at the Hiram School to get the Salk; I was 12. And I don’t recall anyone not doing it—though there surely were some.

I never used to get the flu (or the shots), but then I did, and I’ve been getting the shot ever since—have not had the flu in many years.

Smallpox was the scourge of earlier generations. The vaccine has been around since the late 18th century, and when Mary Godwin (later: Shelley) was in Geneva for the “Frankenstein summer” in 1816 (the summer she began writing the story), she arranged to have her young son William vaccinated.

But she neglected herself, and in 1828 she contracted the disease, which did not kill or disfigure her but seems to have diminished the glow of her beauty.

I remember the scar of the vaccination on my mother’s arm, my father’s. But by the time I got it, the technique was different, and I bear no scar.

Meanwhile, back at CVS, a nurse called me to window next to where the Usurpers had slipped in ahead of me. “I’ll take care of you,” she said. I had registered online, so I had no paperwork to fill out—just show them my vaccine card (which I did).

She took me right back to the area where they delivered the shots, and I don’t think I’ve ever had so swift and painless an injection. We then headed over to the two chairs to wait to see if I’d have any bad reactions. (I didn’t.)

About ten minutes later the Usurpers came by, their smiles gone.

That’s okay: Mine replaced theirs.

NOTE: No bad reactions today—just some wee soreness in my arm.

Some Sundry Things

I've had a number of things flick across my mind recently, none worth an entire post—but all worth mentioning.

First ... I was thinking this morning about how slowly I now dress for the day. And it reminded me of the years I was going to the health club, and how young, healthy men would do almost all their dressing in the locker room standing up. From stark naked to ready to leave ... standing up. 

That changes as you age. Now I do virtually all of my dressing while sitting down. I stand up only to pull my pants up.

TMI? Too bad. It’s time you learned what to expect!

Second ... a word popped up on one of my word-of-the-day online calendars, a word I’ve never seen (I don’t think), a word with a very specific meaning that I could have used now and then ...

chosisme

 

PRONUNCIATION:

(sho-ZEEZ-muh) 

 

MEANING:

noun: A literary style which focuses on description of objects, not on interpretation, plot, characterization, etc.

 

ETYMOLOGY:

From French, from chose (thing), from Latin causa (case, thing). The idea is associated with the writer and filmmaker Alain Robbe-Grillet. Earliest documented use: 1960s.

 

USAGE:

“‘How are things?’ someone asks the author at a party. That sets him off. How are things? You mean, in what way do things exist? How should I know? What, even, is a thing? I’d better write a book about it. And so he does: a book of short meditations on everyday objects, a contemporary exercise in happy chosisme.”

Steven Poole; How Are Things?; The Guardian (London, UK); Nov 5, 2005.    

Third ... I woke up often last night trying to remember the name of one of my very bright Education professors I had at KSU Back in the Day. I knew there was a Z in it. But just could not remember the rest of it.

But in dawn’s early light, here came the name, drifting effortlessly into my memory. Dr. Robert Zais. A razor-sharp mind—his, not mine (obviously).

I remember once, early 1970s, he drove me (in his VW Beetle) down to Cincinnati to some kind of conference. My brain was drained by the time we got back to Kent!

Don’t know if he’s still with us or not ... don’t want to check, either.

Fourth ... I told you there wasn’t enough in any one of these three topics to merit a full post. But as I was writing (leaving things out), I realized there most definitely was.  Oh well ...

Unfinished Business

 

Sue Grafton, who died at 77.

Earlier, I was staring across the room at a couple of shelves of Sue Grafton mysteries.

Remember her? She wrote the “alphabet mysteries” told by the principal character, Kinsey Millhone—a P.I. The first was A Is for Alibi, and she went on through the alphabet, letter by letter. She ended with Y Is for Yesterday (2017).  She did not live to finish the Z novel; she died in 2017; her family says no one will finish the series.

I read almost all of them, starting, I think, with G Is for Gumshoe in 1990. Joyce was once on a panel with her, took her books, got them signed.

Anyway, this got me thinking of all the literary (and other artists) who died before they finished their work.

Norman Mailer died before finishing his novels about Hitler. Dickens didn’t finish The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Ralph Ellison didn’t finish Juneteenth. And on and on and on ...

So many writers died so early we don’t know what they might have done: Stephen Crane, Keats, Shelley, Byron, and so many others. What might Anne Frank have accomplished?

Others wrote so long ago we don’t know what else they did—or would have done. The ancient Greeks and Romans. Shakespeare. And on and on.

Some writers I know were writing on their death beds: Edwin Arlington Robinson, John Updike.

What we learn from this, of course, is what we already know: Life (and) Death don’t care about your plans. Death will arrive when he will and there’s nothing you can do about it.

All you can do is keep working until you can’t. Posterity will sort you out afterwards, will decide what remains (if anything does), what dies with you—or soon after.

Depressing? Yes. But also liberating in a way ...

Smile

 

Chaplin in Modern Times, 1936

Charles Spencer Chaplin wrote “Smile,” a song that appeared in his 1936 film, Modern Times. I used to teach a little Chaplin to my eighth graders when we were studying Jack London and the Klondike Gold Rush. Charlie has a great film about that Rush, The Gold Rush (1925). I showed that entire film to my students.

I was thinking about “Smile” today when I somehow got to thinking about the different ways people smile—I’ve seen much evidence on Facebook.

There are people who show virtually all their teeth, people who show no teeth, people who just purse their lips, people who seem not to smile but whose glittering eyes betray them, people whose smile much resembles a sneer, and so on (I’ll name no names).

Except my own. I show no teeth (if I can help it). This goes back to my boyhood when some in my family (alarmed that I rarely brushed my teeth) told me that I would grow up to have “yellow snags.” And so I quit showing my snags when I smiled. The only time you’ll see my teeth on Facebook is when I am laughing—or inattentive.

They’re actually not bad teeth—generally straight. And my dentist has never called them “yellow snags”—though perhaps she’s just being kind?

And Joyce married me, yellow snags and all, and she also told me, more than fifty years ago now, that if my teeth had been bad she wouldn’t have been attracted to me, literary brilliance and overall charm and “hotness” be damned.

My Osborn grandparents both had false teeth, full sets—which was far more common than it is now. Nowadays we have far better dental care options—implants for the yellow snags, etc.

Our dog Sooner showed his teeth a lot—this the dog we had from the early 1950s to the early 1960s when a driver hit him not far from our house in Hiram, Ohio, and zoomed away to let him die. I would still kill that person today if I found him/her. And every judge in the land would rule “justifiable homicide.”

Anyway, Sooner growled, showing teeth, when strangers or other dogs came around. And when my dad was playing with him (oh, he loved my dad!), he would, with Dad’s prompting, grin—wag his tail like crazy and grin! It’s one of my great childhood memories.

Not enough public grinning and smiling today. We’re too uptight. Too polarized. Too angry at ... whatever.

Maybe we all need need a dose of the great Charlie Chaplin. His films are on YouTube. And his song about smiling.

Link to song “Smile.”

Link to Modern Times.

Piecemeal

 

I’ve realized recently that I stream films and TV shows by using the same technique I use while reading books: piecemeal.*

Right now, for example, I’m reading seven books simultaneously (some via Kindle) at various locations around the house: Richard Osman’s The Man Who Died Twice, Jane Austen’s Emma, Tim Gautreaux’s The Missing, The Complete Poems of E. E. Cummings, Scott Turow’s The Last Trial, Ben Aaronovitch’s Moon Over Soho, and John Grisham’s The Rooster Bar.

I employ the same hop-skip-and-jump approach to the streaming we do at the end of the day when all we want is an hour’s entertainment ere we drop off to sleep. Right now we are watching bits of Ken Burns’ documentary about Muhammad Ali, Jack Irish, Fresh Off the Boat (we’re watching only because Joyce knows the actor who plays the next-door neighbor, Ray Wise: They acted in high school plays together), Hinterland, Schitt’s Creek (second time through), and The Cafe (second time through). 

We try to end the night with lighter fare.

I’ll confess that Joyce is not all that crazy about this streaming technique, but since I am the only one who’s bothered to learn how to use the remotes ...!

I’m not sure what all this piecemeal reading and viewing mean. Is my attention span fracturing? Am I trying to get as much in me before ... you know?

I don’t know. I know only that this is the way I function now.

When I was younger, I never read/viewed like this. I didn’t read much in high school (I was too busy preparing for my career as the catcher for the Yankees, the point guard for the Celtics). Oddly, though, bored in high school study hall (I had four in a row my senior year), I read Moby-Dick and Jack London’s Martin Eden—little did I know how his career would later consume me for about a decade!

And I had to watch TV shows all the way through because there were no recorders then—no Internet, obviously.

As a younger kid, I did read a lot more—Westerns mostly. Kids’ biographies of notable Westerners.

My mom was a big reader—read a lot until she no longer could.

Dad was less obsessive about it, but he did all right. He read enough to snort at my high-school reading patterns, such as they were.

My older and younger brothers both read far more than I did. Both ended up at Harvard. Both still read a lot.

Anyway, here I am, forever catching up, forever making up for those years lost in dreams of athletic fame.

And I’m having the Best Damn Time!

*piecemeal = made from two words that mean “in pieces” and “by a fixed measure.” Or at least that’s what the OED says!

Another Long Day at Seidman Cancer Center

Seidman Cancer Center
Orange Place
Beachwood, Ohio

Yesterday was a miserable day.

Our appointment was at 12:40, so we spent almost all of the afternoon there—most of it: waiting.

I first met with my oncologist, who still remains encouraged by my numbers from the blood tests I had taken earlier in the week. Me, too. I hadn’t been feeling too well and was surprised that my PSA (prostate specific antigen—a sure sign of the cancer’s return) remains undetectable—this the effect of a powerful new drug I’ve been on about a year (Xtandi), a drug that also helps make me dizzy and unstable most of the day.

The other tests were positive, too (in a good way).

But I’d been feeling crappy most of the day: unusually dizzy (Joyce had to push me in a wheelchair through the building) and—I don’t know—on the “edge” of something. Nausea, I guess. I was fairly laconic as the doctor spoke with me.

He’s not sure what to do next, once the numbers start to rise again (as they will). Everything else (e.g., chemo) is even more odious than what I’m on now—and offers no more hope for a cure.

I don’t want to go through chemo—don’t want to deal with the cancer consuming my bones.

Anyway, after the visit with him (a specialist I like a lot!), it was down to wait some more for the two quarterly injections I get there: (1) Xgeva for bone strength, (2) Trelstar to retard the PSA growth; the first is in a quadricep; the latter, in my, uh, derrière. Both hurt despite a very skilled and compassionate nurse.

Then Joyce drove me home, where I pretty much disintegrated. I saw no way I was going to be able to get up this morning (it’s the bi-weekly day for the young women who clean house for us; they arrive a little after 8).

But I did it. I felt better. And Joyce, as is her wont on these days, drove us to the Stow-Kent Starbucks, where we got “our” soft seats; I ate a scone, drank some coffee, caught up on the New York Times (digital edition), my e-mail, Facebook.

Then we drove home where I took a LONG nap.

In the Times this morning, by the way, was the news that Sue Thompson (age 96), died this week. I remember her song “Norman” so well, released in late 1961, my senior year at Hiram High School. It was popular at the sock hops.

I didn’t really need a reminder of mortality today—I’d had a long day of them yesterday. But that song had once made me happy as I danced (sort of) on that old Hiram gym floor. So I listened to it again—and recovered a little joy.

Link to “Norman.”

So Where Did My Love of Shakespeare Come From?

 

If you had told me in tenth grade (when we were supposed to read Julius Caesar) that I would end up loving Shakespeare, I would have laughed in your stupid face. I hated him. I just didn’t understand much of what he wrote. And I couldn’t understand why other students liked him—or pretended to do so.

Same thing senior year when we read Macbeth. Couldn’t do it.

Same thing in English 101 at Hiram College, when once again, we were supposed to read Macbeth. I just couldn’t manage.

And so I planned carefully: The professor who taught the Shakespeare course was on sabbatical the year I could have taken his class (he offered it only every other year). I was so happy: I got to graduate with an English major without having taken a single Shakespeare class!

My first teaching job was in a middle school, so I figured I wouldn’t need to know any Shakespeare. And I was right: I didn’t need to, but it wasn’t too long before I wanted to.

And soon I “needed to” in a very different way. I was hooked.

And I think it started with that old Richard Burton-Elizabeth Taylor version of The Taming of the Shrew, directed by Franco Zeffirelli (1967). I loved that film, saw it several times before I taught it to my eighth graders. Or tried to.

I was still mostly ignorant, you see. Relying on footnotes and quick trips to reference books before class (no Internet then).

But as the years went on, I added more and more to my Shakespeare efforts in class. We played Elizabethan games, ate their food, listened to their music, talked about their clothing and the like. I taught them some history—especially the “cool parts”—the severed heads on London Bridge, the behavior at the Globe, the behavior of the royalty, etc.

Soon, the Bard was consuming an entire 9-week marking period.

I learned that the best strategy was to read it aloud with them, sharing parts. Stopping to clear up a confusion. I saved Act V for after the film (all the Bard’s plays are divided into five acts—though the action was continuous at the playhouses).

Soon I found another film I liked even more—Kenneth Branagh’s Much Ado About Nothing (1993), a film that still moves me (Joyce and I streamed it a few months ago). One strength: the cast. It includes some people who are still notable now—Keanu Reeves, Michael Keaton, Emma Thompson, Denzel Washington, Kate Beckinsale—along with some wonderful English performers: Richard Briers, Brian Blessed, and others.

So I taught it the last few years of my public school career (I retired in January 1997).

Meanwhile, I was reading books about the Bard and his world, reading all the plays and poems and sonnets (memorizing about twenty of the sonnets).

I traveled to England to visit his birthplace (in Stratford-upon-Avon), to London to visit the new Globe (where my son and his sons saw A Comedy of Errors).

Joyce and I went to see every play we could—in Cleveland, Stratford (Ont.), Staunton (Va.—at the American Shakespeare Center). After some years we were waiting to see the last play we had not yet seen, Richard II.

My younger brother called one day and said that play was now running at Shakespeare & Co. in Lenox, MA, not far from where they lived. Off we went. And when the lights came up afterward, both Joyce and I were weeping.

A far cry (!) from Hiram High School.

My obsession really hasn’t waned. Although I can’t go out anymore, I still read books, still revisit the plays, still try to keep those sonnets in my memory. (A bit of a job these days.)

So what hooked me on the Bard? When I realized that I couldn’t read him if I didn’t enter his world (just as he wouldn’t know what-the-hell was going on in 2021 Hudson, Ohio). When I realized the profound truths that resonated through his sometimes unfamiliar words. When I recognized the beauty of his language.

My 1959-60 self would not believe what has happened to him. He would believe he’d turned in the biggest nerd in the world. Whereas I believe I’ve had the greatest education in the world—so much of it coming from a man who didn’t know what electricity is. What a Tweet is. What TikTok is. What ...

Slip-Slidin’ Away

 

You might remember this 1975 song by Paul Simon? (If not, it’s easy to find on YouTube.)

As I was thinking about it today, I was lamenting my current physical and mental condition and one especially deleterious effect it has had: forgetting.

Just a couple of years ago I had, firmly stored in my memory vault, about 230 poems I'd memorized over the years. I was able to trot them out and annoy friends and family all the time. (I took some pleasure in that, actually—the annoyance.)

It was a bit of work to keep them stored. I had a schedule I adhered to rigorously. I had a set of poems I said on my daily walks to and from the coffee shop, some I mumbled at the coffee shop, sets I mumbled various days at the health club (M-W-F, TU-TH-SAT). I had a set I rehearsed in the morning in the shower (I know, I know).

And so I was able to keep them all in my head.

But my New Life is different: I don't walk or go to the coffee shop; I can't go to the health club.

That leaves home, where I do my best—but just don't have the energy to do them all. Not nearly.

I try to keep the long, complex ones that took me so long to learn ("Kubla Khan," "Renascence," poems by Auden and E. E. Cummings, et al.), but some of the others have been slip-slidin' away the past couple of years.

I do have a complete list I keep on my computer so my survivors will know all that my dead head used to hold. Maybe they’ll be impressed. Maybe depressed.  (Why did he waste his time doing that?!)

One comforting thing I have learned over the years: Poems I learned long ago (and forgot) returned quickly when I re-memorized them. “A Visit from St. Nicholas,” for example, which I learned back at Adams Elementary School in Enid, OK, leapt back into my head when I began rehearsing it. As did the opening lines of Thomas Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” (Hiram High School).

A bit of consolation, I guess.

And I’d wager that most of you who’d loved that 1975 Simon song could not remember all the lyrics now, but if you look at them/listen to the song, they’ll return as quickly as a boomerang.

And to make it easier for you, here’s a link to Simon singing it!

Reading Anne Tyler #1

 

I’ve started reading Anne Tyler’s first novel, If Morning Ever Comes, published in 1964 when she was only 22 years old (I was still a student, midway through Hiram College).  It takes place in Sandhill, NC, where a young man from there, Ben Joe, is at law school at Columbia and, on impulse, decides to return to visit his family.

And oh what a complicated bunch they are! From a great-grandmother to a baby.

I’ll write more about the book when I finish it.

But it got me thinking of how different the world was when I was a college student. No cell phone; no computers (except the UNIVAC type that filled an entire room—we each carry more power in our pockets these days).

JFK was assassinated in November 1963. The MLK, Jr. speech “I Have a Dream” was earlier in 1963. The world was ready to boil as the Vietnam War was commencing. There was no Medicare or Medicaid. No Voting Rights Act. Etc. There was still de facto segregation throughout much of the South. The cities were ticking racial time bombs.

Born in Enid, Oklahoma, a small city fully segregated, in 1944, I would not speak to a black person till I was in college—where I found out what I had been missing. I felt like an idiot. And I was.

In 1964 I wasn’t sure what I was going to do—or be. My parents wanted me to teach; therefore, I did not want to. I found, because of a couple of wonderful professors, that I loved literature, so I applied to the University of Kansas for their American Studies Ph.D. program. I got in ... but with no financial aid. So ... I couldn’t go.

To appease my parents, I had done my student teaching, had earned my teaching certificate from the State of Ohio in secondary school English.

I’ve told this before, but my critic teacher at West Geauga HS (where I did my student teaching) warned me, “Don’t get stuck in a junior high school!”

But I did. I applied for only two jobs (there was a teacher shortage), and the first one to call me back was in nearby Aurora, Ohio. I interviewed. Got the job (7th grade) and started my career in the fall of 1966.

I was thinking I would stay a year and get the hell out.

Ha!

I stayed a dozen years (earning my Ph.D. at KSU, mostly part-time), married a wonderful woman, and left Aurora at the end of the 1978 school year, having accepted a job as the Chair of the Department of Education at Lake Forest College (north of Chicago).

But I missed middle school kids, and so ...

I’m drifting away from 1964, the year we elected LBJ, captured the Boston Strangler, the Beatles released their first album (on LP, of course), the USSR was our biggest fear, Cassius Clay defeated Sonny Liston for the heavyweight title ... and so much more.

I turned 20 in 1964–impossible to believe that our world was so ... different. Yet in some scary ways fundamentally the same. Divided. So many people certain they were right—about everything. And anger, boiling, that would soon flow out into our streets ...

I Keep Buying Books

Colson Whitehead (a favorite)

I have slowed down some, buying books. I told myself some time ago that I really needed to do this. We’re out of room for them, and my memory’s not as good as it used to be. Joyce is now reading a book I read a few months ago, and I remember hardly any of it now.  I recall liking it—that’s about it.

I’ve continued with an old, old habit—reading an author’s complete works—a habit I learned at Hiram College back in the mid-1960s, a habit, as I said, that continues to this day. I suppose I could read them on Kindle or get them from the library. But I don’t. I buy them all, all first printings, sometimes signed. It’s kind of a sickness.

A few years ago I quit buying snack-food fiction—mysteries and the like. I buy them on Kindle (a bit cheaper) and read them at night when my energy wanes—which occurs earlier and earlier these days.

I don’t mean to diminish the quality of some of those books by referring to them as “snack-food fiction”: I mean only that I gulp them down, not pausing to take notes or think too much. Books by John Grisham, Scott Turow, and other mystery writers. I admire what they’ve accomplished. 

But when I identify a writer I really like (Paul Auster, Elizabeth Strout, Anne Tyler, Maggie O’Farrell, Ian McEwan, and many others) I just have to read it all. I can’t help it.

Right now it’s Tyler.  I had not read much of her work, but once I started, I felt that old familiar buzz commence, and off I went into Tyler-land, from which I will not emerge until I’m finished.

This week some new books have arrived by Auster, Ian Frazier, Colson Whitehead, and some others, so I’ll be reading them—and very soon.

Can’t let myself slip behind ... 

File It!

When I began teaching seventh graders in the fall 1966 at the old Aurora Middle School, my room was number 116. Except for tables and chairs (for the students), a PA speaker, and some blackboards (they were green!), and a teacher’s desk, my room was empty.

Oh, there was a filing cabinet in the back of the room. It was empty.

When I left teaching in 2011, I had accumulated more than half a dozen file cabinets, all chockablock with files; the basement now features other files in plastic storage boxes.

So what happened?

I’ve filed not just handouts and quizzes and tests but enormous amounts of information about the writers and books I taught and/or wrote about. I’ve got an entire filing cabinet devoted to Jack London, another jammed with information about Edgar Poe, another full of stuff about Shakespeare—including programs for productions of all of his plays (all of which we’ve seen).

Whenever I saw in a newspaper anything related to one of “my” writers, I clipped and stored it in the file(s).

There are also keepsakes in there—programs from speeches “my” writers gave, stamps that picture them, first-day covers of those stamps, etc.

And copies of my own publications. I wrote so many reviews for Kirkus (1563), that I’ve hole-punched them and stored them in notebooks. The same with these blog posts, the same with the doggerel I’ve written over the years.

I continued doing this after I retired—stuffing material into folders and notebooks. I had no real reason to do so, or course. I wasn’t teaching ... who would ever know? Or care? But still I forged on.

Until about a year ago when my balance became so bad—and my madness subsided somewhat—that my sanity emerged somewhat victorious. (I still keep these posts in notebooks.)

So now what?

Who would possibly want all that stuff?

Who would want to sort through it all, separating the good, the bad, the ugly? (The “ugly” pile will be alpine.)

I guess it won’t matter: I’ll be elsewhere by then (let’s not speculate about where). And, anyway, for virtually all of us on this earth there is no “forever.” A thousand years from now (assuming we haven’t destroyed the planet) who among us will be remembered?

But last night I was thinking this: In those files—in those cabinets—among those words I still exist. And live. At least for a while.

I Can’t Do It All ...

 

Baked yesterday.

For years I’ve posted on FB a picture of the sourdough bread I’ve baked that week. The pic has become part of the baking—and people have come to expect it, have become worried when I don’t post one.

Now, every few weeks, I do sourdough waffles instead. They don’t take anything like the energy that the bread does, and I can wait for a later day in the week to bake them, a day I feel strong enough to do it. A day when Joyce is available—for without her? No baking at all.

We put the waffles off till Friday this week (too busy and whupped to do it earlier). We kind of had to do it—or throw away the sourdough (not the starter—that lives and lives and lives, as long as I feed it once a week).

Our refrigerator is just too small to hold two large bowls, one with the waffles-that-aren’t-yet-baked, the other holding  the dough we fed on Saturday and will use on Sunday to bake our bread.

So ... we mixed the waffle batter this morning (Friday); we’ll warm it up; we’ll bake; we’ll eat one waffle apiece tonight and freeze the others to give to our son and his family. The younger grandson, Carson, especially loves them and sometimes (I hear from one of my ubiquitous spies) sneaks downstairs at night to steal one. (Reminds me of someone I knew very well about, oh, sixty years ago!) 

We feel good about sharing. Well, and we also bake more than we can eat.

Eating a chunk of our bread each day has been something I’ve done for decades—since 1986 when I bought the starter in Skagway, Alaska, and have been using ever since.

But, lately, my appetite’s been changing. I don’t eat nearly as much as I used to. I can’t. I can no longer exercise (dizzy, yes, but I’ve also always needed to watch my weight), and the combination of dizziness and Covid has kept me pretty much indoors. Often I eat no sourdough at all at supper—so without our son and his family I don’t know what I’d do with all the loaves.

Lately, both our grandsons have shown an interest in the dough, so it’s likely I’ll pass it along to them one of these days. Who knows?

I do know this: I always used to look forward to my Sunday baking, but now it’s become more and more of a chore—a chore that usually has a tasteful outcome, sure. But is it a wise use of my effort and time?

Not so sure any longer.

Here I Come to Save the Day!

I’m not sure why Mighty Mouse flew into my brain early this morning. But there he was, singing and flying.

I watched his cartoons a lot when I was much younger. Originally called “Super Mouse,” he was born in 1942, two years before I was. (Didn’t know that.) He made some movies (moderately successful), then began his own TV show in 1955 (I was 11)—Saturday mornings until 1967, my first year of teaching. I hope I wasn’t still watching.  Probably not. I didn’t get up too early on Saturday mornings.

There were some newer reboots, but I don’t remember them. Oh, and comic books from 1946-68.

Anyone who watched surely remembers the theme song. Link to it.

I can’t honestly say I remember any of the details about any of the episodes, all of which I watched countless times. (Was there a cat involved?) But I think I remember that the real action came at the end when ... when he came to save the day.

Here’s a link to one of them.

I’m not so sure why I was so fond of the series? Perhaps because I was a small kid and felt at times I could use some super powers? Especially when Big Kids were around—Big Kids who saw someone easy to torment. 

I’m sure I didn’t like the singing (Superman didn’t sing—nor did any of the other superheroes Back When, but this mouse did!).

I’m pretty sure he’s disappeared from the current radar screen. I don’t think my two grandsons (ages 12 and 16) have ever even heard of him.

But ... Back in the Day I lay on our living room floor, listened to the singing, watched the little mouse kick some butt.

Grammar and Usage Mavens

 

I did a FB post the other day about an “error” in grammar I’d stumbled across in an essay by Ann Patchett, a writer whose complete works I’ve just finished reading.

This is the post and the error: 

All right, you “whoever-whomever” mavens, how about this one, published in a collection of essays by Ann Patchett:

“I promised whomever was listening that from those very ashes the small independent bookstore would rise again” (This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage, 234).

Some people who commented said that the distinction was one that, in recent years, has been going away, disappearing into the swamp of Distinctions Lost.

I agree.

It seems as if the only time most people use whomever is when they’re trying to sound ... sophisticated. And often they’re just flat wrong (as Patchett was—so unlike her). When you’re using whoever/whomever, you have to determine how it’s being used in its own clause—and ignore the rest of the sentence.

In this case, the W word appears in the clause “W was listening.” So ... it’s the subject of its own clause, and that clause in its entirety, not the W word, is the direct object of the sentence.

This is true even when it looks weird to you: “Give the candy to whoever asks for it.” This is correct for the same reason the earlier one was: It’s the subject of its own clause—and the entire clause is the object of the preposition to.

Here’s a correct whomever: Give the candy to whomever you like. It’s not the to that makes it correct (as we’ve seen), but because the W word is the direct object of its own clause. I always found it useful to substitute he and him for who and whomever. In the example above, the clause becomes Him you like.

You can see why the rule is evanescing: Too much to think about in these days of texting!

Lots of other rules I learned in school have already bid buh-bye and are totally gone—or barely visible far in the distance.

The difference between may and can. The apostrophe. (On social media I see it hanging about, looking for an exit.) The use of the colon, the semicolon. The difference between healthy and healthful. And countless more pairs of words.

You just have to remember: We made up all these rules, and when the rules become irrelevant or arcane (like old English teachers), it’s time to discard them. Or to accept that such discards are going to happen eventually.

Stephen King Redux

My younger grandson (12–just starting 7th grade and a Big Reader) is into Stephen King. He’s been reading It.

I can relate to his dawning obsession. I was once fully in its sway, as well.

I didn’t read the early King novels (like Carrie).  But in 1990 I was out in the Sonoma Valley taking a workshop on Jack London’s work (another obsession that was in Full Go position).

I drove out there from our home in northeastern Ohio (love the drive into the West) and had taken along with me the first King novel I would ever read—The Dark Half. It would not be the last—not for a long while.

The seminar, sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities, was for six weeks at Sonoma State University, not far from Jack London’s ranch, which at the time was a state park.

At night, after I’d done my homework (yes, homework), I lay in my dorm room bed and read King. Pretty soon I wished I’d brought with me a night light.

The novel scared the bejesus out of me. But what surprised me most? How well it was written. King impressed me.

After that I bought and read each of his new novels as it appeared—for decades. And, later, when I was a freelance book reviewer for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, I wrote about a couple of them. I remember one: Under the Dome—a LONG one ...

I read even The Green Mile (about life on death row), which came out in six paperback installments, which I then collected in a little boxed set. The day each installment appeared, I was waiting for it at one of our local bookstores. I remember reading an interview with King, who said something like this about the serializaion, about how he’d never do it again: “Why did I give the critics six chances to kick my ass about the same book?”

I told my eighth graders about King, about his new books, and some of those kids became addicts, too. Some of them already were.

Then—a few years ago, for some reason I can’t fathom—I lost interest, quit buying his books. I have no idea why. I haven’t read a King in, oh, a decade? I don’t feel superior or anything; I just don’t feel like reading them.

As many of you know, King (born in 1947, only three years younger than I) is astonishingly prolific (the Joyce Carol Oates of horror fiction). He has published about 80 books, including some under a pseudonym, Richard Bachman. Most are novels but he also dives into other genre now and then.

Occasionally, he tries “serious” fiction; it’s not bad but not as good as his horror, his supernatural.

As his career has gone along, by the way, he’s been taken more and more seriously—he writes now and then for the New York Times. It must be very satisfying for him. And every year (or less), here comes a new book. (The latest is Billy Summers.)

I’m not sure how long our grandson will continue with his King Quest, but right now he’s enjoying it—enjoying thinking about all the King he hasn’t read, thinking about how much lies before him. I remember standing on that same promontory, looking far off into the King Horizon.

But we wish him well ... and hope he doesn’t need a night light.

Thomas Berger

I don’t know what got me thinking today about Thomas Berger (1924-2014). Could it be that I’m sitting right across the room from his shelf of books?

Could be.

I first became aware of him when I read Little Big Man, 1964, a novel about Custer’s Last Stand, a novel purportedly told (humorously and movingly) by a very aged man, Jack Crabb, who claims to be the last survivor of that battle, a man who was captured and adopted by a Cheyenne tribe in his early years.

Crabb also meets about every other famous gunfighter who once roamed the West.

Dustin Hoffman starred as Crabb in the very popular 1970 film directed by Arthur Penn. (Link to film trailer.)

Joyce and I were married in late 1969, and it’s one of the first books I told her that she must read. She did—and loved it, too, and taught it in her frosh English course she was teaching up at Kent State as she began her doctoral program there.

I went back and read Berger’s other novels (some dealing with his experiences in WW II), and then on and on until he quit. (And I read Little Big Man several times.)

And one thing I noticed: They were all different—each from the others. He has a King Arthur novel, and he explored about every genre after that, each novel displaying his characteristic wit, each novel making me shake my head in wonder and admiration.

I have a college friend, Bill Heath, who got to know Berger well and did some writing of his own about him. And I think it was Bill who first told me about him. That’s a gift I can’t repay

But the appeal of Little Big Man?

A lot of it has to do with my long fascination with Custer’s Last Stand. Early in my boyhood I read a book about that battle (written by Quentin Reynolds), and I re-read it about a dozen times.

As my life went on, I read scores of Custer books (fiction and non-). I read his own books—and his widow’s. I visited the actual battlefield several times. Bought a Custer Toby jug. Oh, and I took our family a few times down to see New Rumley, Ohio, where he was born and where stands a large statue even now.

Of course, the more I read about him the more I realized he was not always the Good Guy. He did some heinous things to Native Americans.

But he also was a major factor in winning the Civil War battle at Gettysburg.

Still ...

So, my fascination has cooled with Custer.

But not with Thomas Berger, whose work delighted me throughout my middle years. No way to thank him for that.

Coincidence

 

The past few days, Coincidence has moved in with me.

Yesterday, for example, I wrote here about how when son Steve and I went to the Klondike in 1986, he was 14 and I was 41.

And just a few minutes ago a former student from years ago, Reza Rais (a math whiz), messaged me to see if I knew when that would happen again—what year would it be when we would once again reverse our ages?

I had no idea, so Reza quickly informed me it would be every eleven years since 1986: 52 and 25 in 1997, etc. I was impressed—though also depressed when I realized that I would probably not live to see (m)any more such anniversaries.

This morning our son, Steve, texted us a photo of a white butterfly/moth (?) he had photographed while it was resting on his back porch. It immediately reminded me of Frost’s great sonnet “Design,” which I’d memorized a couple of years ago. I texted him a copy; he liked it. (Link to sonnet.)

But here’s the one that really got me—and needs a little explanation.

Many years ago I began reciting to Joyce a couple of poems on our anniversary. One is Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “How Do I Love Thee?” (Link to Browning.)

The other is Shakespeare’s Sonnet 29, “When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes.” (Link to sonnet.)

Okay, this morning Joyce had an 8:30 appointment over in Twinsburg, and she is always wary of leaving me alone for any extended period (my wavering, woozy body), so I assured her I would be in “my” chair in the family room, reading, until she got home. I promised.

I’ve been reading the past couple of days Anne Tyler’s 1998 novel, A Patchwork Planet. About 9:15 Joyce had texted me from Twinsburg that she was leaving, and no sooner had she driven in our driveway than I read this in the Tyler book:

“I remember this one sonnet I learned, the first week I was at Renascence. It started out When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes ...” (87).

I almost fell out of my chair—which would be quite an achievement since I was pretty much slumped in the comfy leather thing.

(I told Joyce; she was dazzled, too.)

Of course, the older you get, the more you do, the more you read, the more such experiences you will have. It’s not long before you begin to expect such things.

But I could not have expected this particular one—an allusion to our anniversary sonnet on the page before me the moment she returned from her appointment.

Sourdough Anniversary

 

It was almost exactly thirty-five years ago when our son, Steve (14) and I (41!), stood on Midnight Dome above Dawson City Yukon, center of the Klondike Gold Rush. (Behind us you can see the Yukon River winding off toward the west, and at the left, the much smaller Klondike River flowing into the Yukon.)

We were there because of The Call of the Wild, a book with which I was becoming increasingly obsessed, a book I’d just taught to Steve and his fellow 8th graders back at Harmon School (Aurora, OH). The book, if you don’t know, deals with a dog, Buck, that is taken to the Yukon to serve as a sled dog.

Steve and I had flown from Cleveland to Seattle, from Seattle to Juneau, from Juneau to Skagway, Alaska (where some key scenes in Wild occur), and rented a car to drive the remaining couple of hundred miles to Dawson City via the Klondike Highway (of which a large portion is dirt).

Along the way we saw and photographed a lot of key locations (including some related to my own great-grandfather, Addison Clark Dyer, who had gone on the Rush and filed a claim that earned him enough to put a down payment on what would become the family farm near Milton-Freewater, Oregon).

Before and after that Dawson City jaunt we spent a couple of days in Skagway, where we hit many of the shops. And in one of them we found some packets of dried Yukon sourdough. I bought one.

And it has changed my life.

When we got back to Ohio, I tried it out for the first time—watched it rise (as it is supposed to), then used the directions to mix my first batch of bread.

A dud. (I did something wrong?!?) But I ate every damn molecule of it, anyway.

The next time it was better, and gradually I adapted the bread recipe until it became what it is today, thirty-five years later.

Over the years I’ve added various flours to the starter—some from Lanterman’s Mill (in Youngstown, OH, a mill once owned by Lanterman relatives on my mother’s side of the family), some from Garretts Mill in Garrettsville, Ohio (where my mother taught English at the high school, where my younger brother graduated from that very high school, where I played baseball one golden summer).

My routine for many years was to feed the starter on Saturday night, then get up the next day, separate and save some of the starter for the next time, and begin the baking process with the rest of it.

During that time I also baked sourdough waffles, pancakes, muffins, pizza dough, biscuits. In fact, when my 8th graders were reading Wild, I would take into school one day some small biscuits, enough that every kid could have one.

But as I grew older (okay: old), it became increasingly difficult for me to do all the work the baking required. I had cancer; I had severe balance problems.

And so just about a year ago, I froze the starter, figuring I’d never use it again unless some sort of miracle occurred.

One did.

Joyce, who knew how much I missed that weekly routine, offered to help.

And so I resuscitated the starter (which took some time and patience), and soon we were back at it. Joyce would do a lot of the assembling of ingredients and implements, would help me clean up. I still mixed and kneaded and shaped and baked the dough.

Joyce has helped me avoid all the turning around—an action that has put me on the floor more than once.

I could not do it without her—as I tell her every week.

I now do only the simplest bread recipe, occasional waffles. And that’s it. I just don’t have the stability to do the others.

Our younger grandson was here visiting yesterday; he’s twelve, has just started seventh grade, and has become very interested in sourdough. So ... maybe ...? Our older grandson, Logan (16) loves the loaves, and I give him one every couple of weeks.

So ... thirty-five years have flown by. Our son is now 49, has one son who is two years older than Steve was when he stood with me on Midnight Dome back in August 1986.

Sourdough starter, by the way (when cared for), is immortal. So here’s hoping that it will live on after me, carrying with it some memories of Alaska, Steve, Joyce, and me. I could hope for no greater legacy!

Some rising sourdough bread dough
that is more than ready to shape!

Yesterday’s loaves.

Dyer’s Revenge

What to do on the last day of school?

The first year I taught middle school in Aurora, we had an activity day—outside. It featured a softball game between the 8th grade boys and the faculty. I played third. And a lot of the kids were surprised when I gobbled up a grounder and fired the ball to first. I was only a few years away from thinking I’d have a baseball career. That dream was over, but some fragments of dream-clouds remained, enough to impress some of the kids.

Other years we did other things—wish I could remember.

But my last, oh, decade at Harmon School, I would put on my syllabus for the final marking period the words Dyer’s Revenge for the last day. Kids would ask me what that was (those kids who looked at the syllabus!), and I would reply, ominously, “Just wait and see!”

So—especially that first year—there was some concern about what was going to happen.

There needn’t have been.

After some end-of-the-year wrap-up occurred (returning textbooks, etc.), I would announce that it was time for Dyer’s Revenge. And the room would go silent.

And this is what I did: I would go around the room—in no particular order—and say some things about each eighth grader. Good things. Things I remembered from the year, encouraging things I had to say about every kid.

All praise—no negative criticism.

I thought of things kids had said, what they had written, how they had behaved, what their presence in my room had meant to me, etc. At times I had a hard time preventing my voice from breaking, shattering with emotion. 

You see, by the end of the year I was very close to those kids. A lot of them had been in our 8th Grade Farewell-to-Harmon Show, performed only days before, a show that featured skits, singing, dancing (choreographed by my great colleague, the late Andy Kmetz). Each show ended with the entire cast singing “Bye, Bye, Harmon!” (The tune was “Bye, Bye, Birdie!”)

I wrote the skits and the lyrics, and various musical talents I knew at the school played the piano—including the great band director Gary Brookhart.

Most of us were weeping when the finale ended.

So, anyway, “Dyer’s Revenge” ended up being, really, “Dyer’s Affection for You,” and I never once had any trouble thinking of what to say about every single kid.

That’s the kind of place Harmon School was ...

I Miss Teaching

I do. I miss teaching.

I know that now I am totally incapable of doing it—in a variety of ways. Although I’m a veteran of approximately forty-five years—and although I’ve taught 6th graders through college undergraduates—I know that, physically, the job is beyond me—especially in these Covid years. I so much admire the educators who are working in this viral environment.

But even if I were younger—and had my health from those years—I don’t think I could teach in a public school. And the reason is the same one I had when I retired from public school (the first day I was eligible—mid-January 1997): standardized tests. They have narrowed and constricted the curriculum so that teachers no longer have the liberating academic freedom that I had most of my career. I’ve seen its effect on our grandsons—and it ain’t good.

This is not to say we teachers were wild and crazy then (okay, sometimes we were), but the principals I worked for (and I worked for two wonderful ones at the middle school in Aurora, Ohio: Mike Lenzo and Jerry Brodsky) did their best to hire intelligent and creative people—of all sorts—and let us do what we did best.

Reigning us in now and then. When needed.

But I miss the interactions with kids, the things I learned from them, the things we were able to achieve—together. The plays I wrote (sometimes with them) and directed. The clubs I sponsored. 

Some of those students have become life-long friends—and thanks to Facebook for that.

Even though some of us have drifted (far) apart politically, I never argue with them. I don’t want to lose their friendship. And arguing about Trump or Biden is just not worth it—not to me. Not at my age. Not in my condition. I’d rather argue with the TV set—which, of course, is just about as effective!

Of course, I don’t miss all the paper-grading—and I had a lot (I was an English teacher). I don’t miss lunch duty—though it was sometimes lots of fun. I don’t miss having four classes in a row. I don’t miss having multiple preparations. I don’t miss having 30 kids in a class (or more!). Etc.

But I do miss—once they and I became accustomed to one other—the fun we had, the discoveries we made, the looks on their faces when I introduced them to something they didn’t think they’d like (Shakespeare!) but did. And on and on.

And I really miss the last day of school. We teachers all used to go out to watch the buses depart on the final day—to say good-bye to the kids—and, believe it or not, some of them were weeping.

As were some of us.

Reuben, Reuben ...

 

Don’t bother to ask where this one came from. It just seems that my brain, like a dripping faucet, is dropping memories into my sink of consciousness, where, I’ve discovered, the only way to clean them up is to write about them.

So today (somehow) I began thinking about that old camp song I used to know: “Reuben and Rachel”—remember it?

I didn’t, either—not all of it. But Good Old Google supplied the rest of it for me, though I quickly discovered that there are many varied alterations of the lyrics.

Reuben, Reuben I've been thinking
What a grand world this would be
If the boys were all transported
Far beyond the Northern sea!

Rachael, Rachel I've been thinking
What a grand world this would be
If the girls were all transported
Far beyond the Northern sea!

Oh my goodness gracious, Ruben,
What a sad world this would be,
If the boys were all transported
Far beyond the Northern sea!

Oh my goodness gracious, Rachel,
What a weird world this would be,

If the girls were all transported
Far beyond the northern sea.

As I recall (from church camp?) the girls would sing the first and third verses, the boys the second and fourth. I also recall a kind of competition in volume, especially with the first two verses.

These were the junior high years when not all boys and girls ... got along. Many of us boys wanted to get along, but, especially in the early years, did not want to reveal that to the other boys—or to the girls. And we boys assumed the girls had no interest in us, as well.

(Many of them didn’t, I later learned. Many of us were still pre-pubescent, and many of the girls were more interested in the manly sophomores.)

(By the way, here is a link to some singing of the song—the lyrics are somewhat different because I pasted here the original lyrics and music from 1871–pictured at the top of the page!)

A far older song than I’d thought—but it still continues to contain its original notion, that the world would be a lousy place without, you know, those other people whom we somehow find ... attractive (after we’re through hating them).

As I would discover.