Hartland Sundries, 2

Day Two in Hartland, Mich., talking about The Call of the Wild and Jack London as part of the Big Read program sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities.

1. I forgot to mention something from yesterday. When I tried to log onto the wireless at the Best Western here, the program would not take me to the login page. Problem.  Needed wireless. But the young, very competent manager came to the room, and he got on the phone with the tech people, and about 20 min later I was online and sailing away. Some kind of glitch--certainly not some problem with the Old Guy in the room, right?

2. Today, I spent pretty much the entire day at the middle school, and let me say: I'd forgotten what it was like to spend all day in a middle school, though I spent nearly 30 years doing precisely that. I'd misunderstood, thinking I would be visiting five classes of seventh grade English students, but, no, I was doing five presentations in the auditorium and five groups of about 90 youngsters each!

And the remote was not working too well, so, after introducing myself and saying a few general things about London, I went to the back where the projector was and showed slides and talked about London--his life, his books.

Had a good time, actually. The kids were great--attentive, respectful (far more than I was capable of at age 12)--and during the one free period I had + lunch, I "talked shop" with some of the faculty, talking about testing and other issues they're dealing with far more than I had to in my career (I retired in January 1997).

And let me say: Based on what I saw and heard today, there are still lots of committed middle school teachers out there, young (and older) men and women throwing themselves into the lives and learning of their students. I was proud to have once been among them. And I was heartened ...

3. Oh, but the "action" in the halls, the pre/early-adolescent costume party--it was fun to see. Much has changed; much has not. Still lots of frantic energy, swarms of kids trying to figure out where--and how--they "fit in." Raging hormones ... You know ...

4. But, oh, am I tired!

5. I have the rest of the evening off and will spend it in bed, reading. Tomorrow morning I go in to do three presentations for 8th graders in the morning--then afternoon recovery time before addressing a group of (mostly?) adults at the local library about The Call of the Wild. I'll crash afterward, then drive home early on Friday.

6. Texted and spoke with Joyce a couple of times, and she is the reason, of course, I cannot wait to get home.

Hartland Sundries, 1

1. Okay, so I missed a blog post yesterday. I hereby surrender my title of Mr. Perfect. Actually, I was in a whirl of work getting ready for this trip today--to Hartland, Michigan (about 200 mi from Hudson and perilously close to Flint!), where, tomorrow (Wed.), I'll be spending the day in the local middle school doing some presentations on Jack London as part of the program, the Big Read, sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities. I'll be with five different classes of seventh graders tomorrow--and that will be the first time I've spent an entire day in a middle school since January 1997, when I retired from (the wonderful) Harmon Middle School in Aurora, Ohio. (Will I survive?)

2. I hate leaving Joyce behind. Hate it!

3. The drive (most of it on the Ohio Turnpike) was very windy, and traffic slowed in many places for construction zones--though I have to say that I was one of the few who seemed interested in observing the 50 mph (I was going 55); most people--trucks, cars, donkeys, whatever--zoomed by me with disdain.

4. The Turnpike looks much different than it did when I was a kid as we headed west. There used to be a grassy median the entire length of the pike--only two lanes each way--and each of the rest areas/service plazas was unique. Now--more lanes and cookie-cutter service plazas. Such is "progress."

5. About twenty miles from my exit (about a mile from my motel) Dyer's Law #748 kicked in: As you approach your final exit after a long drive, there will be (a) construction, (b) an accident, (c) both of the above. Today was (c) for me. Complicating things? I was in, uh, kind of a (physiological) hurry to arrive, if you know what I mean.

6. Anyway, I have arrived safely, have eaten a sub at a chain (not Subway--can't remember the name), and am about to hop into bed (yes, it's only 6:45) to go over a few things for tomorrow--principally, asking myself over and over and over again: Why did I agree to do this?

7. I hate to leave Joyce behind!

Sunday Sundries, 97

This will be a quickie this week: I'm scrambling around trying to get ready for some presentations I have to do next week--on Jack London and The Call of the Wild. I'll be better next week, but there are a few things I wanted to mention.

1. At the coffee shop the other day, I heard the manager tell a customer that one particular brew would "warm the cockles of your heart." Now that's an expression I've heard pretty much my entire life--have employed it myself on occasion--but what does it mean? Here's what the Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins has to say:

• cockles of the heart have nothing to do with the cockles and mussels Sweet Molly Malone used to sell. The cockles of the old ballad are what the dictionaries call "edible bivalve mollusks"--shellfish. In appearance they are not unlike our scallops, having a somewhat heart-shaped ribbed shell. The cockles of your heart, on the other hand, are its ventricles and thus, by extension, the innermost depths of one's heart or emotions. The word comes from the Latin phrase cochleae cordis, meaning "ventricles of the heart," while the shellfish cockle comes from the Latin conchylium, meaning "conch shell" (140).

2. I finished two books this week ...

• Edward O. Wilson's newest (published just last month), Half-Earth: Our Planet's Fight for
  
  Life. Wilson, now 87, has twice won the Pulitzer Prize and has retired from Harvard University, where he taught biology for decades. His thesis here: We are messing up the planet/the biosphere, and it's nearly too late to do anything about it. Here's a sentence from early in the book, a sentence I quoted in my speech at WRA the other day:
• Meanwhile, we thrash about, appallingly led, with no particular goal in mind other than economic growth, unfettered consumption, good health, and personal happiness. The impact on the rest of the biosphere is everywhere negative ... (2). His solution? To set aside half the earth and leave it alone. He does not mean an entire hemisphere, of course, but just a total of half. Think that'll happen?
• Yet another novel by my latest happy discovery, John A. Williams (1925-2015), whose novels and nonfiction I'd been unaware of until I saw his obit in the New York Times last summer. Since then, I've been reading my way through his work, chronologically (for the most part).
• Mothersill and the Foxes (1975) is his sixth novel and deals with Odell Mothersill, an African American who earns his Ph.D. and spends much of his time working for various
  
  Federal projects to help others--including a stint in the Peace Corps. But Mothersill has another consuming passion: sex. And he has one affair after another, some of which end horribly, one of which (near the end) would make Sophocles smile ('nuff said). So the novel is about both social and racial progress (slow, slow) and Mothersill's own slow-moving maturity. I enjoyed it. Lots of stuff about the Great Society programs, about the profound threat to personal safety that many workers in those programs--especially black workers--endured. And about the changing sexual and racial roles emerging in America in the 1960s and 70s.

3. My iPad II died this week (I've had it for quite a long time), so off I went to the Apple Store out in Summit Mall last night to see about a "fix." Instead, it was Plastic Time and a new one--with detachable keyboard. Movin' on up! (Don't wanna think about my credit-card balance now!)

The Call of the Wild--Michigan

For the past decade or so I've had the opportunity, now and then, to participate in a program called The Big Read, sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities (link to the relevant site). The idea of the program is to get the community involved--not just the schools--with a specific (generally celebrated) book. On the list of NEH-recommended titles (link) is ... The Call of the Wild, 1903, a novella I know a wee bit about.

And so it is, from time to time, that I've been invited various places to talk about the book and its author, Jack London.

On Tuesday, I'm driving to Hartland, Mich., where I will spend a few days talking with middle schoolers (haven't done that in a while!) about London's life--and then an evening talk to the community about Wild. (Link to that event info.)

I'm gonna be busy.On April 13th, I'll meet with five different classes of 7th graders; on the 14th, three groups of 8th graders. Community talk is that evening.

I think I'm gonna be whupped and voiceless by the time it's all over.

Meanwhile, I've been re-reading Wild (for the umpty-teenth time), reading a few new books about London that have appeared since the last time I did this, updating my trusty (?) PowerPoints, trying to remember what it's like to deal with middle-schoolers (I retired from teaching 8th graders in January 1997, though I have met with various groups for London presentations now and then).

Anyway, while I'm there, I intend to keep doing posts, more or less in a chunky fashion (chunks of this, chunks of that) in a format I'm going to call "Hartland Sundries."

Then again, I could just collapse into bed and not wake up until the Apocalypse.

red pointer marks Hartland, Mich.

Before and After

Before ... 9:15 a.m.

In about a half-hour I'll be heading up to Western Reserve Academy to visit a sophomore English class studying The Grapes of Wrath, a class led by former WRA colleague Jill Evans. Afterward, I'll walk over to the Chapel to deliver a speech--"Is Anybody Listening"--about our tendency not to listen to folks who are too young or too old. They told me to do 50 min; I timed it last night--47 (not bad). It's an annual lecture sponsored by the family of WRA grad Keir Marticke (2002), who died of a fierce and sudden infection in 2004 while in Vietnam. It was a great honor to be invited for such an occasion.

This morning I went over to Open Door Coffee Co., where I went through the text one more time (silently), and took some ribbing from the regulars because I'm wearing a coat-and-tie--not my usual costume these years of retirement. I'm actually pleased that I remembered how to tie a necktie ... it's been a bit of a while.

I walked home a little while ago to start on this post--and I'll do the After portion, well, afterward.

I'm kind of looking forward to a Grapes of Wrath discussion. I first read that novel back at Hiram College, my junior year, I believe (1964-65), with Prof. Abe C. Ravitz in one of his American Thought classes. It blew me away. It may have been one of the first "long" novels I ever read (or finished). And I related to it in a number of ways--principally, of course, because I grew up in Oklahoma, where the novel begins. I grew up about a dozen years after the Dust Bowl years, but I still remember those occasional dust storms that would boil red in the west (Oklahoma's famous for its red clay soil). I remember once that the teachers sent us all home from Adams Elementary School when a bad one was frighteningly visible in the west. That was fun. I was wearing my Cub Scout uniform that day, and I tied my yellow neckerchief around my face--like a Western outlaw--and battled the wind and the grit all the way home--about a half-mile away. (Just checked Google Maps: It's exactly a half-mile from our house to the school!)

All of Enid's elementary schools were of the "neighborhood" variety, scattered all over the city (yes, city: Enid is the seat of Garfield County, mind you!). So no one had all that far to walk. I'm guessing, though, that a few kids got home to an empty house--though the early 1950s was still the era when many mothers stayed at home. My mom did, at first, but then she got her teaching credential in the mid-1950s--and off she went on her career.

I've read a lot of other Steinbeck since Hiram days (though not all), and I've also read the biography by Jay Parini, who spent a day at Western Reserve Academy a few years ago (April 20, 2012: I helped bring him here), and sat at our dining room table and signed that book for me. A good man--a very good man--is Jay Parini.

The final moment in Wrath, of course, is a stunner--so much so that comedian Louis C. K. has a bit about it in one of his comedy specials. (Link to that segment.) (Kind of R-rated, kind of dances on the edge, as he is wont to do, so use your judgment.)


After ... 3:30 pm

I survived!

I attended a fine class of sophomores, who were actually talking more about Emerson and the Oversoul than Steinbeck. I told them that it was in a course on the Transcendentalists, a course in which we read the very essay they were reading, that Joyce and I met in July 1969. I recited "My Shadow" and "Funeral Blues" (Auden) for them, then walked over to the Chapel a little early to make sure everything was ready; it was.

A lovely introduction from former colleague Sherry Chlysta, and then--there I was--facing a Chapel-ful of young people and their teachers and others.

And off I went, stumbling a few times, losing my place a time or two, but pretty much saying what I'd written. About forty-five minutes later ... it was over ... and I was grateful for the kind reception from the audience.

Then headed with Joyce over to the dining hall where we had a nice lunch with some of the Marticke family--Keir's father and brother--and with some of my dear colleagues from my recent years at the Academy. I was near tears more than once--most powerfully near the end of the talk when I recited one of Keir's poems.

And then ... home. Relieved. Exhausted. Grateful. I fell into bed and napped for about two hours. (Old Guys can nap!)

Awoke with even more gratitude for this day--and feeling a lot of what Keir talked about in that poem: hope.

Day Trip into the Past

Yesterday, Joyce and I drove over to Pittsburgh for a meeting, and whenever we take a trip to that city (not often), I can't help thinking about my mother.

In the late 1950s, teaching English at James A. Garfield High School in Garrettsville, Ohio (three miles from our Hiram home), Mom decided she would work for her Ph.D. She settled on the University of Pittsburgh, a bit over 100 miles away (several other universities are closer, but Pitt's programs excited her).

Her three sons--born in 1941, 1944, and 1948--were not all that understanding about all of this. In fact, I was just starting high school and was morphing into Super Jerk, a role I would not relinquish for a long, long time (some might tell you I've not relinquished it). On the other hand, Dad's cooking skills were somewhat limited to grilling beef and making pancakes (he loved the buckwheat kind)--and I kind of approved of that diet, mind you. He also liked to drive over to Ravenna to the A&W Root Beer stand; I approved of that, as well.

During the school year Mom took classes at Pitt on Tues-Thurs evenings, a routine that meant she would teach all day, drive 100+ miles to Pittsburgh for night classes, drive another 100+ miles home, arriving between 11 and 12 pm, get up the next day and teach all day again ...  It was astonishing, though Super Jerk Dan thought it was merely annoying and inconvenient ... for him.

In the summers, she would spend the week down in Pittsburgh in a tiny room, then come home on weekends.

Dad--to his immense credit--thoroughly supported her efforts and would brook no nonsense from the Super Jerk or his brothers.

Mom got her degree and in 1966 headed out to Des Moines, Iowa, where she and Dad taught at Drake University--the years, I think, that were the happiest of her life. They retired out in Cannon Beach, Oregon (Dad was an Oregonian), then moved to Massachusetts when Dad began his slow, slow decline. He died at the end of November 1999.

Mom, now 96, still lives in an assisted-living place in Lenox. She can do very little for herself now. But she remains in astonishingly good spirits (no raging against the dying of the light--at least not in my presence). I write snail-mail letters now, for she can no longer get her computer turned on and off; her fingers will not cooperate with typing. And I always, always address them to "Dr. Prudence Dyer." She has always liked that--the "Dr." part.

Anyhow, yesterday, driving along the Ohio Turnpike, I pointed out the entrance/exit she used to use on her trips--at Warren (used to be Exit 12--now it's got some milepost-number that I haven't bothered to memorize). We followed her old route--pretty much--as we drove into the city, our GPS woman desperately trying to keep up with the quick changes; she failed, miserably. But we got there. Had our meeting. Then drove home, giving a silent salute at old Exit 12, where Mom, exhausted, would leave the Turnpike (just outside Warren) and drive the 20 miles or so to Hiram, where her loving husband awaited her, her three sons (including Super Jerk), her bed, where she would catch a few hours' sleep before rising at 5 to begin yet another amazing day.

Lawny

Tuesday

Our lawn service crew showed up today for the first cut of the season. (We use Turf Trimmers--Kent, Ohio--and have happily done so since we moved here in 1997.) We have a tiny yard, and it doesn't take them very long (the machines seem almost inappropriately large). I could do it myself, I suppose, but I don't want to--saving my energy for things I do want to do.

We first started using a lawn service when we were living in Aurora, Ohio--1990-97. We had about an acre of grass (front and back total), and I would do the front (the smaller and less difficult--by far), and the crew--run by a former student--did the back.

In childhood, I first mowed grass back in the early 1950s in Amarillo, Texas, and in Enid, Oklahoma. An old push mower (which is pretty much what everyone had).

The only thing fancier was to attach a grass-catcher, which we didn't bother with for a long, long time.

It was pretty hard work, pushing one of those--especially in our final home in Enid, which had a front lawn that seemed perpendicular--at least to a mower-pushing wee one like me. Having no trouble was Dad, a farm boy, a man whose musculature I envied to his final days. But I had trouble. Lots of stopping and resting. And cursing my foul fate. I have to mow the grass while my brothers are not!

Don't want to make it appear that they never mowed the grass. They mowed it a lot, too. It just seemed as if I were mowing it every day. My older brother, in fact, once we moved to Hiram, Ohio, in the summer of 1956, actually had a lawn job out in the township. One thing I remember about him: When he mowed, he sang operatic arias. I thought that was odd. (But then he went on to become the classical music critic for the Boston Globe, so who am I to cavil?!?)

It was in Enid, not long before we moved, that we got our first gas-driven power mower--more about it next time.

To be continued ..