Really?!!? 55 YEARS Ago?

There we are ... the mighty class of 1962, Hiram High School, Hiram, Ohio. All that's left of the once formidable early-60s' Huskies! There weren't all that many of us to begin with. A tiny school (my older brother's graduating class, 1959, had about a dozen), Hiram added some kids in the 1958-59 school year when nearby Streetsboro had a problem with its high school and had to send their youngsters around to various other schools in the county. I think we about doubled in size when they arrived. Our class graduation picture from 1962 (see below) shows forty-one of us (if I count correctly). Years later, a teacher, I used to tell my students that I--working so very hard--had graduated tenth in my class. They were impressed--until I added a little fact to the Fake News.

BTW: If you're curious, I'm at the far left. Toward the top. The dork with the National Honor Society pin gleaming on his lapel.

We gathered on Saturday afternoon at the home of Ronnie (now "Ron") at his home in Hiram Township--down near Camp Asbury, once accessible only by a rough dirt Asbury Road, since paved. Oddly in later years, when I was a middle school teacher in nearby Aurora, our sixth graders would spend a week at Camp Asbury. One year, one of those sixth graders was my own son ...

It was a gorgeous afternoon--sunny, mid-seventies. Ronnie and his wife had arranged tables outside in their sprawling yard, and there we gathered ... pretending (in some cases) to recognize one another, eyes straining for the name tags ... (Is it bad if even the name tag doesn't help? Not a sign of imminent dementia or anything, right?)

It was potluck. But I didn't eat--I'd promised to take Joyce out to dinner when I got home--but I sat and sipped coffee and caught up with old friends--and with people I wish I'd been smart enough to know better when I was Young and Stupid (is this redundant?). Bob, a good friend back then who became a prof at Case-Western was there); I hadn't seen him in five years (the previous reunion), and we laughed about ... well, you know. Always good to see Ralph, who's become a good friend on Facebook.

Not many of us, by the way, are on Facebook.

Carla and I have been teasing each other for more than a half-century now (and on it goes!), and Linda was kind to me, as always.

We talked and laughed on through the afternoon--wondered about classmates we haven't seen since the 1960s, told stories about those who couldn't be there, told more stories about those no longer alive (and there are too many of them). We especially talked about our former Coach, Bob Barnhart, who passed away this year. He was a big influence on a lot of us, and I have to say that he changed my high-school life in so many ways--all for the better. He was the Real Thing.

And then it was selfie-time. And pictures and more pictures and more pictures.

And then I drove off toward home, my heart once again throbbing with pleasure, sorrow, regret, nostalgia.

BTW: One of the reasons for the success of such events? No one talked politics. No one--at least in any of the conversations I had. We found, instead, that common community park we share. Where we played ...

On Sunday afternoon, it was Round Two. All the classes of the Hiram Schools (the high school consolidated with nearby Crestwood for the beginning of the 1964-65 academic year) gather each year in July up in Welshfield (five miles north of Hiram) at the community center. There were only a few of us there this time from the Class of 1962 (see below), but I got to talk with some others I'd known pretty well back then. Jim--an older guy I'd played basketball with; Paul, younger, with whom I acted in the musicals his mother directed.

I had to leave quickly, though. It was our son's forty-fifth birthday, and he and his family were coming over later in the afternoon ... had to get home to help.

So once again I drove into the west, Memory seated beside me, whispering ...

Frankenstein Sundae, 347

Mary also returned to the Vatican; she and Bysshe had been there in March 1819. And now once again, in 1843, she went to the Sistine Chapel to see the ceiling paintings of Michelangelo. They have, she writes, that simple grandeur that Michael Angelo [sic] alone could confer on a single figure, making it complete in itself—enthroned in majesty—reigning over the souls of men.[1]

Then it was on south to Naples, about 135 miles down the western coast of Italy. There, she would again see the ruins of Pompeii. A greater extent of the city has been dug out, she writes, and laid open since I was there before [December 1818], so that it has now much more the appearance of a town of the dead. You may ramble about and lose yourself in the many streets.[2]

“A town of the dead.”

Mary does not say so, but she must have had this feeling in Rome itself—where lay the remains of her husband, her children. Indeed, every place she visited in these journeys—in Germany, in Switzerland, in Italy—must have seemed to her entirely haunted by ghosts of Bysshe, of her youth (and health), of the hope that once reigned in her life, only to sink in a storm-ravaged boat off the coast of Viareggio.

Rambles ends in Naples, ends with these comments: … it is a joy … to see the calm sea spread out at our feet, as we look over the bay of Naples—while above us bends a sky—in whose pure depths ship-like clouds glide—and the moon hangs luminous, a pendant sphere of silver fire.[3]

And thus ends Mary Shelley’s Rambles in Germany and Italy, 1843—the final sentence in the final book she would write. A quarter-century earlier her career had begun with a travel book, History of a Six-Weeks Tour Through a Part of France, Switzerland, Germany, and Holland, 1817, a year before Frankenstein. And she ended with another travel book, an account that tells of her return to the places that she had adored, the places that had shattered her heart.

---

[1] Ibid., 232.

[2] Ibid., 279.

[3] Ibid., 296.

Sunday Sundries, 150

1. AOTW: An easy one this week. Some dude--in a hurry--going the wrong way down a one-way street in Hudson. Right at me. How I avoided him I have no idea? Must have been, you know, the consummate driving skills I learned at Hiram High School under the tutelage of Mr. Barnhart--Coach--who, sadly, passed away this year. Coach would have dragged the AOTW out through the window and explained to him--most abruptly--what a ONE-WAY sign means!

2. Yesterday afternoon was a gathering of the mighty Class of 1962 of Hiram High School (RIP) at the Hiram home of classmate Ron Etling (a retired middle-school teacher, just like ... you know?).

You can see the Old Man lurking in the back. I'll write more about all of this later in the week--for there's a come-one-come-all HHS reunion this afternoon at Welshfield--and I'll be heading up to that, too.

3. A couple of movies this week--one on DVD (Netflix), the other at the theater.

     a. Via Netflix we watched Stranger Than Fiction (2006), a film we'd seen back then--but had pretty much forgotten. Will Ferrell--very much under control--plays an OCD IRS agent who begins hearing a voice narrating what he's doing--and that voice turns out to belong to Emma Thompson, a novelist, who is, at the moment, writing his story--a story, Ferrell learns, that will end with his death. Meanwhile, he falls for a baker, Maggie Gyllenhaal, whom he is auditing. Also along for the ride: Dustin Hoffman and Queen Latifah. Written by Zach Helm , directed by Marc Forester. Link to film trailer.

Both of us loved this film: a bright script--great performances--many surprises (something I love in a film!).

     b. On Friday night we went to the Kent Cinemas to see The Big Sick, which we also both liked a lot. A whole lot. It's a story about inter-cultural love (based on a true story--in the closing credits we see some photos of the "real" people involved) and about how love just doesn't always conform to what others want for you. Again--a bright and clever script (that was a bit too long, I fear) and some excellent, understated performances by the principals. Written by Emily V. Gordon and Kumail Nanjiani, who also plays the male lead. Link to film trailer. Great to see Ray Romano and Holly Hunter, who play the parents of the woman in the lead, Zoe Kazan.

4. I finished a couple of books this week.

     a. The first was a collection of essays by Jonathan Lethem, a writer whose books I've really enjoyed reading over the years (he's principally a novelist). This collection he's called More Alive and Less Lonely: On Books and Writers, 2017,  and includes pieces that date back to the late 80s--though most are more recent. Lethem enjoys fantasy (more than I do), so a number of these pieces are about writers I don't know very well, but I was particularly affected by his essays about Thomas Berger (1924-2014), whose novels I've loved since I first read his Little Big Man (1964). There are more than twenty other novels--and I've read them all! (Joyce taught LBM way back in her earliest years as a grad assistant at KSU.) Anyway, Berger and Lethem never met--but they carried on a long and increasingly affectionate correspondence, and when Berger died, he left instructions that allowed Lethem to go through his library and take what he wanted. Lethem's account of this was a highlight for me.

There are other essays on Bob Dylan, Rod Serling, Steven Millhauser (another great favorite of mine), and numerous others. So glad I read this ...

     b. The second was a dense but enlightening collection of essays by Siri Hustvedt--A Woman Looking at Men Looking at Women (2016). I've read a lot of Hustvedt's works (not all)--and I've greatly enjoyed the work of her husband, Paul Auster (one of my favorites). Hustvedt, who also writes novels, has a Ph.D. in English from Columbia U and lectures on psychiatry. These pieces--many of which were originally lectures/speeches she gave at various academic conferences--are textually very complex and rich (and, okay, beyond me at times!).

The subjects range from gender issues, to the workings of the brain, including memory and emotions and rational thought. Though many of the pieces are academic in nature (numerous quotations from the work of other scholars, etc.), Hustvedt has a graceful, powerful way of stating her principal points. Here are a few I liked ...

• "The Patriarchs disappoint us. They do not see, and they do not listen" (32). 
• "Every book that changes me becomes me" (78).
• "... the literate brain is very different from the illiterate brain" (102).
• "Good ideas regularly go missing, and bad ideas often win the day" (159).
• "Reading is as close as we get to being two conscious people at once" (310).

I could go on and on. I had to read this book slowly--and accept that I just wasn't going to get everything. But what I did get? Illuminating moments--even thrilling at times.

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

     - uptalk  noun [uhp-tawk]

1. a rise in pitch at the end usually of a declarative sentence, especially if habitual: often represented in writing by a question mark as in Hi, I'm here to read the meter?

QUOTES

Uptalk, the researchers found, could also serve a strategic purpose through a technique known as "floor-holding," in which the speaker, anticipating an interruption by the listener, tries to stave it off by using a rising tone at the end of a statement.

-- Jan Hoffman, "Overturning the Myth of Valley Girl Speak," New York Times, December 23, 2013

ORIGIN

Uptalk is a linguistic term for an intonation pattern in which a declarative sentence ends in a rising pitch like a question. The phenomenon was first noted especially among teenage girls and young women, though it is used among the general population. Uptalk entered English in the early 1990s.

Dyer v. E. E. Cummings

Not long ago--a couple of weeks?--I posted here about how I'd decided to memorize a LONG poem by E. E. Cummings, a poem that Joyce, via Facebook (!), introduced to me--and to her many "friends"--on Father's Day.

It's seventeen quatrains long. (See entire text below.)

I had never read it before--never heard of it before. But it is (duh!) about fathers--about the father of the speaker of the poem. And it's a gorgeous piece of work, one whose meanings gradually have emerged (and are continuing to emerge) the more time I spend with it.

It took me about a month of effort to shoehorn it into my memory, and just this morning I recited it for Joyce (a couple of stumbles, errors), but I got through it--and earned a kiss (always worth memorizing a poem!).

Edward Estlin Cummings. 1894-1962. (He died in my first freshman term at Hiram College.)

A few years ago (2014), I reviewed for the Cleveland Plain Dealer Susan Cheever's biography whose image you see below. And I'd also read the one you see at the top of the page (2004).

And in that biography I read this horrible story about the death of his father--November 2, 1926. Cummings' parents--Edward (a Harvard professor and minister) and Elizabeth--were returning home after a social event (in New Hampshire) when a blinding snowstorm swept in.

Rebecca was driving, but her visibility was impaired. Edward finally persuaded Rebecca to stop so that he could clear the windshield. He then got back in the car and Rebecca drove on. "Some minutes later," according to Cummings, "a locomotive cut the car in half (Sawyer-Laucanno, 305).

Edward died instantly; Rebecca survived.

So ... given those circumstances, the poem has an entirely new resonance. Even if the speaker of the poem is not in every sense E. E. Cummings, the affection for the father pulsates with loss in virtually every line.

The poem--named only "34" in Cummings' 1940 collection, 50 Poems--appears in a number of places, including Complete Poems: 1904-1962 (Liveright, 1983), where I found an error when I was making sure that the online text was accurate (I've been burned a couple of times by assuming the online version is!). The ninth stanza, in the book, is missing its ultimate line: His pity was as green as grain.

Anyway, I know it now--and I also know that I will have to rehearse it--silently silently!--pretty much every day so that it doesn't just blow away, like a yard decoration--or a life--in a blizzard.

And--again--I thank Joyce for showing me the poem. So many wonders of the world have first come to me on her breath, in her hands.

34

my father moved through dooms of love

through sames of am through haves of give,

singing each morning out of each night

my father moved through depths of height

this motionless forgetful where

turned at his glance to shining here;

that if (so timid air is firm)

under his eyes would stir and squirm

newly as from unburied which

floats the first who, his april touch

drove sleeping selves to swarm their fates

woke dreamers to their ghostly roots

and should some why completely weep

my father’s fingers brought her sleep:

vainly no smallest voice might cry

for he could feel the mountains grow.

Lifting the valleys of the sea

my father moved through griefs of joy;

praising a forehead called the moon

singing desire into begin

joy was his song and joy so pure

a heart of star by him could steer

and pure so now and now so yes

the wrists of twilight would rejoice

keen as midsummer’s keen beyond

conceiving mind of sun will stand,

so strictly (over utmost him

so hugely) stood my father’s dream

his flesh was flesh his blood was blood:

no hungry man but wished him food;

no cripple wouldn’t creep one mile

uphill to only see him smile.

Scorning the Pomp of must and shall

my father moved through dooms of feel;

his anger was as right as rain

his pity was as green as grain

septembering arms of year extend

less humbly wealth to foe and friend

than he to foolish and to wise

offered immeasurable is

proudly and (by octobering flame

beckoned) as earth will downward climb,

so naked for immortal work

his shoulders marched against the dark

his sorrow was as true as bread:

no liar looked him in the head;

if every friend became his foe

he’d laugh and build a world with snow.

My father moved through theys of we,

singing each new leaf out of each tree

(and every child was sure that spring

danced when she heard my father sing)

then let men kill which cannot share,

let blood and flesh be mud and mire,

scheming imagine, passion willed,

freedom a drug that’s bought and sold

giving to steal and cruel kind,

a heart to fear, to doubt a mind,

to differ a disease of same,

conform the pinnacle of am

though dull were all we taste as bright,

bitter all utterly things sweet,

maggoty minus and dumb death

all we inherit, all bequeath

and nothing quite so least as truth

—i say though hate were why men breathe—

because my Father lived his soul

love is the whole and more than all

Frankenstein Sundae, 346

In March 1843, Mary and her party sailed from Rome aboard a small but well-built and quick steamer.^[1] Once again she was returning to a place she and Bysshe had lived—the spring of 1819, when she discovered that she was once again pregnant. I found it odd that when they passed Leghorn—on whose beach Trelawny and others had cremated the drowned remains of her husband, Edward Williams, and Charles Vivian in July 1822—she mentioned nothing, save this: The view from the sea near Leghorn is not sufficiently praised.[2] Perhaps her mild retreat here into the passive voice indicates her choice to withdraw?

Their arrival in Rome could hardly have been more portentous: She and the others noticed that the Romans all seemed to be looking heavenward. So Mary looked. A comet. According to observers, it was visible in broad daylight and it remained visible after nightfall for a while longer. Its brilliance earned a named—The Great Comet of 1843 or Great March Comet—and if you want to see it again, it’ll return some 513 years after Mary saw it.[3]

Mary was very impressed with the comet’s appearance in Rome—although it was already past its prime. She writes of a long trail of glowing light … it is bright, yet the stars shine through its web-like texture, which, composed of thin beams, is stretched out, and you may see delicate sea-weeds—or aquatic plants in a stream, though a large space of the heavens.[4]

In Rome, Mary and the others toured, again, the most popular sites, even today; she notes that the Coliseum remains a favorite, especially the view from it of the Pyramid of Cestius, which, no coincidence, stands right outside the Protestant Cemetery, the place where lie Bysshe, their son (William, three and a half, who died in June 1819), and John Keats. (Trelawny’s remains would journey there, too, and he now lies near Bysshe.) Mary mentions none of this—only to say that this view is one I am never tired of contemplating.[5]

---

[1] Ibid., 213.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Gary W. Kronk, Comets: A Descriptive Catalog (Hillside, NJ: Enslow, 1984) , 35–6.

[4] Rambles, 214–15.

[5] Ibid., 226.

Great Comet 1843

Pyramid of Caius Cestius, Rome

Climate Change in TV Viewing

I just realized something this morning: I no longer watch cable TV; everything I see is either a DVD or streaming. Everything. I should hop (!) online and cancel my cable subscription--except for Internet services, of course.

What a change ... what changes in my lifetime!

I was born in north central Oklahoma in 1944. I remember not having a TV set at all--and I remember the first one I ever saw at a friend's house. The screen was round. Black-and-white. Blurry. Absolutely amazing. A wooden console set that looked--except for the circular screen--like the full-size wooden radio consoles we had--and my grandparents had. The one in the photo I stole from the Internet is dated 1952. That's about right. I was 8 then--though it must have been earlier because I saw this before we owned a set..

We got our first TV in the early 1950s, too--not long before Dad was called  back into active duty--the Air Force--for the Korean War. We got as far as Amarillo, Tex., the Air Force Base there. We were there a little under two years.

Anyway, back in Okla., our first set--also wooden but with the square/rectangular screen--wooden case. We had only a couple of stations we could access--one in Oklahoma City (when the weather and antenna cooperated), one in Enid, where we lived. Both signed off at 1 a.m., and nothing but what they called a "test pattern" ran all night. Can't believe I just found this image online--it's the pattern of the very Okla City station we watched!

When we moved to Amarillo, we took our set with us, but it sat quietly, unused, the whole time we were there. No TV stations in Amarillo at the time. Our set was just another piece of furniture. So we listened to radio programs on the big wooden radio--Fibber McGee and Molly, The Lone Ranger, The Shadow, etc.

Back in Enid in 1953, our set went back on, and we used the radio only for events that were not telecast. I still remember listening to Rocky Marciano fights on the wooden radio in our grandparents' house. And baseball games. My older brother and grandpa listened to the Saturday opera broadcasts at the Met.

But still ... just two TV channels.

And need I say that all of this was in black-and-white? Color sets were rare--were special. On family car trips I remember seeing large signs outside of motels: COLOR TV! I remember that we once stopped for the night at such a place, only to discover, sadly for us kids, that the only COLOR TV! was in the motel lobby.

We didn't get our first color TV until I was in high school--now living in Hiram, Ohio, where we could get (aerials and/or rabbit ears cooperating) the three Cleveland stations--one for each of the major broadcast networks: ABC, CBS, NBC.

In 1966, when my parents left for Drake Univ. in Des Moines, Iowa, and when I began my teaching career in Aurora, Ohio, they left me the old b&w set and the rabbit ears; that set adorned my little bachelor pad in Twinsburg, Ohio, where I watched my favorite shows (rabbit ears cooperating): Mannix was one I liked, a CBS detective show. The Virginian (I'd read the eponymous Owen Wister Western novel in high school study hall).. The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Etc. That old set was ... temperamental. Sometimes I had to slug it in the side for the picture to sharpen.

The first color set I owned was a hand-me-down from Tom and Annabelle Coyne, whose daughter, Joyce, had mysteriously agreed to marry me late in 1969. We watched that one for quite a while.

And  then we bought our own sets. Cleveland, by then, had added a UHF station (channel 43) to compete with the VHF regulars.

I can't remember when we got our first cable connection. But we loved it--watched all those incredible HBO shows (The Sopranos!) and so many movies ...

Soon, there were so many cable stations--so many options--that it was absolutely overwhelming. What to watch? And why? 

Soon, we got a DVR, courtesy of the cable company, and were thereby able to watch shows that weren't ... convenient ... at the time. SNL (too late!) + other shows we'd decided to watch at our convenience. (Don't dare use the cliche "sea change" here--do not say "see change," for Shakespeare, who used the phrase in The Tempest, will be disappointed in you!)

And then ... video stores (buh-bye) ... and Netflix discs (still get them occasionally) ... and streaming services. (PS: Spell-checker just recommended I replace "Netflix" with "needfuls.")

And, as I said, we never watch cable now.

So, okay, I agree: It is a See Change. (Sorry, Will.)

Frankenstein Sundae, 325

Late in October 1842, Mary and the others left Venice and headed on to Florence—where she and Bysshe had lived twenty-three years earlier. (And where—as I related many, many pages ago—a Gypsy woman picked my pocket—with ease!—outside the main train station on April 22, 1999. Happy Earth Day—and welcome to Florence!)

In Florence, Mary and her party did what many (most?) tourists do today: visit the art galleries and museums. And she has quite a bit to say about it. To read sublime poetry, she writes, to hear excellent music, to view the finest pictures, the most admirable statues, and harmonious and stately architecture, is the best school in which to learn to appreciate what approaches nearest to perfection in each.[1]

And I—a grumpy former public school teacher—ruminate and (inwardly) rant about how schools today quickly cut the arts first when funding gets tight. In other words, we close, in a way, what she called the best school.And pat ourselves on the back for “saving money.” For being prudent. (For being stupid!)

Mary Shelley—whom, like her mother, the public considered a “fallen woman”—could wax a little prudish at time. Considering the works of Michelangelo, for example, she writes, His love of the naked was carried to a curious excess. In the Tribune [Tribuna of the Uffizi—a room in that world-famous gallery], is a Holy Family, into which he has introduced a variety of naked figures in different attitudes that have not the smallest connection with the subject of the picture, but intrude impertinently to mar its effect.[2] She was most likely talking about Michelangelo’s Doni Tondo, completed very early in the 1500s.

In March, Mary and her party sailed from Rome aboard a small but well-built and quick steamer.[3] Once again she was returning to a place she and Bysshe had lived—the spring of 1819, when she discovered that she was once again pregnant.

---

[1] Ibid., 140.

[2] Ibid., 154.

[3] Ibid., 213.