Those Darn Kids!

As I posted here some time ago, around the time of the New Year, I decided I would write for my two grandsons, every day, a little doggerel based on the word-of-the-day that appears on my tear-off calendar. (I'd given them one for Christmas.) I look at the word in the morning; I write the lines; I text them to the boys and their parents.

I confess--it's been kind of fun (for me, if not for them).

Today's word was katzenjammer, a word I already knew only because of a newspaper cartoon that I used to enjoy in my boyhood--Katzenjammer Kids--a comic about some trouble-making kids. And I see online something else I'd forgotten: They starred in comic books, too. (The cover below tells all!)

I don't remember who told me what the word meant--probably my dad: He had taken German in college (not to mention his WW II service in Europe), and he always loved to tell the story about the day a classmate was reading aloud in class and came to the German noun die Fahrt (journey); he cried aloud, said Dad: "Hey, that's fart!"

Dad thought that was hilarious. So did the eight-year-old I. (So does the seventy-four-year-old I, I'm afraid.)

Anyway, the newspaper cartoon. Below I've pasted a couple of examples of it at the bottom of this post.

Well, what did Boyhood Me learn from all of this? The boy who had to listen to a record of Manners Can Be Fun? Who had to answer the phone by saying, "Dyers' residence--Danny speaking." The boy who had to clean his plate at every meal (or no dessert), who had to say "Please" and "Thank you," who had to go to church every Sunday? Who had to go to VBS (though, in his day, it was "Vacation Bible School"--a term that puzzled me: How could you put vacation in the same phrase with Bible and school?). Who had to "pronounce the participial g in -ing words (no "talkin'" in our house--just "talkinG"). Who ...You get the idea?

Well, I thought those two little kids were awesome--my heroes. The anti-Dyer-boys. And so (dare I blame them?) I absorbed some of their naughtiness, naughtiness which remains (thank goodness).

Oh, the evil influence of comics! (That was the "evil" of my boyhood--not computer games or social media, which, of course, didn't exist.)

I just checked, by the way: The strip started in 1897 (Yukon Gold Rush!); it's still going. (I've put a recent one at the very end of this post.) The boys--Fritz and Hans--were twins. They've been honored on a U.S. postage stamp.

So ... words provoke memories (as if we didn't know that). And today--a word propelled me back to boyhood, back to my father's (naughty) story, back, back, back--back to a time when all was possible, when  the road ahead seemed so long I was positive--absolutely certain--it had no end.

A NEW ONE:

More Taxing ...

More taxing work again today--
Not time at all for rest or play.

Instead, it's tax--again, it's tax--
I've had some signs of heart attacks.

I hope I'll finish--quickly so--
For taxes kind of bore me, Yo.

Tomorrow--it's accountant time--
Because of that I hope that I'm

All done with sorting and receipts--
I'm not the sort of guy who cheats--

So wish me luck tomorrow, folks--
And--please!--withhold the taxing jokes!

Today, I worked on income tax ...

Today I worked on income tax--
Among the worst of all life's facts.

I print; I sort; I crave relief--
And when none comes, I gnash my teeth.

I meet with our accountant soon--
I'd rather fly off to the moon

In some ill-fated lunar craft.
I know: This sounds a little daft,

But income tax--no if's or but's!--
It really makes me purely nuts!

What crushes hope ... what raises fear:
It all returns this time next year!

Salmon Again

My family had a ... relationship ... with salmon when I was growing up. My dad was from the Northwest and loved salmon from the Columbia River (not far away), and his younger brother John would go to Westport, Wash., on the Pacific Coast, every summer, live in a camper, and go out salmon fishing every day while he was on vacation from his lifelong job at John Deere in Walla Walla.

One summer we joined them in Westport. I didn't get to go out with them (I was still a kid--I guess that was the reason); instead, I played with my brothers and with our cousins, Billy and Patty, Uncle John and Aunt Juanita's kids.

(Oh, and another great memory: seeing Native Americans salmon fishing at The Dalles, on the Columbia River, before The Dalles Dam, 1957, pretty much ended the Old Ways of doing it.)

I'm not sure how Aunt Juanita liked the week-at-Westport thing (or was it two weeks?). In a camper all day. Etc. But she was/is a saint, so I would guess that "seldom is heard a discouraging word" in that camper.

Uncle John would store some of the salmon he'd caught in his freezer back in Walla Walla--and he would have some canned. And some of that each year he would send to us--in Oklahoma and, later, in Hiram. Mom would sometimes make salads with it, but Dad preferred "salmon burgers"--and, I have to confess, I sided with Dad on that one.

Mom soon developed a lifelong passion for salmon. One of her favorite things about the stages-of-care place where she spent her last years (in Lenox, Mass.) was that it served salmon once a week in the dining hall. Mom would not miss salmon night. It would be, for her, like missing church.

(Mom's other passion? Chocolate. My older brother once gave her a large chunk of chocolate--shaped like a salmon.)

Dad used to fish a lot--and so we ate lots of trout and bass and other critters he caught. But as the years have gone on, I've become more and more like my mom, salmon-wise. Other fish are okay; salmon is ambrosia.

Joyce has caught the bug, as well. And for the past couple of decades we've had salmon once a week--usually for Tuesday suppers.

In the spring we like the wild-caught that's available here and there (ain't cheap--but I don't care!). In the winter we buy the Full Circle brand (available at the local Acme)--frozen, wild-caught. Delicious.

I open the bag the night before, remove the two hard-frozen pieces, put them in a plastic bag in the fridge, grill them on Tuesday--on the outdoor grill in good weather, indoors in bad. A lemon slice. Some Paul Prudhomme salmon seasoning.

Along with the fish, we usually "do" mixed rice (or basmati) and a veggie. Homemade sourdough bread.

After a Tuesday salmon meal I could happily die. And I am not kidding.

Another great memory: Taking a Yukon River cruise near Dawson City with my 14-yr-old son in August 1986, seeing the salmon-catching devices along the river.

By the way, "Klondike" (a smaller river that joins the Yukon in Dawson City) meant "hammer water"--the place where Native Americans would hammer their fishnets along the shore and catch the salmon that composed a staple of their diet--and of their sled dogs' diet.

Anyway, tonight is Salmon Night at the Dyers'. And every bite will remind me of Uncle John and Aunt Juanita, of Patty and Billy, of Westport, of The Dalles, of Dad, of Mom, of those great salmon-burgers, of Joyce (uncharacteristically silent as she swiftly downs the fish), of so many things in my boyhood, in my family, that I will not forget until I must.

Within the Scope

In Saturday's mail was a large mailing envelope from Scholastic Press. I was hoping it was a fat royalty check for my 1997 YA book, Jack London: A Biography.

Nah.

That book's now out of print, but I can still say--with a straight, honest face--that J. K. Rowling and I share a publisher! (Scholastic did the US printings of the Harry Potter books, which, by the way, my younger grandson, Carson, about to turn 10, is now reading.)

No, instead the envelope held the most recent edition of Scope, one of Scholastic's classroom magazines. And when I saw what it was, I have to utter a cliche: Memories flooded back.

You see, I used to use Scope in various ways when I was teaching middle-school English classes (I retired in January 1997). Sometimes I had the kids subscribe; sometimes I merely shared with my classes some things that had appeared in it. Short stories, one-act plays, interesting news articles and features--these Scope features sometimes composed my lesson plan for a day.

So ... let's take a look at the February 2019 issue ... what's there? What (if anything) would I have used? And what's changed?

• The first thing is a very colorful piece on the Chinese New Year--lots of graphics, few words.
• Next is an nonfiction piece--"The Children's Blizzard"--about a "monstrous storm" in January 1888 in America's Northern Plains. It's several pages long--and also has lots of illustrations. It also features some highlighted vocabulary words--mobilized, encrusted, etc.
• Next--an ecological piece about the lionfish, a critter doing lots of damage in the Atlantic Ocean.
• It's followed by a short companion piece, "The Invasion of the Giant Goldfish: How a Little Pet Became a Big Problem." It seems the cute, not-so-little things "can take over a body of water, destroying the habitat of native species" (13).
• Next--a nod to Black History Month, I would guess--is "The Girl Who Dared,” a script about some school-aged youngsters who were activists during the Civil Rights Movement. Included is a portion of a speech given by one of the girls, Barbara Posey, 17, on June 24, 1960--and a link to the entire text.
• Next is a story, "The Perfects," a tale about an apparently perfect family that includes highlighted clues about how to write a story--e.g., figurative language, text structure, setting.
• Next--a two-page piece, "My Life as a Military Kid," by a young woman--looks to be high-school age.
• Text--pro and con pieces about whether the school week should be four or five days--pieces written by two middle school students.
• The final piece is about how waffles changed the design of sneakers.
• The back cover features some graphics and information about spicy food.

So ... what would I have used in this issue? Not much, probably. I might have had the kids read aloud the dramatization of the Civil Rights story ... maybe write a fiction story about destructive fish? (That kind of sounds like fun, actually.)

So ... what's different about Scope these days? (I'm relying entirely on memory now--and that can be a problem!)

• Lots more graphics.
• More patently instructional material--vocab words, suggestions for writers, etc.
• Nothing--at least in this issue--by any celebrated writers. I remember using Scope-adapted versions of famous stories and plays.

One surprise: Except for a suggested link to a site, the social-media, computer worlds are mostly darkened here. Pale sunlight on them, at best. I like that. The magazine--at least in this issue--has not caved, surrendered. It shows students there is another world out there--a world of words and ideas, a world that has its own ways of being exciting.

And that, my friends, is, I believe, profoundly important.

Sunday Sundries, 219

1. AOTW: I don't really have anyone this week--although, this morning, there was a woman with a cart in the grocery store, a woman determined to get ahead of us in the check-out line (she did it, too), but, on the other hand, Joyce and I were kind of ... dawdling. So ... cause and effect? So, once again, I will claim the mantle for myself, earning it in all sorts of ways this week, ways I'd prefer not to get into!

2. The wind has been fierce a couple of recent days. One day, in fact, it blew down a section of our cedar fence that separates us from the next-door funeral home (metaphor?). And it reminds me, this wind: When my brothers and I, as kids, were afraid of the wind back in north central Oklahoma, Dad always used to calm us by telling us it was just "Windsy," a friendly fellow who just wanted to be noticed.

Of course, Windsy had an older brother with a fouler temper--Funnel Cloud. But I managed to escape my twelve boyhood years in Okla. and Tex. without ever actually seeing one--other than the dust devils dancing in plowed fields outside of town. And they were red devils--the sod in Okla., you know?

3. I finished one book this week (very nearly two!)--The Perilous Adventures of the Cowboy King: A Novel of Teddy Roosevelt and His Times, by the amazing Jerome Charyn (1937-), who keeps cranking out fine novels, year after year. I've been reading him since the late 70s when, I think, the first I read was The Seventh Babe, 1979, a novel about a left-handed third baseman. But his first novel was 1964, Once Upon a Droshky (which I haven't read ... maybe it's time?). He also has a series of mysteries--about a dozen now--featuring detective Isaac Sidel. I've read some of them--lots of fun.

The novel--narrated by TR himself--follows Roosevelt from young manhood to the assassination of Pres. McKinley in September 1901 (and, thus, TR's ascension to the presidency--he was McKinley's VP). We learn about TR's boyhood health issues, his time in the Wild West, his political career in NY and NYC, his married life and fatherhood, and, of course, the Rough Riders and the Spanish American War.

Charyn clearly shows us the political forces of the day--and the widespread corruption (has anything changed?)--and shows us a Roosevelt who, though he of course has "issues" of his own, had a moral and ethical sense that separated him from many of his political colleagues.

Charyn is always a wonder to read--and this one is no exception.

4. Yesterday (Saturday) Joyce and I drove down to Green, where our son and his family live--to Green HS, where the community was having its Celebration of Excellence. And among those honored yesterday? Our grandson Logan (who just turned 14), an eighth grader who won first place in an essay contest called "Laws of Life." His piece--a very touching one (which he read aloud to the sizable crowd at the event)--was about his mother's brain-tumor surgery five years ago--how it affected her, him, their family. A proud grandma and grandpa were there!

5. For some reason, we waited a while to start streaming the third season of True Detective on HBO--but we are "enjoying" it. I put quotation marks around enjoying because it's about the disappearance of two elementary school kids--brother and sister--and the desperate search to find them. (Don't want to give anything away ... so no details about it.) We're in the third episode now (we stream, oh, about 15 min/night--can't take the grimness these days)--and there are seven in total, I think? (Link to some video.) The show moves through three distinct time periods, one of which is very late in the life of one of the principal detectives, Wayne Hayes, played by Mahershala Ali (pictured in foreground below).

6. And--a grim note: I will meet this week with our accountant re: income taxes ...

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

     - from wordsmith.org

throttlebottom (THROT-l-bot-uhm)

noun: A purposeless incompetent in public office.

ETYMOLOGY: After Alexander Throttlebottom, a Vice Presidential character in Of Thee I Sing, a 1931 musical comedy. Earliest documented use: 1932.

NOTES: In honor of Presidents Day, this week we’ve been looking at words with presidential connections. It’s about time we paid our dues to the Vice President too. A VP, by its very nature, is meant to play a second fiddle though it’s not uncommon to find an eminence grise in that office. Here’s how the term throttlebottom came to represent VPs and other similar (mostly) harmless figures.

The first musical comedy to win the Pulitzer Prize, Of Thee I Sing, is a brilliant political satire that gave us today’s word. In this masterly operetta (music: George Gershwin; lyrics: Ira Gershwin; libretto: George Kaufman and Morris Ryskind), presidential candidate John P. Wintergreen runs a political campaign based on the theme of love. His National Party sponsors a beauty contest, with Wintergreen to marry the winner. Instead, Wintergreen falls in love with Mary Turner, a secretary at the pageant, and marries her on the day of his inauguration. Diana Devereaux, the contest winner, sues President Wintergreen for breach of contract; France threatens to go to war, since Devereaux is of French descent; and Congress impeaches him. Wintergreen points out the United States Constitution provision that when the President is unable to perform his duty, the Vice President fulfills the obligations. VP Throttlebottom agrees to marry Diana and forever etches his name in the language.

USAGE: “[Lyndon B. Johnson] wanted to be Vice President, both to position himself as JFK’s successor someday and because he believed that he could convert any job -- even Throttlebottom’s -- into a power base.” James MacGregor Burns; The Crosswinds of Freedom; Knopf; 1989.

Flours

No, that's not a typo in the title. Valentine's Day is over, and this morning I'm thinking about my (mild?) obsession (interest?) in flours. Not flowers.

I certainly didn't grow up with it. Neither Mom nor Dad was much interested in baking. We had Bisquick in the house--and a small sack of Gold Medal (white). That was about it. Often the dinner rolls we ate came from a Pillsbury tube that you'd open by smacking it on the edge of the counter. Pull out the pre-shaped dough. Put the dough on a baking sheet. Bake. Consume the resultant rolls in seconds.

As I've posted here before, I began baking our bread in about 1970 (the first year of our marriage), not because it tasted better (though it really did) but because it was cheaper. I had my (pathetic) salary as a middle school teacher; Joyce had her (pathetic) stipend as a teaching assistant at Kent State. And it was just cheaper to bake our own bread.

Gold Medal (white) flour. Packaged yeast. Sugar. Crisco. Yummy, yummy, yummy, I got love in my tummy!

In the summer of 1986--on a trip with my fourteen-year-old son to Alaska and the Yukon, exploring both sites in The Call of the Wild, which I taught to my 8th graders, and some family history (my great-grandfather had gone on the Klondike Gold Rush in 1897)--I acquired some (dry) sourdough starter in Skagway, AK. And that substance, as regular visitors to this site know, changed my life.

At first, it was just basic old white sourdough bread (Gold Medal flour).

But as the years have gone on (yes, the same starter is still alive), I have morphed into a flour-nerd and now have an entire section of one of our kitchen cupboards stuffed with varieties of flour I use for baking the multigrain bread I make pretty much every week (as my Facebook friends, to their sorrow, know because of the annoying pix I post each Sunday). The pic below shows the cabinet ...

Each metal container you see holds a different variety. Right now, that cabinet holds the following varieties of flour (in bags, in containers): buckwheat, soy, flaxseed meal, flaxseeds (whole), barley, graham, spelt, oat, brown rice, teff, kamut, millet, cornmeal, semolina, amaranth, quinoa. There are probably some others; I'm too lazy to go look--but you get the idea. In the pantry (not shown) are some 5-lb sacks of Bob's Red Mill organic white and organic whole wheat. (The little sacks you see above are also from Bob's Red Mill.)

Acquiring these varieties takes some doin'. Trips to Marc's, Heinen's, Acme, Mustard Seed, and (not often--I try to avoid it) Amazon.

Joyce has gracefully surrendered the entire cabinet (not to mention Sunday mornings in the kitchen) for my obsessions. And I try to reward her kindness with a couple of loaves, every week.

Obviously, we can't eat it all ourselves. So we unload some on our son and his family (their parakeet, Jet, loves the flaxseeds!). Consign some to the freezer. But I eat the bread for lunch and supper. Every day.

And we haven't had store-bought bread in decades.