Sunday Sundries, 243

1. AOTW: An easy one this week--an entitled dude in the health club locker room, a dude who spread his gear along the entire length of the bench that is supposed to be available for everyone in that area; then he went in for a sauna, leaving his gear occupying the bench. I was not the only one who believed the dude (40s? 50s?) belongs in the AOTW Hall of Shame.

2. I finished two books this week.

     - One was a short, compact, focused book about the history and use of the ... semicolon: Semicolon: The Past, Present, and Future of a Misunderstood Mark (2019) by Cecelia Watson.

It dates back to the 15th century, when it was invented by an Italian printer. As Watson shows, its uses have been many--though in our day usage manuals (like this one I used years ago at Western Reserve Academy) have narrowed the functions of the semicolon.

The uses, says Warriner's, are these:

• to separate independent clauses (groups of words that could stand alone as a complete sentence) (e.g., I love semicolons; I love ice cream.)
• to separate independent clauses that feature words like therefore, moreover, etc. (e.g., You hit me; therefore, I killed you.)
• to eliminate confusion in a list whose items include commas (e.g.,  I saw a duck, which had no wings; a bat, which had no ball; a dog, a very handsome beast; a cat, whose tail was gone.)

Teachers generally red-mark other uses of the semicolon. But, as the author shows, uses have been many throughout history (Dickens, et al. routinely violated the "rules" I've listed). And today many professional writers have become more and more creative with its use; cool.

     - The second book was Brock Clarke's new novel, Who Are You, Calvin Bledsoe? (2019),  a carnival-ride of a novel based loosely on Graham Greene's Travels with My Aunt (1969).

Let me back up a bit and tell you some about Brock Clarke. I'd not heard of his work until September 2007 when, paging through the most recent issue of Kirkus Reviews, a book title leapt out at me: An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England, a new novel by Brock Clarke.

At the time I was teaching at Western Reserve Academy, and I liked to end the year by having the kids read a brand-new novel--something relevant to what we'd been doing in my English III class. Well, English III was, principally, American literature (+ Hamlet, that great American hero), so I realized my students would feel like geniuses as they read the novel that dealt with, oh, Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, and others.

I bought the book; devoured it; then read his earlier books (here's his page at Bowdoin College, where he teaches, so you can see the titles of his earlier--and later--work).

He was teaching at the University of Cincinnati at the time, and I invited him to spend a day at our school--visit classes, address the entire school community. And he did--April 28, 2008. He was great with the kids, and they loved his novel ...

Some pics from that day ...

He's had several books since then--and I've devoured them, as well, and we have stayed in touch via social media.

Anyway, Calvin Bledsoe ... I don't want to give away too much, because so much of the pleasure in this novel comes from Surprise, and if you read it (which I hope you do), you should do so in a loud place because you're gong to be laughing obnoxiously.

Calvin Bledsoe is kind of a nebbish, a man who is a blogger for a pellet-stove company. His marriage has collapsed; he seems to have no reason to live, really. His late mother had been an authority on John Calvin (thus, Bledsoe's given name). He now lives in the family home in a small Ohio town; his neighbors seem a bit odd (as he is, of course).

And then--swooping into his life--an aunt, a woman he didn't even know existed. And she, a dominant personality (to say the least!) whirls off with him, and they go ... ain't tellin' you. And go ... ain't tellin' you. And go ... ain't tellin' you. And ...

Let's just say that Calvin's life changes--how could it not? And by the end ... ain't tellin' you.

The book, as I've said, is funny (as Clarke so often is in his fiction), but there are also moments deeply felt. Moments when your tears have nothing to do with your laughter.

Read it.

Years ago, Joyce and I were both reading a lot of Graham Greene, and we bought Travels with My Aunt, which has been sitting on our shelf for nearly a half-century.

our copy

After I finished Calvin Bledsoe, I started Travels (have read about 75 pp so far), and I understand why Brock Clarke was so taken with this novel--so taken that he has taken his readers on an equally but very different, wacko journey with a bizarre aunt. Where the destination, you learn (slowly, slowly), is you.

3. We finished all the available episodes of CB Strike--which we really liked--and we hope Cinemax is planning to do more! (The series is based on the detective novels of "Robert Galbraith" (J. K. Rowling), and there is one more novel not yet filmed. I'm reading it right now.)

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

     -  from wordsmith.org

semplastic (es-em-PLAS-tik)

MEANING: adjective: Having the capability of molding diverse ideas or things into unity.

ETYMOLOGY: Coined by poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), apparently inspired by German Ineinsbildung (forming into one). From Greek es- (into) + en, neuter of eis (one) + plastic, from Latin plasticus (related to molding), from Greek plastikos, from plas­sein (to mold). Earliest documented use: 1817.

USAGE: “I once told Giselle she was the essence of the esemplastic act, for as she was giving me the curl of her tongue at that moment, she would pause to speak love words to me in three languages.”

William Kennedy; Very Old Bones; Viking; 1992.

Decades Ago ...

 ... in the fall of 1949

I was in kindergarten; Mrs. Dugan's class; Enid, Oklahoma; I walked every day, several blocks from our house at 1709 E. Broadway Ave. (can you imagine?), sometimes stopping at Kiwanis Park, where I would linger and be late ...


... in the fall of 1959

I was starting my sophomore year at Hiram High School (Hiram, Ohio); I was playing on the JV basketball team and would appear in the musical that winter--Masquerade in Vienna, an adaptation of Die Fledermaus.


... in the fall of 1969

I was beginning my fourth year of teaching--all of them at the old Aurora Middle School (Aurora, Ohio), 7th grade English (we called it "Language Arts"); I had started grad school at Kent State a year or so before, slowly working toward my Master's, and in July of 1969, in one of my classes, I'd met Joyce Coyne; we would marry on December 20, 1969, and I was excited beyond belief (still am); at school, I was writing and directing plays with my students--and I'd learned that teaching was what I loved to do.


... in the fall of 1979

Joyce and I had just returned from teaching a year at Lake Forest College (up the lake shore from Chicago), and I'd learned I preferred middle school--but couldn't get back to Aurora (no openings)--but we both found jobs at Western Reserve Academy; I left a couple of years later to return to Aurora (finally an opening!); Joyce would stay until 1990, when our son graduated from WRA; we both had enjoyed teaching him in class--I in 8th grade, Joyce in 10th and in AP English; in the fall of 1979, he had recently turned 7 and was starting 2nd grade in the Hudson Schools.


... in the fall of 1989

I was back teaching at the middle school in Aurora (a new building--Harmon School); 8th grade; I'd become obsessed with Jack London and would eventually publish some books about him and his most famous work, The Call of the Wild; Joyce was in her final year at WRA--she would move to the faculty of Hiram College after Steve graduated from WRA (she was director of the creative writing program); I was still directing and writing plays with the kids, still loving my time in the classroom.


... in the fall of 1999

I had been retired from Aurora for more than two years; I was now obsessed with another literary figure--Mary Shelley--and had just returned from some weeks in Europe, where I'd been finding places that had bee important to her and her work--esp Frankenstein; my father was fading--and would die at 86 on Nov, 30; Joyce was still at Hiram College; son Steve, now working as a journalist at the Akron Beacon-Journal had married Melissa McGowan in August 1999; my mom had come out for the ceremony.


... in the fall of 2009

I had returned to the faculty of Western Reserve Academy and was teaching three sections of junior English each year--loving it--walking/biking to work (the school is only about 3 blocks from our home in Hudson); we now had two grandsons, Logan and Carson; Joyce was still teaching at Hiram and had won about every teaching award there is at the college.


... in the fall of 2019

I'm sitting at my laptop, typing this blog; my mother died in the spring of 2018; our grandson Logan has started 9th grade at Walsh Jesuit; our grandson Carson is now in 5th grade; Melissa teaches in the nursing school at Kent State and is nearing the end of her Ph.D. program; Steve, who has a law degree (and has passed the bar exam) teaches writing part-time at the University of Akron, works for a think tank (Innovation Ohio--he's their "education guy"), serves on the city council in nearby Green, where they live; Joyce has retired from Hiram and has a book about John Brown coming out after the first of the year--and has finished a draft of yet another book; I write stupid poems every day, am working on the 3rd and final volume of The Papers of Victoria Frankenstein, a YA series about a contemporary descendant of Victor Frankenstein, a teenager living in Ohio (the first two are on Kindle Direct); I'm dealing with metastatic prostate cancer--working out most every day--reading madly, drinking lots of coffee--still doing book reviews for Kirkus Reviews (more than 1500 so far)--looking back on a life I've loved. ... a life of incredible good fortune and happiness ...

Full house last night ...

Smarsh begins to address the crowd last night.

... at the Hudson Library & Historical Society to see/hear author Sarah Smarsh read from/talk about her 2018 memoir, Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth. (Coincidentally, yesterday was the first day of release for the paperback edition (still $18!) of her work, which was a finalist for a National Book Award in Nonfiction.)

Among those in the impressive crowd were Joyce and I. (And two of Joyce’s former Hiram College colleagues, Steve Zabor and Kathryn Craig )

We got there about a half-hour early--and were glad we did. The place filled up quickly, and we got the sort of seats I like: one an aisle-seat (for, uh, Old Man Needs) and near the back so that, after the presentation, I could quickly exit and be near the head of the line for the signing--if not the first. (Last night, Number One!)

Smarsh began in wise fashion, asking how many of us had already read the book (about 1/3, it seems), so she filled in some background on herself (grew up on a farm in Kansas), on her life (rural poverty--but always with food and a roof).

She talked a lot about income inequality, about poverty in America, about how most poor people in fact work very hard (2-3 jobs for many); still, many are left behind as the wealthier accrue more and more. She reminded us of our obligation to help one another. Yet, as she observes in the book, we often shame/blame the poor for ... being poor--as if that's what they want. As if they're lazy, etc.

She read a few pages from her opening chapter--introducing us to her characters, to the land, to the situation(s).

Then ... Q&A, while I hustled outside to the rotunda where I would be, as I've said, Number One!

I was impressed with her presentation. She's articulate, both on and off the page, and, as Joyce noted to me afterward, she was very agile/sensitive about income inequality in a community like Hudson, which is hardly a small Kansas farming town. (Hey, we do have a Farmers' Market on Saturday! That counts, doesn't it?)

I had only a cloth edition of the book, so I bought a paperback (yes, both are first printings!) and got her to sign them both while telling her that I'd grown up in Oklahoma, just 50 miles from the Kansas-Oklahoma border. I told her how my great-grandfather--a former farmer near the end of his life, living in Okla. with his daughter (my grandmother Osborn)--had loved Old Overholt rye whiskey. But at the time, Oklahoma was a "dry" state: no (legal) booze. So when he ran out of his elixir, my dad had to drive to Kansas to buy a refill--50 miles each way. My grandparents--teetotalers, both--would not have done so. So Dad helped lubricate my great-grandfather's final months ...

Anyway, a great night at the Hudson Library--and thanks once more, to archivist Gwen Mayer, who organizes these events, who brings to our little town some big literary names.

A Harsh Book Review, Some Things to Ponder

I recently did a little post here about Rick Moody's latest book, The Long Accomplishment: A Memoir of Hope and Struggle in Matrimony, a memoir about the difficulties he and his wife had with conceiving (and delivering) a child. I generally liked the book (as I wrote here), so I have to admit I was surprised when I saw the very negative review of it in the New York Times Book Review a couple of days ago. (Link to the review, which apparently ran online nearly a month before its appearance in the NYTBR.)

The reviewer, Hillary Kelly, blasted Moody because he, in her view, was writing about women's difficulties (as well as his own), "women who aren't allowed to have their own say."

Really? The women in the story are prohibited from writing about the experience?

Let me hurry to say this: Of course he doesn't/can't know the feelings and thoughts of women who are struggling to conceive--who desperately want to be mothers. All he can know is what he observes and infers--and what they tell him. And this Moody does throughout the book. As far as I can remember, he never presumes. He talks about his own view of the journey they're taking together. (She, by the way, is an artist and thereby has her own techniques/media of expressing her experiences.)

We seem to be in an age now when writers cannot write about anything except their own lives, lives that, apparently, cannot even intersect with those that are "different" in some way (gender, race, economic class, religion, etc..).

Oh, and not just writers. Other artists, too--filmmakers, for example--must stick to their "own" terrain.

A couple of stories from the past.

• In 1967, novelist William Styron published The Confessions of Nat Turner, a novel about the slave rebellion in Virginia in 1831. It won a Pulitzer Prize in 1968. But the book also profoundly annoyed a number of high-profile black intellectuals who believed that Styron had no real right to tell that story--and had not told it properly. They even published a book of criticism of Styron and his "take" on the historical event (William Styron's Nat Turner: Ten Black Writers Respond, 1968). One prominent black writer who elsewhere defended Styron was James Baldwin. And in an interview, Styron called the reaction full of "hysteria" (Conversations with William Styron, 96).
• When Zelda Fitzgerald decided that she wanted to become a writer, too, her husband, Scott, was not pleased. He believed that their experiences were his to write about because he was the "real" writer--that, as Nancy Milford puts it her in biography Zelda (1970), "the entire fabric of their life was his material, none of it was Zelda's" (273).

And now we have our current age of "cultural appropriation"--the idea that stories belong only to those who are/have been directly involved. Does this mean that I can't write about Shakespeare because I'm not English? Or Mary Shelley because I'm not a woman--or English? Or that Shakespeare himself should not have written about, oh, a King of Scotland? Or a Danish prince?

I have a hard time with that idea. Let me give you an example: I've been dealing with metastatic prostate cancer for more than fourteen years now--have had many treatments, some successes, some failures. I'm incurable, so I know it will eventually kill me. I've written about it here and there--in this blog, in my memoir about teaching (Schoolboy).

My wife is also writer--a wonderful one. And if she were to tell my story--rather, her story about traveling with me on this journey--I wouldn't be angry; I wouldn't feel as if she'd stolen something from me.

No, I would be deeply honored, profoundly moved. Grateful. For I know that her journey is just as valuable as my own. It's a part of my own--a crucial part.

I'm just worried that if we start deciding who can tell stories and who can't, then we are impoverishing ourselves--denying ourselves the insights from people who may be a step or two (or more) away from things but whose eyes just might have a broader perspective, who just might help us understand.

Anyway, Hillary Kelly's review of Moody ended with this: "It's wonderful that he got all this out of his system and onto the page, but it's a shame he felt the need to share it with the rest of us."

But that's what writers do, isn't it? Get it out? Put it on the page? Make it available for the rest of us to read--or not?

Should we really be telling writers they can't write about something (publish something) as intimate as their own marriage--can't share their own version of their common though also different and unequal struggles?

Sunday Sundries, 242

1. AOTW: Four-way stop--AOTW to the right of us--she arrived at the stop sign seconds before we did--she sits there, on her phone--I flash my lights--she notices--moves into the intersection (still on her phone)--I have my left signal on--I pull partway out into the intersection after she moves--suddenly she cuts right across my route, turning left--no signal--still on her phone--I say some bad words ...

2. I finished just one book this week, a memoir (and first book) by Sarah Smarsh, Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth (Scribner, 2018). It was a a finalist for the National Book Award in 2018 (Nonfiction). I'd not heard of the book before we got a notice from the Hudson Library and Historical Society that she would be doing at talk on the evening of September 4. Decided to read the book--and go see/hear her.

Smarsh grew up in Kansas (I; in Oklahoma), but our lives could not have been much different. I grew up in a stable home, in a small town (Enid is the county seat of Garfield County), with educated parents. I didn't really have to work too hard as a kid--mow the lawn now and then, make my bed (now and then).

But Smarsh! Hers was a rugged rural life--a harsh one--with people struggling to put food on the table, clothes on their backs. She began helping out (in the fields, in the house) as soon as she was big enough to do so.

They were moving constantly (she was continually changing schools)--divorces, alcohol, despair, violence. But also a ferocious work ethic among the key adults in her life--including grandparents, stepfathers, other relatives.

She tells the stories of several generations of her family (she says her research/writing consumed fifteen years), but not in a strict, chronological way--more in a thematic one. And she comments throughout about the demonizing of the poor in our (sometimes) clueless culture--blaming them for their own poverty, even though family farming is always iffy, even though family members worked multiple jobs, etc. The absence of health care is another issue. And on and on.

She was lucky: She was bright; she paid attention, learning from the adults; she worked hard in school(s); she ended up with undergrad and graduate degrees, taught writing, taught at Harvard (!), and now speaks/writes about economic inequality.

There were problems with the book (so many characters--we needed a cast list!) and some repetitiveness.

But it remains a powerful story of challenged but determined people who worked their hardest to survive--and to give their kids a better chance than they had.

Looking forward to hearing what she has to say ...

3. It's great streaming the most recent season of Elementary on CBS. Although I don't always care for the plots, I do like Jonny Lee Miller as a contemporary Sherlock Holmes & Lucy Liu as his Dr. Watson.They operate as consultants to the NYPD.

(Link to some video.)

I saw online that this season is the last--too bad. And I'll probably cancel my CBS subscription: Elementary was the only thing we were watching!  I've loved Sherlockian stuff for decades--read all the stories when I was a teen.

4. I've written here before about my increasing inability to deal with tension in things we're streaming, and among the most tense is the recent season of Line of Duty, which we're streaming via Acorn (I think). Usually, I can manage only about ten minutes of an episode before my heart, brain, and cowardice combine to make me shift to something more ... pacific.

In this latest season, we're wondering if the captain (whom we've admired for numerous seasons) is in fact mobbed up. (The show deals with a police unit called AC-12 [anti-corruption], a unit that deals with crooked cops.)

I hope it settles down soon--or that I find a more effective way to mellow than changing apps.

5. This morning Joyce used the word piecemeal, and I wondered about its origin. Turns out it goes back to the 14th century, when -meal was a suffix that meant "measure or quantity taken one at a time," says the OED. So ... one piece/part at a time.

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

     - from Oxford English Dictionary

fauxhawk, n.

A hairstyle resembling a Mohawk (Mohawk n. 4), in which the hair is styled upwards in a strip running from the front to the back of the head but the sides of the head remain unshaven.

Origin: Formed within English, by blending. Etymons: faux adj., Mohawk n.

2000 Elle  Mar. 300/1 The pink 'faux hawk' hairdo..was little more than a bad shag in dire need of a strawberry rinse.

2001 Advertiser (Adelaide)  8 June 3/1 Australian men too scared to adopt the extreme look are opting for a toned-down version dubbed the ‘faux-hawk’.

2007 USA Today  6 Sept. d3 Bopping around in..a dark, slim-fitting shirt..was frontman Adam Levine, his hair sculpted into a subtle fauxhawk.

2012 Vancouver Province(Nexis) 12 Apr. a49 He is unlikely to dye his hair blond, streak it purple, sport cornrows or fauxhawks or mohawks.

Some Moments at Marc's

About once a month, Joyce and I head over to the Marc's in Aurora (it's a discount grocery store for those of you not from this area). There, we buy some things we know we're going to need for the month--some things that are cheaper there than at the "regular" grocery stores we go to.

I get jugs of pomegranate juice--not because I like it (I don't) but because its attributes include things that annoy prostate cancer. I drink 8 oz at every lunch. We also buy our dishwasher products there--pellets and rinse. And Marc's also has a great supply of flour products, and Baker Dan likes to grab bags of things from Bob's Red Mill to use in his weekly bake-a-thons.

Last night. BTW, I saw this sight on a shelf ... gluten wars! Side by side ...

Last night, our cart filled with "our" products (and a couple of other things), we got in line (only two were open), and we immediately realized we'd picked the wrong one. Two (older) sisters were ahead of us with a large cart filled with a potpourri of things, from slippers to sliced turkey. The slippers were the problem. No price tag.

So ... the long wait commenced while various employees trotted back to the "slipper" area and tried to find a price.

They were nice women, actually. Apologetic. And because one of the re-usable shopping bags they'd bought had a bunch of dog pictures on it, we got to talking about dogs. When they told me one of their dogs was a Lab (they had two others, as well), I told them the story of the Lab we once had, a creature that ate an entire batch of homemade pasta I'd made and had left to dry in the kitchen. (We were having company for dinner.) When Joyce and I came downstairs and saw the drying racks were empty and the Lab had that yeah-I-did-it look on his face (mingled with a dollop of shame, I guess), I flipped out--had to go to the grocery store, in a rage, to buy some commercial pasta ...

In line behind us last night was a young father with his teenage daughter. We joked with them--about how we were going to demand price checks on everything we'd bought.

Turns out his daughter had just left Harmon Middle School (I taught in that middle school for about 30 years) and was headed into her first year at Aurora High. She thought I was really old when I told her I'd taught the current AHS assistant principal in 8th grade. But her ear buds were in, her phone was playing something, so ... who knows?

We were in line--I kid you not--for nearly half an hour. A new record for us, I think.

The young woman at the register was apologetic, but none of it was her fault. And then we learned it was only her third day at work. Both Joyce and I thought she'd handled the whole thing with supreme patience and calm. I think she'd make a great kindergarten teacher. (Or middle school.) (Or whatever-on-earth she wants to do with herself.)

We were finally out of there, and as we stepped outside to head to the car, the rain started falling.

Perfect end to a perfect day ...

Sleepy Boy

The older I've gotten, the more I love to sleep (perchance to dream? you bet!).

I remember that my maternal grandparents took afternoon naps. I thought there was something wrong with them.

Not long before my father died (Nov. 30, 1999--he was 86), he told me that he loved being asleep. I (clueless) wondered why that was so. He told me: "Because I'm young again."

When he woke up, you see, he was Rip Van Winkle: He was in his bed--or wheelchair (he loved to nap therein)--and could do virtually none of the things he'd always loved to. Except watch football games on TV (oh, did he love doing that!) and eat from a jar of dry-roasted peanuts. (He would eat only one or two at a time--showing self-control--until the entire jar was gone: fewer calories, eating like that.)

Now in my mid-seventies I'm finding I understand more and more what my father meant. Because of my age--and because of one of the meds I'm on--I get tired far more quickly than I used to. I can't ride a bike anymore (I gave it away to a former student last fall); I can't play wiffleball with my grandsons (I took a terrible fall the last time I tried it--this past Memorial Day); I can't run (vertigo--I used to run 4-6 miles/day); I can't hop in the car and drive to Oregon; I can't ...

But asleep? I can do all those things--sometimes even better than I actually did them!

And now that I'm retired, opportunities to sleep abound. In fact, I have to battle the urge to head for the bed during the day--especially during the time (mid-afternoon) that I've set aside to head out to the health club, where I ride an exercise bike, walk a mile of not-so-fast laps, "ride" the rowing machine, do some curls in the weight area. These days, I hate every second of exercising--a thought that the Younger Me would not have believed--the Younger Me who biked and ran and played basketball and baseball and tennis and ... whatever.

A few years ago I stumbled across--then memorized--this short poem by Mary Oliver (1935-2019--a native of Maple Heights, OH), a poem that, for the Me of Now, says it all:

I love that--"the gift of forgetfulness gracious and kind": says it all

And pretty soon--in about ten minutes or so--I will head upstairs and take my late-morning nap, whose restorative powers, I hope, will convince me I've got enough whup-ass in me to head out to the health club later today.