Life Goes On

Last night Joyce and I were streaming some of season 2 of Ricky Gervais' funny and moving (and sometimes naughty) Netflix series After Life, which tells the story of Tony Johnson (Gervais), a small-town U.K. print journalist who is struggling mightily with the recent death of his beloved wife. (Gervais also writes and directs the episodes.) (Link to some video.)

At one point last night a couple of characters are talking (I don't want to give away too much), and one of them says, "Life goes on."  Pause. Then the other says, "Robert Frost." The other concurs, and the scene continues.

Life goes on. That didn't ring a Frosty bell with me, so, last night, a quick Google check gave me the source.

It is not a line from a poem (if it had been, I would have memorized the damn thing!) but from an interview he gave when he was 80 to This Week Magazine in September 1954. Here's the entire exchange with interviewer Ray Josephs (ellipses were in the original):

“In all your years and all your travels,” I asked, “what do you think is the most important thing you’ve learned about life?”

He paused a moment, then with the twinkle sparkling under those brambly eyebrows he replied: “In three words, I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life. It goes on. In all the confusions of today, with all our troubles . . . with politicians and people slinging the word fear around, all of us become discouraged . . . tempted to say this is the end, the finish. But life — it goes on. It always has. It always will. Don’t forget that."*

Frost (1874-1963) was born two years before Jack London (1876-1916), a fact that always unsettles me because, you see, I remember Robert Frost. He died when I was a freshman in college; I remember his difficulty reading his poem at JFK's 1961 Inauguration (he gave up, recited "The Gift Outright"** from memory instead--here's a link to that). Jack London just has always seemed to me of a more distant generation. Oddly, too, they both grew up in the Bay Area. I like to imagine them running around together--throwing rocks, watching trains and ships, discussing books--though there is absolutely no evidence that they ever met.

Anyway, that quotation from After Life has resonance for me these days. I think of our son, of his sons and how the latter will live the majority of their lives without me, whom, by the way, they called "Silly Papa" when they were younger, "SP" now. (Can't imagine why they'd consider me "silly.")

We are all ... evanescent. Temporary. Mortal. Human. Oddly, we casually use words like forever and always--but I can't think of two more irrelevant words when you're talking about something that dies! Shakespeare has endured for more than 400 years--but forever? I don't know about that.

Actually, I do know about that. And so do you.

As I've gotten older, I often think about how the things that bother me (don't get me started!) are really pointless to worry about. I can do nothing about them now. A hundred years from now? A thousand? Ten thousand? A million? I don't think that too many people a million years from now (if there even are any) will pause in a conversation, say, "Well, remember what Dan Dyer said? How he felt?"

Frost's comment--though it contains a kernel of hope--is also somewhat short-sighted. Yes, "life goes on"--for a while. And then it won't. In the short term, a kind of comfort; in the long term, naive.

Anyway, we love that Gervais series, and were happy to learn recently that Netflix has renewed it for a third season.

May we all live long enough to see it.

If not?

Life goes on.


*Here's a link to the website where I found this info.

**Link to "The Gift Outright"; link to poem he'd written for the occasion but could not because of the bright sun on his pages

The Sound of Silence

Okay, I've written here before about our antique cuckoo clock--and how, during this pandemic, its bird has self-quarantined. No more ticking. No more emerging from the clock. No more cuckooing.

Let me back up to remind you a bit about that clock before I begin to wax sentimental ...

It originally belonged to my great-grandfather Warren A. Lanterman (1866-1963), who lived on a farm in Austintown, Ohio (Four Mile Run Road), for about ninety years. (The farmhouse was razed years ago.) In his final years, he moved out to Enid, Oklahoma, where his daughter, my grandmother Alma E. Osborn (my mom's mom, 1896-1978), could care for him--which she did until he died.

We visited that farm when I was a wee one, and I remember that clock very well--and I remember, too, how Grandpa Lanterman had beheaded a chicken for our supper--how that headless chicken ran around the barnyard a bit before Reality caught up with him, and down he went--on the ground and, later, our throats.

I never again in my life had to wonder about that expression like a chicken with its head cut off.

When Grandpa Lanterman left the farm, the cuckoo clock came to us in Hiram, and it hung and cuckooed on our wall throughout my youth.

In the late summer of 1966, my parents moved out to Des Moines, Iowa, where they would both teach at Drake University. The clock went with them.

In 1978 my grandmother Osborn died out in Columbia, Missouri, where she and her husband, who pre-deceased her, retired. That same year, my parents, now both retired, headed out to live in Cannon Beach, Oregon, in a home they built on the slope of Tillamook Head leading up to Ecola State Park. And Joyce and I acquired the cuckoo clock, which has hung on our wall ever since.

It's lived in Kent, Ohio; Lake Forest, Illinois; Hudson, Ohio; Aurora, Ohio; Hudson, Ohio, again.

Our little boy loved it. His sons have loved it. One of these days it will pass on to them.

But recently ... it quit, as I said. (We have had it repaired a few previous times in its forty-plus years with us.)

Okay--one quick repair story ... When our son was 6, we were living in Lake Forest, and one day one of his friends came over, got curious about the cuckoo clock, climbed up on a chair for a closer look, and when the bird popped out, he grabbed it. Off for repair we went--for the clock, not for the little boy.

In these COVID times we're cautious about calling our Clock Guy to come pick it up for repair, so we'll probably wait until things settle down a little bit more.

I've tried re-starting it a few times--adjusting its position on the wall a little, listening for a solid tick-tock. Last week one day it ran for about six hours, and I was ecstatic.

Then it stopped and would not run for more than a minute or so after my subsequent adjustment.

Meanwhile, I can't stand its sound of silence. I've been so used to hearing it in the night (it cuckoos on the hour and half-hour), throughout the day. As I said in a previous post about it, it has been, in many ways, the steady heartbeat of our house.

I even miss pulling the chains that "wind" it twice a day--morning and evening. It hangs right by our front door, right by our steps leading upstairs, and it has been part of my going-to-bed routine for decades, pulling those chains.

Now when I go by it each evening, I feel I've lost something. Reproachfully--regretfully--I look at it and urge it to come back to life.

And, honestly, there are times during the day--in my study--in the family room--when I am positive I've just heard it.

Maybe the little bird is just telling me: I'm still here--I'll be out again soon.

And don't I hope so!



Link to Simon & Garfunkel and "The Sound of Silence."

Backpack on the Chair

When it wasn't on my back, my backpack lived on this chair in our dining area. Each morning, I would heft it onto my back and walk over to Open Door Coffee Company here in Hudson to do my morning's work.

Back on the back it would go for the walk home, and I would sling it into this chair, where it would rest until my post-lunch return to Open Door for my early afternoon's work. Then ... back home, another slump into the chair, where it would rest until the following morning. And I have done this for years--even before Open Door opened its doors--the days of Saywell's, Coffee on Main, Caribou, Bruegger's, Hattie's Cafe (as I closed one, I moved on to another--except Bruegger's, of course, which endures despite my daily presence there for about a year).

So what's in that backpack? Books. a writing tablet for note-taking. My Kindle. My iPad. Supplies (mechanical pencils, pencil leads, ink refills, spare pens, a small stapler and some staples, a portable charger, a stack of note cards--each featuring a poem I've memorized, assorted junk that I've totally forgotten about ... I think it weighs about forty pounds when loaded--good exercise, those walks to and from the coffee shop.

The last day I went to Open Door was Saturday, March 14, when I decided I was going to play it safe in COVID Times. (I'm in a vulnerable demographic: 75 years old, cancer patient.) Since then, I've been doing all my work here. Joyce and I used to go out for daily walks, but the streets can be crowded, so we stay in and ride our exercise bike (she, early in the morning--I, about 2:30 p.m.). The only other time we go out for any extended period is to Acme Fresh Market to pick up our online grocery order for the week. We sit in the car; an employee brings the order out, puts it in the trunk for us.

But the backpack still sits in its chair. Day after day, night after night. Week after week. Month after month.

Joyce commented on it the other day--said it made her smile, seeing it there.

Me, too. Smile and grieve.

I want to sling that thing on my back again, walk over to Open Door while reciting some memorized poems (silently, in my head!), sit and work and interact with other Regulars. I want to look out the window at some of the glorious sunrises I can see from "my" chair.

So ... the backpack reminds me of all that, and sometimes I think I can almost hear its plaintive voice: C'mon, man--let's go!

Don't I wish.

Sunday Routine

sourdough starter--fed and ready to separate

I don't think I've ever written about how we spend our Sundays--but if I have, you probably didn't read it, anyway (and if you did, you've probably forgotten it: obviously, I have!).

It's changed a bit since COVID-19--but not a lot. And it's changed a bit since I have to deal with this periodic [insert your own foul adjective here] dizziness.

On Saturday morning I feed my sourdough starter--let it sit for eight or nine hours (see pic at the top of this post)--then remove a couple of cups to put back in the crockery container and save for next time. I leave the remainder in the bowl where it rose, cover it with Saran Wrap, put it in the fridge for Sunday's baking.

(I used to feed the starter on Saturday night, then, the next morning, do what I just described in the previous paragraph.)

On Sunday, we get up at 7. In the Pre-Dizzy Days I used to mix my bread and set it aside to rise, but I can't do that now, so, instead, I unload the dishwasher and put the sourdough from the fridge on a wooden rack in the kitchen to let it warm up to room temp before I begin the baking process.

Upstairs I go to clean up--and shave! (once a week, without fail!)--then head down to work at the computer a bit before Joyce comes downstairs.

When she comes down, in pre-COVID days, we used to drive over to Panera for a bagel and to read the Sunday New York Times--then do our grocery shopping at the Acme store and Heinen's (Acme is in the same shopping center as the Panera).

No more.

Since our staying-at-home began, we now toast a bagel here (we do our grocery shopping online with Acme--pick it up on Saturday afternoon) and read the Times (home-delivered!). Here's a habit: Joyce takes the Magazine first; I take the Book Review. Then I move on to the opinion pages, the arts pages, the news section, Joyce following behind.

After we're done and Joyce heads upstairs to work, I'll lie down on the couch for about 15 minutes (getting my balance back), then mix my bread dough for the week and set it aside to rise for a couple of hours (or more--depending). I clean up my mess in the kitchen. (Yes, I do!)

Then ... another 15-minute rest before heading into my study to start work on that week's "Sunday Sundries," which, as all of you know, I post on this site.

By then it's lunch time, and I have my usual: cup of vanilla yogurt with strawberries and blueberries, a piece of toasted sourdough bread (spread lightly with some preserves from Szalay's Farm Market; my favorites are strawberry, blackberry, apricot.) I rotate the jars. When I run out of one, I move onto the next. I have a big supply of jars because we go to Szalay's about every week in the summer, and I stock up for the fall/winter/spring.

We clean up from lunch, and usually it's about time to shape the bread, put it in the pans, and wait for its second rise (about an hour and a half), during which time I head upstairs for what our little boy used to call a Tiny Nap.

Up from the nap, I go back down to preheat the oven and to sharpen the kitchen knives we use during the week. Just before the oven is ready, I sprinkle the tops of the loaves with whole-wheat flour and slice the tops. And into the oven they go. The aroma fills the house with the inexpressibly wonderful baking-bread-smell--as all you bakers know.

I'll work in the study a little more--or lie down--while it's baking. I'll compose a little doggerel to post along with the bread-pic I'll post on Facebook after the baking's done.

More work in the study.

Then, it's supper time. On Sunday evenings we usually have omelets (I use Egg Beaters for mine; Joyce gets the Real Thing).

After cleaning up the kitchen and starting the dishes, up we go. I put on my pj's and flop in the bed (and, yes, it's usually only about 5:45!) and read from my stack of books--10 pp or so in each--before the streaming commences. (Confession: about 7:30 we each have a sugar-free Popsicle!)

We finish our streaming about 8--lights out--talk (sometimes for an hour or more)--sleep (eventually).

Sound excitin'?

Well, to me it's a lovely routine that I would have abhorred as a teenager (I could not have believed the Old Me would act like this!) but that I now cherish like the Cullinan Diamond.

Sunday Sundries, 276

1. AOTW: Last week our son and his family came up for a couple through-the-front-door porch chats--we used my iPhone for audio (!) (and they are the HBOTW this week--no question), but here's the AOTW part: The first day they were here, a couple of older men were walking along the sidewalk (men, in other words, about my age), and one of them stopped, mask-less, and came over to talk to our daughter-in-law (masked) and stood about two feet away from her. She's a nurse and was clearly alarmed--but he was on her, and it was beyond awkward. (He was telling her that she reminded him of someone he knew--how he could tell through her face mask is ... impressive.) He finally returned to the sidewalk, comforted by the fact that he was the hands-down winner of the AOTW Award this week.

2. I finished just one book this week (the book I was reading for Kirkus Reviews was very long this week, and I spent most of my time with it).

     - Arthur Phillips' 2009 novel, The Song Is You, was the last of Phillips' novels I had not read. He's still fairly young (compared with me) and still writing, so here's hoping there will be many more.

Like The Egyptologist, 2004, which I wrote about a few weeks ago, this is a novel about obsession and what it can do to you--and to those around you. Like almost all of Phillips' other novels, though, this one is about a world totally different from the other worlds he's written about: Egypt, Prague, Shakespearean times, Victorian London. He is a polymath--evidenced, I guess, by his having been a five-time Jeopardy! winner.

Julian Donahue is the focus of this one, and the novel begins with an account of how his father's voice is in a live recording done by jazz singer Billie Holiday (1915-59).

In adulthood, Julian has become a very successful director of TV commercials, but his marriage to Rachel has fractured--a fracture due in some (large?) part by the death of their four-year old son (and only child), Carlton.

Visiting Julian frequently is his odd brother--who has been on Jeopardy! and seems to know every arcane fact there is about ... well just about everything.

One day, in a local club, Julian hears a young woman singing. Her name is Cait. And he and the other patrons recognize that she is a wonder--definitely a rising star.

Julian becomes obsessed with her--stalks her (even across the Atlantic on a tour)--and convinces himself (is it true?) that she has reciprocal feelings--even though he's quite a bit older.

Well, that's enough ...  Phillips takes us on a twisted, anfractuous* journey through their relationship--many surprises along the way--arriving at a resolution I did not expect.

A major writer is Phillips. Can't wait for the next one!

3. This week, in the evenings, while waiting for Joyce to finish her work and come to bed (where we stream bits of shows we like for about an hour), I streamed The Long Goodbye, a 1973 film by Robert Altman (based on the eponymous novel, 1953, by Raymond Chandler). Altman updated the film to the early 70s (Joyce and I saw it when it was released), and it stars Elliot Gould (a young Elliot Gould--he was 35 at the time), who frolics around in his character of P.I. Philip Marlowe--very agile and even athletic.

One of the things I really liked: the music. The theme song ("The Long Goodbye," by John Williams--yes, the Star Wars guy--sung by Clydie King) appears throughout the film in a variety of ways: underneath the story and transitions, a guy playing it on a piano in a bar, various people singing parts of it--it's everywhere. (Link to the song.)

I got a surprise, too, later in the film. Marlowe has been taken by a hood and his minions who want to know where the money is (Marlowe doesn't know), and as I was watching I saw that one of the minor hoods in the room was ... Arnold Schwarzenegger! (He takes his shirt off--the gangster has ordered everyone to strip--and then there's no doubt!).

Anyway, I loved seeing the film again--even though I remembered the ending quite clearly. (Boy, did it shock me back in 1973.) Just before the credits roll, we get an almost Chaplinesque scene as Gould playfully/friskily walks off into the distance down a wooded lane in Mexico, moving ever father away from the fixed camera--I almost expected an iris out!

Link to some video.

This made me want to go an Altman-binge.

I actually saw him once. I was in Chicago with my older brother (at the time, he was the classical music critic for the Boston Globe)  seeing an early performance of an opera by William Bolcom, an opera based on Frank Norris' 1899 novel McTeague, a novel with which I have a "history" that I will not get into right now.

Altman co-wrote the libretto--and directed the performance. And he and others did a Q&A with the audience.

Link to some video of the opera.

4. I've had a little trouble acquiring flour recently--but I lucked out this week when I acquired a 50-lb. bag of organic flour! You should have seen me carrying that sucker from the front porch back to our pantry. Arnold Schwarzenegger, you ain't got nothin' on me!  (I didn't see how easily the FedEx guy carried it from the truck, up our few front porch steps, onto the porch. I bet he got a lot of HELP!)

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

     - from dictionary.com

proxemics [ prok-see-miks ]

noun (used with a singular verb): the study of the spatial requirements of humans and animals and the effects of population density on behavior, communication, and social interaction.

WHAT IS THE ORIGIN OF PROXEMICS?

It is hard to find a more apposite word right now than proxemics “the study of the spatial requirements for humans and the effects of population density on behavior and social interaction.” Proxemics is made up of prox(imity) and –emics, which is extracted from (phon)emics “the study of the system of sounds of a language,” or is formed on the pattern of a word like phonemics. Proxemics was coined in 1973 by the U.S anthropologist Edward Hall.

HOW IS PROXEMICS USED?

 We’re likely to see a recalibration of the bubble of personal space we keep around ourselves—a field scientists call proxemics. AMIT KATWALA, "CORONAVIRUS COULD KILL HANDSHAKES," WIRED, MARCH 6, 2020

Proxemics, however, is not merely about interactions between individuals. On a larger scale, it helps developers, urban planners and executives in various industries understand how people move through public spaces, how they shop, even what type of restaurants they find most comfortable. STEPHANIE ROSENBLOOM, "IN CERTAIN CIRCLES, TWO IS A CROWD," NEW YORK TIMES, NOVEMBER 16, 2006

*anfractuous = full of windings and especially intricate turnings (I learned this one years ago while reading a piece by Wm. F. Buckley, Jr.--and like to trot it out now and then!)

Delivery

Delivery trucks are up and down our street all day—USPS, Amazon, UPS, FedEx, etc. And we all know why, of course: COVID-19 is keeping many of us at home, and it’s just safer to have that toothpaste delivered from Amazon (as I did yesterday) than to venture out to a store where a no-masker, perhaps carrying a rifle, will sneeze in your face and call you a coward.

Not that I’ve ever seen such a thing in our local Acme Fresh Market—but I do see lots of unmasked people—men, women, parents-with-children, etc. Alarming.

And so I think of The Lone Ranger, that show on radio and TV that I loved as a kid. When we lived in Amarillo, Tex., in 1952–53, we had no TV reception—so it was Radio Time. And, later on, back in media-rich Oklahoma (!),  I’m sure I saw all the episodes (multiple times) of the TV series that ran from 1949–57.

I even loved that recent Gore Verbinski film about the Ranger (2013) with Armie Hammer and Johnny Depp. (Most critics did not like it.)  In fact, when that familiar music from William Tell began late in the film, I wept! (Shows what's happening to me in my, uh, Later Years.)  (Link to film trailer.)

Anyway, in lots of the TV shows, near the end, as the Lone Ranger rode away (having solved the problem of the episode), one of the characters would ask another, “Who was that masked man?” And when the reply came, the theme music returned again, and the credits rolled.

Now, there are masked men (and women and children) everywhere, and the question now has altered to become: “Who is that unmasked man?” And a funeral dirge commences.

I know not many of us really like being told what to do—I certainly didn’t as a kid (and later). I get that part.

What I don’t understand is why so many people now flagrantly disobey a requirement to protect their own health and the health of others. I know that there’s lots of activity on Facebook and other social media—posts and memes and the like—that roar about oppression and fake news and libtard conspiracies, conspiracies that have grown ever more bizarre as the lockdown period has progressed.

Some apparently  believe that this is all a deep-state/Democratic plan to take down President Trump—as if those of us who oppose him would engineer and circulate a deadly virus (killing some we know and love), that would wreck the economy (putting millions out of work), that would sink us into a 1930s kind of depression, that would destroy local business, that would …

But here's the simple truth: The virus does not care about our politics, our conspiracies. It just arrives, sickens, spreads, and, in tens of thousands of cases here in America, kills.

The opening of The Lone Ranger TV show has a bit about “the thrilling days of yesteryear.” I’m thinking I’d like to dial it back, return to 1952, where I'm about 8, lying by a radio, listening delightedly as the Lone Ranger solves another one. I had no fears then. I certainly do now.

And I could use the Ranger--right now.

Link to video of opening and closing of The Lone Ranger.


NOTE: Many complete episodes are on YouTube.

Will Things Ever Be the Same?

chickadee--not "ours," though

Yesterday after supper we had a "front-porch visit" with our son and his family, who had driven up from their home in Green, Ohio. We didn't go outside, even though they were masked: Both Joyce and I are, for one reason or another, in the "vulnerable" category. To communicate, we used my iPhone on speaker.

Delighting everyone was this: They had given us a gift not long ago--a wee birdhouse (the kind you can hang on a wall), and Joyce had hung it on the outside wall by our front door. In the past couple of days, a chickadee has declared it his space, though. When he hears the front door open, he will dart out of there with all the alacrity of .... well, of me, say, if I were to see Bigfoot at the front door. (I'd be out the back, of course.)

Our human visitors were out on the porch for quite a while as we caught up on all that they're doing (for example, the two boys, 10 and 15, are both engaged in remote, online learning from their schools and seem to be very self-disciplined about doing their work--just as I would (not) have been at their age).

Meanwhile, the chickadee was annoyed and from its perch--which moved from limb to limb on nearby trees--issued dire (!) warnings about his presence--loud chirps that seemed somehow inconsistent with his diminutive presence.

I will now translate those chirps for you: That's my space! When are you going to leave? When are things going to return to normal?

On that score, the chickadee and most of the rest of us compose a chorus, one that sings the same verse over and over and over again, our voices growing ever more raspy as we do so.

I'm afraid I believe that the general insouciance of my life will never return, not in my ever-shortening lifetime. COVID-19 seems determined to linger on the porch so long that even an irate chickadee will give up and wing off in search of a more promising abode.

We're learning that the virus has mutated somewhat (no surprise: all creatures, great and small, do that) and may have become even more threatening to younger people--and even to those who've already recovered from COVID-19(a) and now must confront (b).

Social distancing, it seems, will have to continue for quite a while--months? years? forever?

And masks? Already highly controversial (among some--not me), masks seem to have a doubtful future. As you no doubt know, if you wear a mask, you are principally protecting others whom you encounter. If they are wearing masks, then the protection flows both ways; if they are not, the (potential) virus flows one way: toward you. In other words, not wearing a mask is tantamount to saying: I don't care if I infect you.

But some seem to think that requiring masks is somehow dictatorial--un-American--like, you know, speed limits in cars, driving in the right, not the left, lane, stoplights, and on and on and on. One person has already died--murdered--because he was enforcing a face-mask rule at a store. Shot dead by an annoyed, mask-less, freedom-loving customer denied access to the store. (Would the Founding Fathers be proud!)

Some stores have adjusted their face-mask rule because of angry, even violent encounters that employees have had to deal with.

Anyway ... that's just one way our world has changed in the past couple of months. There are, as you know, so many others.

In fact, there have been so many that the thought of one day (soon? ever?) returning to my previous, careless routines seems more and more remote. Walking over to the coffee shop, sitting and talking with friends, going out to the health club to exercise on machines others have used, to chat in the locker room, etc.? Going to movies, plays? Driving out to a mall to walk around and look and sit with a cup of coffee?

Greeting family members with hugs instead of iPhone-chats with a door between us while an annoyed chickadee screams about the loss of his Normal. His Freedom.