Cicada Quiet

among the 1st arrivals,
several weeks ago

I just noticed today that it's quieter around here in Hudson, Ohio--no more deep droning sound in the air from sunrise to sunset. The cicadas are ending their brief return after their seventeen-year hiatus below ground. The silence is suprising, almost unnerving.

Oh, there are still signs of them around: some live ones are flying, walking around, looking, I must say, a little dazed. (I'm guessing the birds are beginning to wonder where their stunning bounty of food has gone.) This morning, Joyce used the hose to wash a number of carcasses from our front and side porches.

The cicadas have enjoyed our house and yard this year, affixing themselves to the screens, walking around on the porch (perching on my bicycle tires), dying in clumps on the sidewalk, on the steps, on the porch itself. They were so plentiful at one time that our son, Steve, brought his two sons (Logan, 11, and Carson, 7) up from nearby Green to see and hear them. The boys were simultaneously excited and a bit wary--at least at first. Learning that cicadas have no teeth emboldened the boys (as it once did me).

I imagine the critters will linger a bit more--it's not suddenly Exeunt left. Like the rest of us, they'll drop and die on their own schedule, thank you.

I'm glad I got to see them another time, despite having to watch my step on the sidewalks for a few weeks, despite having to brush them from my hair and shoulders and bike tires, despite hearing them roar in chorus while I was trying to take a nap. They are one of nature's wonders, reminders that if you think your own life is weird, well, consider the cicada.

If I am still kicking when they next return, I'll be eighty-eight years old. Unthinkable. But if I am alive to see and hear them, I hope I still appreciate the wonder of it all and not gnash my teeth (if I have any) and grumble like a Grumpy Old Man (which, by the way, I already am).

And speaking of unthinkable, our son will be sixty then, our grandsons in their twenties.

Thoughts of Union ...

My dad--and I'm not sure why--wasn't crazy about labor unions. In fact, when he was teaching teacher-education courses at Hiram College (1956-66), he would distinguish between the teachers' union (AFT--American Federation of Teachers) and what he called "professional organizations" (like the NEA--National Education Association). No surprise: He favored the latter. I knew this for two reasons: (1) I lived in the same house with him; (2) I took his (required) introductory course for those considering a teaching career, Educ. 301: The School in American Society (and, yes, I got an "A," dammit!).

As a result, I was slow to warm to unions myself. When I began teaching (fall of 1966), the Aurora Education Association (AEA), an affiliate of the NEA and OEA, was pretty much a social club. It sponsored a progressive dinner at Christmas, a teachers' bowling league (which I loved, by the way), and seemed to me to be pretty much a formality.

Except ...

My first year I chaired some committee (why me?) that never met ("Professional Rights" or some such name), but one spring day I got a message: We needed to meet with a teacher and the Superintendent about a salary issue ...

At that time, Aurora still had a merit-pay system. Based on your building principal's recommendation, you could earn up to 4% more on your salary (also available, 1, 2, and 3%). The best part: That percentage became a permanent part of your base.

Well, one of the veteran teachers believed he'd been unfairly denied the merit increase and demanded a hearing. I was just 22 years old that spring.

We met in a room at Aurora High School (the brand-new AHS had opened just that year), and the Superintendent came swooping in, declared peremptorily why this wasn't going to be an issue, and rose to leave--all within about two minutes.

The two other teachers and I (and the veteran who'd wanted the hearing) sat there silent and awe-struck.

And then something that sounded like my voice said, "Wait!"

The Superintendent turned around. "Yes?"

"Shouldn't we at least talk about this a few minutes?"

And for a reason I cannot to this day figure out, the Superintendent turned around, sat, and talked with us, eventually agreeing on some sort of compromise involving the veteran teacher's status the next year when merit pay decisions came up.

I have no clue why I spoke up (I was terrified)--or, as I said, why the Superintendent broke stride and returned. But I did, and he did, and my opinion of unions began to change.

Later, I would become a very active member of the AEA, participated very vigorously in our teachers' strike (spring of 1978)--I even got cited by the Aurora Police for blocking (amiably) a driveway so that a vehicle full of replacement teachers could not just cruise up to the high school. (Yes, I have a record!)

I remember that, near the bottom of the Harmon Middle School driveway, we used to picket. It was friendly--some sad parents would pull up and talk with us (a few were angry; most were not)--but occasionally joining us was a retired teamster who lived across the street, a man who was puzzled by our genial behavior: You guys need some damn ball bats out here, he would tell us. We would smile and talk about Proust (not really--but you get the idea).

Oh, I'm no Pollyanna about labor unions--even our own. I well know the problems I saw firsthand (e.g., protecting those whom the teaching profession would perhaps be better off without)--and those problems I read about in other unions (corruption).

But on balance? No question, at least for me. Unions made better the lives of millions of workers and their families. Joyce's father (a life-long URW member in Akron) was able to live in a nice home in Firestone Park (Akron), to send his only daughter to college, to save, enjoy health and retirement benefits, job protection (which came in handy when the company decided to cut him off just months before his full retirement benefits would have kicked in). He went to his grave a Union Man.

And so I'm saddened to see a chart like the one I've posted below ...

This, of course, is the result of downsizing, of out-sourcing, and, of course, of flat-out union-busting and unadulterated greed. Workers who, because of unions, were once firmly in the middle class now must struggle even to get by--working multiple jobs for diminished wages and benefits. Exacerbating the problem? These workers have few advocates. In a non-union job you're pretty much helpless, on your own. Fragile.

I personally benefited tremendously from the teachers' union. Working conditions, health care, job protection, retirement benefits ... and on and on. And my students benefited, as well, from the overall climate and working conditions, from the stable faculty (happy people generally don't leave their jobs, etc.).

Again--I do not wish to suggest there were no problems with unions--of course there were (they comprised human beings, of course--this flawed species of ours).

But still I have to ask: Why can't all American workers enjoy such things? Shouldn't our simple humanity insist on it? Demand it? Are we really going to have to fight the union battle all over again?

Frankenstein Sundae, 235

While I was whirling away in all my Mary-research, I read a bit about and by Frances “Fanny” Milton Trollope, including the 1997 biography Fanny Trollope: The Life and Adventures of a Clever Woman.[1] My notes remind me that I read that book in the middle of September 1999 (a couple of years into my research), and as I page through the volume now, I am stunned to see how much Trollope wrote in such a short time. Forty-one books between 1832 and 1856. Just twenty-four years. 

Equally astonishing: Born in 1780, she did not publish her first volume until she was in her fifty-second year. Novels and travel books were her favorite (especially the former), and among her novels was The Life and Adventures of Jonathan Jefferson Whitlaw; or Scenes on the Mississippi, 1836, now credited with being perhaps the first anti-slavery novel—as well as an influence on Harriet Beecher Stowe.

I’ve not read this novel, and, as I look online today (June 22, 2016), I see that there are available only print-on-demand editions—or some very expensive originals (she published the novel, as was the custom then, in three volumes). I’m going to have to pony up for something because I want to read that novel. (I just now checked: I can get it online—it’s been digitized by Google.)

I did read one of Fanny Trollope’s books, however—her first one, Domestic Manners of the Americans, 1832—a book that propelled her into an almost immediate celebrity and (on our side of the pond) notoriety. She had traveled to America, where, to say the least, she was generally not impressed with many of us—or with our ways.

---

[1] Neville-Singleton, Pamela, (New York: Viking). 1^st American edition was 1998, which is the one I read.

Mort Sahl, Still with Us ...

August 15, 1960

I don't know why I thought of comedian Mort Sahl the other day, but I do remember that I could not think of his name (coming up with names--an issue that has, well, deepened as I've grown older). I still couldn't think of it after a reasonable time, so I hit Google with "1960s radical comedians," and there he was, along with some others whose names I can't remember right now.

Mort Sahl. Sharp wit. Biting political satire. Politically incorrect. Bright as a brass button in the sunshine.

I Wikipediaed him and was surprised to see he's still alive (born in 1927)--and even more so to learn that he's still performing fairly regularly.

There was a time when Sahl was on TV a lot as a guest; his comedy albums sold very well; then things went sour when he began regularly going off on the Warren Report (the official account of the JFK assassination). He didn't believe it. He smelled conspiracy. And his audience, tolerant at first, gave up, drifted away, found other voices to listen to. While he'd stepped off the train for a moment, he realized that no other train would stop for him. And he found himself limited to small clubs in small places with small audiences.

And it was in just such a setting that I saw him perform in 1966 or 1967, down in Columbus, Ohio, where a great college friend, Claude Steele, was starting to work on his Ph.D. I drove down to visit him and wife Dorothy, and they took me to the oddest bar/club I've ever been in. I think it was called "The Bedroom," and it featured servers dressed in pj's, bedroom decor, etc. Some rather feeble searching on Google and newspapers.com did not turn up anything about it, so I'm going to rely entirely on Traitor Memory.

I don't remember anything specific Sahl said that night--though I do remember that he was still ranting a lot about the Warren Report.

I do remember that I laughed a lot; I remember loving his biting, intelligent humor. And I think I remember marveling at how ... professional he was, even performing in this odd, odd place to a room either half-full or half-empty. A long fall from The Tonight Show and other prestigious venues where he'd once been a welcome guest.

Sahl still has a considerable presence on YouTube--and here are a few links to some bits he did.

1. explaining politics (1967)
2. Mort and Milton Berle (not sure the year)
3. With Steve Allen (1960)
4. With Smothers Brothers (1969)

I'm glad Mort Sahl is still out there--still saying those outrageous things that need to be said. He's kind of a Jiminy Cricket, chirping away even when we don't want to listen. And listen we should.

Seek and Ye Shall (Maybe Not) Find

I got a new laptop a few weeks ago, and, in general, I'm really happy with it. It's a Dell (from BestBuy), and it boots up and shuts down far more quickly than my previous Dell, which seemed always reluctant to awaken (reminding me of myself, an adolescent, years ago on Saturday mornings--hell, on any morning, really) and to shut down (ditto re: my adolescent self).

But it's been great ... for the most part.

The only problem I've had has been My Own Damn Fault. When I transferred files from my old one, I seemed to have neglected a few things.

For example, today ...

Someone had posted a story online about the summer beach home once used by writer John O'Hara (whose complete works I read a few years ago--and about whom I wrote a monograph for Kindle Direct, Do You Like It Here? Inside the Worlds of John O'Hara--A Brief Biographical Memoir). (Link to book.) The O'Haras would stay there for many summers.

I went to the realtor's site online, found about ten great pictures of the place and its surroundings, downloaded them ... and then ... could not for the life of me find my (many) folders of images of O'Hara and his world.

After about a half-hour of teeth-gnashing and uttering grievous execrations, I realized the obvious: I'd somehow not copied them onto my new hard drive.

No problem.

I am a psychopathic backer-upper of computer files.

So in a matter of moments I had them where I wanted them, added the new images, added those images to the PowerPoint presentation (which I've delivered to two different audiences--Hiram College and the local library here in Hudson, Ohio ... who knows if I'll give an O'Hara talk again, but I'm ready if I do!).

So, my blood pressure has diminished. My attitude has sweetened (insofar as that is possible these Dark Days).

And I'm now somewhat recovered from what happened yesterday at a Father's Day dinner with my wife (Joyce), son, daughter-in-law, grandsons.

When Joyce and I were waiting for the others at the restaurant table (at one of our favorite places, The Pufferbelly, an old train station, in Kent, Ohio), our waitress was touched by our Father's Day plans and asked Joyce if I were her father.

I laughed.

And cried.

Sunday Sundries, 107

1. AOTW: A close call this week ...

• RUNNER-UP: The guy at the health club counter who knew I was there first, but when the attendant came to the counter, the AOTW-RU went ahead of me anyway. Nice.
• WINNER: Driving north. Four-lane road. I'm in the left lane because, a frequent traveler here, I know the lane on my right merges/closes soon. A guy on my right, leaning far back in his driver's seat, cellphone affixed to his ear (I won't say "smartphone" because, well, look who was using it?), absolutely oblivious to the traffic situation. I slow, let him merge though he does not have the right-of-way and remains, the entire time, absolutely unaware of what else is going on around him. The world is his oyster, and I was ready to rip him out of his shell and feed him to a feral cat. (I know: The metaphor doesn't quite work, but I like the violent part.)

2. I forgot to mention this last week. I was on my bike, riding down to Starbucks, cutting through a parking lot. There, some folks were unloading their bikes. One little boy (7? 8?) saw me go by and said to his dad (while pointing at me): "I don't like that old guy's helmet."

3. I finished two books this week ...

• The first, Custer's Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America (2015) by T. J. Stiles, won the recent Pulitzer Prize (History)--and deserved it. I have read a lot of Custer books--fueled by a boyhood biography I read (Quentin Reynolds' Custer's Last Stand, 1951), by a trip to see the battlefield in youth (and some later visits as well), by one of my favorite novels of all time Little Big Man, 1964, by Thomas Berger. Wisely, Stiles does not expend much energy on the Last Stand (ground so well covered by so many others) but on other aspects of Custer's life: his wife, his, uh, infidelities, his ambitions (political, financial), his racism, his strengths (a truly fearless leader on the battlefield--no sitting on a horse on a distant hill and watching; he was leading charges!), his relationships with his fellow officers and his subordinates, etc. And, to Stiles' great credit, a man emerges from the mists of myth.

• The second was the antepenultimate (love that word!) novel of John A. Williams, 1925-2015, whose complete novels I began reading when--to my chagrin--I read his obituary about a year ago and realized I'd never even heard of him. I've enjoyed my journey through his works, though this one I just finished, The Berhama Account (1985), is not among my favorites. It takes place on a fictional Caribbean island, Berhama, where race remains an issue, where the current prime minister (a fool's fool) has employed a U.S. PR firm to help him in the current election, an election that doesn't look good for him. The book does have its moments ...

• A hyper-sexed woman journalist falls off a fifth-story balcony of a hotel, survives, keeps covering the election.
• Some apparent evil brewing throughout proves to be a dud.
• And just about everyone involved in the political process--candidates, journalists, PR people, the electorate--all emerge from the story covered in the slime they deserve (figuratively, of course).
• I just felt the novel wasn't as entertaining as it could be--his sense of humor seemed unequal to the task--and there were so many characters (he shifts focus throughout) that I sometimes had to refresh my memory about who this person was and why I should care about him/her.
• Still ... Williams was a talent. And reading just about anything by him is educative.

4. I was surprised to note the other day that I have hit a mile-marker on my other blog, Daily Doggerel. (Link to that site.) Six hundred posts. Six hundred silly poems, one a day (pretty much). Who woulda thunk I'd have such a supply of trivial thoughts?!?

5. Some Final Words ...

• Wordsmith.org had a cool series of words-of-the-day this week: "reduplicatives"--words such as these: hugger-mugger, argle-bargle, hoity-toity, tussie-mussie, hurly-burly.
• From the OED: prosily, adv. Origin:Formed within English, by derivation. Etymons: prosy adj., -ly suffix². Etymology: <  prosy adj. + -ly suffix².
• 
  
    In a prosy, dull, or commonplace manner; tediously; prosaically.
  
  
  1836  Dickens Pickwick Papers(1837) xiv. 134 The Peacock presented attractions which enabled the two friends to resist, even the invitations of the talented, though prosily inclined, Mr. Pott.
  1849  D. M. Mulock Ogilvies xxiii, This speech, delivered rather prosily and oracularly.
  1874  T. Hardy Far from Madding Crowd I. ii. 23 Oak knew her..as the heroine of the yellow waggon..: prosily, as the woman who owed him twopence.
  1937  J. P. Marquand Late George Apley xxxi. 353, I am speaking very prosily, out of sheer joy at having you come back.
  1993 Chicago Sun-Times 21 Feb. (Travel Section) 8/3 ‘Time's masterpiece’ the village likes to call itself, a bit prosily, but there is a timelessness about those cobbled streets..that seems to pass by the 20th century in favor of the 16th.
• And this one--not a word-of-the-day--but just something I read, didn't know, and looked up in the OED.  aphesis, n.

Etymology: < Greek ἄϕεσις a letting go, < ἀϕιέναι, < ἀϕ' off, away + ἱέναι to send, let go.

  The gradual and unintentional loss of a short unaccented vowel at the beginning of a word; as in squire for esquire, down for adown, St. Loy for St. Eloy, limbeck for alimbeck, 'tention! for attention! It is a special form of the phonetic process called Aphæresis, for which, from its frequency in the history of the English language, a distinctive name is useful. Now also used in the sense of aphaeresis n.

1880   J. A. H. Murray in Trans. Philol. Soc. 175   The Editor can think of nothing better than to call the phenomenon Aphesis..and the resulting forms Aphetic forms.

1930   A. Western in Gram. Misc. Jespersen 135,   I do not quite see the difference between aphesis and aphæresis, but use the former term as the shorter and therefore more convenient of the two.

1932   W. L. Graff Lang. vi. 234   A loss at the beginning is called aphaeresis or aphesis ..bishop < Lat. episcopus, knife and write in which k and w were formerly sounded.

A Day to Remember a Father Lost

Dad and his 3 sons,
August 1956,
Enid, Okla.,
the day we left to move to Hiram, Ohio

I miss my dad--Charles Edward Dyer, 1913-1999--with a sense of piercing affection and loss that has not diminished since his death in November 1999, an impossible seventeen years ago this fall. And I miss him every day. As many of you know, you don't ever get over the loss of a loved one; the loss changes, multiplies, surprises you with fresh appearances in dreams, in daily events, in memory. It's astonishing.

My dad was overseas in France, WW II, when I was born on November 11, 1944, and didn't even know I existed for a while (his letters at the time are full of queries about the me he didn't know--but Mom's letters took a while to catch up with him). (And yes, for you with naughty, skeptical minds, he had been home nine months earlier.)

We were living in our Osborn grandparents' home, 1609 East Broadway Avenue in Enid (they had an apartment upstairs--1609 1/2--where we lived), and both my older brother, Richard (by three years), and I got to know Grandpa very well--so much so, in fact, that when Dad returned from the war, and Richard (Dickie at the time) found Dad in bed with Mom that first morning after that first night, he asked Mom: Who is that strange man?

It was a question he and I (and, later, our younger bro, Davi) would spend a lifetime discovering. And everything we learned was a marvel. Just a few things--some of which I've mentioned here before. Tough. Here they are again.

• He grew up--the 2nd oldest of nearly a dozen--on a farm in north-central Oregon (near Milton-Freewater).
• His own father died when Dad was just a teen.
• He went to work during the Depression to help support his family.
• He worked his way through college.
• He was at Phillips University (RIP) in Enid in the late 1930s when he met my mom, the daughter of one of the professors at Phillips. They married on October 12, 1939.
• Off he went with her to begin his career as a minister (Disciples of Christ) in Denver.
• World War II. He served as a chaplain.
• He stayed in the Air Force Reserves after the war, retiring years later as a Lt. Colonel.
• He earned an Ed.D. at the University of Oklahoma and switched his profession to Education.
• He was called back to active duty during the Korean War and was stationed for nearly two years at Amarillo Air Force Base in Texas.
• Back to Enid afterward where he became the provost at Phillips.
• In the late summer of 1956 he took a position as the Chair of the Division of Education at Hiram College; he would stay until the spring of 1966 (my years of junior high, high school, and college), when he and Mom (who'd just earned her Ph.D. at the Univ. of Pittsburgh) took positions at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa. And that's where they retired.
• They built a retirement home in Cannon Beach, Oregon--with a gorgeous view of Haystack Rock--but then he began to fail physically and they built another, more "elder-friendly" place in Seaside. But soon he needed more help. So they moved to Pittsfield, Mass., not far from the place my brothers use in the summer (Becket, Mass.). Then he diminished even more, and they moved to an assisted-living place--and then it was a nursing home--and then ...

Dad was most definitely not a "helicopter parent." He was so busy--teaching during the week, filling in as a preacher here and there on weekends, having meetings and other duties out at the airbase. He taught summer school every year. And why did he do all this? For his family. He had a wife, three sons, and he worked hard to make sure Mom would be okay if he were to go first (he was six years older). Since his death, she's continued to rely on his retirement packages from the Air Force, from teaching, from preaching. Mom isn't rich by any stretch, but she's been able to live in physical comfort; she will turn 97 in September.

But the times we did have were special. Long car trips to Oregon to be with his family (I loved those trips--and have, ever since, loved long car trips), games of catch in the yard, watching him grill outside (oh, did he love to do that), evening trips to the A&W in Ravenna--or the ice-cream stand in Burton. Dad came to my baseball and basketball games. He strongly supported the interests of all three sons--all three very different sons.

When he was sick (he had emergency surgery for kidney stones when we were in Enid), I was terrified. I still remember, not long after his return home, his struggling outside to toss a baseball with me (I was 9 or 10). It was so odd, seeing my father weak. He was a powerful man. Athletic. Fast on his feet. Even when I was in high school I could not catch him in our games of touch football in the yard--not unless he let me.

Dad was a Republican; his best friend was a Democrat (those were the days when that was possible!); and as his sons' politics drifted to the left, we resolved not to debate with Dad. It was pointless. And we loved him beyond words. And so we talked about our cars, the weather, the Oklahoma Sooners (whom he adored).

I remember him standing up and saluting the screen during the National Anthem on televised sporting events.

I remember his eruptive laugh--especially with his brothers--that would turn his face fiery red.

I remember some of his sayings (some I will not repeat!): After eating (I feel like I swallowed something), after passing someone on the highway (I took him like Grant took Richmond), when seeing the ocean appear as we rounded a curve in Oregon (There's that mighty ocean!), after eating--again (I've got convexity of the epigastrium) ... and on and on ...

I remember when, pitching to my little brother, Dad hit him in the cheek with a curveball that didn't.

I remember him going hunting, fishing, and always returning with something--rabbits, quail, rainbow trout.

I remember the buckwheat pancakes he would make on a Saturday morning.

I remember when he whacked my butt with the back of a hairbrush when I deserved it (which was very, very often).

I can hear his voice, preaching.

I can hear his lovely, pure tenor voice, singing.

I can see his eyes redden when he got the news of his mother's death.

I can hear him ringing a school bell to awaken his boys in the morning.

I can smell his Mennen aftershave.

I remember the touch of his powerful hand on my shoulder when I'd done something well.

I can hear him say on Christmas morning that we can't start opening until he's shaved.

I can see him, dressed in red tights, heading off to play Charles the Wrestler in a local production of As You Like It.

I can hear him, watching the opening of Gunsmoke, saying that James Arness (Sheriff Matt Dillon) has the most famous behind in TV.

I can see him pushing our lawnmower (and probably wondering where Danny is--Didn't I tell him to do this?)

I can hear him reading to his little grandson Steve.

I can see myself, rubbing his hand on his deathbed, telling him over and over and over that I loved him.

Dad with grandson Steve, 1972 or 73?