Magazines ... RIP?

I love magazines. Always did.

When I was growing up, we had a steady stream of them flowing into the house. Time, Life, theNew Yorker, the Saturday Review of Literature, Sports Illustrated (guess which was my dad's favorite? ... and mine?). I remember Mom, a high school English teacher through my adolescence, methodically clipping stories and photographs from them to share with her (lucky) students. Atlantic and Harper's came some years--though not all, as I remember.

Recycling was unknown then, so they all ended up in landfills, along with ga-jillions of other copies of the same thing. The aliens who come and find our ruins will have no problems--if they do a little digging--finding out who we were and what we were like.

Up at the Hiram School, the study hall room featured the school library at the front, so, instead of studying, I would go up there and look at magazines. Look is one I remember; National Geographic (especially some issues, if you know what I mean!); Reader's Digest (which my grandmother subscribed to for decades). There must have been others. Popular Mechanics.

When I graduated from Hiram College in 1966 and started my teaching career at the nearby Aurora Middle School, I got one of those "deals"--seven magazine subscriptions for ... not very much. I signed up for several of the ones that had always come to our house--and Down Beat. In college, under the influence of friend Claude Steele (from the south side of Chicago) I'd gotten interested in jazz. (BTW: Claude's son, Benny, is now a professional jazz drummer.)

When Joyce and I married (December 1969), we continued subscribing to stacks of magazines--including the "new" New York Review of Books. We also shifted to Newsweek, which Joyce's family had subscribed to. We kept Saturday Review, Harper's, Atlantic. I took Esquire now and then. For quite a few years (while William F. Buckley Jr. was alive) I subscribed to Buckley's  National Review: I wanted to know what the bright folks on the "other side" were thinking about current social and political issues.

I even published things in magazines: Tennis and National Review among them.

And then ... the Internet. And magazines (and newspapers, of course) began to wither and die or go digital.

We still have a few that come to the house, though: Harper's, New York Review of Books, New Yorker, Entertainment Weekly (hey, how can I stay relevant, you know?), Nation. I have a digital subscription to Atlantic, but it's just not the same, you know? Some months I don't even bother to look at it.

We still take actual newspapers, too: New York Times, Cleveland Plain Dealer, Akron Beacon-Journal, Hudson Hub-Times. I get the Times on my Kindle, too--which costs extra for some reason.

But at times I feel like the guy who kept a horse tied up out front even when Fords began chugging down the street. Just because. That guy loved his horse. Trusted it. Depended on it. And knew he would miss it--desperately-- when he had it no more.

When Spring Isn't

I know, I know: It's not officially spring yet. Not for a couple of weeks yet. But still ... every now and then it's been feeling like spring. Warm. Sunny. (We even had a tornado warning last week!) Even some of the plants have been saying, Hey, what the heck! Let's go for it!

Our day lilies are coming up, poking their pointy little heads through the topsoil to look around to see if it's safe. It's not. But lilies are easily fooled--as tiny children are. They'll get a few rude surprises before it's truly safe for them.

When I was a baseball-loving kid, I used to hate false spring--the same as false hopes in my book. In junior high, I remember sitting in study hall at the old Hiram School; the windows faced the west, and I could see my sunny days sometimes (often?) change into darkness (and teen despair) as the afternoon wore on. Meaning: I had to sit in this dumb school while the weather's nice, and as soon as it's time to get out of school (and play baseball!), here come the dumb clouds and rain (and snow?) to screw it all up!

At Hiram College one of my years there (1962-66), we had to postpone one of our tennis matches on May 1 because of snow and sleet!

Later on--a young father--I loved to take our little Steve outside in the (false) spring. A stroller ride around the block (okay--down to Friendly's Ice Cream in Kent), a little bit of wiffle ball in the front yard. (Steve called it "BAH-bah.")

And then, when the spring darkness fell--when the spring reminded us that it really wasn't spring--we had to stay inside and play Candy Land for the gazillionth time or Bigfoot (which we both kind of liked)--or watch Sesame Street (I kind of liked that) or Mr. Rogers (neither Steve nor I particularly cared for that one--sorry). Or waited for Mom to get home from the store--or class--or the cleaners--or wherever: She would have much better ideas about what to do--and still does.

I haven't matured. I still grumble and grouse when the weather fails to behave in the way I want it to. When I was a kid, my mom would listen to a bit of this, then say, Danny, the weather isn't personal.

Oh yes it is, Mom. Oh yes it is!

Loss

We heard the awful news last week when the president of Hiram College sent an email announcing the death, last Monday, of Dorothy Munson Steele.

She was Dorothy Munson when I met her at Hiram College in the early 1960s. She was a year behind me in school, but we had a common history--the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ): Both her father and mine were ordained Disciples ministers--and the Disciples had founded Hiram College, where my father was teaching. We had stories to share ...

I knew, too, that she was a music major. But I didn't know a lot more, not at first.

She soon began dating Claude Steele, my good friend, and they formed (I think) the first openly interracial couple at Hiram in my day. It did not, believe me, always go smoothly for them. They were devoted to each other (and would remain so in the decades leading to her death), but there were those (on-campus and off-) who were not so sure this was a good thing.

They were right. It wasn't a good thing. It was a great thing. For them, for me, for everyone who loved them--and there were many. There remain many.

They both went on to earn Ph.D.s and to teach at some of the country's most prestigious universities--the University of Washington, the University of Michigan, Stanford, Columbia, Berkeley. (Not bad!) Dorothy specialized in early childhood education and was a fierce advocate for the young throughout her long, blessed career.

When I was working on my various Jack London projects in California in the 1990s, I stayed with them a few times in Stanford, where they opened their home to me--opened their hearts to me.

This is a cliche, I know, but ours was the sort of friendship that is like a song. Sometimes we put it on Pause because we were not near one other, but when we met again, we hit Play once again. I was certain that song would never end.

Claude was in our wedding party (December 20, 1969), and Joyce and Dorothy became instant friends.

I saw the Steeles off and on for decades. Wrote letters now and then. Email. Facebook. (Though Claude was not a fan of any of such electronic things.) Spoke on the phone now and then.

And what I remember about Dorothy? Her fierce intelligence--her loyalty to her friends--her devotion to her two children--her unrelenting advocacy for young children in school--her bright, piercing eyes--her sense of humor--the music of her laughter--the vast dimensions of her love for Claude--

What a laugh she had! Explosive--authentic--vibrant with her love of life. And, oh, is the music of the world poorer today without that sound!

The picture at the top of the page is at Hiram College, two years ago. Dorothy was a Trustee, was in town for meetings. Gave me a call. I drove over, met her in the coffee shop, hit Play once again. I did not allow myself to think that I might not ever see her again. Here's some of what i wrote in my journal that day--April 24, 2015:

… had a great talk with her in the Bistro, learning about her chemo (oral) for her liver; she learned about my prostate cancer and so on; talked about Claude, who’s now Provost at Berkeley; a few more years before they’ll retire; she gave me an autographed teaching book she’d co-authored with someone; talked about Joyce and John Brown and our kids and grandkids—maybe get son Steve in touch with Claude, who’s writing about charter schools; Paul Gaffney (Eng Dept colleague of Joyce’s) took an iPhone photo of Dorothy and me—and we talked about Shakespeare, etc.; she had to go to luncheon at 11:30; home I went ...

I have a much older picture of us all in college. I know the exact day, too. November 11, 1965. My 21st birthday. I was working in the office of Hiram's Student Senate that evening, and here came my friends--Dorothy and Claude among them--with a cake and surprise. In the photo below I'm the pretentious young twit holding a pipe. Claude is to my immediate left. Dorothy forms the point of the triangle right in front of us.

There we are. 1965. Life, an endless horizon, never bending. Happiness and success, certainties. Death, a foul rumor.

Sunday Sundries, 133

1. AOTW: Well, I nearly had a second straight week without an AOTW. Then, on Saturday afternoon, one appeared! She was a person, driving, who did not seem to know that when you are in the right lane (as she was), and a sign says RIGHT LANE ENDS, you do not have the right-of-way; you yield to the traffic in the left lane. She didn't. Nearly sideswiped me. I honked, conferring upon her the AOTW! (I could't tell if she was subsequently waving at me--or ... you know?)

2. Joyce and I have been streaming, via Acorn (as I wrote last time, I think), the Brit cop series Suspects. I noted earlier that we didn't really know much about the personal lives of the three principals, but as the shows have gone on, we have gradually been learning--especially in the first episode of season 2, which I'll not spoil for those of you thinking about watching it. So well filmed. So well edited. (I do wish, though, that I understood more of the dialogue: It's taking me a while to catch on to the accents.)

3. Finished two good books this week.

     - The Archivist (1998) is a novel rich in history, in literature (especially T. S. Eliot), in human dynamics. And surprise. I had read about a third of it and was feeling confident I knew what was going on, what was going to happen ...

I didn't.

For when Part II arrives, everything which I had thought was stable and predictable suddenly was not--like the ingredients in a blender before you turn it on. The predictable plot reached a tangled wood, plunged in, dragging me along behind in wonder.

It's the story of an older archivist in the library of a renowned university (not named). Among his duties--overseeing some personal letters from T. S. Eliot to "another woman"--letters that are not open to the public until ... I forget the year--and am too lazy to look! Anyway, one day, an attractive young woman shows up asking to look at the letters. He says no. Their relationship goes on.

And then, the lights go out. And we are dealing with madness, with the Holocaust, with personal anguish of all sorts.

Ain't gonna say no more ... well, maybe one more thing. Read it.

I learned about Cooley only recently--and can't remember how it happened. But I ordered her novel, read it, admired/liked it ...

     - Novelist Jerome Charyn has been writing lately about his literary siblings. He has two recent books about Emily Dickinson (one fiction, one non-), and now, just this past month, a new novel, Jerzy, about novelist Jerzy Kosinski (1933-91--a suicide). Kosinksi shot to prominence with the publication of his first novel, The Painted Bird (1965), a horror of a story about a little boy wandering around in Poland during the Holocaust and experiencing, in each village, a new kind of depravity.

Jerzy Kosinski

I latched onto his work early on (in the late 60s) and bought and read his other novels as they appeared, including Steps (1968), which won the National Book Award. He was on talk shows (radio and TV), earned numerous other honors. His novel Being There (1971), about a young man named Chance, raised in a rich man's garden. An innocent. No ... an Innocent. The rich man dies; Chance wanders out of the garden; his simple sayings about life in the garden are taken to be profound metaphors by the rest of us; he becomes a celebrity.

The 1979 film starred Peter Sellers as Chance and was a hit. (Link to film trailer.) It was nominated for eleven Oscars (won only one--and not Sellers, who had been nominated). Sellers did win a Best Actor in the Golden Globes.

And then in 1982 the floor fell out from under Kosinski. A major piece in the Village Voice accused him of plagiarism (of using little-known works in Polish), of having ghost-writers. He staggered on for a while, then took his own life. Here's what the New York Times reported on May 4, 1991:

... his wife, Katherina von Fraunhofer-Kosinski, discovered him lying naked in a bathtub half-filled with water, with a plastic shopping bag twisted around his head, the police said. (Link to the entire NYT piece.)

Charyn's novel employs multiple narrators, beginning with an aide to Peter Sellers, who was desperate, it seems, to get the part of Chance in the film. Audiences had tired of him (and his Pink Panther films); his career was slowing; he saw in Chance a chance (!) for a resurrection.

Other narrators include Stalin's daughter (!), a third-person narrator who tells about one of Kosinski's loves, another lover, and another third-person narrator who tells about Kosinski's boyhood in Poland during World War II--and about his father's cleverness and intelligence.

Kosinski emerges here as a fabulist--a storyteller--a man who performs all the time, spins lies and fabrications, who creates a false biography, continually changing details, etc. Reality and Story bear little resemblance to Truth. (Hmmmm ... alternative facts?)

But there is also a profound sadness about it all, as well. Kosinski appears as a man who cannot live without his fabrications. And so ... when people cease to believe ... he ends up with a plastic bag around his head in the bathtub.

Charyn has always been a talented storyteller himself (I've been reading him for years), able to weave bright baskets containing such rich surprises inside. Jerzy is no exception.

After finishing the novel, I ordered a standard bio of Kosinski. Gotta learn more!


4. Last Words--Some words of interest (to me!) from my several online word-of-the-day providers.

     - from dictionary.com

crocodilian adjective [krok-uh-DIL-ee-uh n]

1. hypocritical; insincere.

2. of, like, or pertaining to a crocodile.

QUOTES

The crocodilian concern with the lower classes and their subsidy of middle-class students (who are fighting to extend such subsidies to lower-class children) is authentic "old-time" common sense at the zenith of coherence.

-- Marvin Harris, "Campus Confusion: To the Editor," New York Times, January 5, 1969

ORIGIN

Crocodilian can mean "hypocritical, insincere." The insincerity of crocodiles has been noted since ancient times and is also reflected in the term "crocodile tears" (crocodiles supposedly weep for the victims they are eating). Crocodile tears are mentioned in a collection of ancient Greek proverbs attributed to Plutarch (a.d. c46–c120). The proverbs compare the crocodiles’ behavior to that of people who desire or cause the misfortune or death of others but afterward publicly mourn them. Crocodilian entered English in the 17th century.

     - from wordsmith.org

jury-rig (JOOR-ee rig)

MEANING:

verb tr.: To assemble or fix temporarily using whatever is at hand.

ETYMOLOGY: 

On a sailing ship, a jury-mast is a temporary mast, rigged when the original is damaged or lost. From jury (makeshift or temporary), perhaps from Old French ajurie (help). Earliest documented use: 1840.

USAGE:

“The city does not run power to Bushkoppies, so most residents jury-rig their homes with illegal connections from power lines. But the Segelbergs refuse to wire an illegal connection to their creche, both out of a concern for safety and to teach the children a respect for the law.”

Cecilia Johnson; Raising South Africa; Times Live (Johannesburg, South Africa); Jan 13, 2017. 

     - from Oxford English Dictionary

boffola, n. and adj.  With form buffola compare buffo n. and adj. and its etymon Italian buffo comical, burlesque.

U.S. slang.

 A. n. Originally and chiefly in the entertainment industry: an uproariously funny joke. Cf. earlier boff n.2   and boffo n.1

1946   F. Wakeman Hucksters vi. 97   It'll sound all right. Good jokes, laughs, I'll pack the script with boffolas.

1949   Sat. Evening Post 28 May 35/2   This ability [to think of gags] brought out the old boffolas from coast to coast.

1979   Washington Post (Nexis) 4 Jan. b1   Writing jokes..for businessmen who pay $1,500 for five minutes of boffolas.

1998   Hartford (Connecticut) Courant (Nexis) 6 Nov. f5   When treating a biology prof who looks like Colonel Sanders like a tackling dummy is a big boffola, then something profoundly imbecilic has overtaken Hollywood comedy.

(Hide quotations)

 B. adj.  Of a laugh: uproarious, unrestrained, hearty. Of a joke: uproariously or boisterously funny, hilarious. Cf. boffo adj.2

1976   National Observer (U.S.) 16 Oct. 10/3   There is a lot of shouting, posturing, and attempts at boffola humor.

1989   T. Tryon Night of Moonbow ii. vi. 121   He knew you couldn't help getting a boffola laugh when the front end, feet crossed, sat down on the rear end.

1999   Washington Times (Nexis) 7 July a15   The punch was in the very last sentence... If the boffola line means anything at all, it implies the Dalai Lama and Jiang Zemin, if they could only meet and liked each other, might make substantial progress on the Tibet question.

Not Again!

Last night, I had one of those Damn Teacher Dreams again! I had them throughout my career, and when I retired, they sort of tailed off a little. But did not disappear. The elements remain the same; the cast and setting do not: I have an unruly class; stuff happens.

In last night's version--which woke me up about 5 am and put me in a foul mood that only time, I suppose, will dissipate--I was in a strange school, a middle school building whose features reminded me both of old Hiram High School and the old Aurora Middle School (which, when I was a lad, was Aurora High School). An old brick building, I mean--the kind that resembles a factory.

It was on a hill in a town I didn't recognize.

Someone official took me to my classroom (was I subbing for someone? finishing off the year for someone?), where I met the youngsters. I did not recognize any of them--a good thing because I would have been Unfriending like mad on Facebook today!

For some reason there were far more students in that room than sense should allow. Sixty? Seventy? More? As I looked left and right, it seemed as if there were more kids present every time.

Worse: I wasn't sure what I was supposed to do. I was sure of only one thing: The kids were not paying the least bit of attention to me, despite my feckless attempts to attract their attention.

I got an idea: I will tell a ghost story. A good one I know. (It's one that features a leap and a scream at the end; I often told it to my middle-schoolers when they looked as if they needed it.)

I started.

And almost immediately I had to stop. Though some kids were paying attention, most were not, and at one table, right in front of me, four girls were singing. I went over to their table, asked them to stop. They ignored me. Rage began to form its funnel cloud in me.

Then--somehow--the assistant principal was in the room (didn't recognize him, either). I told him this was ridiculous--far too many students, etc. He said he'd do something about it in a day or two.

Then I was talking to him again in the same spot in the same situation. This time I told him to fix it or I'd quit--right then. He assured me he would. I played a trump card: I have cancer. I can't deal with this.

It didn't seem to faze him.

So I told him I was quitting--right now.

And I stalked out of the room. And outside the building. But where had I parked? I couldn't remember. I started jogging toward something that seemed to be a parking lot--but also seemed as if it were not really the school's parking lot. Some kids were playing in a yard. (Why aren't they in school?)

Jogging along, the town/city in view down the hill, I woke up. And decided I'd stay in bed all day and sulk. I mean, I felt awful.

But when 6 a.m. arrived (I don't think I did more than doze now and then in that hour between 5 and 6), I realized I'd mellowed a little. Struggled out of bed. Headed down to unload the dishwasher (one of my morning tasks).  Felt the deep relief we all feel when we awaken from a nightmare, sniff the sulfur-free air, and realize we are not in Hell.

Frankenstein Sundae, 289

Trelawny talks about his experiences at the Falls in his published letters—both in a text that he apparently mailed to no one (dated August 5, 1833) and in a letter to Claire Clairmont (dated December 10, 1833), posted from Charleston, South Carolina. (More about that later on.)[1]

Anyway, in both texts Trelawny writes vividly about a somewhat rash decision he’d made to swim across the Niagara River, just downstream from the Falls. I’d love to reprint them here in their entirety, but I can’t imagine asking readers to deal with all of it, so, instead, here’s a summary of what he said in his letter to Claire—with some of his words in italics.

He begins his account by asking, who can look at a clear river on a hot day without wishing to plunge into it? He described the river below the Falls—the water eddying, whirling, and turbulently boiling in a caldron. And so, he tells Claire, he just must give it a go.

I plunged into the river of the cataract. He says he made it to the other side all right, but, coming back, he ran into some trouble. Let’s let him speak at a little more length here:

I was overpowered by the strength of the current and whirled along headlong till I was drifting towards the rapids—which form a terrific whirlpool in which nothing that lives could float an instant—exhausted and powerless—I for a moment resigned myself to my fate …. I cannot tell how I regained the shore—but this I know, I was so used up I could not see things distinctly for nearly an hour ….[2]

He describes this experience in far greater detail in his un-mailed account—but the details are basically the same. Now … a word in his defense. He was a strong swimmer—and later in his life swam every day in the ocean near his home in England. But the Niagara River? Just above the rapids and whirlpool? Could a person do that?

I wasn’t sure. So in early March 2000, I decided to take a drive to the Falls and find out.

---

[1] Letters of Edward John Trelawny, ed. Henry Frowde (London: Oxford UP, 1910), 178–91.

[2] Ibid., 189–90.

How Do You Memorize?

I got a recent Facebook query from a (long-ago) former student* who was wondering how I memorize things. (Followers here know that I recently wrote about how I've now memorized 200+ poems and literary passages.) Here's what she asked; wondered if you could give some hints on what helps words and phrases stick in your memory, assuming there's more to it for you than just reading the passage 800 times.

I told her I'd get back to her (I was in the middle of some things--including getting our tax materials ready for our accountant--an annual joy). But not much time passed before another former student (from a different era)--a young man who's taught drama and participated in many productions himself--offered his ideas. And here they are;

I'll jump in (as a former Drama student, and former Drama teacher).

Different people learn different so different techniques work better for each. And, the best thing is multiple techniques (even at the same time). I've had success with handwriting poems or dialogue from a play (or song lyrics for a choral concert) over and over again. This was a movement oriented activity (kinesthetic), and it helped me learn partially through motor memory. I'm also visual so seeing the words on the page would help. And I would highlight or use all caps for certain words or phrases, to help them stick.

If you were more auditory, you could listen to a recording of it over and over.

Other techniques: yes, reading it over and over and over again. You start to learn the whole thing at once, gradually, and slowly, but it can be done.

Another good memorization technique: learn first line. Close eyes. Say it. Learn second line, say it. Close eyes. Say first and second together, , and keep building from there.

Or write the first word of each line and work from that as a cheat sheet. Until you can move to just looking at the first letter of the first word of each line.

And so my advice to former student #1: What he said.

But I'll add a bit about my own history with this issue. Like #1, I learned a lot of things in church as a kid without even trying--23rd Psalm, Lord's Prayer, etc. (All in the KJV, for which I am very grateful--I love those lines.)

And when I began requiring my students to memorize poems and passages, I went along and memorized them, too, and soon I discovered the method that seemed best for me. (See below.) But I would tell the students, too, that, as #2 says above, different strokes for different folks. Figure out what works best for you--and do it. And, I should add, there are people for whom memorization is very hard--no matter what the technique. This has nothing to do with intelligence--just with the type of memory you have, the sort of things your brain will allow you to retain!

Okay ... what I do ...

1. I print out the poem/passage on a piece of paper and carry it around with me.
2. As #2 suggested, I start with the first line, move to the second (repeating the first each time), on down through the whole piece. I had another former student, a wonderful pianist, who told me that this was how she memorized musical pieces--measure by measure, repeating the first as she learned the second, repeating the first and second while she learned the third. Then, by the time she got to the final measure, she had the whole thing in her memory and in her fingers.
3. When I'm doing my coffee-shop reading, I keep the poem beside me, and every twenty pages (OCD, I know)--exactly twenty pages--I review and advance to the next part of it. Slowly, slowly, it all comes together.
1. Just recently, for example, I memorized Longfellow's "A Psalm of Life," a fairly long fellow of a poem--nine quatrains. It took me a week or so to get it to the point that I could recite it quickly and smoothly, to avoid the long pauses while my memory sought the key words I needed.
4. While I'm learning some pieces, I look for mnemonic devices to help me with certain combinations of words--especially in pieces with diction from another era.
1. For example, in "Psalm of Life" is this line: Sailing o’er life’s solemn main. I was having trouble remembering solemn, so I recognized that -s is the prominent consonant in this piece (sailing ... life's solemn). So, I remembered that solemn starts with an -s, just as the first word in the line does.
5. Finally--if you want to retain what you've learned, you need to rehearse it regularly. I've written here before about how I divide up my 200+ poems during the week--how I divide my "rehearsal time." The old adage applies: Use it or lose it.
6. Once the thing is in my head, I make a little 3x5 card and paste the poem on it and put it with its siblings in a pile in my backpack. Even continual practice does not guarantee accuracy ("things fall apart," as Yeats said), so, every now and then, I check to make sure I've "got it." Sometimes I don't. At which time I "rage, rage against the dying of the light." And fix the problem.

*I've not mentioned the names of my former students since I've not asked them if that's all right. But ... they can comment and reveal their identities, if they choose.