Seidman Cancer Center, continued ...

Seidman Cancer Center
Beachwood, Ohio

Wednesday, 9:15 a.m.

Later today--about 2:30--Joyce and I will drive up, once again, to Seidman for my quarterly session with my oncologist--and to get my quarterly Trelstar injection (a testosterone nemesis: prostate cancer loves testosterone).

I'm not, of course, looking forward to it--for a variety of reasons: the intense cold, a missed workout at the health club (I hate working out now--but prefer it to cancer centers), a missed nap (among my very favorite "activities" these days), traffic on I-271 (where Construction has been the High King for, oh, a decade?).

As I've written here before, Seidman is simultaneously depressing and inspiring. In the waiting room are patients in every sort of condition--patients of every age and gender and race and ethnicity and (apparent) social status. Cancer is an equal-opportunity enemy. So ... it's hard to see all of that--to sit there in the waiting room and witness such suffering.

But, of course, we also witness such courage and compassion and empathy--people helping, being kind and considerate. I will not add the obvious comment about our current political climate ...

I've already had my blood tests, and the numbers are good for the nonce. Last summer, when my PSA had risen to 20.13 (not good: I should have no PSA since a surgeon removed my prostate gland in June 2005--a returning number means that prostate cancer has a grip, for the prostate cancer cells also produce PSA), my oncologist recommended a series of ten radiation sessions: One of my vertebrae had become a hostel for the cancer cells. And so the sessions commenced, and, by the end, I was often nauseated, had to force myself to eat, for ingesting had been unpleasant--all due to the radiation beams passing through my esophagus on the way to my spine.

Anyway, my periodic PSA measurements since the radiation sessions have been 11.98 (Sept 12), 3.36 (Oct 16), 1.93 (Nov 9), 1.07 (January 15). That's obviously good.

What's not obvious is that the decline will stop one of these days, and the numbers will begin to rise again. I am, you see, incurable. All the oncologist can do is delay and distract and wound the cancer. I've undergone immunotherapy (a year ago), am on a couple of heavy-duty meds (Trelstar and Xgeva, the latter for bone strength--my cancer has metastasized into my bones) ... some other, experimental, meds lie in my future--the proximity of that future we just don't know.

And without health insurance?

Let's not think about it. But let's do ask ourselves why we deny it to so many "fellow passengers to the grave." The quoted phrase comes from Dickens' A Christmas Carol--uttered by Scrooge's nephew very early in the tale: He says he sees Christmas "as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.”

Anyway, I'll pause here and when I return from Seidman, I will complete this post, early this evening--or tomorrow morning.


Thursday, 10:30 a.m.

Well, all things considered, it went pretty well. There was the normal amount of waiting--both in the room that's named for waiting (where, for some reason, the TV monitor always features shows about a pair of twins who help people find/restore a dream house--quite a choice for a cancer center!) and in the examination room.

My oncologist was happy about my recent PSA score (and the other bloodwork), so I won't see him again till April, and he really had nothing too dire (!) to communicate to me this time. He did schedule me for a bone scan down the road a few months (not my favorite thing to do): They need to see where/if the cancer is building a homestead somewhere in my skeleton.

After he left the room, some more waiting--and then the Happy Encounter with the needle-in-the-hip: my quarterly Trelstar injection--a sharp conclusion to my visit.

On the way home Joyce commented about something I'd noticed on other visits, too: the positive demeanor of the other patients--even those looking pale as paper, with canes and walkers and wheelchairs. I share it a bit, and I think it's because we're in a place--a very good place--where some very bright people are trying to help us. Hope needs little encouragement in dark rooms, and gratitude and optimism are kin in a cancer clinic.

We got home a little after 5, prepared our dinner-of-leftovers, and slumped on the couch, a Pendleton blanket draped across my legs, ate and talked and realized that we have a few more months till next time. And few realizations are better than that!

R.I.P., Carol

Carol, upper left, with our other class officers, 1960-61

I don't believe I'd seen Carol since our graduation from Hiram High School on June 6, 1962. She'd never attended our school reunions (at least, not the ones I'd attended); she was not in touch with anyone I talked to regularly. I have a faint memory that at one of our recent reunions someone had said that she'd tried to get her to come--but ... no.

Carol Rutkus was part of a contingent of about twenty students from Streetsboro who attended Hiram High, 1958-62, when their own high school was having trouble with the State of Ohio about accreditation (I believe). Each day, those students had a fourteen-mile bus ride, each way.

It wasn't easy for them--attending a new school, living in a different town. And not all of us Hiramites were especially ... welcoming. I blush now to think of some of the adolescent cruelties that some of us (myself included) visited upon them.

But gradually things changed. There was some dating. Some of them excelled athletically (and that helped!). Some were excellent students, musicians, artists, human beings. And by the time we all graduated, the relationships had softened--and, in some cases, become intimate.

All the boys had noticed Carol right away. She was--as the picture shows--very attractive, and many of the boys made moves, subtle and otherwise, on her. She remained ... I don't want to say "aloof" because she was very friendly, amiable. But she seemed to know, even as a fourteen-year-old, that a lot of us just weren't worth the trouble. She earned, as a result, considerable respect.

This is evident, as well, in our yearbooks (which exist only for our junior and senior years). She was class treasurer in our junior year; vice-president, senior year. The yearbook that final year notes that she had been a Y-Teen, a class officer our freshman year as well, cheerleader (sophomore), school play (sophomore), yearbook, school newspaper, Rebel Rousers (the pep club), F.T.A. (Future Teachers of America), and an usherette at one of our plays our junior year.

I also was in that play our sophomore year--a piece of piffle called Curtain Going Up, a play about a bunch of high school kids putting on a play. She played someone called "Janet Young"; I played the class clown, "Milt Sanders." I should add something here: The play they were performing was set on a plantation in the ante-bellum South. I played "the old family retainer," a slave; I appeared in blackface. Not the activity I've been most proud of in my life! (I bought the script some years ago but cannot for the life of me find it right now.) I can't remember if "Milt" and "Janet" had any onstage exchanges.

There were several other kids from Streetsboro in the show, and I remember how that experience, for me, eased some of the tension (in me) that ignorance had delivered. We were all just kids trying to find our ways in the dark--and that experience--that play--for me flipped on a switch that never should have been Off.

Carol and I were friendly--but never really "friends" in any kind of meaningful way. We shared some experiences, some school activities. But I was "into" sports and being a professional-athlete-in-training (hah!), and our lives just didn't overlap in all that many ways. But when they did, amity ruled.

Still, in my yearbook, senior year, she wrote a kind comment: "To a nice guy I'll never forget, especially those jokes. Remember me! Best to you always, Carol."

I never did forget her--(and I dread to think what the "jokes" were)--but I never saw her, as I said, after that early June day in 1962.

And so when the news came yesterday--news of her death--I was stunned. It was not just another classmate gone (more than a few have passed away now), but it was Carol, whom I had ever remembered as that young, friendly, vibrant classmate, that student who seemed so ... mature ... in a high school world aswirl with immaturity.

I see in her obituary that she seems to have had a good, productive life. And that is no surprise. She wouldn't have had it any other way. And all of her former classmates, today, feel suddenly older, suddenly more ... mortal.

R.I.P., Carol Rutkus Barker (link to obituary)

Frozen Wasteland ...

January 28, 2019
9:45 a.m.
decal in upper right shows young Charles Dickens

I look out my study window and see the White Death. Piles of snow. Bitter cold (supposed to be much worse on Wednesday: a high of, oh, -2). I snarl at the OED, which today offered as its word-of-the-day musher (see full entry at bottom of this post)--"a person who travels through snow" (with dogs and sled--or afoot).

So, I have indeed been a musher the past week or so--wearing a parka, face wrapped in a long scarf I acquired while teaching at Western Reserve Academy. School colors--green and white. The opposites: spring and winter. Life and Death.

I wince at an irony: I spent about ten years of my life pursuing the story of writer Jack London (who specialized in Northland tales)--traveling twice to the Yukon, even hiking over the Chilkoot Pass (a mountain pass from Alaska to Canada, a pass which figures in The Call of the Wild--a pass that London himself had traversed in 1897--see pics below).

Of course, wimpy lowlander that I am, I visited both times in August. Warm. Sunny. Midnight sun and all. And I hiked over the Pass but once; the gold-rushers had to do it about thirty times, once a day, to haul all their stuff to the top of the pass where the Northwest Police of Canada would not allow you to proceed without a year's supplies. Oh, and tens of thousands of them did it in the winter, when temps routinely plummeted far below zero.

Chilkoot Pass, Aug. 1993, when I
scaled it

And so I feel a little ... wussy ... when I complain about my quarter-mile walk--on salted sidewalks--over to the coffee shop and back each morning.

But, being a Man among Men, when I returned today, I put my backpack inside the back door and shoveled our sidewalk ... well, that wee portion of it that needed a shovel's attention (a friendly neighbor had used his snowblower to do the main sidewalks, up and down both sides of our street).  Still, I felt virtuous. Hardy.

Hardly.

Hardly hardy these winter days. A better word? Grateful. Grateful that I can still get to the coffee shop using my corporal locomotion only. When you arrive at a "certain age," you begin to wonder and think about how much longer you can keep doing what you're so fond of doing.

And now, as I stare out my window, I remember "The Cremation of Sam McGee," the Klondike Gold Rush poem by Robert Service.  Sam McGee is from Tennessee, and he cannot abide the cold, so he makes the narrator, his travel companion, swear that "foul or fair, you'll cremate my last remains." Sam worries about "the icy grave"--and thus his plea for cremation. (Link to entire poem.)

Sounds like a plan--especially when I look outside and see a sight that would please a penguin, a polar bear. But never me. Instead, I think of comforting flames ... though they're putatively not so comforting in ... you know ...

musher, n.3 A person who travels through snow, on foot or with a dog sled; (also) the driver of a dog sled.

Origin: Formed within English, by derivation. Etymons: mush v.3, -er suffix1.

Etymology: <  mush v.3 + -er suffix1.

 Chiefly Canad. and U.S. regional (Alaska).

1900  J. White Jrnl. Yukon River Exped.(MS) 118 in  R. Tabbert Dict. Alaskan Eng.(1991) 201/1 Musher, one who travels on the trail, with or without dogs.

1902  L. McKee Land of Nome  178 I felt that I had received a very high compliment..when an old-timer in the party..told me that I was a ‘musher from hell’.

1925 Chambers's Jrnl.  July 456/2 Those far northern regions are inaccessible..except to the most hardy and expert ‘mushers’.

1948 Time  19 July 34/3 Klondike Mike, the greatest of the mushers, the sourdough who struck it rich and kept his poke, is a living legend.

1973 Islander (Victoria, Brit. Columbia)  20 May 3/1 Art Fraser, owner and musher of the dog team, was my guide.

1991 Daily Tel.  21 Jan. 42/6 It takes every ounce of human energy to keep the dogs from running away with the sled, with or without their musher on board.

Sunday Sundries, 215

1. HBOTW [Human Being of the Week]: Again ... our neighbor who goes up and down both sides of our street with his snowblower, cleaning sidewalks and the aprons of driveways.

2. I finished one book this week, the second volume in Rachel Cusk's trilogy (Outline, Transit, Kudos). Transit (2016) is the one I just finished--and I've just ordered Kudos (2018). Similar in style to her Outline, Transit is a series of encounters. The narrator is a writer and sometime-teacher, and she is moving to London. But these events are not all that important; what is important are her encounters with various people--for it is their stories that she listens to (patiently, patiently), and as I was reading, I was thinking about how so many conversations are just people waiting to interrupt to tell their stories---sometimes in order to "one-up" us.

Example: You say, "We went to a French restaurant last week." And the other person says, "Oh, we lived in France for six months. No French restaurant here can approach what is there!"

Cusk tells us in the first sentence about an astrologer who wants to talk with her about an actual transit in the sky, but there are all sorts of transits in lives going on in the narrative.

Among the people we hear from: a builder who is remodeling a rundown place for her in London (he is not sanguine about the prospects), a hair-stylist named Dale (a guy), figures at a literary festival (and this is a howl of a satire on such events), a student named Jane who has some 300,000 words of notes for a book she wants to write, some very grumpy neighbors downstairs, the narrator's cousin Lawrence--and on and on.

And, of course, one of Cusk's themes: It is through our stories that we define ourselves, that we reveal some truths about ourselves--and not always the truths we think we are revealing.

Quite a talented writer. Waiting impatiently now for the 3rd volume to arrive.

3. We had lunch on Wednesday over at the old train depot in Kent (can't remember the name of the restaurant that's now occupying the space--used to be the Pufferbelly). And our companion? Eileen Kutinsky ("Mrs. K." to generations of Harmon students who adored her as a science teacher--among them: our son). I've known Eileen since I began my career at the middle school in the fall of 1966. She and some others took me under their wings and helped me--slowly, slowly--discover how to teach.

At 90, Eileen is still managing her farm down near Atwater--has about a dozen head of cattle, chickens (whose numbers a hungry fox regularly diminishes), etc.

She's a wonder.

4. We didn't see a movie this week--but stayed inside and streamed portions of "our" shows: Wire in the Blood, The Inspector Lynley Mysteries (2nd time through), Vera (whose latest season is now available on BritBox). In the wings: the new season of True Detective on HBO.

5. Final Word--not a word-of-the-day but one I came across in the Kate Atkinson novel I'm reading right now--the second in her series about P.I. Jackson Brodie--One Good Turn: A Jolly Murder Mystery (2006). The word appears on p. 78: A character says: "They're all tossers."

Now, I knew that tossers was a term of opprobrium (in British English), but I wasn't sure of its exact meaning--or its derivation. So ... time for the OED:

b.  [Probably < sense to toss off 4 at Phrasal verbs [to masturbate] of the verb.] A term of contempt or abuse for a person; a ‘jerk’. Cf. bugger n.1 3a.slang.

1977   Zigzag Apr. 40/3   She came on in a big mac and flashed her legs like an old tosser before throwing it off.

1983   P. Inchbald Short Break in Venice xviii. 172   It's a right pig's job... Poor little tosser. As if he wasn't suffering enough already.

So ... it's similar to our jerk-off as a noun. And our more polite form: jerk.

Ain't this nice to know.

BTW: Here's a favorite sentence (so far) from Atkinson's novel:

Gloria often had the impression that her life was a series of rooms she walked into that everyone else had just left (80).

Baseball Days--and Where's My Bat?

I started playing on baseball teams in the summer of 1952--Amarillo, Texas (where Dad had been stationed at the Air Force Base during part of the Korean War). I had just finished second grade, and I played on a softball team--the Ticks. That's right--ticks. We had bright green T-shirts with a large white tick on the front--oh, how I wish I still had it. The tick cracked with repeated washings.

I played center field. One fly ball came to me the entire summer. I didn't move an inch; the ball landed right in my glove. I dropped it.

I didn't like to swing the bat that summer, so I hoped for walks. That was about it for me: W or K--all summer.

The years went on. Back in Enid, Okla. (the Korean War over), I played on a Kiwanis team (see photo at the top --I'm next to the coach). I played shortstop and was not exactly an Omar Vizquel. I was more like a scared little boy, thinking: Please don't hit it toward me!

But confidence grew. We moved to Hiram, Ohio, where I lied to my first coach when he asked if anyone had experience as a catcher. I said I had. (The only experience I'd had was getting tagged out at home plate. And hearing the opposing catcher laugh when the ump called strike three on me.)

But I found--surprise, surprise--that I could catch pretty well--as long as the pitcher wasn't too awesome, and that wasn't much of a problem in Hiram, Ohio, in the late 1950s.

I played in high school--started thinking I was pretty damn good. Then, the summer after I graduated from high school, I played on an American Legion team over in Newton Falls, and that was where I learned I was not "pretty damn good"; I was pretty damn bad.

Career over.

Later, I would enjoy playing catch with our son--watching him play (I was even an assistant coach one year)--watching our grandsons play. I was on a couple of (slow-pitch) softball teams.

And then Age and Self-Respect said: Enough!

I still have a mitt. I'm not sure why.

I don't have a bat--but today I wished for one.

Why?

My damn wireless printer/scanner was not responding. I tried the logical things. The intelligent things.

Didn't work.

Wished I had a baseball bat.


PS--It's working! Didn't need that bat after all! Glad it's gone!

Writers Who Appear Nearby

Steven Pinker, speaking in Hudson last night

Last night, Joyce and I joined throngs of people who had gathered at the Hudson Library and Historical Society to see/hear Steven Pinker, a Harvard professor of psychology, who was there to talk about his latest book: Enlightenment Now: The Case for Science, Reason, Humanism, and Progress (Viking, 2018).

He was a few minutes late for his 7 p.m. date with us--and he had a little trouble with his laptop (he used a PowerPoint that rolled along, repeating the points he was making orally), but he spoke eloquently and forcefully about the research he had done to write the book--the discoveries he had made, most of which contradict the dire and depressing narratives which we hear all the time about the lack of progress, about the decline of civilization, about the inescapable crudity and cruelty of humankind. Many graphs and charts to support his arguments.

I had just finished his book the night before the presentation (as always, Dyer puts off his homework till the last possible second!), so almost all of what he was saying was still very fresh in my memory (these days--nothing stays too fresh there for very long, I fear). So ... though I heard little that surprised me (he had surprised me plenty in his pages), it was great to see and hear him and to be in the presence of, well, a thinker.

And since then I've been thinking about the wonderful opportunities we've had at the Hudson Library to hear and see important writers. Just in the last years we've gotten to see (and meet) a wide range of people (not listed in chronological order)--James McBride (whose The Good Lord Bird, a novel about John Brown, had just won the National Book Award for fiction), Nathaniel Philbrick (popular historian--Mayflower, In the Heart of the Sea, In the Hurricane's Eye), Fred Kaplan (popular biographer of Gore Vidal, John Quincy Adams, and others), Mary Doria Russell (novelist, author of Doc and Epitaph),  Paula McLain (novelist, author of The Paris Wife and Love and Ruin), David S. Reynolds (popular historian and biographer, author of John Brown, Abolitionist and Walt Whitman's America)--and so many others.

The library is only about a half-mile from our house--an easy walk in the good weather, an easy drive in the bad (like last night!). So without really expending much effort, we have been in the presence of some of America's finest minds, some of America's finest writers. What a gift.

And another gift? The writers do a book-signing afterward, and I (eager collector of authors' autographs) am almost always the first in line, mostly because I skip the Q&A after the talk (relying on Joyce's later summaries!) and hurry out to the Signing Spot to wait for the writer to arrive. Kind of childish, I guess, but there's something important about Keeping the Child in Us Alive, right? (Pinker signed three for me last night ... uh, for us.)

Anyway, thanks to the library's archivist, Gwen Mayer, who has arranged so many of these events (all?)--and for all the other personnel who make things go so smoothly--from arranging the chairs to hooking up the projector and microphone to ... things so subtle I don't even know what they are.

Word-a-Day, Doggerel-a-Day

The last few years Joyce and I have given our two grandsons (9, 13) a page-a-day calendar featuring a new vocab word every day. It's the same calendar that we have bought for ourselves for decades. But this year, I decided not just to give the boys a calendar but to give myself a little related task, as well.

I decided--oh, about January 4--that I would text them every day with a little bit of doggerel involving the word that day.

This seemed like a nice, grandfatherly thing to do. ("Lord, what fools these mortals be!" Puck cries out in A Midsummer Night's Dream.)

Today is January 23, and, so far, I have stuck to my pledge. It hasn't always been easy, though. Here's my routine. I decided I would not "cheat"--would not look at the word ahead of time. Not until the day of. So each morning when I come downstairs to unload the dishwasher, I tear off the previous day's page to see what new word awaits me.

I think about it a bit as I clean up, dress, and head back downstairs to do a few computer tasks before I walk over to Open Door Coffee Co. to begin my day's work and reading. One of those "computer tasks"--writing a quick draft of the vocab-doggerel, saving it to Word's OneDrive.

Over at the coffee shop--after about an hour of other work--I open OneDrive on my iPhone and look at what I've written. I make changes--if necessary (almost always)--then copy and paste the ditty into a text message that I send to the boys, to their parents, to Joyce.

And then I pretty much relax until the next morning when, walking downstairs, I wonder what problem I'm going to face with the word-of-the-day.

And there have been some. Just in the past week I've had to deal with mansuetude, pusillanimous, prehension, anthropomorphic, and peripatetic.

At the bottom of the page are a couple of examples of what I do--examples that will give you an idea of the "quality" of the verse I'm secreting every day.

So ... will this go on until December 31, 2019? Three-hundred-and-some-days hence?

Who knows? But I'm a-gonna try. Illness and other evils will, of course, intrude and perhaps prevent me one day (or more--or many more).

But, as Miss Emily wrote, "Hope is the thing with feathers." And, right now, I'm (sort of) flying!

Yes, he was angry—wished to fuss—

But, being PUSILLANIMOUS,

He waited for a little while,

Then fussed in truly awesome style!

He stole a donkey, stung a bee

(Which didn’t make much sense to me),

Befriended every snake in town,

Then changed his town from Green to Brown.*

This fussing made the world so mad

It printed in the sky: “You’re bad!”

So he calmed down and ceased to fuss,

Was once more PUSILLANIMOUS.

Oh, he loved taking walks in the light of the day—

And he loved it at night (which is weird, don’t you say?).

And some neighbors just thought he was weird, old, and crude,

But in fact just a PERIPATETIC old dude!

*Our son and his family live in Green, Ohio.

Sun & Snow

Yesterday afternoon, about 3:45, when I walked out of the health club (fully whupped, as usual), the sun was shining brightly--and it was snowing.

That seemed unfair.

But so what? I remember my mother telling me, over and over and over again (when I was an inattentive adolescent), that life isn't fair. It just is. At fifteen, I didn't find that particularly useful. And so I filed it away with all sorts of other parental sayings (paternal and maternal) that now, of course, I'd give the world to remember. It took me a long time to value what my parents were saying to me. For far too long I was ... a jerk.

I was also--via that cliche--a "late bloomer." I sort of dawdled my way through secondary school, caring about pretty much everything except classes. Sports, friends, girls, school plays--all of this was far more important to me than Latin and American history and indirect objects.

I wasn't a terrible student, mind you, just a lazy one. I did enough to "get by" throughout junior high and high school, and the habit lingered with me even into some college classes. Will you think less of me if I told you I got a D in Romantic poetry? (My junior year--I attended only sporadically, turned my term paper in a week late, etc.) I probably should have failed. But my professor's office was near my dad's at Hiram College, so maybe that earned me ... something?

But in college I also felt some things begin to return--my early boyhood fondness for reading, my enjoyment of writing, my desire to know things. By the time I graduated (1966), I was pretty much back on the highway, accelerating slowly, realizing I'd missed a lot--and that a lot of traffic had passed me ...

As most of you know, I became a teacher in the fall of 1966. Seventh graders. Aurora Middle School. Aurora, Ohio--only about eleven miles from Hiram, where I'd lived since 1956 when we moved there from Enid, Oklahoma. I thought it would be a temporary thing--something to do to feed and clothe and house me until I found something else to do.

I never really did. And I'm glad.

I ended up teaching in that middle school for nearly thirty years (loving it beyond description). But then one day I looked up, and it was over.

I probably could have stayed longer, but Ohio was going standardized-test-crazy, and I watched helplessly and hopelessly my final few years as tests changed everything. I've shared this little exchange before, I know, but here it is again--a reminder of what had happened:

DYER (waxing eloquent about Shakespeare or something)
STUDENT (raising hand--I call on him): Is this going to be on the proficiency test?
DYER: Definitely not.
STUDENT (puzzled): Then why are you talking about it?

And that was that. I retired in January 1997, the first moment I was eligible. I was 52 years old.  (In 2001 I returned to the classroom at nearby Western Reserve Academy and retired, again, in the spring of 2011 when my prostate cancer took a dark turn.)

Meanwhile--all those years from 1966 to 2011 (and beyond)--I was a voracious reader. I got graduate degrees. Published some books. Had a ball. The sun was always shining ... well, mostly.

But then, gradually, the snow arrived. Illness, deaths, losses of all sorts.

And so yesterday, exiting the health club, when I saw the sun, the snow, I felt something swelling in my eyes. And I hurried to the car where I could let it all out.

Snow Day!

Because I lived in the Southwest (Oklahoma, Texas) almost all of my first twelve years on earth, I had, as a boy, no idea what a "Snow Day" was. Our move to Hiram, Ohio, in the late summer of 1956 changed all that. And Hiram--which I'd already, and very quickly so, learned to love (the woods were lovely, dark and deep)--became to me a kind of heaven-on-earth when I experienced my first Snow Day.

Because Hiram was (is) such a rural community--with many "back roads"--the snow plows weren't always able to clear the roads all that promptly, so we began getting the calls: "No school today."

Is there a sweeter sound to a confused seventh grader? (Or, I would learn later, to an ill-prepared teacher?) I remember one fabulous week in the 1956-57 school year (I was in seventh grade) when we had the entire week off because of a blizzard. (Maybe it was 57-58? and maybe only four days?--I prefer thinking it was five.) My mother, who taught high school English in Garrettsville, three miles from Hiram, had to teach a couple of those days, and I remember her muttering some things about "standards"--whatever those were ... I think she was just jealous.

We did have snow now and then back in the Sooner State, but nothing like what I have experienced in northeastern Ohio. Oh, and I should add this: In the 1978-79 academic year, Joyce and I were teaching at Lake Forest College, up the North Shore from Chicago, where they had a mega-blizzard that winter. It seemed an omen--a message from Ohio: Get back here--our winters may be bad--but Chicago's are horrible! And so we did--after only a single year away, the only year we have not lived in Portage or Summit County in our entire forty-nine years of marriage.

Anyway, as a youngster I came to cherish Snow Days. Often--when the call came--I would think: Great! I can do that homework I neglected to do last night! (Usually, though, Lassitude prevailed, and I found myself returning to school, my homework still undone. My mediocre grades in junior high are ample proof.)

Later--a teacher--I became more ambivalent about them. Early in my career (which commenced in the fall of 1966 at the Aurora Middle School) I was thrilled to have days off--a chance to catch up. I was then in my mature early twenties, and (most of the time) I actually did catch up on grading and preparation--after, that is, I got out of bed, sometimes even before noon.

Later in my career, though, I didn't like Snow Days. I had carefully planned my courses, and unplanned days off annoyed me. I had to make ... adjustments. And adjustments were not easy for the Older Me. Days off also complicated things like play rehearsals. (I directed more than thirty shows at the middle school.) Anyway, when classes resumed, I had to feign delight at the day(s) off so that my students wouldn't think--even more than they already did--that I was a dork.

After I retired from public school, and after a few years of reading and writing and traveling and penury, I began teaching again (part-time) at nearby Western Reserve Academy (I could walk or bike to class--and usually did).  Principally a boarding school, WRA never had Snow Days. I found that refreshing--even charming--until, of course, I had to struggle through a foot of snow in below-zero weather. Then the charm quickly froze.

And now--fully retired--I sit in the coffee shop and watch the school buses roll by (or not--depending on the snow). I sip hot coffee and miss having a surprise day off--though, being retired, I know that every day is really a day off. Every day's a Snow Day. Which kind of diminishes the charm ...

Sunday Sundries, 214

1. HBOTW [Human Being of the Week]: Today, a neighbor with a snowblower worked his way up and down our street, both sides, doing the sidewalks and driveways of all of his neighbors after our major snowfall last night. Time for a Nobel Prize, I think!

2. We're glad to hear that True Detective is back for another season--we'll start streaming on HBO as soon as we finish a couple of other series we're working on. Link to trailer.

3. I finished just one book this week--Case Histories (2004)--the first in Kate Atkinson's ongoing detective series featuring Jackson Brodie, a series that has now reached four novels--with another scheduled for 2019. I first read all of Atkinson's "literary" novels first, thinking that these Brodie novels would be lighter fare, saving them for later.

I was wrong. Case Histories is brilliantly conceived and executed--no different in "literary" values than, oh, Life After Life, Atkinson's superior novel that I think is one of the best I have ever read.

So much of Atkinson's style is evident here: multiple (overlapping) stories; leaps back and forth in time; puzzled, damaged people; Surprise (yes, with a capital letter!). The principal cases are these: the disappearance of a little girl spending the night in a tent in the back yard with her sister (30 years previously); the murder of a young woman at work one day; a frustrated mother--and another murder.

Atkinson weaves these stories together--takes us back and forth in time with electrifying skill and subtlety--leads us to conclusions that both surprise and shock.

Brodie himself is a terrific character: He resembles some of the greats in the genre (Philip Marlowe, etc.) but is unique in so many other ways.

Can't wait to read the remaining volumes!

4. We had fun on Friday evening--dinner at Dontino's (an Italian restaurant in North Akron, a restaurant Joyce has gone to since her girlhood) with our son, daughter-in-law, and two grandsons (13 and 9). Time, uncooperative, flew, and before we knew it, we were heading home--but with our heads aflutter with memories and ever-deepening affections for all of them. Pic shows Joyce with her grandsons amid the ruins of supper!

5. My dental implant area is healing well--saw the surgeon this week, and he was pleased. I'll see him again in about six weeks for the Next Step. I'm now chewing (gingerly, gingerly) on both sides once again.

6. I am whupped from all the car-cleaning and shoveling this morning. We did manage to get out to the grocery store (our Sunday task) but found very few shoppers there. And I mixed the week's batch of multigrain sourdough bread--pic on Facebook to follow! Now, I'm half-dazed as I type, yearning for the nap that will follow when the bread is out of the oven!

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

     - from the Oxford English Dictionary

ranivorous, adj.: Of an animal, esp. a bird: that feeds on frogs. Also humorously of a French person.

Origin: A borrowing from Latin, combined with an English element. Etymons: Latin ranivorus, -ous suffix.

Etymology: <  scientific Latin ranivorus (1800 as a specific name; <  classical Latin rāna frog (see ranid n.) + -vorus: see -vorous comb. form) + -ous suffix.

 rare. 

1821  J. Latham Gen. Hist. Birds  I. 181 Ranivorous Falcon.

1878 Fraser's Mag.  18 504 Frenchmen..were not the ranivorous and capering creatures they supposed.

1940  L. E. C. Hughes  & C. F. Tweney Chambers's Techn. Dict.  702/1 Ranivorous (Zool.), feeding on frogs.

1996 Re: M813  in alt.religion.scientology(Usenet newsgroup) 20 Mar. Our ranivorous Continental chums.

Mass Suicide of Small Kitchen Appliances

They must have formed some kind of sick pact, our small kitchen appliances. In recent months the following have decided they've had enough: toaster, Crock Pot, toaster oven. And so out has come the plastic once again.

I need them all, those small devices.

I have a piece of toast for lunch every single day--with some preserves I buy each summer at Szalay's Farm and Market down in the nearby Cuyahoga Valley National Park--I alternate: strawberry, blackberry, apricot. The bread is from a multigrain sourdough loaf I've made, and I try to use prudence (my mom's name!) when I slice it so that the slice is sufficiently thick but still able to fit in the toaster slot. I like it a bit dark--not burned, mind you. Just darkish. Like a wannabe Darth Vader who can't quite find the shade of black he wants, settles for one of the fifty shades of ... you know.

We've had a Crock Pot since early in our marriage back in late 1969. This will be the third one. The first--I think we broke the crockery by doing something stupid ... can't remember exactly what it was, but I'm pretty sure it involved Impatient Me. We used to use it for lots of things; now, however, we've sort of dwindled to two principal functions: chicken soup (from stock we've made--with some contributions from a bird, of course) and hot cereal (in the winter we alternate weeks: steel-cut oats and cornmeal mush; we're having the latter tonight).

The second Crock Pot just flat died a week ago. Decided it would stick on the "Warm" setting and eschew the "Low" and "High." Not good. We'd had that particular Crock a long time--decades--so although it was sad to see it go, I was not all that surprised. Just annoyed when it ruined a batch of mush (and that is hard to do!).

I've used a bit of literary license re: the toaster oven. It actually died last fall, but I needed three examples here, you know? (All cool things come in threes--Larry, Curly, and Moe; Tinker to Evers to Chance; etc.) We use it for all kinds of things--from toasting bagels to broiling turkey burgers to reheating pizza, etc. This new one is great. One of the problems with the previous one (as well as with the previous Crock Pot): the electronic display had dimmed so much over the years that I needed to use the flashlight function on my iPhone to read what it said!

So ... there we are. Newly equipped and waiting for the next fatality in the kitchen.

"We're on an austerity plan ...."

When I was a kid (in need of 6 cents for a Popsicle), my dad used to say this. Of course, I had no idea what austerity meant--though I had a pretty good idea: No Popsicle.*

We didn't have a lot of money in our family. My mom--early on--was a stay-at-home mom: three sons to deal with. We lived on Dad's salary as a professor at Enid, Oklahoma's Phillips University (RIP); he supplemented it with filling in on Sundays as a preacher here and there; he supplemented it a little more with what he earned in the Air Force Reserves (he was a chaplain at Enid's Vance AFB).

When I was in later elementary school, Mom went to work--teaching junior high school English at Enid's Emerson Junior High School. (Enid's other jhs was Longfellow!) But public school teachers then made very little. When I started teaching in the fall of 1966 in the Aurora Middle School (Aurora, Ohio), my salary was $5100--so you can imagine what it had been a dozen years earlier in Oklahoma.

Anyway, every now and then Dad would announce that we were on an "austerity plan"--and we knew there were no extra $$ available for anything. Just the essentials. Food. Gasoline. Utilities. Etc. That was about it until (how?) we crawled out of the Austerity Pit and could enjoy a Popsicle.

Let me hasten to say this: I never felt "deprived" or "poor" or whatever. We always had food. We lived in good housing. I didn't wear rags to school. But there just was never really a lot of extra cash lying around. My parents were very prudent (my mother's name was Prudence!), very careful about money, and it served them well later on when they went into a stages-of-care facility for their final years. They had the money for it.

When I became a teacher (as I mentioned), I had to practice the austere routines I'd learned as a kid. We got paid on the 1st and the 15th; my take-home was $168.42. I had to pay rent, food, car payment, utilities, etc. My sad checking account--by the end of the pay period--usually held only cents. When I married Joyce in December 1969, I had begun my fourth year of teaching. I had not a single penny in savings. Her wee stipend at Kent State (she was a grad assistant) brought in a few hundred a month, and I felt we'd found the rainbow jackpot.

Then our son was born (July 1972), and money began to flow out more quickly than it was coming in. Fortunately, we had no credit cards at the time (except for gasoline and Amex, which, then required full payment at the end of each month). We learned to be ... austere. To get by. I learned some of the habits of my parents without even realizing that I'd done so.

Yesterday, for some reason, the phrase austerity plan popped back into my head; I checked it out on the web and learned that it has been employed for a long, long time--and all over the world. It's controversial, too. Cutting government spending affects lots of people--and not usually in a good way. My parents had experienced a number of instances of it.

But--now--I'm glad I learned the word at such an early age. Learned the idea. No Popsicles has transformed, later on, into No unnecessary expenses--or, rather--Rare unnecessary expenses.

And so we've reached our Twilight Years (no--no sign of Edward Cullen and Bella yet) and are able to live just comfortably--and happily--on our retirement incomes. We are not Popsicle Rich, but we have each other, our families, our memories, our daily experiences with each other. And I can't think of a better, more affluent way to live.


*austerity = a way that is plainly simple or unadorned; giving little or no scope for pleasure or indulgence

NightReader

I know: The name of this blog is DawnReader, a name I chose seven years ago when I began, a name that's appropriate, for I begin my days (well, most of them) at the Open Door Coffee Co. here in Hudson, around 6:45 a.m., where I spend a couple of hours reading--often reading a book I'll review on Friday for Kirkus Reviews.

But I read later in the day, too. Late morning. Afternoon. And at night--in bed. I suddenly recall those famous lines from Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock":

For I have known them all already, known them all:

Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons ....

In my case, it's coffee cups and pages turned ...

I think I've been a NightReader most of my life. Oh, there was a period in my life (junior high/high school) when I didn't do much reading--anywhere (except study hall). Hey, I was preparing for my careers with the Cleveland Indians (catcher) and Boston Celtics (point guard)!

But at home we owned only a single TV set--in the living room with Dad as the Commander-in-Chief--and so there was not much else to do, alone in my room, than read. And so I did ... nothing too impressive, mind you. Biographies of cowboys and mountain men. Books about sports heroes. An occasional Hardy Boys. You know ...?

When I began teaching in the fall of 1966, I was overwhelmed with work, some of which I actually did. But I always reserved an hour for myself, just before Lights Out, to read. I still remember one of the first books I read that way, the fall of 1966: Catherine Drinker Bowen's Miracle at Philadelphia (1966), a brand new book about the writing of the U. S. Constitution. I was teaching English and American history to 7th graders that year, and I knew I needed some more "learnin'." (Actually, I needed a lot more of it!)

I just went on a search for my copy of the book--couldn't find it (which could mean all sorts of things). But mine looked just like the pic.

I maintained this habit throughout all of my teaching career--reading at night after my homework was over. And I've continued it since I've retired (twice).

I read from multiple books each night--ten or so pages from each. Right now, here's what's on my nightstand (and on my Kindle):

• Steven Pinker's Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress, 2018 (he's coming to speak at the Hudson Library on Jan. 23; it's a long book--hope I finish ...)
• John McPhee's latest collection of essays, The Patch (2018)--I've loved his work for a long, long time
• Haruki Murakami's Killing Commendatore, 2017, a novel that's in a way a tribute to The Great Gatsby
• Wilkie Collins' The Law and the Lady, 1875, a novel about a young bride who discovers her husband has been accused of murdering his first wife (I'm slowly reading my way through all of Collins' novels--such an amazing talent)
• and on Kindle ...
• Ken Bruen's 2017 Jack Taylor novel The Ghosts of Galway; I got interested in the Taylor novels after streaming the TV series based on his dark adventures
• Michael Connelly's new one, Dark Sacred Night, that features both Harry Bosch and Renee Ballard (the point of view shifts throughout: Bosch gets some chapters, then Ballard--all 3rd person, just differing points of view) 

So (I just counted) I'm reading from six books each night--though (confession) not every night--just most of them. Sometimes I'm too tired, and I'll do just the Kindle books, but most nights I stick to the plan.

My eyes tire quickly these days, and I can no longer read for hours on end, so when the words begin to blur, it's time to stream some British detective/mystery shows ... and we're thrilled that Vera is back for Season 9! And then ... z-z-z-z-z-z-z

And up the next day to assume my DawnReader costume and head for the coffee shop!

Sunday Sundries, 213

1. HBOTW [Human Beings of the Week]: This is somewhat overdue--more than somewhat overdue. A bit of background required: Back in the spring of 1999, I spent about a month in Europe running around, chasing Mary Shelley--places she lived and loved, places of grief (e.g., where her husband, poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, drowned), her grave. One disappointing stop: Oxford, where young Bysshe had briefly been a student before they booted him for publishing a pamphlet about atheism. At Oxford's University College (where he'd been a student) there is now a famous sculpture of Bysshe after his drowning (I know--but it's beautiful). Anyway, when I got to Oxford in 1999, I discovered to my horror that the exhibit was closed for maintenance and repair. They would not let me in to see it, even though I'd come across the ocean to do so. Years passed. And then a former colleague from Western Reserve Academy--Susan McKenzie--was headed to Oxford to visit her daughter, who's studying there. I see Susan's husband, John, all the time in the coffee shop (well, not all the time!), and when he told me of their journey, I asked a favor. (Gee, wonder what it was?)

And they did, indeed, go to University College, see the sculpture, take some pics for me (see below). And I am eternally grateful to these most kind human beings!

2. In the coffee shop not long ago, former WRA student Alexxa Gotthardt  told me about a writer I'd not heard of--Rachel Cusk. I wrote her name down, ordered one of her books (Outline, 2014, the first volume of a trilogy), read it with admiration--and with some alarm: Why have I not heard of this person? Turns out, she's won prizes, had her books named to the best-of-the-year lists by some notable publications (New Yorker, etc.). What's my excuse?

Dotage?

Well, I have learned this over the years: The older I get, the less I know; the more I learn, the more I discover there is to learn. I will go to my grave grieving for all I never got around to reading and learning about.

The novel is narrated by a writer. She's on an airplane to Greece, where she will be teaching a writing course. Sitting next to her, an older Greek man who befriends her (okay, he makes moves on her later on), and they begin spending time together after their arrival.

As the story moves along, we learn things about her past, about his (which is far more ... complicated), and I was stunned at her naivete: going out on his boat with him, etc.

We get some glimpses of her class--the sorts of tasks she assigns her fledgling writers. But, mostly I was so taken with the novelty of her approach--a running commentary on what's going on during her days, a commitment to trying to understand her own motives.

I've got vol. 2 on my pile--but I've first got to finish a Kate Atkinson novel!

3. We went last week to see Clint Eastwood's film The Mule, a story of an older man (Clint) who loses his day lily farm (you heard me), then stumbles into being a drug "mule" for some pretty rough guys--and making so much money doing so that he begins contributing to various local causes. It's based on a true story that originally appeared in the New York Times.

It was much better than I feared it would be (popcorn was a primary motive for going! and I've been seeing Clint since Rawhide days on TV: 1959-65).

There was a scene at a mob party in Mexico that I thought was excessively ... prurient, I guess. Young women in thongs shaking their butts in close-ups. Really, Clint? You thought that was necessary?

And I was troubled a little by some of the convenience of the plot twists--and by the failure of the script to deal with the effects of his trafficking. Who was buying these drugs? What was it doing to their lives? Their families? Their communities? Not worth a mention? An allusion?

That said, I still mostly liked it, especially the times that clueless Clint learned something about the worlds he was living in--the drug world, the human world. (Link to film trailer.)

Good supporting cast--Bradley Cooper, Dianne Wiest, Michael Peña, Laurence Fisburne, etc.

3. Still streaming bit of shows each night as our days wind down: Wire in the Blood, The Inspector Lynley Mysteries, and we started one called WPC 56, about a British woman copper in the 1950s; 1st episode is kind of clichéd and predictable, but we'll give it some more chances.

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

     - from the Oxford English Dictionary--sounds like a great name for a comic-book villain!

† cannibal stinkwood, n.

Origin: Apparently from a proper name, combined with an English lexical item. Etymons: proper name Camdeboo, stinkwood n.

Etymology:Apparently <  Camdeboo (Afrikaans Kamdeboo), the name of a region and a national park in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa, with folk-etymological alteration after cannibal n. + stinkwood n.

 S. Afr. Obsolete.

  A timber tree of southern Africa which gives a strong odour when felled, either the white stinkwood, Celtis africana (family Cannabaceae), or (perhaps by confusion) the black stinkwood, Ocotea bullata (family Lauraceae).

1859  R. J. Mann Colony of Natal  viii. 156 There is a variety of this wood, known under the name of the ‘Cannibal Stink-wood’.

1877  M. A. Barker Year's Housek. S. Afr.  325 What rhyme or reason, what sense or satire can there be in such a name as ‘Cannibal Stink-wood’?—applied..to a graceful, handsome tree whose bark gives out an aromatic..perfume.

1913  C. Pettman Africanderisms  107 Cannibal stinkwood, Celtis Kraussiana. The first part of this name appears to be a corruption of Camdeboo..; it is applied to a variety of stinkwood, the wood of which is woolly, porous, and useless to the cabinet-maker.

Alvin Likes My New Look

So ... I had the oral surgery on Thursday morning--installing the implant so that, later, my dentist can install the new "tooth." Since then, I've become even more familiar with my bed than usual. Long naps. Long hours at night (lights out by, oh, 8 p.m.). A half-day of pink saliva. Some pain now and then. The oral surgeon gave me a scrip for an opioid, but I shredded it, preferring pain to, you know, addiction and living in a van down by the river.

I hardly got out of bed at all yesterday (Friday).

He had advised me to ice the left side of my face "for a couple of hours," but I craved sleep instead, so now (as a result) I look like a chipmunk who mouthed a nut that's too large to chew, too large to expectorate, and now it just swells his jaw. Alvin stopped by, told me he admired my new look, offered me a gig with the Chipmunks. I demurred. Politely.

I had one other implant done, oh, seven or eight years ago, and I'd forgotten all of this ... discomfort. If I'd remembered it, I would have declined the invitation for another and spent my final years gap-toothed. (Actually, it's not really visible--a lower left molar.) I think there's something slightly sexy about a missing tooth--as if I'm a UFC fighter or something? At any rate, if it's visible, it's a conversation-starter. Not that I like conversations with people curious about my dental arrangements. Why are they looking at my mouth?

Joyce tells me my new look is kind of cute--and that, my friends, is Love.

I go back to see the surgeon this coming Thursday--just to see how it's healing--and I'm sure he'll bark at me a bit about not using ice. Oh well. What's life without a little barking?

(As I type barking, I smile, suddenly remembering David Copperfield and that great bit from Barkis, the coach driver, who tells young David that he should write to Peggotty, David's childhood nurse (a wonderful cook whose goodies Barkis has just tasted), and tell her that "Barkis is willin'"--i.e., he'd marry Peggotty. See entire exchange at the bottom of this post.)

Then--assuming all is going well--I will wait to see my family dentist who will do the final installation.

Meanwhile, I'm chewing exclusively on my right side--except when I forget, and Pain reminds me to rethink what I'm doing. I'm sinking into slumber at the slightest self-suggestion that I do so. For meals, I'm eating food so soft that I'm not even sure it's food. I'm craving a vast tub of popcorn. A stack of Ritz crackers with crunchy peanut butter. A jar of dry-roasted peanuts. A ... you get the picture?

But, no. It's yogurt. And bananas. And crust-less bread, microwaved to soften it.

I think I need a nap ...

from David Copperfield, Chap. 5: "I Am Sent Away from Home"

As this was a great deal for the carrier (whose name was Mr. Barkis) to say—he being, as I observed in a former chapter, of a phlegmatic temperament, and not at all conversational—I offered him a cake as a mark of attention, which he ate at one gulp, exactly like an elephant, and which made no more impression on his big face than it would have done on an elephant’s.

‘Did SHE make ‘em, now?’ said Mr. Barkis, always leaning forward, in his slouching way, on the footboard of the cart with an arm on each knee.

‘Peggotty, do you mean, sir?’

‘Ah!’ said Mr. Barkis. ‘Her.’

‘Yes. She makes all our pastry, and does all our cooking.’

‘Do she though?’ said Mr. Barkis. He made up his mouth as if to whistle, but he didn’t whistle. He sat looking at the horse’s ears, as if he saw something new there; and sat so, for a considerable time. By and by, he said:

‘No sweethearts, I b’lieve?’

‘Sweetmeats did you say, Mr. Barkis?’ For I thought he wanted something else to eat, and had pointedly alluded to that description of refreshment.

‘Hearts,’ said Mr. Barkis. ‘Sweet hearts; no person walks with her!’

‘With Peggotty?’

‘Ah!’ he said. ‘Her.’

‘Oh, no. She never had a sweetheart.’

‘Didn’t she, though!’ said Mr. Barkis.

Again he made up his mouth to whistle, and again he didn’t whistle, but sat looking at the horse’s ears.

‘So she makes,’ said Mr. Barkis, after a long interval of reflection, ‘all the apple parsties, and doos all the cooking, do she?’

I replied that such was the fact.

‘Well. I’ll tell you what,’ said Mr. Barkis. ‘P’raps you might be writin’ to her?’

‘I shall certainly write to her,’ I rejoined.

‘Ah!’ he said, slowly turning his eyes towards me. ‘Well! If you was writin’ to her, p’raps you’d recollect to say that Barkis was willin’; would you?’

‘That Barkis is willing,’ I repeated, innocently. ‘Is that all the message?’

‘Ye-es,’ he said, considering. ‘Ye-es. Barkis is willin’.’