Hiatus

Until further notice.

Singing at the Health Club

the evil sort of stationary bike I ride

At the health club (where I drag my unwilling behind most every day) I've noticed lately that there are a couple of fellow-sufferers who sing when they work out. (Both wear earbuds, so perhaps they're not aware that they're performing in public?)

One sometimes rides the exercise bike next to me (or, if she's living dangerously, she rides the other bike, the one I prefer--which is borderline madness and damn close to suicidal--not that I'm territorial, mind you).

Another (also a woman--just a coincidence?) sometimes walks laps at the same time I do (though she's, of course, nowhere near capable of maintaining the Olympic-quality brisk pace I am). She's not as loud as the Biker-Singer, but loud enough that I can hear her, oh, a dozen feet ahead of me or so--before, of course, I zoom by her with male disdain.

I don't know the songs they're singing. I quit listening to popular music back in the early 1970s when our son arrived (1972), and I suddenly discovered I had no extra time for anything; even my ears needed to be focused on what this Mysterious Stranger--this wordless Mysterious Stranger--wanted of me, 24/7. Demanded of me (and, of course, Joyce.)

And then I just never got back into the habit. I've got some earbuds. I've used them maybe once or twice, listening to things on my iPad in the coffee shop, not wanting to annoy those nearby.

I imagine there are other people around the club who are singing along with their iWhatevers as they exercise, but, so far, I've noticed just these two. I hope they go away. Soon. I've heard better voices in my own shower.

That sounds unkind, I know, but Honesty Is the Best Policy--except, of course, when it applies to one's self.

As I've written here before, I do mutter (inaudibly?) when I bike and walk at the club. Discreetly, I work my way each day through that day's set of poems I've memorized. I have in my head (to various degrees of stability) some 225 poems now, and I have certain sets I rehearse on certain days so that they don't wing away more quickly than they want to. Some are very short (William Carlos Williams' "The Red Wheelbarrow"); some, very long (Edna St. Vincent Millay's "Renascence").

But--I don't think?!!?--my Fellow Bikers and Walkers can hear me. Oh, they may see my lips moving (a sign of dotage? they no doubt think), but I don't let them hear the glories of "Dover Beach" or "Ulysses" or "Mending Wall" or "To be or not to be" or ...

 I do not smudge the glory of their bike rides and walks with ill-pitched versions of popular songs.

On the other hand, I need to lighten up. Riding a stationary bike sucks, and if it helps to sing audibly (or even very audibly), well, hell, just go for it! Anything that speeds up that damn ride ...

It's Not Even Possible, You Know?

Yesterday, I re-posted on Facebook the two images you see--they show Joyce and me in fourth grade. (We were not in the same school system, as you will read below.)

As I looked at the post yesterday, it hit me--again--how improbable--no, impossible--it was that we should ever even meet--much less fall in love and marry.

When I was in fourth grade (1953-54), we were living in Enid, Oklahoma, in the north central part of the state. I had not the faintest wisp of a cloud of an idea that we would ever live anywhere else. Mom and Dad were both teaching there (Dad at Phillips University, Mom at Emerson Junior High School); my maternal grandparents lived only a few blocks away; we, as far as I could imagine, were set.

When she was in fourth grade (ain't gonna tell you the years), Joyce was living with her mother and father in Firestone Park (Akron, Ohio). Her dad worked for Firestone; her mom, for the Akron City Schools. She had uncles and aunts and cousins living nearby. She, I'm sure, could imagine no other life.

And yet ...

We moved to Ohio ... I graduated from Hiram College ... I started teaching middle school in Aurora, Ohio ... I decided in the summer of 1969 to take a grad-school class at Kent State ...

Joyce stayed in Firestone Park ... graduated from Wittenberg ... was home that summer ... decided to take a grad-school class at Kent State ...

We were both "closed out" of the classes we'd wanted (not the same class, by the way) and ended up in a course--American Transcendentalism (Emerson, Thoreau, et al.)-- a class in Satterfield Hall.

Where we met.

Now that seems improbable enough, doesn't it?

But don't even think about the larger improbabilities.  We each had two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents, sixteen great-great-grandparents, thirty-two great-great-great grandparents, sixty-four ... you do the math: It gets very numbery, very soon.

All those hundreds of people--thousands, really ... tens of thousands, if you keep going back)--had to meet, hook up, have children who lived long enough to meet another of our direct ancestors, hook up, have children who lived long enough ...

So, what I'm saying is: It's impossible that Joyce and I met and married forty-nine years ago.

And then ... a coincidence.

I've been reading my way through the novels of Wilkie Collins (1824-99), generally in the order that he wrote them, and the past few days I've started his 1876 novel, The Two Destinies, which tells the story of two children--a boy, a girl--who are great friends in childhood and eventually realize they want to be more than that. They believe they are destined for each other.

The problem: He is the son of a prosperous landowner; she, the daughter of one of his employees. So ... anything more than a childhood friendship is ... impossible.

His father discovers the increasing seriousness of the relationship, fires his employee, who quickly moves away with the daughter. The grieving son cannot find her--though he still dreams of her, still considers her his future.

I've reached the part where they're now in their twenties. I don't know what's going to happen, though I have hopes, of course.

We'll see.

But that novel has been making me think more and more about the improbability/impossibility of human encounters--and of any of those encounters ever turning into something ... more.

Yet they do, don't they? Sometimes for good--sometimes for ill. But all ... impossible ...

What's in a Name?

I have just uploaded to Kindle Direct my latest collection of doggerel and wolferel (lines that are not quite poetry, not quite doggerel). It's What's in a Name? and Other Doggerel and Wolferel and costs $2.99--the lowest price I can use on Kindle Direct. It's worth every penny. (!) It should be available for purchase later today (after lunch? a verbal dessert? or purgative?).

Below, I've pasted some of the front matter + the Preface ...

What’s in a Name?

And Other Doggerel and Wolferel

(October 10, 2018–March 3, 2019)

by

Daniel Dyer

Copyright © 2019 by Daniel Dyer

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

To Joyce

Who has always understood … always cared … my breath … my life …

 

“What’s in a name?”

—Juliet in Romeo and Juliet,  2.2

(balcony scene—just before she knows Romeo is even present, listening to her.)

Preface 

I have no memory of how this idea arrived—the idea of writing a doggerel series about eponyms[i] (words derived from the names of people—or, in some cases (like sirenic, protean), from mythological characters and creatures). One day the idea was invisible; the next, glowing in my face. (Was this “false fire,”[ii] as Hamlet cries in that, uh, eponymous play? You’ll have to be the judges.)

I should quickly say that although this series may be exhausting, it is in no way exhaustive. There are myriads of eponyms in the sciences, for example, and although I did include some of them, there was no way to use them all. If I had tried it, readers would have disappeared more quickly—far more quickly—than they normally do. Also, I plead ignorance. I had no idea what some of those terms even meant or referred to (e.g., gauss = “a unit of magnetic flux density equal to 1 maxwell per square centimeter”).

So you will find no gauss doggerel here. (Are those sighs of relief—or disappointment—I hear?) Gauss does rhyme with house and mouse and louse and douse, etc. Maybe I should have included it?

A few other things to get out of the way. First of all, I owe a tremendous debt to two websites from which I took virtually all of these words:

            • englishclub.com

• alphadictionary.com

You can go to their sites and see all the ones I did not include. (Most of my choices, by the way, came from the latter.)

I usually used the definitions/sources provided on the sites, but I double-checked them all  for accuracy and other factors (at least, I hope I did!). I employed Merriam-Webster for the “first known use” of the word, a date I included with each one.

Next—the question of categories. As you can tell from the Table of Contents, there is a section of doggerel based on eponyms, then a section called Desultory Doggerel, followed by a final section called Wolferel. A word about the final two …

• Desultory Doggerel: Almost all of these are pieces I wrote now and then about quotidian events (usually), then posted on Facebook to give my friends an excuse to unfriend me. I have made some very mild adjustments to a few of them, Time allowing me to see the Error that had somehow crept into those lines after I published them. (Doggerel, of course, refers to light, inferior verse, as my efforts here verify.)

• Wolferel: This is a word I invented—a word I’m waiting for the Oxford English Dictionary to include. (Those of you who arrive in the Netherworld after I do must be sure to tell me if it ever happened.) It’s a word I use to refer to lines that are something more than doggerel, something less than poetry. Think, for instance, of baseball: We have the amateur leagues and the minor leagues and the majors. Those three categories align pretty well, I think, with doggerel, wolferel, and poetry.

So the journey begins … I hope you find these lines amusing, sometimes informative, always intended in good fun.

Whatever the case, I’ve had a great time composing them (I realize that word—composing—seems a bit uppity for such an enterprise as mine). And having a great time, for a scribbler, is really what it’s all about.

—   Daniel Dyer

March 3, 2019

---

[i] EP-uh-nimz

[ii] “What, frighted with false fire?” Hamlet cries during the murder-of-a-king play he has staged for his mother and step-father, King Claudius, who is, naturally, alarmed to see a version of the murder he committed performed on a stage right in front of him (3.2).

Sunday Sundries, 222

1. AOTW: Okay, Ohio drivers--many of you, it seems, don't know the right-of-way laws out on the road. So ... here's a link to them ... review them ... then laugh at me the next time you (illegally) cut me off.

2. I finished two books this week.

     - The first was really not a book, though it was published in its own volume. It's a short story that Sylvia Plath wrote in 1952 when she was a student at Smith College. She sent it to Mademoiselle--got a rejection--fussed with it some more--gave up. Now her estate has arranged the publication of Mary Ventura and the Ninth Kingdom.

It's a surreal kind of tale--an unwilling young woman put on a train by her parents, and pretty soon we (and she) realize this is not any ordinary train but one that appears to be heading for a very terminal destination.  Mary wants off that train before the final stop--the eponymous Ninth Kingdom--and she ends up in a conversation with another passenger, an older woman, who just may help her ...

Fun to read--and an early reminder just how talented Plath was. She committed suicide at the age of 30--what a loss to the world, to literature.

     - The second was The New Magdalen, an 1873 novel by Wilkie Collins, whose novels I've been reading, generally in the order that he published them. I read a chapter at night (most nights) before Morpheus swoops me up, up, and away.

This one takes place during and after the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71). It begins on a battlefield in France. Two young women are in a cottage with some wounded French soldiers; one of the women is "fallen"--she is now a nurse; the other, a higher-class Englishwoman, who, traveling, was caught in the battle and has found refuge in the cottage.

This second woman (Grace), about to come into a comfortable life with a relative she has never seen, is killed by a shell, and the second woman (named, appropriately, Mercy) impulsively trades places with her--takes her things and prepares to pass herself off in London.

Which she does. She even has a wedding planned ...

Until, one day, Grace--who did not die in the cottage (an army surgeon saved her)--shows up in London to claim her inheritance.

Collins is a wonder. And he makes things very difficult for us. Mercy loves the older "relative" she's with--and vice versa. She has been transformed by her experience. Grace turns out to be, well, not so nice. So ... what happens?

Collins' novels often treat women with profound respect and understanding--not usual, I think, among male writers in the 1870s!

3. No movies this week--but we're still streaming, nightly, bits of shows we like: Wire in the Blood, True Detective, Fargo, After Life (which is alternately funny and wrenching, touching and disturbing).

4. Will upload this week to Kindle Direct my latest volume of doggerel--What's in a Name?--a collection I did about eponyms (words derived from the names of people--e.g., watt, atlas, etc.). More info when I've actually done it!

5. I recently realized that I published my first book review for Kirkus Reviews twenty years ago--on March 1, 1999; in about a month, if all goes as it has, I will submit review #1500 to them--at which time I will do a post here about the wonderful experiences I've had with Kirkus.

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

     - from the Oxford English Dictionary--a word that's now apparently obsolete, a word I'd like to see come back, a word that fits me in all its meanings (I'm forced to admit)

scripturiency, n.  Passion for writing; an urge to write. In early use esp.: the tendency to produce an abundance of trivial or inferior writing.

Origin: Formed within English, by derivation. Etymons: scripturient adj., -ency suffix.

Obsolete.

1652  T. Urquhart Εκσκυβαλαυρον  196 Though scripturiency be a fault in feeble pens [etc.].

1685  H. More Cursory Refl.  1 The Disease of Scripturiency in R. B. taken notice of.

1717 Entertainer  No. 3. 18 This Bladder of Scripturiency.

?1751  J. Markland Let.  in  J. B. Nichols Illustr. Lit. Hist. 18th Cent.(1858) VIII. 537 Whenever..a scripturiency comes upon me, you shall hear more from [me].

1881 Manch. Guardian  15 Aug. 5/3 ‘Scripturiency’ appears to vary greatly in different nations. The United States claim 2,800 of these medical authors; France and her colonies, 2,600 [etc.].

Spaghetti and J. K. Rowling

We had a spaghetti dinner last night with our son and his family at our house, and--as always after they've been over--I felt as if I'd been worked over by a mobster.

Oh, don't get the wrong idea ... it was tremendous fun, and no one really worked anyone else over. It's just that at my age, well, things can be ... more difficult.

Our older grandson (in 8th grade) has been making a difficult decision about high school. And our younger grandson (about to turn 10) is reading his way through the Rowling novels about Harry Potter. He's well into the fourth one now (The Goblet of Fire), and he is reading copies of the books that I had read back in 2007.

I've written about this before--but just a quick reminder: I had not read any of the Potter novels when the final one came out in 2007. But when we saw the enormous queue at the local bookshop, when we saw little kids carrying fat books as if they were precious gems (which, of course, they are), and when the cultural imperative to read them became, well, overwhelming, I read them.

Rowling published the first one in 1997, the year I retired from middle school teaching, and if I had still been teaching when this new star rose in the sky, I would have read it, right along with the kids. I often did that: saw what kids were reading, then read it myself.

Anyway, in the summer of 2007, Joyce was away for a week-long conference somewhere, and I decided to read one Potter a day while she was gone--quite a commitment, I know, because (as I've alluded above--and as you surely know), they are l-o-n-g books.

I loved them. Consumed them like Snickers bars. Cried when it was over.

And so--seeing my younger grandson similarly obsessed, I felt like weeping again. Restrained myself.

He was quizzing me last night--asking me about Potterian names and events that I haven't really thought about in a dozen years. I made him give me clues; then I did pretty well (C or C+).

An odd coincidence ... Chris, a friend, told me I should read the novels Rowling wrote under the name "Robert Galbraith")--detective novels about a P.I. named Cormoran Strike. So ... I downloaded one to my Kindle (the first--The Cuckoo's Calling, 2013), and now I have to confess to Chris that he was ... right. I'm loving it. Loving how she's shaped the genre to accommodate her story.

And ... maybe ... one of these days ... our grandson will wander into those books, too, and find himself, once again, deliriously, delightfully lost.

"Who ARE Those Guys?"

Remember in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid when the two are are being pursued by the relentless posse? And Butch (I think), amazed at their persistence, says, "Who are those guys?" (Just checked some video: Both Butch and Sundance say the words--link to video.)

Anyway--and this is a weird segue--some (many?) of you know that Joyce and I are slowly selling our library via abebooks.com (our bookstore on the site is DJ Doodlebug Books). And we sell a few each month (unfortunately, we are still buying more than we're selling!).

But what has surprised me is not so much what sells--but what doesn't. What's not selling? Most of the books written by the literary eminences of my youth and young adulthood.

When I was in college (and in a couple of decades afterward), the following names were very prominent in American literature:

• John Updike
• John Barth
• Thomas Berger
• Saul Bellow
• Norman Mailer
• Gore Vidal
• William Styron
• Truman Capote

There are more--but these will give you the idea (lotta guys in the list, eh?). Although we have first printings of many of their works (and some signed copies), I don't believe we've sold any. We have, for example, all of Updike's "Rabbit" novels--1st printings in dust jackets. We have all of Berger's novels (ditto). And the others. But here's the thing ...

Today, I don't read too many allusions or references to the many works of these guys. Most of them are dead now (Barth, 88, is still alive). And it seems as if their prominence has died with them. Although they once graced the covers of magazines and appeared on the TV talk shows, now there is, at least in the popular culture, just the sounds of silence.

And if you mention their names, the reply is often a quizzical look--or that question from Butch & Sundance: "Who are those guys?"

I'm sure that in the (ever-shrinking) circle of American lit specialists, the names are still there--if, perhaps, not so prominently as they were in my youth. (These writers, of course, fail one current test of relevance: They are all white males.)

Do we even teach these guys anymore? I don't know--I'm no longer really in that world. It's too bad if we don't teach them, though, for their works helped me--and countless other readers--to understand American life in the 50s, 60s, 70s.

Anyway, if you're looking for some good copies ... !

Blood on the Tube

We are streaming some sanguinary shows at night before we drift into Dream Time, and I have to say that they don't make me all that sanguine about our species.

Here's a list of the things we're streaming (about 10 min or so of each one each night):

• Fargo (season 2)
• Wire in the Blood (season 5)
• True Detective (season 3)
• The Inspector Lynley Mysteries (season 1*)

The last few nights we have seen: a butcher kill a would-be assassin with a cleaver (Fargo), an 11-year-old girl on the street, grabbed and dragged screaming into a car (Wire in the Blood), a former police detective losing his mind to dementia--continually troubled by the disappearance of a young girl years earlier (True Detective), a young boy murdered at an exclusive boys' school (Lynley). 

Now--the principal reason I watch only about ten minutes of each one? I just can't take much more of it. My heart rate accelerates, my BP elevates, my terror escalates. And none of this is good before Dream Time commences.

Joyce would probably watch more, but guess who grips the remote while we are watching? I think she's used to this Purely Male Prerogative with the streaming devices; I mean, she hasn't left me ... yet. Right?

And I am ashamed of what I do--but not sufficiently so to alter my behavior. I just can't take the tension.

So ... a very logical question is surely occurring to you right now: Why do you even watch those shows?

Good question.

But let's move on.

Besides revealing the sorry state of my manhood (chickening out after 10 minutes, commanding the remote), these shows also depress me for what they show us about Homo sapiens. Not all of us, it seems, are very nice.

We lie, we murder, we dismember, we rape, we cheat, we steal, we ... well, we will do just about anything, it seems--at least in TV shows. Surely, we don't do these things in Real Life ... do we?

Yeah, of course we do. In spades.

As I suggested above, watching such things in bed at night is not all that wise, for we are providing some ... unpleasantness ... for the scriptwriters who are crafting our dreams.

But to answer an earlier question: I think we watch them because the writing is generally excellent, the actors wonderful. And--best of all (and very unlike the Real World)--the Bad Guys get caught in the end. Always.

So--in a way--they are fairy tales--fully as grim (Grimm!), fully as cautionary.

And besides--we try to end each viewing session with something more ... pleasant. A genial comedian (John Mulaney, Sebastian Maniscalo, Mike Birbiglia). Right now, we're streaming--at the end of the bloodbaths--the latest Netflix series by Ricky Gervais, After Life, which makes us both laugh and grimace and laugh at the grimaces.

And as we turn off the lights, I try to fill my brain with ... with ... with, well, what one of my old children's records tried to teach me--"the pleasant things that we have seen and done!"

The record was called Manners Can Be Fun. (The audio is available here.) The book, 1936, was written by Munro Leaf, author of The Story of Ferdinand, also 1936.

A flower-sniffing bull? Not a bad image to take me to sleep!

* For some reason we've been watching Lynley backwards--starting with its final season; we've now reached season 1.

For Mom

Mom--Hiram, Ohio
August 1958
reading in the sun

I mentioned the other day on Facebook that I would be doing a post about my mom, who died on March 10 a year ago. But I got sidetracked yesterday--a meeting with our "tax man" re: ... guess what?

Anyway, that's over ... at least until his phone calls commence!

Mom, born on September 9, 1919 (when women did not yet have the vote!), died at age 98. She was in hospice care at the stages-of-care place in Lenox, Mass., where she had lived for a number of years. She and Dad had moved from the Oregon coast (which they both adored) about twenty years ago (?) when Dad's health had begun to fail, and they had decided to move to western Mass., not far from where my two brothers shared a summer/weekend place in the Berkshires--an old farmhouse they have slowly restored.

Dad passed away on November 30, 1999, and, in some ways, it was a relief for Mom, who had been his principal caretaker for years. His decline had been slow but steady. Small strokes and heart attacks. Cane-walker-wheelchair-bed. You know ...

As soon as he died, Mom moved out of their assisted-living facility and got her own apartment in Lenox, where we visited her quite a few times over the years. Western Mass. is nearly 600 miles from our home in Hudson, but we were young and (relatively) healthy. We went as often as we could.

Mom had a bad car accident (just her car vs. a tree) and had to wear one of those "halo" devices. And then she, too, commenced her slow but certain decline. Cane-walker-wheelchair-bed.

She had enjoyed a wonderful career. Had taught English in public schools in Enid, Okla., and Garrettsville, Ohio. Then she earned her Ph.D in Education at the University of Pittsburgh, and she and Dad got to teach together their final career years at Drake University (they began there in the fall of 1966, the year I began my own public-school teaching career). Drake's president at the time was their great friend Dr. Paul F. Sharp (whom they'd known since college years).

They retired out in Cannon Beach, Ore., built a home there, and enjoyed some wonderful years before Dad began his decline.

Mom was such an intellectually active woman--until she simply no longer could be. She was one of the first in the family to have a personal computer (an Apple II!), was a ferocious reader, got very involved in civic activities. She never, never "wasted time."

Near the end, she was not able to finish the last book she was reading (I think it was a mystery that my younger brother had bought for her), but she left it out in full view--with a bookmark--in her living room so that visitors could see it. The same with her laptop. She couldn't use it anymore--she'd forgotten how to turn it on and off, how to manipulate it. But it also stayed in public view. These were Mom's way of saying, I have not given up.

And she didn't, not really, not ever.

One thing that astonished me about her final months: her remarkable humor and equanimity about it all. By that time she could do nothing that she'd once loved to do: hike, swim, write, read, drive around, quilt with her friends, ...

But she could laugh at her infirmities, could deal with the indignities of old age with a calm I never would have believed she could manage.

If I live long enough to see those conditions in my own life, I know this--for certain: They will have to medicate me--heavily. Otherwise, I will be screaming vile obscenities, 24/7.

It took me a lot of years to figure it out--and to give credit where credit is due--but Mom was a fantastic model for me. Curious, hard-working, devoted to her students, determined to stay current. A true educator and intellectual.

My dad, I should say, supported her without reservation--encouraged her to get advanced degrees, etc. Not something every man in his generation (b. 1913) was capable of, I don't believe.

I think about Mom and Dad every day--I marvel that she died a day after his birthday--I marvel at their fierce work ethic, at their support of their three sons (so different from one another--almost separate species!), at their long (but ultimately hopeless) fight against physical and mental decline.

To say I didn't always appreciate my parents when I was a kid, a teen, is an understatement (I was often a jerk), and I'm so glad they both lived long enough that I could show them--and tell them--how much they'd meant to me. And how sorry I was ...

They were two very distinct varieties of human excellence. And I got to grow up in their home. No one was ever more fortunate.

Sunday Sundries, 221

1. AOTW: This choice required no thought whatsoever--and the person winning the "award" displayed no thought whatsoever while in the process. Joyce and I were driving back to Hudson from Cleveland on Friday night (after seeing a good production of Witness for the Prosecution at the Hanna Theater). We were on I-480, in the right lane (a car was to my left, so I could not switch lanes); near an on-ramp the AOTW gunned his way out onto the freeway, saw I was inconveniencing him (I was going about 65), and roared by me--on the right berm--doing about 80--then cut back in front of me, leaving, oh, three or four inches of space between us. I said some bad words. Thought about what qualifies as justifiable homicide ...

2. I finished two books this week --

     - The first (an "in-bed book" (one I read when I've gone beddie-bye)) was Never Home Alone: From Microbes to Millipedes, Camel Crickets, and Honeybees, the Natural History of Where We Live, 2018, by Rob Dunn, a professor of applied ecology at North Carolina State Univ.

It's an amazingly good book about the many critters--visible and -in--that share our homes with us--around 200,000 species he says (not counting viruses!).

One point he makes continually: Virtually all of these critters are beneficial to us, so when we kill a spider (or whatever)--or spray pesticides around--we are actually harming ourselves. The hardy evolve, survive--but, unfortunately, many of them are not beneficial to us.

He advises us to make our dwellings a little "wilder"--in- and outside. Plants, pets, etc. Most of them share with us their bacteria, etc.--beneficial bacteria. He also advises that we just wash our hands with soap (which removes the recent pathogens and leaves behind our invisible friends).

He has a great section near the end about sourdough--about the microbes in and on the starter--and on the hands of the baker. Beneficial to everyone.

Based on years of research and study--and a treat to read.

     - The second was a 2019 novel by Christopher Castellani, a writer I'd not heard of, but when I read a recent review of his Leading Men, well, I plopped down the plastic, bought it, read it, really liked it. (Link to review in NYT)

The novel is about the relationship between Tennessee Williams and Frank Merlo (1922-63). This is a novel about love, about ambition, about death. (In pic below, TW is standing.)

Castellani moves artfully through Time, bending it, splitting it, revisiting it as his plot demands. Much of the story is "true"--i.e., Tenn (the name Frank called him) and Frank are in the places they actually were at the times they actually were, and other actual people pop in and out of the story: Truman Capote, Gore Vidal, Franco Zeffirelli, and others.

A key incident is the discovery of a short play Williams wrote and the decision to produce it. (It deals with Tenn and Frank and others we've met.) Castellani actually reproduces the (fictional) script here and does a credible job of producing a text that is not unlike the weaker plays Williams wrote after his soaring successes (A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, The Glass Menagerie, et al.).

Frank's death (to cancer) is key, as well--and the ending of the book is quite moving and powerful.

3. We've started streaming (Netflix) the new mini-series from Ricky Gervais, After Life, about a man whose wife has recently died (he's a small-town journalist) and about how that has changed him. He's become brutally frank with people (even cruel)--but we find ourselves laughing at the extremeness of it. (We've seen only the first episode, which features some funny bits about food--for humans, for dogs.) (Link to some video.)

4: Later this week (I hope!) I'll be uploading to Kindle Direct the latest collection of doggerel I've written--the series based on eponyms. I'm calling it What's in a Name?--stealing a line from Juliet's mouth in the balcony scene--before she knows Romeo is below, listening to her. I'll let you know when it's up on the site--$2.99 (the cheapest allowed), and the Kindle app on your smartphone or tablet or computer will give you access to it.

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

     -  from wordsmith.org (in case you thought there is not a word for everything):

mondegreen (MON-di-green)

noun: A word or phrase resulting from mishearing a word or phrase, especially in song lyrics.

Example: “The girl with colitis goes by” for “The girl with kaleidoscope eyes” (in the Beatles song “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”).

ETYMOLOGY: Coined by author Sylvia Wright when she misinterpreted the line “laid him on the green” as “Lady Mondegreen” in the Scottish ballad “The Bonny Earl of Murray”. Earliest documented use: 1954.

USAGE: “Sometimes in musical announcements, words lose their meaning, or are misheard, resulting in a delightful mondegreen. ... The audience thought Walter Love had said: ‘We are beginning tonight with Howard Ferguson’s overture ‘Fornication’.’” (instead of “Overture for an Occasion”). Paul Clements; “An Irishman’s Diary”; Irish Times (Dublin); Oct 5, 2016.

“[Tim Minchin’s] elocution is so exquisite there’s not a mondegreen in earshot.” Suzanne Simonot; “Tim and Tom Show a HOTA Opening Act”; Gold Coast Bulletin (Southport, Australia); Mar 19, 2018.

Courting

Joyce and I went to court last night.

No, there was no lawsuit--no divorce. (Whew!) It was a production of Agatha Christie's Witness for the Prosecution mounted by the Great Lakes Theater at the Hanna Theater in downtown Cleveland.

Joyce and I have been subscribers to the GLT (which has had several names, including the Great Lakes Shakespeare Festival (they still do two Shakespeare plays a year) and the Great Lakes Theater Festival). And so we always recognize some of the principal players--as we did last night.

One problem: I remembered the plot twist, something I'd learned from that old (1957) film with Charles Laughton. (Link to some video of that film.) Joyce did not, and I offered her a deal: $20 and I'd keep my mouth shut. She thought that was amusing, but I was serious. (Not really.) Anyway, I remembered seeing that film at the old Hiram College Sunday Night Movie on June 15,1958. I was thirteen. And the ending shocked me. (As it shocked Joyce last night.)

The story involves a murder case (it is Agatha Christie, after all!). A young man has befriended a (wealthy) older woman (she's in her 50s!), who changes her will to benefit him. Then someone murders the woman; the young man goes to the police, tells what he knows. Then he's accused of the murder.

He finds a defense attorney (Charles Laughton in the film), and the case unwinds right in front of us.

By the way, the video I linked above shows that the GLT reproduced the film's look of the courtroom--a replica.

Downstage is the attorney's office, where more than a little of the action takes place.

The principal performers were very good--esp. the defense attorney, the prosecutor, the judge (who provided some comic relief--at one point he says he doesn't know what a "cat brush" is), the accused, and the "wife" of the accused. These parts were played, respectively, by Aled Davies (a GLT veteran), Nick Steen, David Anthony Smith (another veteran), Taha Mandviwala, and Jodi Dominick. I put quotation marks around wife because ... ah, ain't gonna tell you!

The audience--pretty much a full house--seemed to love it (as the Standing O at the end might confirm--though Standing O's are far more commonplace these days than they used to be).

I noticed some wee "holes" in the plot this time (one involved the blood types of the victim and the accused), but let's not get too picky.

I will get picky about the drive home. On I-480, near an on-ramp (I was in the right lane on the freeway), an entering, impatient driver roared by me on the right berm, doing about 80. My heart asked me if I wanted to go on living; I said I did. Okay, said my heart, just this one time ...

Anyway, lots of fun last night, watching with Joyce (and watching Joyce!), remembering the myriads of plays we have seen together--on Playhouse Square and at many other venues. One of my life's great privileges ...

And next month at the GLT? The Taming of the Shrew, a play I taught to my 8th graders for quite a few years at Harmon (Middle) School back in the late 80s, early 90s. And, as Fate smiles somewhere, the word-of-the-day calendar says that today's word is froward, a word I learned from a speech in Shrew, Kate's famous (long) advice to women at the end: And when she is froward, peevish, sullen, sour .... (5.2).

 

Stopping by Woods & the Memorizing Thing

This morning, Facebook reminded me that three years ago I had shared some information from Writer's Almanac (R.I.P.): Today is the anniversary of Robert Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," first published on this day in 1923 in the New Republic--and later collected in his volume New Hampshire, 1923.

The Robert Frost Encyclopedia, 2001 (yes, there is such a volume; yes, I own a copy), says that Frost did not write the poem quickly (as he sometimes claimed). Documentary evidence shows drafts, and those drafts show his labor.

Apparently, the horse-and-the-sleigh-in-the-snow was based on an actual incident near their farm in Derry, New Hampshire (which Joyce and I saw and toured on July 12, 2002). (See our pic below.)

The structure if the poem is intricate--and Frost's skill makes it subtle. Take a quick look:

Whose woods these are I think I know.  

His house is in the village though;  

He will not see me stopping here  

To watch his woods fill up with snow.  

My little horse must think it queer  

To stop without a farmhouse near  

Between the woods and frozen lake  

The darkest evening of the year.  

He gives his harness bells a shake  

To ask if there is some mistake.  

The only other sound’s the sweep  

Of easy wind and downy flake.  

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,  

But I have promises to keep,  

And miles to go before I sleep,  

And miles to go before I sleep.

The rhythm is iambic tetrameter (duh-DUH, duh-DUH, duh-DUH, duh DUH in each stanza). But it's the rhyming that is so cool. Look at it. aaba is the first stanza--then bbcb--then ccdc--then dddd. In other words, the word at the end of the third line in each stanza provides the principal rhyme for the following stanza. Frost ended it the only way he could, really: by introducing no new rhyming words in the final stanza.

Anyway ... for quite a few years I had my 8th graders at Harmon School memorize this poem (I retired in January 1997), and today, responding to my Facebook post, a former student (and now a professor) commented that she still could recite the poem.

As I can. (I run through it in my head three days a week--MWF while I'm on the exercise bike at the health club).

This morning, at the coffee shop, a friend came in; He'd seen my post, and he alluded to "miles to go before I sleep."

I waited a few minutes, then walked over to his table and reeled off the whole thing for him.

I don't often do that--recite poems I've memorized. For some reason, it seems to annoy many people. So Joyce must suffer for all!

But my friend seemed grateful to hear the whole thing, and I was grateful I could still do it.

I've always believed that it's a good thing to have some great words in my brain--alongside all the clutter and detritus (the TV jingles from 1954, Mickey Mantle's batting average in 1956, the theme song from Wyatt Earp, the highest number of points I scored in a high school basketball game, the grade I got in Algebra II at Hiram High School, the name of my 2nd grade teacher in Amarillo, the ...).

And so Frost's words are there, and if you ever have the misfortune of asking me about it, get ready!

Obsolete Word, Enduring Relevance

The word-of-the-day arrived this morning from the Oxford English Dictionary: dade. I'd never read or heard that word (I don't think?!?). I knew of Dade County in Florida. I went to public school with a kid named Vaughan Dade. When I was a kid in Oklahoma, people would say some cowboy on TV had shot a black-hatted guy "daid." That's about it.

Dade, says the dictionary, is "obsolete." But here's the definition of it, its earliest known appearance in 1580: transitive. To lead and support (a person who totters or moves unsteadily, esp. a child learning to walk)

This, of course, had great emotional resonance for those of who have been parents. I well remember our son (born in 1972), absolutely determined to walk, teetering and tottering on his feet, the hands of his mother (or his father) cupped round him to make sure he didn't fall and hurt himself. Such moments are among the wonders of parenthood.

Later, my brothers and I would perform the same service for our father (who died in 1999) and our mother (who died in 2018). Both of them had experienced the Full Meal Deal of declining locomotion: cane, walker, wheelchair. Both took falls--sometimes bad ones. Both, you see, were determined to walk--as determined as any toddler.

Today, at the coffee shop, I witnessed an act of supreme kindness. A local man who has trouble walking came in the shop, took his order, headed out, then returned about ten minutes later--disoriented. Frustrated.

A coffee-shop friend immediately stood up, put on his coat, led the man to his car, took him home, came back and finished his coffee. I said some kind words to him; he waved them off. It's just what you do, you know? Help people who need it?

Actually, it's not what far too many of us do--in coffee shops and elsewhere. Self-reliance and all that stuff. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps. Asking for help is, you know, un-American!

Except it isn't.

Asking for help is human. Giving it is human. Not giving it is inhuman.

And, of course, this principle lives far beyond the walls of any coffee shop. We need to help one another--whether we've been asked to or not. Whether or not the recipients are "deserving."

So many of us seem so adamantine these days, our political views so firm and fixed that we can sometimes view those on the "other" side as inhuman, as unworthy of our help. They're not "like" us, and so ... you know ...

But this takes me to the other definition of dade: intransitive. To move slowly or with uncertain steps; to toddle, like a child learning to walk. Also fig.

If we live long enough, we will all move slowly ... with uncertain steps ... like a child learning to walk. I've seen it in my own family; I see hints of it--forecasts--in my own body.

For many, many people, however, it has nothing whatsoever to do with age or illness. It has to do with economic or  political or corporal circumstance.

And I believe that as we see others dade, we need to extend a hand--literally, figuratively, financially. It's the only way.

Jack London has a grim story he called "The Law of Life." It's one of his Northland tales and involves a dying old Native American man whose tribe gives him some supplies, then moves on, leaving him to die in the bitter cold and snow. Wolves arrive ... (Link to entire story.)

The old man is resigned--accepts what has happened, realizes his end is near, recognizes the Law of Life. 

Well, isn't it time for a new Law ... one that glows with empathy? One that recognizes that one day--sooner? later?--we will all ... dade.

Sullied Heroes

There was a story in the New York Times a couple of weeks ago about how Charles Dickens, involved in an affair with actress Nelly Ternan, tried to put away his wife of twenty years in an institution. (Link to that story.) Oh, and she'd delivered his ten children.

It's depressing, isn't it? The more we learn about people the more we discover that they're ... people.

I've long loved Dickens' work--I've read all of his novels, most of his other works. For a few years I took my middle school classes in Aurora to see A Christmas Carol in downtown Cleveland. Right now, looking in on me, is a Dickens decal in my study window. (See pic above.)

Oh, he was a gifted guy--not just on the page but onstage. A talented amateur actor. He did a reading tour in the US in 1842--Edgar Poe interviewed him while he was here.

And he tried to put his wife away so he could proceed unimpeded with his affair.

Jerk.

But "Jerk," I fear, is a word we could employ for about just about any writer. I've read countless biographies of writers, and every time I do, I groan and moan with disappointment in them. Jack London had some racial issues. Mark Twain may have had a thing for little girls (later in his life). Mary Shelley, at 16, ran off with a married man. Percy Bysshe Shelley, married, ran off with a 16-year-old girl. Edgar Poe was a drunk and druggie; he married his first cousin, a teenager. Melville wasn't faithful. Norman Mailer stabbed one of his wives.  Saul Bellow was continuously on the make. Robert Frost had an affair--in the lovely, dark, and deep woods? Faulkner was unfaithful. Hemingway? (Need I say more!?!)

It's a good thing we don't know more about Shakespeare than we do. If we learned a bunch of darkness about him, would we end the productions of Romeo and Juliet?

Oh, we do know a few things ... he lived apart from his wife in London (she was back in Stratford-upon-Avon)--so for whom did he write those sonnets? (Speculation about the identity of the so-called "Dark Lady of the Sonnets" has raged for centuries.)

All of these assorted failures, of course, belong, as well, to artists, musicians, politicians, lawyers, doctors, teachers, et al.

To you?

To me? (I'm running out of space--too bad I can't really get into it.)

So .. what do we do about it? Banish from the curriculum all writers and others who violated moral and/or ethical standards? And if we were to proceed with those excommunications, who would be left? Anyone?

So ... what do we do? I guess we go case-by-case. We draw a line. If the person has crossed that line, well, too bad for him or her?

I do think we need to be generous with those lines, however. As I said, if we exclude all who are less than perfect, then our classrooms will be empty: no curriculum, no teachers, no students. And every other profession will be pretty much unpopulated as well.

Right now, as you know, we're having some intense cultural and social debates about what is tolerable. Lots of people have fallen--many, no doubt, deservedly so.

But, as I said, if we become too rigid--if we draw our lines too close to the edge of perfection--will we really like the result? Will our lives be better? Or worse?

Just asking ...

Pizza Time!

I remember the first time I ever ate pizza. I was in high school, so the year was, oh, about 1960, I would guess. Beatrice Zeleznik, a girl a year or so ahead of me (in school!), had a cast party at her house--one of our school plays. Her mom had made pizza.

Oh, I knew what pizza was--but it just hadn't seemed all that appetizing to me. I'd never tasted it--at all. I'm not a big tomato fan (cannot--to this day--eat a fresh tomato), so I couldn't see how I could possibly like this food that had tomato sauce smeared all over it like blood at a crime scene.

But some friends convinced me. I tried it. Addict!

I cannot remember when I first made pizza, but it was probably not long after I started baking with sourdough (the summer of 1986, when I acquired my starter). I initially used pans and baked with them.

But then I discovered the pizza stone (one now lives in the bottom of our oven), and pretty soon I was baking them regularly--by "regularly" I mean, oh, every month or so--maybe ever couple of months?

It takes a bit of work. Mixing the dough. Letting it rise, etc. Shaping it. Then the toppings. Transferring the unbaked pizza from the "slip" (the big spatula, basically) to the stone.

The baking. Removal from the stone. Cooling and cutting. Consuming.

And, oh, the mess to clean up afterward.

When I was younger, I never thought two seconds about all the labor. I just did it. Loved it. When I was teaching, I sometimes had students over for homemade pizza.

I've also baked them for our son and his family--though not so much in recent years. My energy has declined dramatically (let's not get into the meds I'm on, the meds that have taught me some new rules about what I can and cannot do).

But this weekend ... I decided it was time to do it again. One reason for the decision? I didn't need to bake regular bread this week: The freezer is stuffed. So ... what to do with the starter? (I use it every week--it's like a pet (or a child!) that needs regular feeding--and attention.)

Joyce wondered why I didn't invite our son and family over. Here's why: I hadn't made pizza in so long that I was afraid I would mess it up, and I didn't want to do that in front of my family. Let me get the technique back, I thought. Then I'll try it in public again.

And so ... here's how it went.

• I fed the starter on Sunday night--let it bubble away all night.
• In the morning, about seven, I separated a couple of cups of starter to store in the fridge for next week, left the rest in the big mixing bowl, covered, in the fridge.
• About 11:30, I took the bowl out, allowing time for the dough to warm up a little.
• About 1:30, I prepared the pizza dough: sea salt, a bit of water, some olive oil, some local honey, some flour (oat, whole wheat, white).
• I let the dough rise for a couple of hours or so.
• The risen dough provides enough for four pizzas. Because Joyce prefers veggie pizzas, we had decided to make two veggie, two chicken-and-pineapple (which I love). We would bake the first two--one of hers, one of mine--then eat some of the second two.
• pizza sauce (I tried, for the first time, some made in Cleveland's Little Italy--good!)

It mostly went pretty well. I say "mostly" because I had a little trouble with my first one (Joyce's first had gone without incident). I use semolina flour on the slip so that the dough will not stick, so that the pie will slide easily onto the baking stone.* 

But after Joyce's something went wrong with my first one. It stuck a little, and it took some doing (and some other implements) to get it onto the stone. I nearly had a meltdown, by the way--another side effect of my meds: emotions lying very close to the surface.

From there on--no problems, really.

And, oh, did it taste fine. But let's not get into that: I'm veering too close to self-praise, something my parents taught me was a no-no. (And considering the near disaster with pizza #2, I have no cause to bray.) Pic below shows three of the four I baked.

All the classes from Hiram High School (which closed its doors forever at the end of the 1963-64 school year) meet each July for a reunion in Welshfield, Ohio (five miles north of Hiram). A couple of years ago I saw Beatrice Zeleznik at the reunion, and I told her that her mom had made the first pizza I'd ever eaten.

She told me her mom had loved to make pizza--had been so good at it. And I can most definitely confirm that. It changed my life--my waistline. And baking it myself has brought me tremendous joy over the years ... if it weren't for all that clean-up!

*I'm thinking of trying parchment paper next time; I've been using it the past few years with my regular bread--and it works spectacularly well.

Sunday Sundries, 220

1. AOTW: How about the woman in the grocery store this morning, a woman whose cart was blocking an entire shelf (with some things I needed, naturally), a woman who was texting merrily and just having the Best Damn Time ... while--politely, in cowardly fashion--I stood and waited for her to notice me--which took a bit of a while.

2. Last night Joyce and I drove down to the Nightlight, an independent (very small) cinema on High Street in Akron. We have known about the place for a long time but had never gone there. (Habit, Habit, Habit!) But last night they were showing Stan & Ollie, a film about Laurel & Hardy, a film that both Joyce and I have wanted to see.

The Nightlight is a simple place. A small concession stand, only one apparent employee, limited (but comfortable seating), two single-person unisex bathrooms (not that I needed one, of course). The young man working the concession (and ticket) area also came out just before the start to tell us about the film--and about some upcoming ones. A literate, intelligent, lucid young man. (It reminded me of our days of going up to the New Mayfield and hearing little talks before each film.)

The film was wonderful. I first heard about Laurel & Hardy from my dad (who loved them); Dad had told me about how he and my mom's brother, Ronald, had seen Way Out West together in Enid, Okla. (where both of them were at Phillips University). Dad said they had laughed themselves into two puddles of sweat. So I was touched last night when some of Stan & Ollie was about the filming of Way Out West (1937--Dad was 24--and two years away from marrying my mom).

This new film deals with that film--the team's break-up--their reunion in 1953 when they went on a tour to the British Isles, trying to attract crowds to give them some support for a new film they were planning about Robin Hood. (All is based on true events.)

The two actors (John C. Reilly as Oliver Hardy, Steve Coogan as Stan Laurel) were superb--absolutely convincing in their roles--both masters of the mannerisms, facial expressions, movements of the two comic geniuses they were portraying. They never descended to caricature, and I believed both of them, absolutely, all the way through this very moving film about decline and fall--and friendship--and love (the two women who played the actors' wives were also great--Shirley Henderson as Lucille Hardy, Nina Arianda as Ida Kitaeva Laurel).

I loved the film (as did Joyce) ... and what was that wetness in my eyes? A leak in the ceiling?

Many years ago--at Aurora Middle School (pre-Harmon)--I used to teach film history courses, and I always showed Laurel & Hardy's The Music Box--about the two guys moving a piano up some steep outdoor stairs. There is some talk about that film in Stan & Ollie--and a sly reference to it when, on a steep stairway in an English city, their big trunk gets away from them and slides to the bottom. (That whole film (The Music Box) is on YouTube now.)

Link to film trailer.

3. I finished two books this week ...

     - In the Galway Silence (2018) is the latest in Ken Bruen's startling series of novels about Jack Taylor, a former cop in Galway (Ire.), dismissed for drinking, now an informal P.I. who has the worst experiences, I think, in P.I. fiction.

I first learned about Taylor (and thus Bruen) by streaming the series about him (Acorn? Britbox? I forget). I loved the series--and decided to read the novels. I'd originally thought the TV shows were dark. Nah. They glow with hope compared with the novels.

In every one he suffers some grievous loss (sometimes more than one)--physical, psychological, the death of someone he cares about. It is g-r-i-m.

In this current novel someone is going around killing people who don't deserve it. Some are known to Taylor; some, very close to him.

So ... vigilante time! (He's good at that, vigilantism!)

I love the unique style of the novels, too (Taylor almost always narrates--the p-o-v sometimes shifts, too.) Colloquial in style--though Taylor is a great reader--with a unique way of writing dialogue (as you'll see if you read them).

     - Regular visitors to this site know that I've been deliriously travelling through the writings of Kate Atkinson, whose work I accidentally stumbled across in a New York Times article about some writers making appearances in NYC (link to that piece from July 31, 2018).

Anyway, I thought I'd give her books a whirl--and what a whirl it has been, a life-changing one. She is one of the best writers I've ever read. From her first novel (Behind the Scenes at the Museum, 1995) to Transcription, 2018.

She also has written five detective novels featuring Jackson Brodie (the fifth will be out this year); I read these after I read her "literary" novels, discovering, of course, that there's little difference between them (between, that is, her "literary" and "detective" work). The same unique style, the same sly allusions to Shakespeare and other major writers (and popular culture), the same amazing movements about in time, in point of view.

I just finished her third Brodie novel, When Will There Be Good News? (2008), and she had me from the epigraph (an Emily Dickinson poem--"We never know we go when we are going"--which I loved so much I memorized it). This one involves--among numerous other things--a horrible murder of a mother and two of her children thirty years prior to the main action of the novel. One little girl escapes, and she has grown up to become a physician.

Brodie gets on the wrong train, which wrecks. He's out of it for a while.

Enter Reggie Chase, a teenager, who hears the crash, goes to it, saves Brodie's life. She's an amazing character--one of the bright lights of the book. She works for the physician (whose family was murdered) and ... well ... let's not spoil it.

Just this (which is true in all the Atkinson I've read so far): Everything's connected. Every single plot thread (and there are lots) is in the hands of the mistress of marionettes, Kate Atkinson. She is a WONDER.

Her next Brodie novel--Started Early and Took My Dog (2010) is on its way to me--and I've also got her short story collection (Not the End of the World, 2002) and her play (Abandonment, 2000).

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--the OED says it's "rare"; we should make it less so!

imaginarian, n.

A person concerned with imaginary things; a fantasist. Also: one who stresses the imagination.

Origin: Formed within English, by derivation. Etymons: imagine v., -arian suffix.

Etymology: <  imagine v. + -arian suffix.

 rare.

a1729  E. Taylor Metrical Hist. Christianity (1962) 278 Constantinople calls Nicephorus A Laick vain Imaginarian.

1833  J. Montgomery Lect. Poetry  216 The greatest realists, and the greatest imaginarians,—if I may coin a barbarous word for a special occasion.

2003 Independent on Sunday(Nexis) 27 Apr. (Features) 15 Northern State are three white feminist rappers from Long Island who describe themselves as ‘vegetarian, humanitarian, imaginarian not a liberatarian [sic]’.

2005  J. Ehrat Cinema & Semiotic  i. 58 In the context of film theory, the debate between the ‘ontological film realists’ and the ‘imaginarians’ could certainly profit from this Peircean insight.