Sunday Sundries, 233

1. AOTW: This one is easy: I was poised in the intersection of Rts. 91 and 303, waiting to turn left. The light shifted to amber--uh, oh. I got ready to turn quickly, when as the light turned Full Red, a driver approaching me gunned it through the intersection, blowing by me like an ill wind. I honked (prayed he didn't loop back and show me his Uzi), turned left (I had no choice--I was in the intersection), thereby earning some honks of my own.

2. We went to the Kent Cinema last night (a favorite since we first went there in the early 1970s--and also where son Steve had his first date at the end of his 8th grade year)--to see Yesterday, the new Danny Boyle* film about a global power outage (for twelve minutes). While it's black, our "hero," Jack Malik (played well by Himesh Patel), is on his bike and is hit by a bus. When he wakes up in the hospital--and in the days afterward--he discovers that there has been some sort of reality shift in the world--no one, for example, seems to have heard of The Beatles (and some other things, we later discover).

Malik is an aspiring musician, so he gets the idea to perform The Beatles' songs (those he can remember--the albums, etc. no longer exist)--and, of course, he becomes an immense success. But then ... go see it!

The film was so cleverly done in so many ways--graphics, jokes, etc. And SNL's Kate McKinnon appears as an unctuous agent/manager, interested only in her own wealth and prestige.

And there is a Big Surprise near the end. (Go see it.)

The Beatles' first hit was "Love Me Do," released in the fall of 1962, my freshman year at Hiram College. So I basically came of age listening to them (and seeing them on Ed Sullivan's show), so I found myself, in Kent last night, with tears in my eyes as I heard that stunning array of songs they created. I remember this, too: When their semi-documentary (Let It Be) came out in 1970, Joyce and I sat through it twice at the old downtown Kent movie theater. We'd been married less than a year.

The ethical issues in the film are in the forefront, too, and they eat at Malik throughout.

Link to film trailer.

3. I finished three books this week--one from my nightstand:

     - The "nightstand" book was the latest YA novel by Cori McCarthy, who attended Harmon School, graduated from Aurora High; I didn't get to teach her (grrrrrr), though I did teach her older brothers. Anyway, Cori has had a very successful career (link to her website), and I've read all her books, have seen her expanding as a writer.

Her latest--co-authored with her partner, Amy Rose Capetta--is a blend of some of her favorite things: King Arthur, Star Wars, Tolkien. The novel is a series of what-if? ideas: What if King Arthur were a young woman called Ari?** What if she pulled Excalibur? What if Merlin--living backwards through time--is now a teenager? What if all of this took place "out there"--in space, on other planets? What if the Evil Force in the universe is a greedy mega-corporation controlling planets? What if Ari and Gwen (Guenievere) were attracted to each other? What if Merlin had a love life?

And on and on.

Arthur-Star Wars-Tolkien fans (like me) will have a romp of a ride through this novel--with a Very Big Surprise on the last page. Other readers will get an education from McCarthy-Capetta. And all readers will have a great, surprising time.

     - The second book I finished was one I'd been working my way through at the coffee shop--Shakespeare's Library: Unlocking the Greatest Mystery in Literature, 2019, by Stuart Kells, a literary historian.

Those who know a bit about the Bard's life know that the absolute absence of books that can be traced to his personal library--the failure of his will to even mention books--has been some of the kindling that has supported the flames of conspiracy theories: Shakespeare must have been a pseudonym for someone else. Kells goes through each candidate--acknowledges the strengths of his qualifications before dismissing him.

We get a different look at Shakespeare. Kells presents him as one who was a master adapter of other material (his plays came from a variety of sources), a writer alert to the requirements of the Elizabethan stage--and its audiences. Kells also suggests that a key factor was his friendship with playwright Ben Jonson--who did have a massive library and who was one of those who put together the collection of the Bard's thirty-six plays, The First Folio, in 1623, seven years after the Bard's death. Did Jonson edit those plays as well as collect them? (There are significant differences between the Folio versions and the earlier, quarto (small--single-play) editions.)

Anyway, this book was so much fun to read--so enlightening. Kells is one of the first writers I know who has recognized that playwriting is almost never a Lone Genius with a Quill and a Candle but is a collaborative effort, with all sorts of people pitching in at various stages of the process.

     - I also finished The Pathfinder, 1840, the 3rd volume in James Fenimore Cooper's series of five novels, collectively called The Leatherstocking Tales. (Earlier posts here have dealt with The Deerslayer and The Last of the Mohicans.) I'm reading the books not in the order that Cooper wrote them but in order of the age of Natty Bumppo, the hero known variously as Deerslayer, Hawkeye, Pathfinder, etc.

I'd never read Pathfinder before--except in its Classics Illustrated form when I was a kid (the same way I'd read all of The Leatherstocking Tales--until college and grad school, where I read the first two).

Here's the weird thing, though: Although I'd read that comic repeatedly, I remembered so little of it. I could have told you hardly a thing about the story. So I was surprised and moved in the actual novel

Natty is in his early 30s in this one--but still, as they say, at the top of his game--as is Chingachgook, his Delaware friend since boyhood. They are around Lake Ontario and are escorting some people back to the English fort--people including young (and beautiful) Mabel Dunham. (It's French and Indian War time--mid-18th century.)

Well, they encounter some Indians who want to kill them--some dangers on the lake--some fear of treachery among their own. And ... some LOVE. In fact, Mabel's father convinces Pathfinder to marry his daughter!

But there is also a young lake sailor with them, Jasper Western, who has Eyes for Mabel.

Hmmmm ... what will happen?

The climactic scenes are in a remote fortress, and, of course, Pathfinder and Chingachgook are able to Save the Day.

I was actually quite moved at the end of this one as the Love Story is resolved. Cooper's prose can be, as I've said, tangled and dense (and, well, racist), but he can also cut through it all and make your tear ducts drip blood.

4. We'd been streaming--just before Lights Out (ten minutes or so/night)--the Netflix puff-of-a-film Murder Mystery, with Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston. They're an American couple on Euro holiday (he's a cop; she, a hairdresser--which ends up being significant). Lots of Agatha Christie stuff going on (including an Orient-Express moment later on). Murder-comedy--who woulda thunk it? But I chortled a few times and liked some of the minor actors. Harmless fun, right? Link to film trailer.

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

     - from Oxford English Dictionary

pussivanting, adj. and n.

That fusses, intrudes, or causes a disturbance; interfering, meddling.

Forms:  18 poursuivanting,   18– pussivantin',   18– pussivanting,   19– puzzivantin'.

Origin: Apparently a variant or alteration of another lexical item. Etymons: pursuivant n., -ing suffix2.

Etymology:Apparently < a variant of pursuivant n. + -ing suffix2.

A. adj.

1880  M. A. Courtney W. Cornwall Words  in  M. A. Courtney  & T. Q. Couch Gloss. Words Cornwall  45/2 Pussivanting, part., fussing; meddling. In the latter part of the seventeenth century the Poursuivants came into the county to search out all those entitled to bear arms.

1915  J. Galsworthy Bit o' Love  i. 17 There's puzzivantin' folk as'll set an' gossip the feathers off an angel.

 B. n.

1888  ‘Q’ Astonishing Hist. Troy Town  xvii. 203 ‘This 'ere pussivantin' may be relievin' to the mind, but I'm darned ef et can be good for shoe-leather.’ (Note: in the Fifteenth Century, so high was the spirit of the Trojan sea-captains,..that King Edward IV sent poursuivant after poursuivant to threaten his displeasure. The messengers had their ears slit for their pains; and ‘poursuivanting’ or ‘pussivanting’ survives as a term for ineffective bustle.)

1993  K. C. Phillipps Gloss. Cornish Dial.  46 Pussivanting, ineffectively bustling.

*Boyle also directed Slumdog Millionaire, Trainspotting, A Life Less Ordinary, etc.
**The King Arthur cycle keeps repeating itself throughout history--as you'll learn (if you didn't already know) in these pages.

Different Species?

Joyce and I are a lot alike in so many ways. We love to read, write, talk (well, she surpasses me in this one), travel to sites connected with the books we've read, stream British mystery shows, go to the movies, see our son, daughter-in-law, grandsons, occasionally eat Forbidden Fruit (crunchy peanut butter, say, with a knife, right out of the jar--or Stoddard's Frozen Custard).

But if you were to examine our lunch and dinner plates each evening, you would not believe that we lie along the same evolutionary branch.

I'm a carnivore--but in more focused ways than I used to be. I grew up on hot dogs, hamburgers, roast beef, etc. I very very rarely eat beef anymore. Got to keep the cholesterol down--and my weight. (I'm on a heavy-duty med whose odious side effects include easy/rapid weight gain.)

So, it's our feathered and finned friends who must accept the consequences. Pretty much every night I have chicken or fish or sliced turkey.

Joyce prefers veggies--though she is not a total vegan. She loves salmon. Loves freshly outdoor-grilled chicken. Will sometimes have some sliced turkey.

But many meals she eats no animal protein whatsoever. Instead, at night, she loves a plate piled with salad (sometimes alpine in its dimensions). For lunch she'll often have some stringy things that look like pasta but are made from other veggies. She heats them in the microwave; the kitchen absorbs the powerful odor, which I have learned to ... tolerate--maybe endure is a better word?

And my lunch? Lowfat yogurt and fruit, a slice of sourdough bread, toasted, with fruit spread; 8 oz of pomegranate juice (helps fight the prostate issues).

And at supper we sit there, side by side--she with her Everest pile of grasses and weeds; I, with a sizzling something that once walked and clucked and maybe loved.

Oh, I also must have some of my sourdough bread at every meal (see lunch comment above). She will sometimes join me in that obsession--though often not. She does like a grilled cheese sandwich made with that bread--and she likes the yeast baguettes I make when we have spaghetti (oh, is she a pasta addict--one of the first things I learned about her a half-century ago).

Oh #2, one night a week we each have a 3-egg omelet. She gets real eggs; I get Egg Beaters (chol.--see pic at the top). Her omelet she decorates with veggies; I adorn mine with (turkey) sausage (chol.).

I guess one way to look at our diverse eating habits is this: Nothing edible in the grocery store is safe from Dyer Teeth!

Our Little Street ...

... is busy these days. Right across from us, our neighbors are having their house painted--noise of sanders and other electric tools. A little farther down, a tree company is doing some work for a couple of other neighbors: chainsaws, chippers. It's also trash/recycle pickup day, so heavy trucks are groaning down the street, pausing only for a robotic arm to reach out for the barrels, to grab them, to elevate them, to deposit the contents in the truck. Then the arm returns the barrel to the tree lawn (or devil strip--depending on where y'all hail from). Sometimes the lid remains flopped open--other times, not. You have to check.

Lawn services are routinely mowing and blowing. A block away, in downtown Hudson, the city blowers are out about 5 a.m. on Thursdays. Charming alarm clocks.

Of course, all this activity has consequent noise, noise which has implications for naps--not that I take many, mind you--usually no more than one a day (not counting the Big One at night). Yesterday, I had to surrender my usual late-morning nap because Joyce was having an issue with her Quicken program--an issue that took us more than an hour to resolve. (An online chat got us nowhere, so I simply uninstalled/reinstalled the program, and it worked fine; it took about five minutes. Well, I can't really say the chat got us nowhere; it took me directly to the Land of Madness and Melancholy, where I resided for, oh, a half hour or so!)

And so, earlier this morning, I smiled when Facebook showed me a post from two years ago on this date. (See pic at the top of this post.) I was backing out of the drive, on the way to the dentist (no comment), when I saw this mother turkey and her poults (or chicks) blithely crossing Church Street (our street) on the way to ... who knows? A session on the meaning of Thanksgiving? I'd never seen wild turkeys here before--have not seen them since.

A few days later, I saw something else I'd never seen before (and have never seen since): a fox. I'm pretty sure what he was after ... an early Thanksgiving, for sure.*

*No evidence, though, that he found one.

Thank You, Liberal Arts--and Hiram College

Hiram's Hinsdale Hall--now gone
my father's office was there

I'm grateful for many things in my life--the family I was born into, the woman I met quite by accident almost exactly fifty years ago, the friends I've had (and have), the coffee shop across the street, ... I could go on and on.

But recently I've been thinking about how fortunate I was to attend a liberal arts college--Hiram College (1962-66)--at a time when the very concept of "liberal arts" was deeply respected, not under attacks both blunt (eliminating entire features--like foreign languages) and subtle ("revisions" that are often sly slices designed to hamstring).

During my college days, Hiram required us to take courses in music, art, literature, mathematics, history, biology, chemistry, foreign language, physical education, psychology, political science, religion, philosophy. I didn't love them all--I wasn't good at them all. In fact (I've mentioned this before) in my college calculus class my freshman year, my weary professor wrote on one of my mediocre test papers: Can I help you cry?

But I wasn't really crying; I was realizing more clearly something that I'd begun to figure out back at Hiram High School: Math ain't for me.

I spent a couple of college years fumbling around, trying to figure out what I wanted to do. Some of my friends then were positive; some, in fact, had known since they were children that they wanted to be physicians or biologists or preachers or whatever. This certainty was nearly incomprehensible to me.

There were a number of professors who inspired me, but the principal one was Prof. Abe C. Ravitz (now a Facebook friend!), a rigorous English teacher who taught me so much about reading and literature. I now blame him for the obsession I have to read an author's complete works. See, if he was teaching, oh, The Sun Also Rises, he also told us about Hemingway's other works, and the tacit message was this: You gotta read it all, or you don't really know Hemingway! Do you?

I'm not sure where this thought belongs, but I'll put it here ... When I was a Hiram College student, most of the other students I knew were not looking at college as a vocational school, were not expecting to walk directly from graduation into a lucrative position. Most were planning on graduate and professional school. I know I was. I'd been accepted into the American Studies program at the University of Kansas, but when no financial aid was forthcoming, I knew I could teach for a few years ("a few" turned out to be about forty-five!).

Colleges now seem to have a more heavily vocational focus, don't they? (Good thing?--Bad thing? Not an easy answer.)

Anyway, after graduation, I began my teaching career at the old Aurora Middle School (Aurora, Ohio) in the fall of 1966. (In 1974 Aurora opened its new middle school building--Harmon School--and I was teaching there when I retired in January 1997.)

While I was teaching (English), I discovered the immense value of all those courses Hiram knew that I needed. Allusions in literary works to historical events, works of art, musical pieces, etc.--most I could comprehend immediately (this, in a cultural world that long antedated Google).

And then, retired, in the late 1990s I began reviewing books, first for Kirkus Reviews (I'm still working for them--and have filed more than 1500 reviews), then for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, which, in its heyday,* had three pages of reviews each Sunday. I did a couple of hundred reviews for them--until, a few years ago, the vast changes in print journalism brought about very reduced books coverage at the PD--and the virtual absence of reviews by freelancers (like me). A sad, sad time for me--I'd loved working for them.

For Kirkus I do only nonfiction (history, memoir--and they send me baseball books in the late winter); for the PD I did some nonfiction, too--but lots of new fiction, as well.

And do I need to tell you how much those Hiram College years meant/mean to me in the writing of reviews? Liberal arts courses did not make me, of course, an expert in the required fields (see calculus comment above!), but they did make me feel like a citizen of those worlds. Or maybe a somewhat seasoned traveler. I could read the signs in the train station, order from the menu, find the men's room, etc. Gratitude.

In the late 1990s I returned to Hiram to teach a basic writing/lit course in their Weekend College program. Most of my students were ... older. People who were working out in the Real World, people who wanted some more powerful fuel for their rockets.

We read Othello in the class, and I liked to start off with questions like these: Have any of you ever felt you were passed over for a promotion you deserved? Have any of you ever believed that a lover was unfaithful to you? Have you ever been manipulated by a liar? Etc.?

Oh, the reactions!

The liberal arts can give us contexts for our lives, can help us understand one another better, help us realize we're not alone, help us see our world from a variety of perspectives, help us understand that things are not simple--are almost always soaked in complexity and ambiguity.

And for me? The liberal arts have made so many things possible. I know I was a better teacher because of them; I know I've been a more careful book reviewer, a more circumspect writer.

And so ... thank you, Hiram College. Thank you, liberal arts. Thank you, thank you, thank you ...

*heyday--"of uncertain origin," says the OED.

The Bed Is Back!

the left side had collapsed

A couple of weeks ago I posted here the sad account of the collapse of our bed. (Link to earlier post.) As I wrote, that bed is not just any bed. It's part of a set that I remember from the earliest days of my life, a set that had belonged to my Osborn grandparents back in Enid, Oklahoma. When I was born in Enid (Nov. 1944), my mom and older brother were living upstairs at my grandparents' place--1609 E. Broadway Ave.--and Dad was off to World War II (he served in both the Pacific and European theaters).

Anyway, I believe our grandparents acquired that bedroom set from her parents (the Lantermans of Austintown, Ohio)--but I could be wrong. (Maybe one of my brothers will correct me?)

We received the set after the death of my grandmother in 1978 (my grandfather had died in 1965), and it's been our bedroom furniture ever since.

And then--a couple of weeks ago--lying there, reading, I heard an ominous "Snap! Crackle! Pop!" And the next thing I knew, my side of the bed was on the floor. (Joyce was in the other room, working (i.e., writing), when this happened.)

We were very concerned that it was irreparable. And when we talked about getting a replacement, I grew profoundly melancholic. Just the thought of not having that bed ...

Joyce called the local handyman service we've used for years, and they sent someone out to check it out--but not for a week.

In the interim, I slept on the part of the bed that still worked (we'd used a small step-stool to support the other half); Joyce, on the spare bed in the back. And that, my friends, was the worst part of the whole experience.

Anyway, Pat (the worker) came last Wednesday, took one look, said, "No problem," headed out to the hardware to get a few things he needed. Fixed it swiftly.

And by that night--that very night!--we were back not just in our beloved bed in the arms of Morpheus but also in the arms of each other.

Paradise.

**

PS--We are still both a bit ... tentative ... about getting in and out of bed, but, so far, it seems sturdy. The word gratitude needs more letters in it so that it can more adequately express the dimensions of my emotions!

Fixed!
The teddy bear was a Christmas gift some
years ago from our older grandson, Logan.
It's been on our bed every day, ever since.

Sunday Sundries, 232

 1. AOTW: Daniel Dyer, who failed to blog all week.

2. POTW [Phrase of the Week]: "Locked and loaded." Here's what the OED says: 

to lock and load:  (a) to prepare a firearm for firing by pulling back and ‘locking’ the bolt and loading the ammunition (frequently in imperative, as an order);  (b) figurative to ready oneself for action or confrontation.

3. This week I actually finished three books, all of which had been on my nightstand for ... a ... while.

     - The first was The Silkworm (2014) by Robert Galbraith (aka J. K. Rowling), the second in her 4-book series about the British P. I. Cormoran Strike, an Afghan war vet who's lost part of a leg. This one deals with a grisly murder (is there another kind?) of a novelist whose latest (unpublished) work has eviscerated a number of people in the publishing world. Guess who then actually gets eviscerated?

These C. Strike novels are very conventional--almost old-fashioned (far more dialogue and description than action)--but that, of course, is part of these novels' appeal--and Galbraith/Rowling is (obviously) no dummy, so she, I think, is enjoying romping around in another genre--mastering it.

I got a little smile on my face on p. 192 when Strike, looking at magazines, comments about one cover he sees: "Emma Watson in white on the cover of Vogue ...." Sly, sly, eh?

I also like Strike's relationship with his young assistant, Robin, whose BF does not like her job. There is some sexual electricity between Strike and her, but, so far, it hasn't gone anywhere steamy.

We'll see what happens. I've already started the third in the series, Career of Evil ...

     - The second I finished (via Kindle) was Val McDermid's The Mermaids Singing (1995), the first in her series about criminal profiler Tony Hill (and the detective he works with, Carol Jordan, who is, uh, very attracted to Hill). Serial killer focusing on gay men? Each section features, at the head, a transcript of a recording the killer has made about his/her preparations for the murder--the very careful preparations. Then, near the end, he/she zeroes in on our of our lead characters ...

I'd not heard of McDermid until my friend Chris told me about the British TV series Wire in the Blood, which is also the title of the second novel in the series (a novel I have now started). So I thank Chris for that (we've streamed all the seasons)--and (True Confessions Time) for alerting me to the fact that Val McDermid is a woman (was I thinking Val Kilmer? or was I just not thinking at all?). Anyway, humility is a good thing, right?

     - The third book I finished was a short one by Edward O. Wilson, his latest: Genesis: The Deep Origin of Societies (2019). Wilson, now retired from the faculty of Harvard University, is one of the world's leading experts on "social" animals (ants are/were his specialty), and in this book he goes over the evolutionary evidence (mixed with some very learned speculation) about how it is that some critters band together and (in one sense or another) help one another. But others do not?

Long-term care of the young is one trait--and, in the case of humans, how about this? Talking near the end about the social organization of humans, he writes about the importance of the campfire, the cooked meat often obtained by group cooperation: at night, talk was "primarily devoted to stories, some about living individuals, some enthralling, the latter turning easily into singing, dancing, and religious conversation" (124).

4. Last night--on the spur of the moment--Joyce and I drove over to our local Regal Cinema to see Emma Thompson in Late Night, co-starring Mindy Kaling (who also wrote the screenplay). It's a story with lots of current relevance (hiring of women and minorities), and it tells the story of a veteran talk-show host (Thompson), whose ratings have been falling, whose attitude is less than, uh, cooperative, and who needs to change. Enter Kaling, a new hire ...  You can probably guess the rest. But who cares? It's Emma Thompson, whom I have long loved--since the mid-90s and Much Ado About Nothing. Link to Late Night trailer ...

5. Our son and his family are back from two weeks in France and England. They got to see part of The Comedy of Errors at the Globe in London; then the skies opened, and they had to leave (they were among the groundlings). A wonderful trip for them (Melissa did a couple of presentations on human trafficking): Their boys (10, 14) got to see and do so much!

6. Still streaming away--little bits of "our" shows each night. Enjoying Waking the Dead, another Chris-recommendation.

7. I posted not long ago that our Poor Old Bed collapsed a couple weeks ago ... it's fixed! But we both remain ... tentative ... as we lie down ...

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

     - from wordsmith.org

achillize (UH-ki-lyz)

verb tr.: To harass or chase.

ETYMOLOGY: After Achilles, a hero in the Greek mythology. When his close friend Patroclus is killed by Hector, a vengeful Achilles chases Hector around the wall of Troy three times. Also, he causes great carnage among Trojans. Earliest documented use: 1672. Also see Achilles’ heel.

NOTES: Achilles is better known for his heel, but his anger is so prominent that it’s a popular subject in paintings. For example, The Wrath of Achilles (1630-1635) by Peter Paul Rubens, The Rage of Achilles (1757) by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, and La Colère d’Achille (1847) by Léon Benouville.

USAGE: “Parker ‘hectors and achillizes all the noncomformists’.”

Martin Dzelzainis & Edward Holberton; The Oxford Handbook of Andrew Marvell; Oxford University Press; May 28, 2019.

Sunday Sundries, 231

1. Human Being of the Week (HBOTW): A wonderful visit this week with former Harmon Middle School student Susan Peterson, whom I taught during her 8th grade year back in the mid-90s. She's about to start an MFA program at the U of Pittsburgh (writing) and is moving with her family from Austin, Tex., where she's lived for quite a while. Great to "catch up"--and see how this talented writer is set to pursue a dream she's long had.

2.  I finished two books this week ...

     - The first was James Fenimore Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans (1836), the 2nd in the 5-volume chronological story of Natty Bumppo (aka Deerslayer, Hawk-eye, Pathfinder, etc.), stories collectively known as The Leatherstocking Tales. Cooper did not write the tales in order of Natty's age, but that's the order in which I'm reading them. (As I've mentioned here before, I'm reading all five of them--and have started The Pathfinder.) (There's a signed first edition of the novel on ABE right now for $27,500.00!)

I'd read Mohicans a couple of times before (college, grad school), and, of course, there was that 1992 film, very loosely based on the novel (the love between Daniel Day-Lewis (Hawk-eye) and Madeleine Stowe (Cora) is not in the novel). (Link to film trailer.)

Cooper would not be a bestseller today--his prose, as I've said, is as thick and tangled as the 18th-century American forests he writes about so fondly.

Mohicans is a sad story--two characters you really like die near the end--and it also reveals the casual racism advanced by Cooper. He's forever talking about the "natur'" of white men and others, especially American Indians.

But--if you're patient--there's some excitement. Capture by Indians. Escape. Near-torture. Feats of marksmanship by Hawk-eye. Examples of human devotion--both among and between the Indians and whites.

Oh, and in case we haven't understood, an Indian elder says in practically the last sentence: "'The pale-faces are masters of the earth, and the time of the red-men has not yet come again'" (877, Lib of Amer edition).

Before I read the novel in college, I'd read--countless times--the version of the story in the old Classics Illustrated comic.

It amused me how--reading the book this time--images from that comic would pop into my head at key moments in the story, moments that the comic had illustrated!

When I finish the books, I'm going to re-read the comics, too.

     - The second book I finished was a debut work by Katherine Duckett--Miranda in Milan (2019)--a sort of prose sequel to Shakespeare's The Tempest. The question seems to be: What did Miranda and her father, Prospero, do when they got back to Milan, where Prospero had once been the duke before being ousted by his brother, Antonio (who also goes back to Milan)?

I liked the idea--and I enjoy reading contemporary sequels and adaptations of Shakespeare's plays. (I've read a lot of them in the past decade or so.)

But this one disappointed me. It upsets what we thought we learned in The Tempest (about Prospero, about Miranda, about Antonio), and it quickly descends into a book about magic--and witchcraft--and hidden tunnels--and some almost Frankenstein-ian fussing with the creation of life.

And Miranda, we learn, is discovering things about her sexual identity--not that I care much about that. But it just seems so .... forced ... considering what we learned about her in the play.

Oh well. I'm still glad I read it. The Tempest is, I think, my favorite of all of the Bard's plays, and anyone who can bring those characters back for a visit--even if the visit does not go well--is fine by me!

3. We finished the latest seasons of some of “our" shows that we've been streaming as we are preparing ourselves for the arms of Morpheus. Bosch, Shetland, The Unforgotten--we finished all of them this week (it took a while because, as I've said here, we "do" only about 10-15 min per show/per night).

The Bosch season I didn't enjoy so much because I had read not long ago the Michael Connelly novel which formed the source for the season. I knew what was happening--what was going to happen. So ...

We love Shetland. The principal actor, Douglas Henshall, is just tremendous, and there's a very strong cast throughout. The current season was about human trafficking--not the most pleasant thing to end the day with! BTW, we followed the advice of friend Chris and watched the post-season interview with Henshall. What a great few minutes that was!

And The Unforgotten, a series about cold cases in England, is anchored by that wonderful actress Nicola Walker. She and Henshall don't dare appear in the same series: There won't be a dry eye in TV Land! Anyway, Walker plays the leader of the cops who are investigating cold cases, and this one (which involves the murder of young women--a favorite, it seems in TV crime drama) drives Walker near to despair.

So now we're watching bits of the new HBO film Deadwood (we were addicts to the original series), the early seasons of Waking the Dead (another Chris recommendation--another "cold-case" drama), and we're about to start Luther (if I can get BBC America to behave).

4. I've been reading my way through the novels of Wilkie Collins (1824-89), pretty much in the order he wrote them. I've about finished The Fallen Leaves (1879), and last night I came across this amusing/annoying comment from the point of view of the principal character, a young man from America (a Socialist!), now in London, falling in love and whatnot: "But some of a woman's finer sensibilities do get blunted with the advance of age and the accumulation of wisdom" (181, Pocket Classics Edition).

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

     - from The Oxford English Dictionary

bumbledom, n. Petty local bureaucracy; officious and pompous behaviour by minor officials; officials of this type collectively.

Origin: From a proper name, combined with an English element. Etymons: proper name Bumble, -dom suffix.

Etymology: < the name of Mr. Bumble, from Oliver Twist, by Charles Dickens

1847 Express  10 Sept. 2/2 That head-quarter of Bumbledom, the Mansion-house of the City of London.

1856 Sat. Rev.  2 12/1 The collective Bumbledom of Westminster.

1865 Spectator  22 Apr. 427 There spoke the true spirit of parish Bumbledom.

1921  S. E. Morison Maritime Hist. Mass.  xxii. 340 A banquet, not for owners and bankers and all bumbledom, but for the mothers, wives, and sweethearts of the workingmen who built the ship.

1991 Times  9 July 15/1 Bumbledom can be thanked for prevaricating over the future of the Hampton's site for a full 32 years.

2011 Daily Tel.(Nexis) 23 July The Blue Badge Scheme..is maladministered with varying degrees of inefficiency and bumbledom by county councils throughout the country.

It was fourteen years ago this month when ...

... I underwent prostate cancer surgery (a prostatectomy) at the Cleveland Clinic. My family physician had detected something ... different ... about my prostate gland during a routine physical back on November 30, 2004, and I'd had some small pieces plucked out of me (that was fun!) and subjected to a biopsy. Which had turned out positive (which, of course, means negative).

But the Gleason score (a measure of the cancer's intensity) was apparently only moderate (a 6 on a 10-point scale), so the surgeon said I could wait until school was out to have the surgery. (I was teaching at Western Reserve Academy at the time.)

So ... as I said ... I wasn't really worried. (Too much.)

I wrote some about all of this in my memoir Schoolboy (Kindle Direct, 2012), and below is some of what appears there:

June 2005.

Early on Thursday morning, 9 June I enter the Cleveland Clinic for surgery to remove my prostate gland (a prostatectomy).  I will be home on Saturday afternoon.  During the procedure, I emerge briefly from the anesthesia.  People busy around me.  I say, “I don’t feel any pain—just some pressure.”

Dr. Klein, leaning over my abdomen, his hands buried inside me, some effort thickening his voice, says, “I’m—just—trying—to—move—your—bladder.”

 “Oh,” I say.  And go back to sleep.

When I awake again, I am in recovery.  Joyce is there, her hand in mine.  Dr. Klein tells me he was able to spare the erectile nerves that Dr. Moore said must go.

In the first days at home, I discover that it hurts fiercely to move, to laugh.  (I have to stop playing a DVD of Grosse Point Blank when I laugh so hard at Dan Aykroyd that I scream in pain.)  For about a week I endure a catheter and its attendant indignities, but Joyce and I walk around town, going farther each time, visiting our usual stops and shops.  I feel myself getting stronger every day.

A week and a half after surgery, I get a call from Dr. Klein.  The post-op pathology report on my prostate is not good.  The cancer is more serious than the biopsy predicted.  It is not a Gleason 6; it is a Gleason 9.  There is only one score worse.  He says he wants to see me again and that I will likely have to undergo a daily course of radiation for seven weeks.

I return to Dr. Klein’s office on 15 July.  Joyce, away teaching at a writers’ conference (I’ve urged her not to cancel this commitment), participates via speaker-phone.  Dr. Klein is pleased that my most recent PSA test is zero, indicating that no active cancer cells appear to have escaped the prostate capsule to cause continuing problems.  He wants me to have PSA tests every three months.  As for treatments, I can do nothing, start radiation (his recommendation), or undergo a combination of therapies, including hormones.  The latter can mean enlarged breasts, the loss of all sexual desire.  Other unpleasantness.  I say I will think about it.

In mid-August I am back at the Clinic to discuss treatment options with other specialists.  Joyce and I are both concerned about doing anything more.  My body has endured a lot.  And besides, my PSA remains at zero.  Still, some awfully smart doctors are advising action, so I schedule radiation treatments.

And then I change my mind.  Here’s why:

On 17 August, at a nearby Borders, we find a book called Dr. Peter Scardino’s Prostate Book.  Scardino is chair of the urology department at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.  He is a cautious man.  I like what I am reading.  If the PSA is zero, he says, it’s generally not time to do anything radical.

I exchange email with Dr. Klein on 19 August.  I ask if I will hurt myself if I wait until I get a positive PSA test.  He says probably not.  I promptly cancel all other appointments.  I will wait, and hope.

School begins in just a couple of weeks.  I’ve been reading the complete works of Willa Cather all summer, preparing for our study of My Ántonia.  The first solo car trip I take after surgery is on 5 July—to visit the Cather birthplace in Virginia, then to Pittsburgh to see the school building where she taught, the home where she boarded.

On 28 August, Joyce and I go down to the Great Lakes Science Center to see Body Worlds II, the astonishing display of actual human bodies and body parts preserved by a process called plastination.  I linger for many minutes over the glass case that holds the prostate gland.  Such a small thing.  A squishy walnut.

But--as followers of this site know--things did not go all that well. The PSA rose; the cancer came back; and--despite a number of treatments, it's still lurking in my body and will one day emerge to introduce me to Mr Reaper.

I've had two rounds of radiation, sessions of immunotherapy, and have been on drugs that have dramatically altered my life.

But--as the naive say--I'm still here. Still hanging on. The latest radiation sessions have slowed the growth once again (temporarily, I know), so I am "enjoying" a bit of a respite. I can pretend for the nonce that All Is Well. Though there's always that wee voice deep in my brain that says, Oh, Dan, don't be an idiot!

Remaining a "Guy"

In some ways, regrettably, I'm still a guy. Yes, I'm in my 70s. Yes, I'm on cancer meds that kill my testosterone (and you know what that means!). But still ...

Let's journey to the health club, the site where my "guyness" lingers most prominently--and in a way that continues to surprise me.

It's competitiveness. And it remains a part of my personality even though testosterone is merely a fading memory (it's been gone for about five years now).

I've been competitive virtually my entire life. I have two brothers--one older, one younger--and those of you with siblings know what that means.

I loved sports throughout boyhood and on into young manhood--and beyond. When I was in my 40s, I was still playing tennis early every morning out at a local racket club not far from where I taught. And I wanted to win--and sometimes didn't take losing very well. (And, considering I lost a lot, you would think I'd ... adapt. Mellow. I didn't.)

Anyway, competition can be a good thing. It can help motivate you in all sorts of ways--motivate you to be better at your job, to try harder, etc. And so it was with me. Early in my career (and later) I recognized the strengths--sometimes the amazing strengths--of colleagues, and I found myself wanting to be like them. And the only way to do so? Work harder. Learn more.

When I began the quarterly injections of the testosterone-killer, I thought some of this competitiveness would disappear. I guess some of it has ... but not at the health club.

Part of my routine out there is to walk a brisk mile around the indoor track (eleven laps). And I've discovered in recent years that there are often familiar folks on the track at the same time I am. And--confession time--I don't want them to pass me.

Let me say first that there are people who will pass me, no matter what I do. They're younger, stronger, more stable, etc. Them I don't really worry about.

No, it's the folks who are generally in my age bracket whom I wish to discourage from the sad notion that they are My Equal. Or My Superior.

Okay, some of them are faster than I, so (and this is beyond pathetic) when I see them on the track, I try to begin my own laps just a bit behind them. During my eleven laps they gradually pull farther and farther away--but not so far that they will lap me.

I'm not the only one who does this sort of thing, by the way. There are a couple of guys who, when they realize I'm about to lap them, will step off the track for a drink of water or whatever. This could be authentic--but it isn't: They do it just about every damn time I near them. (I smirk with disdain when I swoop by.)

Let's take yesterday. There's a guy, an older guy, who is a tad faster than I am, so when I saw him yesterday, I pulled my not-far-behind-you strategy (see above). My goal: to keep him in sight, to make sure he didn't lap me.

And so yesterday--as I do on other such occasions--I kept a faster pace than I normally do, and I managed to prevent the lapping. And when I did so, I felt a combination of pride and revulsion. Why am I still doing this?

I have "balance issues" now--probably related to my BP med. So going faster is not generally a good idea.

Yesterday, I didn't care. Maybe I'd fall? Maybe I'd collide with the wall? I didn't give a damn. That guy was not going to lap me.

And he didn't.

Thus confirming that I am both a Man. And an Idiot.

In some ways, of course, the words are synonyms.

Yes, I'm Still Wearing Shorts

Last evening, we went to a nearby Kohl's, where I "saved" a bunch of money when I bought some new shorts.

That's right--I still wear shorts in the warm weather. Yes, I'm that Old Guy you see wearing them and think: Gross!

Oddly, back in Oklahoma, where I grew up, boys didn't wear shorts in the summer--even though the temps often soared above 100. Blue jeans. You know--cowboy pants. That's what we wore--what men wore.

Things softened when we moved to Ohio. I don't remember when I got my first pairs of shorts--and started wearing them regularly. But I'm pretty sure it was after high school--probably in college, when I saw the Cool Guys wearing them. So ... what choice did I have, you know?

My mother didn't care for them, by the way. When I would visit her in her stages-of-care place later on, she would tell me that if I was wearing shorts, they wouldn't serve me in the dining hall. (They did.)

And another time--when I was in my 40s!--at a family reunion, Joyce and I came out of our motel room (right next to Mom and Dad's), and when she saw me wearing jeans, she said (as only Mother could): You're not going to wear jeans, are you?

I guess not. Muttering grievous execrations, I went back into our room and changed into some slacks. And was, of course, the only Dyer at the picnic not wearing jeans.

Jeans and shorts, shorts and jeans. No way in Mom's world. Mom had standards!

And in a story I've told elsewhere ... when I was in Naples in 1999, I headed out one morning to "do" Mt. Vesuvius. In shorts. On the streets ... in the bus ... Neapolitan men looked at me, pointed and laughed. (I needed no translation.) Not one of them was wearing shorts. (Cultural faux pas!)

Anyway, I've worn them for decades now. As I sit here typing, I'm wearing the new pair on whose purchase I "saved" so much at Kohl's last evening. (See pic.)

My late mother would disapprove. And I probably will agree with her one day--maybe very soon.

Breaking Bed

In May 1978 my grandmother Osborn died out in Columbia, Missouri, where she and my grandfather had retired, living in one of those now-popular "stages of care" places. It was called Lenoir and was operated by the Disciples of Christ, the church which my grandfather had served for decades. (The place is now in different hands.)

He died in 1965, but I am glad that both of them got to live out their lives in the little brick cottage they loved and never had to enter the large nursing facility on the grounds. (Some years ago, by the way, I visited the site--and discovered their cottage had been razed to make way for a new building project.)

Anyway, that summer my older brother, Richard, and I drove a U-Haul out to Columbia (Joyce and I were living in Kent, Ohio, at the time) where we removed from storage those things that my mom had not taken or disposed of--and had saved for us. Among the things that came to us was a bedroom set--two dressers, a double bed--that I had known my entire life.

Back in Kent, we installed the items in our house--and they have been our "master bedroom" set ever since. It's been wonderful, waking in that bed every morning, looking across the room to see furniture that once belong to my beloved Osborn grandparents. (My middle name, by the way, is Osborn--as is our son's.)

We've never had a lick of trouble with any of it--though we have replaced the box spring and mattress.

Yesterday (Sunday) afternoon I went upstairs for my wonted post-bread-baking nap, and as I lay down, I heard an odd complaint from the bed. A creaking/cracking kind of sound. Never mind ... into the arms of Morpheus I swiftly went.

I didn't hear the sound again.

Then, last night, Joyce and I were ending the day--as is our custom--streaming bits of "our" shows. Ten minutes of this, fifteen of that.

A sudden crack! And my half of the bed was now a foot lower than Joyce's. Something, obviously (even to a practical doofus like me), had broken.

We lifted up the mattress and box spring and saw that a support piece had indeed broken away. Now what?

We took a footstool and put it under the box spring for some support, and now the bed looked not broken but odd. Slightly out of whack. Out of kilter. Maybe even tipsy. (You know!)

But it survived the night.

This morning Joyce got hold of our handyman service, and next week they will send out their best carpenter to deal with it.

I don't want a new bed. Ever. My history binds me to the one we have. Having a different bed in that room would be just ... wrong.

And I am reminded how--in a very emotional way--Emily Dickinson left instructions that when she died, she wanted to make sure that they bore her coffin to the nearby cemetery in such a fashion that her head would face the home that she had loved so much.

Sunday Sundries, 230

1. HBOTW (Human Beings of the Week): Former students Chuck Wilson and Dina Fordyce Luciana, whom I taught in 8th grade at Harmon School, 1985-86, showed up at Open Door Coffee Company last week, surprising me beyond belief. Lots of talk and laughing about Them Thar Old Days. (Both were in stage productions I directed back then.) So wonderful to see them both ...

2. AOTW: Those people--and there seem to be so many of them now--who, waiting at a side street or driveway, simply gun it out into traffic (i.e., right in front of me), forcing me to B&C (Brake and Curse). Does Impatience entirely rule right now? Or--older now--am I just hypersensitive about it?

3. Our son and family are off to Paris and London for the next ten days. Daughter-in-law Melissa is making a presentation about human trafficking, and, afterward, they are going to show their boys (ages 10 and 14) some wonderful sights/sites, including, they've said, the Globe Theatre!

4.Per a recommendation from friend Chris, we've begun streaming a Brit series Waking the Dead, about a cold-case squad. One of the things I really like? The unit is not One Big Happy Family: They squabble and argue and gnash teeth and roll eyes and ... you know? Much more plausible that a lot of shows we watch. Link to a trailer.

5. I didn't get much blogging done last week--none, in fact. Stuff happens (and doesn't happen). Sigh.

6. I didn't finish a book this week ... well, I finished one--the one I reviewed for Kirkus--but, as I've said, I ain't allowed to say what it is. So, you know, you'll just have to trust me.

I am very nearly finished with The Last of the Mohicans (1826), the 2nd in James Fenimore Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales. I'm reading the five books not in the order that he wrote them but in order of the age of Natty Bumppo, the hero, who goes by the names Deerslayer and Hawk-eye and Pathfinder, etc.

I'd read Mohicans before--a couple of times (in college, in grad school)--but I wanted to re-read it with Deerslayer fresh in my head--and with Pathfinder soon to come.

Following Pathfinder: The Pioneers, The Prairie. I've got them ill in the two Library of America volumes.

7. For some reason I remembered today something once said by my late high-school basketball coach Robert Barnhart (1935-2017) back in the late 1950s. Link to his obituary.

SITUATION: He'd made a mistake about something.

COACH: That's only the second mistake I ever made.

US: What was the first one?

COACH: One time when I thought I was wrong.

8. Wonderful lunch in Kent last week with Joyce and Eileen Kutinsky--the much-beloved "Mrs. K." When I began teaching at the old Aurora Middle School in the fall of 1966, she was already on the faculty, teaching sixth grade science. I recognized right away that she was a Wonder. And throughout our years together she proved an inspiration, an amazing friend. She taught me to "loosen up" with kids, to enjoy my job, my time with the youngsters. She showed me how you can be imaginative in the classroom, how "fun" and "education" are not at all two discrete things.

(Oh, and I also had the privilege of teaching all three of her sons: David, Ron, John.)

She is now 90-ish and still working her family farm--the place where she grew up--down near Atwater, Ohio.

Sharp as a tack, funny, compassionate, kind--these are traits she's always had, traits that have endured.

9. At the Hudson Library and Historical Society this week we got to see/hear novelist Stephen Markley, whose book Ohio: A Novel caused quite a splash last fall (which is when I read it).

It tells the tale of a failing small rust-belt town in northern Ohio--and about the lives of several high school classmates who find themselves--not on purpose--back in town for various reasons. A principal issue: drugs and hopelessness. And the Past reigns over all; the Future seems dark.

His presentation involved a reading of the opening section (a stage-setter), then ... Q&A. Just before he finished, I sneaked out to the signing area, where--as is my wont!--I was Number One in Line to Get My Book Signed.

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

     - I love this one from the Oxford English Dictionary ...

tarzy, n. Chiefly in Middlesbrough: a makeshift rope swing across a river or stream, typically suspended from a tree. Cf. Tarzan swing n. at Tarzan

Pronunciation: Brit. /ˈtɑːzi/,  U.S. /ˈtɑrzi/

Forms:  20– tarzee,   20– tarzey,   20– tarzie,   20– tarzy.

Origin: From a proper name, combined with an English element. Etymons: proper name Tarzan, -y

Etymology: <  tarz- (in the name of Tarzan: see Tarzan n.) + -y suffix6.

Compare the following earlier example of tarzy swing, apparently denoting an act of swinging hand by hand from tree to tree like Tarzan:

1984  S. Unwin Deep Joy  iii. 23 Along the top of the mound were sycamore trees which we climbed from time to time, crossing from tree to tree like a monkey,—rarely leaping, of course, but I had seen one chap do it like a tarzy-swing—it was considered a brave and expert thing to do.

2003 Evening Gaz. (Middlesbrough)  7 July 14/1 I took 'em out ter play some real games..—kerbie,..beck-jumpin', chicken. Only fell off a Tarzy didn'a, eh?.. What a doyle!

2005  A. Bissett Incredible Adam Spark  73 Mind jude that time i was swingin on tarzy that goes over the burn and i fell and landed on a rock and broke ma arm?

2015  A. Hulse Forever & Ever  xxiii. 144 ‘Billy, throw the tarzee!’.. Tony caught the rope expertly and swung across the river without looking back.

2017  @kitschfinder 20 June in twitter.com(O.E.D. Archive) Fancy damming a stream & mekin a tarzy, or building a den or going down t'park—I've got pop money?

Sunday Sundries, 229

1. Critter of the Week [COTW]: Frequenting our back yard is a rather fat bunny, and whenever I see him (her?) out in the back, browsing, I think of Watership Down, of the rabbits out for their "evening silflay [snack]." I'm sure I will not think so kindly of him (her?) when he (she?) begins to dine on our strawberries, but, for now, I find myself inexplicably thrilled whenever I see him (her?), and if a critter makes me feel good? Well, that earns him (her?) the COTW! (Should I apologize to him (her?) for all those relatives of his (hers?) whom my father shotgunned? Those cooked corpses I subsequently ate with glee in boyhood? Nah. He (She) would understand ... right?

2. I finished two books this week.

     - The first was the latest story collection, Orange World (2019) by one of our best young writers--Karen Russell. I first became aware of her work in 2006 when I read glowing reviews of her debut, a collection of stories called St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves. I consumed it like a box of Wheat Thins, could not believe the skill--the language--that Russell brought to every sentence.

Subsequently, I have read all her books (there are now five)--and have been happy, now and then, to see one of her stories in The New Yorker. She has one novel (Swamplandia!, 2011), which I liked but did not love so much as I do her short stories.

This latest collection features some wild ones, that's for sure. There's one about some ghosts at an old mountaintop lodge who kind of don't realize they're ghosts. There's another about a young woman who's invaded by the essence of a Joshua tree (!). Another based loosely on Madame Bovary ... You get the idea?

Her stories are strange--but here's the wild part: They are absolutely credible. Her skill is such that she draws you immediately into the world she is creating; you live there; you believe it.

I look for great things from her--even greater than she's already managed. She'll be 38 in July--so many wonderful years--and books--to come!

     - The second was The Trial of Lizzie Borden: A True Story (2019), a debut work by Cara Robertson, who has a Ph.D. (English) from Oxford and a JD from Stanford Law School. And, boy, did I learn a lot in this text!

In August 1892 the father and stepmother of Lizzie (in her early 30s--still living at home in Fall River, Mass.) were found brutally hacked to death in their own home. Who did it? And why?

I've known a bit about this case for a long time--it has been part of the popular culture for more than a century. In 1961 (I was a high-school senior in 1961-62) the Chad Mitchell Trio (a folk group a la The Kingston Trio) released their song "Lizzie Borden." (Link to their song.) They began with a (spoken) quatrain that has been around for years: Elizabeth Borden took an axe / And gave her mother forty whacks. / And when the job was nicely done, / She gave her father forty-one!

So ... leap ahead to 2019. I was simply not prepared for the complexity of this case--of Lizzie's trial--all of which Robertson recounts here in amazing detail (oh, the research she did!).

But most surprising of all? The trial verdict ... and Lizzie's subsequent life. I'll not spoil it for you.

3. I used a word this week--grueling--then looked at it and wondered: Is that related to gruel, that cereal thingy? Looked it up.

And gruel, which goes back to the 14th century, comes from various sources and does, in fact, mean flour or an oatmealy type of cereal.

Back in the 18th century, the word morphed a bit--to have one's gruel meant punishment. And from there, it was a rather quick trip to punishing, exhausting, etc.

So there!

4. We're looking forward to streaming the movie Deadwood on HBO. We were devotees of the original HBO series way back when. We'll probably wait until we've finished the latest season of Bosch, though.

Years ago, when our son, Steve, was but a lad, we visited Deadwood, SD, and walked around, saw the famous graves, etc. And, of course, I've loved cowboy movies and TV shows forever. Link to trailer for Deadwood.

5. I did a post last week about a song we used to sing in music class back in the Hiram School when I was in 7th and 8th grade--"The Green Cathedral." I said in that post that I'd ordered the sheet music. It came (see pic). And I was surprised to see (or maybe not surprised?) that its original copyright was in 1944. The year I was born ... [cue theme music from The Twilight Zone]...

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

     - from Oxford English Dictionary

gilravage, n. Noisy or drunken merrymaking; boisterous play; commotion, confusion. Also: an instance of this.

Pronunciation: Brit. /ɡᵻlˈravɪdʒ/,  U.S. /ɡəlˈrævɪdʒ/,  Scottish /ɡᵻlˈravɪdʒ/,  Irish English /ɡəlˈrævɪdʒ/

Forms: see gilravage v.

Origin: Apparently formed within English, by conversion. Etymon: gilravage v.

Etymology:Apparently <  gilravage v.

 Scottish, English regional (northern), and Irish English.

a1796  R. Burns Poems & Songs(1968) I. 124 While at the stook the shearers cow'r..Or in gulravage rinnin scow'r To pass the time.

1818 Edinb. Mag. & Lit. Misc.  Sept. 155 Muckle din an' loud gilraivitch was amang them, gaffawan an' lauchan.

1838  T. Carlyle Let.  12 June in  T. Carlyle  & J. W. Carlyle Coll. Lett.(1985) X. 96 This season of the year is all on a gallop here in London with dinners and meetings and business and gilravish of all kinds.

1856  J. Strang Glasgow & its Clubs  125 Scottish ‘Galraviches’, as these drinking bouts were called, are well known to all acquainted with the ‘annals of the bottle’.

1863  R. Paul Let.  in Mem.(1872) xviii. 269 An after-dinner galravage with the children.

1876  W. Brockie Confessional  185 A' thing's ranshacklt frae head to fit, Ye canna get room to stand or sit, There's sic a gulravage as never was kennd.

1910  P. W. Joyce Eng. as we speak it in Ireland  xiii. 270 Gulravage, gulravish; noisy boisterous play.

1968 Classical Rev.  18 162 Simice and the daughter were arbitrarily and incorrectly given speaking parts in the post-rescue scene, and Simice again in the final gilravage [sc. wedding celebrations].

2013 Scotsman(Nexis) 6 Mar. If there are any statesmen left in Britain it is high time they stepped forward and brought some clear thinking to the present gilravage.