Busy Day, Busy, Busy Day ...

When I was a kid in the mid-1950s, there was a Jell-O TV commercial that seemed to run all the time. Animated--primitively so, as the pic above confirms. A housewife (in 50s style) scurrying around the house while the soundtrack chants "Busy day--busy day--busy, busy, busy day." The message: Even if you're busy, you still have time to make some Jell-O ... or was it the Jell-O pudding?

I just found a video of the commercial and discovered a couple of things: I had the lyric a little bit wrong (hey, it was 1956!), and the commercial was for the instant pudding.

Link to the video.

Okay, I was thinking of this earlier today because I found myself having a Busy-Day kind of morning. Oh, nothing like a morning working in a coal mine--or teaching 8th graders. But still.

• Up about 5:30--unloaded the dishwasher and straightened up downstairs.
• Helped Joyce change our bedding (a Saturday task). 
• Cleaned up.
• Updated my journal and my Quicken account on my laptop.
• Walked over to Open Door Coffee Co.--with snow up to my armpits. (Well, sort of.)
• Read the New York Times on my Kindle--while eating a homemade scone (see below).
• Caught up on email and Facebook.
• Texted my daily doggerel to my family (one every-morning job)--based on the word today on our word-a-day tear-off calendar (mercurial).
• MERCURIAL = CHARACTERIZED BY RAPID AND UNPREDICTABLE CHANGEABLENESS OF MOOD
• Sometimes I’m so MERCURIAL
  I really can’t decide
  If I am Dr. Jekyll—or
  If I am Mr. Hyde!
• Wrote a Daily Doggerel to post later on my other blog.
• Finished the last 50 pages of Ian McEwan's 1990 novel, The Innocent. (Wow.)
• Walked home with snow up to my ...
• Fed my sourdough starter for tomorrow's bread-baking.
• Mixed and baked a batch of apricot-walnut scones (I eat a homemade scone every morning for breakfast). Joyce had sliced the apricots for me while I was feeding the starter.
• Caught up on some things in my study.
• Wrote this post.
• It's now 10:03 a.m.

I'm whupped. I will go upstairs, read through this post with Joyce (who will find several typos I missed). I will correct them (muttering obscenities while doing so).

Then--after this beginning to a Busy Day I will wander into our bedroom, close the door, collapse and nap till lunch.

In the Real World of Work this is really nothing, I know.

Still, I am whupped ... So wonderful, being seventy-five ...

Jaded

Joyce and I are getting jaded.

BTW: I didn't know the origin of jaded, so I just looked it up. It comes from the word jade ("of obscure origin," say my dictionaries), a word that once meant "a worn-out, broken-down, worthless, or vicious horse"--from the 14th century.  In that famous, flaring flash of wit between Katherine and Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew, we get this exchange:

PETRUCHIO

Thou hast hit it: come, sit on me.

KATHARINA

Asses are made to bear, and so are you.

PETRUCHIO

Women are made to bear, and so are you.

KATHARINA

No such JADE as you, if me you mean. (2.1)

Anyway, Joyce and I are not horses (sure, I'm sometimes an ass).

(See dictionary definition above if you don't understand what I just wrote.)

But we are getting, sort of, "worn out."

Not really by Life, which is wearing enough, but by the sorts of TV series we are streaming. Shows about detectives and cops. We love them ... but ...

Currently we are streaming that endless BBC series called Waking the Dead (about a cold-case unit), Vera (a wonderful show)--and we just finished the most recent season of Brokenwood. And, before those, we streamed numerous others--like Wire in the Blood and The Doctor Blake Mysteries.

All good ... but ...

We're sort of wearying of watching psychos murder women (and sometimes children), wearying of seeing pathologists pick at the remains of human beings who've been buried in a landfill for twenty years, wearying of watching creepy guys (almost always guys) stalking and raping and terrorizing and dismembering and whatever-ing. There seems no end to it.

And there probably isn't. I mean, after all, what do the producers of the local news do? They look for whatever the most depraved people in town have done--and that becomes the nightly "news." And we are so shocked--and then tune in the next night to see what new outrage has occurred, what new outrage we can be outraged about.

The other night, while we were streaming in bed, Joyce joked: "They ought to make a series about detectives devoted to finding out who's done a good deed!"

Yeah. An hour about how some Sherlockian character finally figures out who shoveled the Old Guy's sidewalk, who gave a wad of $$ to a homeless person, who donated bags of food to a shelter, who ...

You get it?

I'm sure that show would rocket to the top in ratings.

Nah.

We prefer the creepos and the corpses, don't we?

If only ...

Many people have bees that buzz in their bonnets--language bees. Grammar bees. Usage bees.

I see posts on FB, for example, that chide others (others--of course!) for failing to observe the differences among there-their-they're (notice that I used among--more than two! oh, thank you, Mrs. Rood, my 7th grade English teacher!) or between its and it's (thanks again, Mrs. Rood).

Sometimes these misuses are the products of hurry. I have (rarely, rarely, rarely) caught an its error, say, in my own FB posts, and I scurry to correct it with all the alacrity of someone who's left his/her wallet in the coffee shop. (Who's and Whose--there's (theirs?) another one!)

So we need to be careful: We mustn't condemn the hurried mistake but save our venom for ignorance, right?

Wrong.

In the Prologue to The Canterbury Tales (late 14th century), in a passage about the Clerk, Chaucer wrote that famous quotation, "And gladly would he learn and gladly teach."

We need, I think--especially in these days of vicious and viral assaults on those who make a mistake and are thus inferior to the rest of us--to simmer down. To learn what we can, teach when we can. 

Our teaching can be private. When, for example, I see a usage error in someone's post, I will send them a private message about it, not post it for the World to See and Condemn. And I don't always correct things, for I can tell the difference between a speed-induced error and one born of Not Knowing.

I am hardly exempt from such things. After I post this, I will go upstairs; Joyce will read it; Joyce will find a few errors (typos, of course!), and I will hurry to correct them with a sinner's speed.

Anyway, today I posted on FB a quotation from a book I'm reading, and the writer wrote of "a phenomenon whose structure emerges only when we interact with others."

Look at the only in that passage. The placement of only has been something that's bugged me for years now. The author uses it correctly in that passage--putting only as close as possible to the thing that's only. And that's what we all should do--both for clarity and for reducing my blood pressure.

Some examples:

I only found it yesterday. (No: I found it only yesterday.) (You didn't "only find it"; you found it "only yesterday"--not this morning or whatever.)

I only saw the tiger when I stepped into the jungle. (No, I saw the tiger only when I stepped into the jungle.) (You didn't only see the tiger, did you?)

I just found this example online--an example that shows clearly how the placement of only is a key to meaning (I added the parenthetical stuff):

Only John hit Peter in the nose. (Just John did it.)

John hit only Peter in the nose. (John hit Peter--and no one else.)

John hit Peter only in the nose. (John did not hit Peter in the jaw.)

John only hit Peter in the nose.  (John just hit Peter; he didn't shoot him or kiss him, too.)  (link to the site)

That's enough for this mini-rant of mine. I'm sure I will never see (or commit) this error again ...

... if only.

PS: Joyce found ONLY one typo!

Letters ...

Joyce and I were streaming a Netflix comedian last night (Ryan Hamilton--Happy Face, 2017), and he did an amusing bit about letters--personal and business letters we used to write but do so no more. (Most of us.)

It got me thinking about a couple of songs: "Love Letters in the Sand" (Pat Boone, 1957--I was in junior high; link to song) and "I'm Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter" (also 1957, by Billy Williams; link to song). Both songs, by the way, were composed earlier and have had multiple versions recorded by multiple artists.

And there once were countless other songs about letters ...

And how about Perry Como? Remember, near the end of his show, The Perry Como Show (1948-63), he would do a bit about letters. "Letters--we get letters--we get stacks and stacks of letters. 'Dear Perry, would you be so kind, to fill a request and sing the song I like best?'" And Perry would come out and sing a song that someone had requested. (Link to some video.)

When I was a kid, part of the routine in our English classes each year was to go through some practice with "personal letters" and "business letters"--not that we kids had any business to speak of. I can imagine the sort of thing I would write: Dear Grocer, Would you please stock more orange Popsicles? Thank you. Your friend, Danny Dyer.

I wrote very few letters in boyhood--most were (required) (by my mom): thank-you notes after my birthday and Christmas. In fact, one of my standard "gifts" for Christmas was a pack of thank-you cards. Would you think less of me if I told you that those cards were not among my favorite presents?

When I began teaching "language arts" to 7th graders in the fall of 1966, we used a textbook called Language for Daily Use (see pic).

my actual copy!

Chapter 8 was "Writing Letters." Among the advice:

1. Write naturally, as if you were talking.
2. Write with pen or typewrite, whichever is easier for you.
3. Write about what the other person will want to know.
4. Remember, courtesy demands that your letter be neat and legible.

One other piece of advice (I kid you not): "Don't start by stating that you hate to write letters" (208). That, of course, is exactly what I felt like writing around my birthday and Christmas.

There were sections on Preparation for Mailing that showed diagrams of how you ought to fold and insert the letter in the envelope, how the envelope should look on the outside.

Oddly, on the facing page of this are lines from Wordsworth's "The World Is Too Much With Us." (Link to poem.)

Following are sections on "Social Notes" and "Business Letters."  One of the latter is a complaint about a product the writer ordered: 35 mm slides that are, regrettably, "badly scratched." The writer wants a replacement (224).

And so on.

Until fairly recently I was writing lots of personal letters--four a week in fact. Two to my mom (Wednesday and Sunday), one to my dear friend and colleague Andy Kmetz (Saturday), one to a former high-school friend and teammate who was having severe medical issues (Tuesday).

But--one by one--all three died.

And now it's pretty much all emails and texts. I hardly ever get personal letters in the mail. Or send them.

I wonder: What would Perry Como think of this brave new world of ours?  Instead of "Letters, we get letters," would it be "Email, we get email"?

Trying to Keep It All

Now that I can no longer go out to the health club (dizziness), I'm having a bit of a problem about something that, in some ways, seems silly.

When do I practice all the 231 poems I've memorized?

See, I used to have batches that I did out at the club while I was exercising--a M-W-F set, a T-Th-Sat set. And there were longer ones I rehearsed out there every day (Longfellow's "Song of Youth," E. E. Cummings' "My Father Moved Through Dooms of Love," etc.).

I can't easily just transfer them to home, for I already had sets I do here every day.

Oh, the things we do to ourselves!

I mean, no one has forced me to memorize 231 poems. I did it to myself. I began back when I was teaching middle schoolers in Aurora (I memorized the poems I gave them to memorize), but soon I was adding, adding, adding. I would get bored, say, with "The Road Not Taken" (which the kids were learning), so I'd learn a different one by Frost. And Millay. And Shakespeare. And ...

You see?

I retired from teaching in the spring of 2011. Nearly nine years have ensued. And I haven't really slowed down. I've kept adding, adding, adding. Like an alcoholic: Just one more!

Right now, in fact, I'm working on a fifteen-stanza gem by Auden, "As I Walked Out One Evening"; as of this morning, I have four stanzas "down" pretty well. (Link to the poem.) It appeared on Writer's Almanac the other day, and both Joyce and I loved it so much that, well, I had no choice, did I?

So what about those health-club poems?

A little explanation ... I get up about 5:30, Mon-Sat (Sunday's a different story--don't get me started). Don't be too impressed with the early rising: I'm back in bed, reading, about thirteen hours later.

Lately, I've been snapping awake about 5:15 ... and guess what I do then? I start running those health-club poems through my head, one at a time, till 5:30--and keep on keeping on as I go downstairs to unload the dishwasher, etc. By the time I head back upstairs, I've usually finished them (if not, I mumble the remaining ones over at the coffee shop in the afternoon).

So, my days are now chockablock with memorized poems. Why I'm adding another one is nothing more than a certain sign of addiction.

Joyce is pretty much the only one who hears them, now and then (not all: that would be grounds for you-know-what). But when a poem fits what we're doing or talking about, well, I fit it in. She never seems to mind. (The definition of True Love.)

And my grandsons, now and then, don't mind hearing "Casey at the Bat" or "Jabberwocky." But I don't push it.

I suppose there's some kind of neurological benefit to all of this--keeping my memory "woke," I guess. But I haven't seen a lot of evidence. I can't remember some of the damnedest things--quick-recall stuff that used to be as simple for me as bending over to tighten a shoelace.

Which ain't no longer simple.

Anyway, I don't suppose I'll stop until the Grim Reaper arrives at our door and says, "Now that is just enough!"

Sunday Sundries, 265

1. HBOTW [Human Being of the Week]: former Harmon (Middle) School colleague Tim DeFrange (we taught English together--then he moved into taking charge of the media center). This week, Tim, having read about my cancer issues, sent me a lovely card that contained news of something else he'd done for me--personal, so I'll not share. But it moved me ...

2. I finished one book this week--Girl, Woman, Other--a 2019 work by Bernadine Evaristo, a novel that shared the Booker Prize last year with Margaret Atwood for The Testaments.

When I bought the book, I'd never read any Evaristo (she has about a half-dozen others). To be honest, I'd not heard of her until I read about the Booker Prize. Her background is Nigerian--and many of the characters here share that with her.

The design and organization of the novel are astonishing. It has about it a whiff of As I Lay Dying, but Faulkner confined that story, pretty much, to a single family--the Bundrens.

But here? We have about a dozen principal characters, and each section bears the name of one of them (as Faulkner did). But within each section we often deal with generations of the family.

We begin with Amma, a playwright who has finally hit it big (after a long, long wait)--a production at London's National Theatre. Today is the opening. We also meet her son, Yazz, and as the story proceeds into the lives of other characters, we at first don't see the connections. But when they they come--never really bluntly or obtrusively--it is with a subtlety and intelligence that, well, dazzle.

Faulkner once plotted a novel on a wall of his house, Rowan Oak, in Oxford, Mississippi: A Fable, 1954, and if you visit Rowan Oak (open to the public), you can see what he did. (Photo below.)

Anyway, Evaristo must have used all the walls in town!

The title--Girl, Woman, Other--refers to the various sorts of women (and transgendered people) she is writing about, and we see just about every sort of human being here--in a variety of settings.

One thing that really struck me: As a former teacher, I rarely read books (or passages in books) about teaching that ring true to me. This one did (one of the characters is a high school teacher). Spot on.

As we approach the ending, we realize that many of these characters are going to meet again at the premiere--and what a scene that is!

3. Last night, Joyce and I went to see the latest film of The Call of the Wild, a book I taught for fifteen years, a book I was obsessed with for about that same amount of time. (See yesterday's post.)

I'll confess that I did not have a lot of high hopes for it: I'd seen some trailers; I knew that Buck is a CGI-dog; I knew that Han Solo was not what Jack London had in mind for John Thornton, whom, in the novel, Buck does not encounter until Chapter 5 (of 7). (The filmmakers introduce the two much earlier.)

I also expected the filmmakers would make myriads of changes--from small to large. Among the small: in the film Buck lands at Skagway, not Dyea; the dogsleds are not the type used during the gold rush (and they go much faster than any dogsled in history!); they skip the scene in Seattle; they eliminate some important characters; they offer more backstory for John Thornton (virtually nothing in the book). Among the major changes: the violence is much diminished (in Seattle, "the man in the red sweater" beats Buck severely; here, one swing of the club, which we see only in shadow; in the novel Buck kills Spitz; in the novel Hal, Charles, and Mercedes all die; in the novel, near the end, Buck kills both a bear and a moose; in the novel, Indians arrive to kill John Thornton--and Buck delivers some payback). And on and on and on.

Oh, and the scenery does not always resemble what it was--and Buck's life in California is shown here almost as a family cartoon with a big, fluffy, rambunctious dog.

Of course, lots of this is due to the (undeserved/inaccurate) conception by many (who have not read it) that The Call of the Wild is a book for kids. Jack London did not write such books. And one of the things that used to startle/bother my students was how graphic and brutal the book can be. It's downright Darwinian--which fits: London took On the Origin of Species with him during his own trip to the gold rush.

So ... it wasn't much at all like the novel. But--as I said yesterday--that's the way it goes with many books-into-movies. Different ideas, different media. Live with it.

I think the filmmakers were really hoping for a hit (oh, the ads I saw on Facebook!), but, last night, there were only about twenty people in the audience--and many of them were ... older. I don't want to infer too much from that--but I wonder? I'll check the weekend numbers tomorrow.

People, by the way, were laughing a lot last night. That doesn't happen much in the novel--though there are a few amusing moments--like when Buck wakes up in the snow and can't find the other dogs (they've buried themselves to stay warm). (This happens in the film, too.)

Oh, and the filmmakers also left out the "ancestral memories" and visions that Buck has in the book. Instead, Buck gets some sort of black "spirit wolf" that appears now and then and seems to embody the call of the wild.

Nor do we get the bet about how much weight Buck can pull (PETA would not go for a scene like that--even with a CGI dog?!?).

I guess what I found myself most impressed with? The quality of the CGI. That dog almost always looked real. Yes, he was as emotional and sentimental as, oh, some cartoon dog (which he kind of was)--or Lassie. But still ...

If you're looking for women characters, don't look too hard. There are some in California, and the filmmakers transformed mail-carrier Francois to a woman--but that's about it. Plus Mercedes. But there aren't really any in the book, either--save for Mercedes. And an old Indian woman who appears in a single sentence.

So ... what did I think? It's not Jack London's book come to life--no way. But if you don't know the story at all--and if you like clever dogs that can read the minds and hearts of humans--if you want to go "awwwww" a bunch of times--and laugh? Go see it! It's sort of fun.

PS--How does John Thornton narrate at the end? He's, you know, ...?

4. This week I had a brain MRI (with and without contrast). My family physician is pursuing the cause(s?) of my persistent dizziness, so although I had that same scan in 2017, she thought we ought to try again. The results: No change. So ... on to the cardiologist!

5. Sadly, this week we finished streaming all episodes of Upstart Crow, the clever BBC comedy series about Shakespeare. Both Joyce and I loved it. Now--thanks to the suggestion of our friend Chris--we've started a similar series (by some of the same folks) called Black Adder. The first episode is about Richard III, the Battle of Bosworth Field, etc. We've both laughed a lot!

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

     - from dictionary.com

thersitical [ ther-sit-i-kuhl ]

Adjective: scurrilous; foulmouthed; grossly abusive.

WHAT IS THE ORIGIN OF THERSITICAL?

The very rare adjective thersitical “scurrilous, foulmouthed, abusive” derives from the Greek personal name Thersítēs, itself a derivative of the adjective thersiepḗs “bold of speech.” Thersites appears in Book 2 of the Iliad in the assembly of the Achaeans. Homer describes Thersites as lame, bowlegged, with shoulders that sloped inward, and a pointy head covered with tufts of hair—the ugliest man at Troy. Thersites accuses Agamemnon of greed and Achilles of cowardice, for which Odysseus beats him severely about the head and shoulders to the great amusement of the rest of the Achaeans. Thersitical entered English in the mid-17th century.

HOW IS THERSITICAL USED?

… there is a pelting kind of thersitical satire …. LAURENCE STERNE, THE LIFE AND OPINIONS OF TRISTRAM SHANDY, VOL. 2, 1759

These he lists in language so richly thersitical that his English translator, likely Herring himself, must have strained his vocabulary to its limits to do it justice. TODD H.J. PETTIGREW, STEPHANIE M. PETTIGREW, AND JACQUES A. BAILLY, EDS., "INTRODUCTION," THE MAJOR WORKS OF JOHN COTTA, 2018

How Wild Is the Call?

This evening, Joyce and I will head out to see the latest film version of The Call of the Wild. (Yes, there have been numerous others--one with Clark Gable and Loretta Young in 1935.)

Those of you who know me well--especially my former students at Harmon Middle School in Aurora, Ohio--know that, for me, this will not be just any old film. For, you see, I taught that novel to my 8th graders for nearly fifteen years. (I also had students read it, later, at Western Reserve Academy, where I taught high school juniors after my retirement from  public school in January 1997--but it was an "outside reading," and we didn't really get into it with anything like the detail my classes did back at Harmon.)

I had been away from Harmon for four years when I returned to end my public-school career there in the fall of 1982. In our literature anthology, Exploring Literature, there was Wild, at the end of the volume, serving as the example of the "novel" genre.

I had never read the book. I had read other works by Jack London (Martin Eden and The Sea-Wolf), but I'd read only the old Classics Illustrated comic-book version of the novel--novella, actually: It's quite short.

I did not know, starting to teach it, that the anthology editors had made some cuts and alterations, leaving out the moments when Buck begins to have his ancestral dreams--cave men and all. (This must have been a move to appease those who believe in more religious stories about the age of the earth?)

I was wildly ignorant about the background of the novella--the Klondike Gold Rush, the Yukon Territory. To me, all of that was just, you know, "up in the North." Alaska, Yukon--it's all the same, isn't it?

No.

I've always hated my own ignorance about what I was teaching, so I set out to remedy it with Jack London and Wild.

And so ...

• I read all fifty of his books.
• I read every biography about him.
• I read all the histories of the Klondike Gold Rush.
• In the summer of 1990 I was chosen to participate in a six-week seminar on London and his work at Sonoma State University (in Rohnert Park, California)--sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Our teacher was Dr. Earle Labor, the world's authority on London and his work, and it was under his kind tutelage that I began to plan a new annotated edition of Wild. It came out in 1995, published by the University of Oklahoma Press, who also issued a paperback edition of the novel (fewer annotations and pictures and maps). In 1997 Scholastic Press published my YA bio of London. Little did I know that a writer named J. K. Rowling (know her?) would later publish her Harry Potter novels with Scholastic! Her books sold a wee bit better than mine.

Best of all--I traveled all over Jack London-land: from California to the Yukon (twice); I even hiked the Chilkoot Trail, the trail over the Alaska mountains into the Yukon Territory, the trail that figures so preeminently in Wild.

Oh, and the libraries and archives I visited! From Yale to Berkeley.

I guess you could say I OD'd on London and his book, and by the time it was all over (in 1997), I was absolutely saturated. And by then, I'd gotten interested in another writer, Mary Shelley, and she consumed another decade (or so) of my life.

I ain't got no more decades to devote, so I have smaller ambitions now--ones that don't require much (if any) travel--except in my head.

So ... off to the movies we'll go tonight. I am not so naive as to think the film will follow the novella with near-religious adherence--no movie does that--or really can do that. Each is a different medium with different narrative techniques in its toolkit.

And ... I have seen some of the trailers, and I know that Buck is a CGI dog ... and I've noticed some odd details about the terrain and the "look" of the characters and their implements.

I'm also guessing (based only on the trailers) that the filmmakers are aiming this version at children? (Could be wrong--we'll see.)

And I'll end by saying that one of the big surprises I had when I read the book for the first time in the spring of 1983: This is no children's book.

MORE IN BLOG TOMORROW

Health Care for All?

As the political campaigns heat up, I read more and more about “health care for all” or “Medicare for all.” I hear conversations, debates (sometimes fiery ones), declarations—all in tones that range from exploratory to peremptory to homicidal.

Before I go on, let me tell you a story ...

When I was visiting with my oncologist about a month ago up at Seidman Cancer Center, he told me that if my numbers rise much more, the next med he will prescribe will cost $10,000 a month.

That’s right—a month!

As some of you know, I’ve been through quite a bit with cancer in the past fifteen years: surgery (failed), radiation (failed), various heavy-duty meds (they’ve slowed but can’t stop the advance of the cancer), immunotherapy (which empowers my own  immune system to fight the prostate cancer that has now metastasized into my bones), another round of radiation (temporary success). All of this, I know, has cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

So, soon, it seems certain, we will run out of options, and the cancer will smile its victory smile—and do what it does best.

The $10,000/month drug remains—as does chemo. But we’re nearing the end of our options.

There's no way I can pay $10,000 a month for a med. And, yes, my insurance will (probably?) pay a portion of it—but how big a portion?

Here’s one thing I know for sure: I will not bankrupt us to stay alive a little bit longer. That, to me, is unconscionable. I’ll choose palliative care in a heartbeat.

Back to the main point ...

Despite the existence of Obamacare, we still have millions of uninsured Americans. In other words, there are millions out there who do not have the good fortune that I’ve had—receiving insurance from my employer, then qualifying for Medicare. These programs have kept me alive for more than a decade now. And I have cherished every second of it.

So ... do I somehow “deserve” this insurance coverage—and other people somehow don’t?

To me, that idea is obscene. Nauseating.

We have a for-profit medical system—for-profit drug companies. Profits, in many cases, trump compassion and empathy, trump humanitarianism. The companies know that desperate patients who need a drug will pay ridiculous prices. If they can. If not ... well ... buh-bye.

I really can’t understand why so many are opposed to universal health care. The look-what-happened-to-Venezuela argument is absurd. We’re not Venezuela (or any other failed socialist/communist state)—we have one of the most robust capitalist economies in the world. And we have enjoyed —for a long, long, long time—a wide range of public services that any disinterested alien emerging from a flying saucer would have to call “socialist”: public schools, fire and police departments, libraries, highways and bridges, produce and meat inspections, regulations on pollution, aviation—not to mention Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and on and on and on.

Why do we think those things are necessary (maybe even democratic!), but public health care somehow exudes the fetid odor of Evil Empires?

And it just baffles me when I hear/read people who identify as Christians suggesting that some people deserve help, others don’t. In fact, I don’t really know of any religion that suggests we should not help one another.

As I’ve written here before, public health-care skeptics should spend a day in the waiting room at the Seidman Cancer Center. Keep your eyes wide open—your heart, as well. You will see struggling people of all ages, all races, all genders battling cancer, this formidable enemy that has decided they don’t deserve to live.

And those who continue to insist that health care is not a public right--how different are they from a deadly disease?

Junior Words

In the next day or so I'm going to upload to Kindle Direct my most recent collection of light (well ... ultra-light) verse. I'll be charging the lowest amount Kindle allows for such a publication (last time I checked it was $2.99--and worth every cent!).

You don't need a Kindle device to read it--you can download a free app for your phone, tablet, computer, then purchase the "book" on Amazon using your computer. And off you go!

Anyway, here's the Preface to the volume.

A Preface from the Poetaster

 So yet another volume of doggerel has now somehow escaped from its cage and winged its way onto Amazon Direct. Wby?

Try this explanation: Remember “Some Enchanted Evening,” that wonderful song from South Pacific? Emile De Becque, the French planter, sings of love:  “Who can explain it, Who can tell you why? / Fools give you reasons, wise men never try.”

So all I can say is, “I’m going to be wise.” And not try.

Well … maybe I’ll try a little.

Most of these lines I composed (brave word) as part of my most recent doggerel project for my blog Daily Doggerel: turning into verse the 200 vocabulary words I taught in my final year of my career, 2010–11, at Western Reserve Academy in Hudson, Ohio. English III (high school juniors). I selected the words not because they were “hard” or likely to pop up on the SAT, but because they appeared in the literary works we would read throughout the year. Among those texts: Hamlet, The Scarlet Letter, The Awakening, and The Great Gatsby. There were numerous others.

I gave the students twenty lists of ten words (20 x 10 = ?) and quizzed them five times per marking period (of which we had four). We reviewed them continually.

And as I converted those words into doggerel, I proceeded in order: I started with List #1, took the first two words, wrote lines about them. Next day I moved on to the next two words in List #1. And so on and so on until—somehow—I had reached the final two words in List #20.

(Do I hear a sigh of relief?) (If so, is it from you? Or me? Or both?)

And in the midst of all this, I got another idea: a series of silly lines about subjects that sound (almost) as if they’d come from Dr. Seuss.  (“Rooster in a Roadster,” “A Sheep in a Jeep,” etc.) Collectively, I called them “Jingles That Jangle,” and I’ve arranged them here into three sections. No real reason for that organization. Just did it.

There’s also a section called “Desultory Doggerel,” lines that I wrote about ordinary, quotidian things and posted on Facebook to the delight (or, more likely, dismay) of my FB Friends. These lines deal with, oh, a trip to the dermatologist, some squirrels I saw, a cloudy day. I’m sure you can see the compelling, enduring interest of such things?

The final section boasts for a title a word I invented a few years ago: Wolferel. What does it mean? Well, if doggerel is a word we use for inferior lines—silly, inconsequential ones—I decided a few years ago that we need a word in English for lines that are more serious than doggerel but not quite accomplished enough to earn the name poetry. Wolferel seemed, well, perfect.

Here’s one way to look at it: Let’s say you applied to three colleges/universities. One is stellar (Poetry U.), one a little less so (Wolferel U.), the third even less so (Doggerel U.). Not a bad analogy?

I think I’ll have a sweatshirt made. So when people in the coffee shop notice it and ask me about Wolferel University, I can lie, tell them I graduated summa cum laude!

(Just as I did in 1966 from Hiram College—now that is a patent lie!).

So we’ve arrived at the end of this Preface. I’m sure you feel enlightened. I know I do.

At any rate, I hope you enjoy your journey through these pages. I hope you smile now and then; I’m confident that as you read through the Wolferel you will mutter, “Not quite a poem. But definitely not a doggerel.”

Daniel Dyer

February 11, 2020

I'm Back!

So said creepy Jack Nicholson in The Shining (1980).

So says my Mont Blanc fountain pen after a month at the repair shop!

I did a post here a month ago (January 16) about the failure of the pen to ... perform. (Link to that post.) And about my sorrow at having to send it away. (I'd bought it, on impulse, in 1997 in the Portland, Oregon, airport.)

Turns out it went to Texas, to the Mont Blanc repair site. Would Texas have been the first state you would have guessed? Not I! I mean, I lived in Amarillo for two years in my boyhood, and I don't remember a lot of talk about Mont Blanc pens.

But I realize perfectly well that I wouldn't have understood it even if I had heard such talk. I was interested only in baseball, bicycles, and cowboy movies. And, okay, my 3rd grade teacher, Miss Fleming at nearby Avondale Elementary School, was awfully attractive ...

Anyway, Joyce wrapped the package carefully, and we mailed it, part of me believing I'd never see it again.

The estimate came for the repair.

Shall I share?

Why not?

$121 + change.

A lot for a pen repair, eh? But I didn't hesitate. I plopped down the plastic and thought of how I could, you know, slowly pay off the debt.

The pen arrived home on Sunday via FedEx. We had to sign for it. It took forever to unwrap it (oh, did they protect the thing!).

Mostly, I use that pen for two things: (1) taking notes on the Kirkus books I will review; (2) sending personal notes to people. And for a month now, I've felt ... deprived.

I inserted the ink cartridges (it holds two), and scribbled a little something--just to see. It worked!

But would it work full-time?

Yesterday, I found out. I started taking notes on my next Kirkus book, and here came that old dark river, flowing smoothly, abundantly, beautifully ...

Would you think less of me if I told you I was ecstatic? That my heart rate accelerated? That I felt, once again, that I am immortal?

written today with my pen!

Sunday Sundries, 264

1. HBOTW [Human Being of the Week]: Our neighbor, who, without our asking, uses his snowblower up and down our block--even the little walk connecting the sidewalk to our front porch. In these Latter Days of mine--with my, uh, steadiness-of-foot in decline--this is a great and thoughtful gift to us.

2. I finished just one book this week--Ian McEwan's third novel, The Child in Time (1987). (I've been slowly reading my way, in chronological order, through his novels I've never read.)

our copy

This is a painful book to read--especially if you are a parent. The protagonist, Stephen Lewis, is a writer of children's books (a very successful one), a man whose daughter, a three-year-old, was abducted from his grocery cart in a busy market. Two years have passed without any news, and, as McEwan writes, "He was the father of an invisible child" (2).

His marriage has fractured--his wife has left him--and he finds that he can do little but suffer.

He is also part of a government project to make recommendations on the teaching of reading in England (he daydreams throughout the meetings). The committee chair--the man who got Lewis to serve--was the editor who'd first recognized Lewis' talents and published his first book.

Throughout, Lewis remembers his daughter, and in one painful scene he sees her on the street. But does he?

Meanwhile, other things happen: He sees his wife a couple of times (can they possibly reconcile?), and he visits the committee chair, who resigns about halfway through, and appears to be suffering from dementia.

So ... does he ever get news of his daughter? Do he and his wife reconcile? Does he somehow learn to manage his grief?

I guess you'll need to read the book to find out, cuz I ain't tellin'!

3. Last night Joyce and I went to our local Hudson Regal Cinema to see Parasite, the South Korean film that recently won the Oscar for Best Picture.

It's the story of a struggling family, living in a sorry basement apartment: a father, mother, son, daughter. A friend of the son's offers the son a gig tutoring a local very wealthy high-school girl in English. The son agrees--and here we go!

Soon, the son and the three others in his family are all employed by the wealthy family: the dad as a driver, the mom as a housekeeper, the sister as an art therapy consultant for the rich family's somewhat troubled young son.

The problem? They're all pretending that they're not related--that they just happen to know of one another--and they all connive to get the current holders of their job removed. Fired.

So--although you want to root for the poor family, you're also disturbed at how they're deceiving and betraying others.

The title Parasite applies to lots of people in the film. The poor family--and an even poorer couple we learn about later on the story. The rich family--for they are, in a way, living off of the poor.

Near the end, things grow really dark, but I'll not get into that.

Suffice to say: This film very starkly (though sometimes with humor) shows our Darwinian nature. Survival of the fittest--and in this case "fittest" has more than one meaning.

The theater was pretty full (though it was not a large auditorium).

Link to film trailer.

4. We still cannot bring ourselves to finish the final episode of Upstart Crow--a Christmas episode that borrows very heavily from A Christmas Carol, written more than two centuries after the Bard's death. Some very funny stuff so far in the episode that we are crawling rather than streaming.

5. Tonight we go out to dinner with our family to celebrate the 15th birthday of our older grandson, Logan Thomas Dyer, who's a frosh this year at nearby Walsh Jesuit HS. It remains stunning to me that he's now older than his father was when I taught him in 8th grade in 1985-86 at Aurora's Harmon (Middle) School. And our son, Steve, 47, is now older than I was (42) when I taught him in 8th grade! Lordy.

I texted Logan on his birthday (yesterday) and told him that I'd turned 15 in November 1959. Eisenhower was President. JFK would be elected the following year.

Impossible.

Anyway, Logan is a terrific young man, a better golfer than I ever was, and a kind, kind soul. He thinks of others--not because he should but because that's who he is.

6. We're slowly streaming the latest season of Curb Your Enthusiasm, Larry David's very funny (and uncomfortable!) show about, in a sense, himself. Joyce has a personal connection: One of the writers for the show--and someone who occasionally directs--is a former WRA student of hers back in the 1980s--Jeff Schaffer. If you’re a fan of the show, wait for the credits and look for Jeff's name.

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

     - from wordsmith.org

interdigitate: (in-tuhr-DIJ-i-tayt)

MEANING: verb tr., intr.: To interlock like the fingers of two hands.

ETYMOLOGY: From Latin inter- (between, together) + digitus (finger, toe). Ultimately from the Indo-European root deik- (to show, to pronounce solemnly), which also gave us judge, verdict, vendetta, revenge, indicate, dictate, paradigm, diktat, dictatress, dittohead, fatidic, hoosegow, and interdict. Earliest documented use: 1847.

NOTES: To interdigitate is to hold hands together. Also, to hold toes of two feet together. Also, hand and foot. Also, hand and paw. Or foot and paw. Think of other combinations. Show us what you come up with. Write to us at words@wordsmith.org.

USAGE:

“‘Oh, by the way, do you only interdigitate once a day?’

“She stopped and looked up at me. She was mentally replaying what I had just said to her. ‘What did you say?’ she said indignantly -- wondering if I just had been incredibly rude to her. She was getting ready to be really ticked off. Short fuse was a side to Mia I had only guessed at.

“’I asked you if you only interdigitate once a day?’ I replied innocently working hard to keep the grin off my face. She obviously did not know what the hell I was talking about, but she was not ready to let me know it. I started walking again. She stood still for a moment and then scurried up beside me. We walked for another few yards before I asked again.

“She hesitated and then grudgingly -- as if she had committed some major sin -- quietly replied, ‘No, I’ve not set any limit on that. Should I?’

“’Oh no,’ I replied, ‘I kind of enjoyed holding your hand earlier, but when you didn’t take mine a minute or so ago, I wasn’t sure if you had set some sort of personal daily limit.’

“She started to giggle and then punched my shoulder -- hard. ‘You are truly nuts -- one of your oars is clearly out of the water -- and that’s a fact.’ And she took my hand. ‘Where did you get that word? What was it?’

“’Interdigitate,’ I replied. ‘The first time I heard the word was when a kid in my Sex-Ed class -- his name was Jerry Piels, I think -- asked our female Sex-Ed teacher if she thought interdigitation before marriage was morally wrong.”

Al Rennie; Clearwater Journals; Smashwords; 2011.

“So the days would have passed, literary labour interdigitating with agricultural.”

V.S. Naipaul; The Mimic Men; Andre Deutsch; 1967.

My Favorite Quiz

I had a "school-teaching memory" that popped into my head this morning ...

Near the end of my career (I retired in the spring of 2011)  I was teaching English III at Western Reserve Academy. High school juniors. American literature + Hamlet (a play about that great American hero).

In the winter we read Melville's wonderful not-so-short story "Benito Cereno" (1855--four years after Moby-Dick), a story based on an actual event--a slave rebellion aboard a Spanish slave ship off the western coast of South America. It deals with a rather dense captain of another ship--an American one--Captain Delano (an ancestor of Franklin Delano Roosevelt)--an officer who does not recognize what's happened aboard the slave ship when he goes there to "visit." Not until it's almost too late.

Anyway, "Benito" is not an easy text to read--but well worth the trouble (I'm not sure all my former students would agree). Melville seduces readers, gets them rooting for the wrong team. It dazzled me when I realized what he'd done ...

Anyway, when we finished the text, I gave them a reading quiz; many groans ensued when I announced it. But the groans soon turned into other sounds when they actually started completing the quiz. They all got 100% on it--and I'm sure you will, too, if you want to give it a whirl.

I put the answers at the end--DON'T CHEAT! I'M WATCHING! You do NOT need to read the story to take the quiz! But if you do want to read it one of these days, I've put a link here.

Link to text of "Benito."

	___  11

 

Ridiculously Difficult Final “Benito Cereno” Quiz

Instructions: Match the letters below with the statements that best go with them.

a. Atufal

b. Babo

c. Bachelor’s Delight

d. Benito Cereno

e. Captain Delano

f. Daniel-o Dyer-eno

g. Don Alexandro

h. Herman Melville

i. Iceland

j. Mayflower

k. San Dominick

l. Santa Maria

m. seals

n. slaves

o. Starship Enterprise

p. William Shakespeare

___  1. Captain of the San Dominick, the Spanish ship,   (He's also called Don Benito.)

___  2. Captain of the American ship, Bachelor’s Delight.  (A later relative was Franklin Delano Roosevelt.)

___  3. Leader of the slave rebellion (pronounced BABB-oh)

___  4. Second in command of the slave rebellion (pronounced uh-TOO-ful)

___  5. Owner of the slaves; his skeleton’s name was Don Alexandro.

___  6. Name of the American ship (note: a bachelor is an unmarried man).

___  7. Name of the Spanish ship (note: San is Spanish for Saint).

___  8. Main human cargo on the Spanish ship.

___  9. Furry animals that the Americans were hunting before they met the Spanish slave ship, San Dominick.  (Used for seal furs and seal oil.)

___ 10. Author of “Benito Cereno” (Originally spelled his last name Melvill).

___ 11. The island near Chile where the action of the story occurs.  (Means St. Mary in English.)

___ 12. A long-ago Spanish relative of Benito Cereno whose descendant is now my English III teacher at WRA.

ANSWERS (don't cheat!): d, e, b, a, g, c, k, n, m, h, l, f

We (Apparently) Stink

We stink. And badly so.

This is the inference I have drawn from so many TV commercials I have seen lately. Now, Joyce and I don't watch much TV. We do stream bits of "our" shows for about an hour before Lights Out, and, during supper, we customarily stream the previous day's The Daily Show. That's about it.

And it's then--at supper, on The Daily Show--that we see repetitive ads for products that will make us smell better--from sprays to use around the house (and in the car) to detergent pods to use (not eat) to other sorts of personal products that will make us less offensive to those unfortunate enough to find themselves in our presence.

There are at least two ads we've seen that feature mothers crinkling up their noses at the smells in the house (and in the car). They're pretty funny, actually.

Companies have made vast fortunes by convincing us that, without them, we stink. Personal deodorant, perfume, after-shave, laundry products, sprays, things you plug in at home so the house won't smell like a stable. You know ...

But do we smell bad? I don't--of that I'm positive. Just ask ... well ... me.

But I also realize that throughout most of our species' history we have gone through our entire lives without products to make us smell better. I believe it was only when bathing became so difficult and onerous (think: the London of Henry VIII, etc.) that we began trying to replace our natural odor with something more pleasing to the noses of others.

I mean, if you had to carry buckets of water a mile or so from the polluted River Thames so that you and your family could bathe, how often would you do it? (And, of course, only the first bather got the benefits of the "fresh" Thames water; all subsequent users got the Thames plus the residue from the previous bathers.)

Most people in our country bathe at least once a day, I think. (I could be wrong--probably am.) But with frequent bathing, improved, of course, by scented soap and shampoo and body-wash and whatever, do we really need to splash on cologne and perfume afterward?

And besides--thinking in evolutionary fashion--didn't our "natural" smells attract rather than repel our distant ancestors, whose genes, of course, continue to have homes in us? If, say, a distant grandfather (one with twenty or so greats in front of it) reeked so badly, would my distant grandmother (one with twenty or so greats in front of it) have allowed herself to be ... seduced? Wouldn't she have wrinkled her nose and said, "Ugh!"?* Causing our family tree to wither, drop leaves, and die?

Now, of course, believing after decades of advertising that we all smell terrible, when we do smell someone's "natural" odor, we crinkle our noses and sprint for the Febreze. Ah, Progress!


*I'm not sure of this punctuation but am too lazy to check it.

Ignorance Is Bliss?

I just looked up the origin of this famous saying--and realized, once I'd done so, that I'd once known it. From a poem by Thomas Gray, 1716-71. (Link to entire poem, "Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College.") The famous part occurs in the final stanza:

To each his suff'rings: all are men,

         Condemn'd alike to groan,

The tender for another's pain;

         Th' unfeeling for his own.

Yet ah! why should they know their fate?

Since sorrow never comes too late,

         And happiness too swiftly flies.

Thought would destroy their paradise.

No more; where ignorance is bliss,

          Tis folly to be wise.

I should say that I first met Gray back in my senior year at Hiram (Ohio) High School (1961-62), when our English teacher, Mrs. Davis, required us to memorize some of Gray’s "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard." I just looked again at the poem, and I think she asked us to memorize only the opening stanza--or maybe that's all I got around to? (It's the only part that seems ... intimately familiar.)

Here's that opening stanza:

The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,

         The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea,

The plowman homeward plods his weary way,

         And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

Anyway, the Eton poem about ignorance and bliss is a dark one. The speaker is looking over the school at Eton, a prep school near Windsor (Percy Bysshe Shelley attended it--unhappily so), and when I visited Windsor back in the 1990s, I took some pictures of the school--which I'll try to find before I post this.

The speaker is talking about how naive the young are--how they can't imagine things growing darker in their lives. And so we see the relevance of the ignorance is bliss line.

I sort of agree.

When you don't know what's coming--what dark thing is coming--you can be, well, blissful. I think about my childhood, about a time when all the family deaths and tragedies lay so far ahead that I thought they would never happen. Certainly not to us!

But, of course, they did. So many of the people I adored in boyhood are gone now. So many classmates, friends, colleagues, former students. It's impossible to be blissful when the memories of those losses rise up at night, when all those people continue to populate my memory and dreams, when I realize now more clearly than ever before that I will join them. And not far in the future, either ...

But in another way, I do not believe that ignorance is bliss. In fact, the older I've gotten, the more I've been frustrated with my ignorance--even angry about it.

Every time I read a book (and many of you know that I read a lot of them), I am annoyed to discover all the things that I don't know--and (worse) the things that I will probably never know.

Every book I read informs me about another book I should read--or books I should read. In a way it's exciting (still so much to learn out there!), but it's also depressing (of all those things to learn out there, I am barely going to skim the surface of them).

When I finished reading all the novels and travel books of Charles Dickens some decades ago, I remember thinking: Okay, that's done!

But then I moved on to Anthony Trollope, Tobias Smollett, William Makepeace Thackeray--and now I'm nearing the end of my journey through Wilkie Collins' novels. And when I do (if I do), I know that there are countless others waiting in line. Impatiently so.

There's sometimes a temptation to just throw up my hands and quit.

But I won't. Not until I have to. Here's one of the searing images from the life of my mother, also a compulsive reader. Near the end of her life (she died at 98), she could no longer do so many of the things she'd loved to do throughout her life. Reading was one of the last. But until she had to move into a nursing facility from her assisted living unit, she kept on her table by her easy chair the last book she'd been reading. Unfinished. She couldn't read any longer, but she wanted that book where she could see it.

That's the way I want to go--if I have to live that long (which I probably will not): an unfinished book lying on the table beside me.

Let me end with something I read the other night in one of Wilkie Collins' final novels--Heart and Science (1883). Two doctors are talking, and one of them says: "'Give ignorance time ... and ignorance will become knowledge--if a man is in earnest'" (100).

Ignorance can become knowledge, but, as the doctor says, we must be "in earnest" if we want that transformation to be occur.

And I wonder, today, when so many people are perfectly happy with what they already know--and want no new information or fact to disturb their intellectual/emotional equilibrium--if the whole concept of being in earnest about replacing ignorance with knowledge is evanescing, right in front of our eyes.