Hiatus

 On hiatus for a while.

What Dreams May Come ...

Benedict Cumberbatch as the Melancholy Dane--
the best I ever saw

 

I'm sure a lot of you remember "To be or not to be"--some of you former juniors of mine at Western Reserve Academy had to memorize it for class--and the lines Hamlet utters. He thinks about suicide, then wonders "what dreams may come" when he is dead. The thought of that he says "must give us pause."

Well, I did some pausing today as I reflected on the dreams I had last night. For some reason I've been sleeping more deeply lately--even remembering some details of dreams. I'll not rehearse them all for you, but last night was something typical.

A mixture of places in my life. At Kent State's Satterfield Hall (where Joyce and I met 51 years ago this summer), and some other places I knew so well (but can't remember now). On the same stage. The same set. Why?

People from my life mixed together--as if Hamlet were to wander onto the stage and find Willy Loman there and commence a conversation as if nothing were ... untoward. In one dream last night (I had several that I sort of remember) our teenage son (he's 48 now!) was there, some friends from my own junior high, Joyce--jumbled together in the "story"--as if some author had populated her novel with characters from Moby-Dick, Infinite Jest, Jane Eyre, The Sun Also Rises, Frankenstein, Watership Down, and, okay, Hamlet.

Yet I don't recall (in the dream) thinking that anything was amiss.

I shouldn't be surprised: Our minds are crammed with all the people we've known, all the places we've been, all the things we've done (including, of course, those we desperately wish we could forget).  It shouldn't really surprise us that when we lose control (i.e., when we sleep) all these things and people come out to mingle--to entertain or alarm us. And our minds, at rest, simply accept it. 

Until we wake up and think, Now, that was weird! Or: Whew! Just a dream!

Indeed.

I'm not sure I've ever believed that dreams "mean" more than what they are--the doors to the past swung wide. But I'm not a psychiatrist or psychologist, so what do I know?

Not much more than Hamlet, who said of death and dreaming:

"Who knows what dreams may come / When we have shuffled off this mortal coil / Must give us pause. ... the undiscover'd country from whose bourn [border/boundary] / No traveler returns ...."

Like Hamlet, I wouldn't mind if all my dreams rehearsed things I've enjoyed, loved, accomplished.

But they don't, do they? At least, mine don't.

When I Learned a Big Word

Yesterday, on my tear-off word-a-day calendar, antediluvian turned up. It's yet another word  I can remember learning in a specific way--though I might have learned it earlier (I should have!) than 1968 when the popular singer Donovan released that song "Atlantis." In March 1968, you see, I was already a teacher of English (was well into my second year!) and would turn ... twenty-two ... that year. (And I did not meet Joyce until the summer of 1969.)

Donovan (Philips Leitch) was from Scotland and is just two years younger than I (as I type this, we are both still alive). His "Atlantis" was an odd popular song for the day--and it was popular: It reached #7 on the U. S. charts. The song, you see (or remember!) was full of talking. No not rap. Plain old talking, Well, not really "plain." Artful. And written by Donovan himself. (See lyrics at the bottom of this post.)

I remember then, hearing that song many times on the radio, how strange it was: The Beatles, Otis Redding, Cream, The Temptations, The Delfonics--these and many others were popular in 1968. Donovan did not sound like them.

Here's a link to the song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AUEjzVQwKo

It was long, too--over five minutes (also unusual for the day--though The Beatles would soon transform that, as well.)

As I said, I should have known antediluvian (before the Flood and Noah). My father was an ordained minister as was my grandfather Osborn, as was my uncle Ronald Osborn (he taught at Christian Theological Seminary in Indianapolis--on the campus of Butler University). I even toyed with the idea when I was in college, majoring in religion and philosophy for a couple of terms (then decided I'd rather read novels and poems than dense works by Aristotle, Nietzsche, Locke, et al.--the same reason I eschewed law school even after I was admitted about a third of the way through my teaching career).

Still, I have no memory of antediluvian before Donovan.

Surely, I had heard it? Surely I had "learned" it in the countless Sunday School classes I attended, the endless hours of Vacation Bible School, the conversations among my father, uncle, grandfather?

If so, I don't remember it--at all.

I'd like to say that after 1968 I plopped that word out on the conversation plate when I was talking with my dad or Uncle Ronald  (Grandfather Osborn died in 1965, before "Atlantis"). But I didn't. I'm not sure, even now, that I've ever spoken the word in public. (I have written it in articles.)

Now, of course, I'm starting to feel somewhat antediluvian myself. Every time it rains, for me, it rains no pennies from heaven. Instead, I look to see if some neighbor is gathering lots of wood, if animals are parading, two by two, down my street to his house.

And I also sit here wondering, "Why did Donovan know that word and I didn't?

Lyrics to "Atlantis":

“Atlantis”

Donovan

 

The continent of Atlantis was an island

Which lay before the great flood

In the area we now call the Atlantic Ocean

So great an area of land, that from her western shores

Those beautiful sailors journeyed

To the South and the North Americas with ease

In their ships with painted sails

To the east, Africa was a neighbor

Across a short strait of sea miles

The great Egyptian age is but a remnant of The Atlantian culture

The antediluvian kings colonized the world

All the gods who play in the mythological dramas

In all legends from all lands were from fair Atlantis

Knowing her fate, Atlantis sent out ships to all corners of the Earth

On board were the Twelve

The poet, the physician, the farmer, the scientist

The magician and the other so-called gods of our legends

Though gods they were

And as the elders of our time choose to remain blind

Let us rejoice and let us sing and dance and ring in the new

Hail Atlantis!

 

Way down below the ocean

Where I wanna be, she may be

Way down below the ocean

Where I wanna be, she may be

Way down below the ocean

Where I wanna be, she may be

Way down below the ocean

Where I wanna be, she may be

Way down below the ocean

Where I wanna be, she may be

The End of a Special Time

 

Yesterday, my bank account showed the final deposit from Kirkus Reviews for the last book review I did. It wasn't much: I'd done only one the past month (as I explained in an earlier post), but I still felt a "twinge" of sorrow and regret. (Some years ago I opted for direct deposit--so no more monthly checks came--but I kind of like the image I "borrowed" from Google.)

As I've said here (see my earlier post on July 4 this year if you want more details),* I began reviewing for them in 1999 when a Hudson friend, Ron Antonucci (who was working at the Hudson Library and Historical Society--and was also reviewing for Kirkus), asked me if I'd be interested. I was.

And now--1563 reviews later, the last check arrived in my bank account.

In ways I am glad the gig's over. I just don't have the energy, the eyesight, the confidence in my body (cursed cancer!) that I did for so many years, and so I'm relieved that I don't have to contact my editor and tell him that I can't complete a review--or that I will have to miss a deadline (which I never did).

Also, there was the building pressure each week as Friday loomed ever near (Friday was the day I filed my reviews, for the most part).

But I miss so much of the rest of it. For Kirkus I read many books that I never otherwise would have read--and, as I've said, I was almost always glad that I had done so. Learned so much. (Too bad I can't remember all of it!)

I've described my routine earlier, so I won't go over that again. Instead, a moment about the identity I've lost by retiring. Yes, for most of my post-teaching life I was that "book-reviewing guy": I reviewed both for Kirkus and the Cleveland Plain Dealer (about once/month for them). Now, I'm just that Old Guy Who's Reading All the Time.

I know: a bit self-absorbed. (Probably more than that! Probably nearing the border of Pathetic.) But as you age, that's what happens. Things do not so much fall apart (though they do do that) as ... go away.

I'm no longer the Teacher, the Play Director, the Essayist (I wrote op-eds for the Plain Dealer for a number of years, too, as part of what they then called their Board of Contributors--again about once/month), the Book Reviewer. If you haven't experienced something like this, it's kind of sad.

I watched it happen to my grandparents, my parents, Joyce's parents. Now it's my turn.

I don't want to sound like Debbie Downer here; it's just something I've been thinking about--and feeling.

There's still so many things I do (besides read books I will never review): I write this blog, I write silly poems for Facebook, I have another blog, Daily Doggerel, which I pollute with ... well, with doggerel. Every now and then I publish direct to Amazon a collection of that "verse." (I'm afraid to remove the quotation marks around "verse"; if you've read some of it, you'll know why!)

So, I can't really complain, can I? No one is guaranteed perpetual Youth and Energy and Health--except, of course, in, oh, Greek Mythology, where things don't always turn out too well--just ask, oh, Tithonus. who asked for eternal life but forgot to include eternal youth!**

* link to July 4 post: http://dawnreader.blogspot.com/2020/07/yesterday-end.html

** link to a summary of the Tithonus story: https://www.greekmythology.com/Myths/Mortals/Tithonus/tithonus.html

 And I just discovered that Tennyson has a poem about poor Tithonus:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45389/tithonus

Seidman ... Again

 

Seidman Cancer Center
Beachwood, Ohio

Monday, August 10, 2020; 9:00 a.m.

In a couple of hours, Joyce and I will drive back up to Seidman Cancer Center in Beachwood (for the gajillion-th time), where I will meet with my oncologist, review my recent test scores, talk--and I'll probably get a couple of injections, too.

I've been on a new med, Xtandi, since July 17, and its effects have been quick: My PSA score (Prostate Specific Antigen) dropped from my June measurement of 5.12 (it had begun rising again after a steady fall for a bit) to 0.65. (The PSA score is an indicator of the growth of my cancer.) That's very encouraging.

The other blood work was good, also--a couple of small deviations from the norm, but we'll see what my physician has to say about them.

Less encouraging: My dizziness has grown ever worse since I've begun the Xtandi. On Saturday, Joyce had to help me up the stairs, help me get ready for bed. And this morning I didn't dare walk over to the coffee shop (as is my long, beloved habit): I knew I couldn't make it--not without some visits with the sidewalk, up close and personal. (A new kind of Face Time?)

There is an alternative drug we'll probably talk about today (I forget the name), but it includes some other unpleasant side effects, so we'll see what he recommends. Right now, I have very little time during the day when I can stand up--sitting and lying down are all right, so far.

Today's appointment is for early afternoon, so I may post a follow-up later today--or tomorrow. We'll see.

Monday, 2:51 p.m.

We're back. A fairly easy drive up there--the I-271 project, which has lasted longer than the building of the Brooklyn Bridge, is starting to make sense (though some drivers on the road are manifestly not)--and we arrived a bit early.

We went through the checks: temperature, questions about COVID, etc. Then we sat socially-distanced in a waiting room before they called us back for vitals (weight, BP, etc.)--then some more waiting for my oncologist to arrive (not all that long, really).

He was happy with my numbers--but not happy with my dizziness (join the party!), so we are going to try adjusting the meds to see if there's any effect. (He's also submitting a request for an inner-ear guy.) I felt better, just talking about it with someone who's concerned about it and wants to try some things. I've often received just shrugs before--as if to say, Not my thing ... sorry.

He also wants me to drink more--no, not that way!

So ... I will go off Xtandi for a week--and if there's dizziness-improvement, then he'll adjust the dosage. Today, I also received no Trelstar injection (another suppressant of testosterone--another possible source of the dizziness) and will see how I'm doing in six weeks, when I visit again.

I did get an injection of Xgeva, a bone-strengthening med (my cancer is now in my bones--and Trelstar weakens the bones). Not a bad one--in an area beneath my arm. Can be painful--but this nurse was excellent.

So ... encouraging numbers, discouraging dizziness, encouraging efforts by physician to look for solutions, wonderful ride home with Joyce--and small lunch with Joyce--and hope, hope, hope, which, as Miss Emily wrote, is winged.

Some Things I Don't Understand

 

• As I was reading this morning, I heard tiny footsteps on the roof above me. This part of the roof has two skylights, and I soon saw the source: a squirrel. Awww ... Except: He was up there far too long, moving back and forth ... has he/she found a way into our attic? I'll have to check later.
• Why do those who operate the farm market here on our village green allow people to have leashed dogs with them? Not everyone likes dogs; some fear them (I don't--I generally like them). But you couldn't bring your Great Dane with you inside the grocery store?
• I just typed "Great Dan" before I realized what I'd done.
• Why did I go ahead and add an -e?
• Why is it invariably young people who are not wearing masks around here?
• What can I do about the feral cat that stalks birds in our backyard? People in the neighborhood are feeding it, so I can't adopt it (not that I would in my Frailer Days).
• Why did our lawn crew skip us this week? Our back yard now looks like the Nebraska prairie.
• Why am I still buying books? I mean--I could check them out of the library, buy them on Kindle, etc. Or steal them. But I don't ...
• Why have social media become anti-social media? I joined Facebook to keep in touch with friends and former students--to see their families, hear their stories, envy their food. Now, I must scroll (rapidly!) through hateful posts, some of which, I confess, condemn (viciously) the likes of me (i.e., a Democrat). In recent years, it seems, I've become a Nazi, a libtard, a socialist, a hater of cops, a supporter of street violence--none true.
• So I don't get into it on social media. What's the point? Minds are made up. I remember my father, a Republican, sticking by Nixon, even as his helicopter whirled away from the White House for the final time.
• I wish I could just take a pill that would control my incessant dizziness Why isn't there one? There are a lot of pills that cause it; you would think, by now, some chemical/pharmaceutical genius would have come up with something to counteract the problem.
• I'm terrified for teachers and students this rapidly approaching school year. Were I still teaching, I don't know what I'd do ... take a leave? Quit? I can hardly manage to walk to the coffee shop and back while wearing a mask (puff, puff) ... how will kids and teachers be able to cope? And I have trouble communicating the simplest requests at the shop, the simplest friendly conversation. How could I carry on a discussion about Hamlet? (Why, it would be as confusing as some of the play!)
• I've not hugged our grandsons--or our son and his wife--since early March.
• Why are there so many "people" out there whose sole goal in life appears to be to con others out of things? (I put "people" in quotation marks because I'm not sure they are human.) On the phone, on the Internet--they're everywhere. I'm beginning to revise my (libtard) feelings about capital punishment!
• Why can't we just settle-the-hell down and try to work with one another to make this country a better place for everyone? A safer, more secure, more hopeful place? Why is there so much my-way-or-the-highway in our political differences? Why must we demonize folks?
• Why ...? Nah, I'm getting depressed. Let's end this before I get more depressed than my own writing of this has just cause me to be!

Time Flies--I Can't ...

 

My dad liked silly jokes. He probably liked the "other kind," too (after all, he grew up on an Oregon farm with many brothers and spent lots of years in the military--on active duty and in the reserves), but he rarely shared such stories with his impressionable young sons.

One of his silly ones was this: "Time flies--I can't--they go too fast." (My own grandsons had to think a minute before they caught on--so don't feel bad if you do, too.) (And, when I was a kid, it took me, oh, about a century to figure it out.)

Anyway, for me the old expression "Time flies" seems pathetic right now--woefully inadequate (to quote a teacher's comment on an essay I wrote in high school). Time, for me, now approaches the speed of light.

Just a few for-instances:

• Our son just turned 48. When I taught him in eighth grade (1985-86), I turned 41.
• Our elder grandson begins 10th grade this year.
• I am only about ten years younger than my father was when he died (he was 86). I thought he was beyond ancient. (I was a puppy then--just 55.)
• The first seventh graders I taught in Aurora (1966-67) are now eligible for Social Security and Medicare.
• Enough.

But COVID times, it seems, have accelerated things for me. Today is Friday ... but how can that be? Yesterday was Friday, wasn't it? I mean, wasn't it just yesterday that Joyce and I drove down to Szalay's Farm and Market to buy some corn and other goodies? Are we really going to do that again this evening?

And tomorrow morning I will feed my sourdough starter for my Sunday baking. Didn't I do that just yesterday?

The eight scones I baked last week are almost gone--is it really time to mix-and-bake again?

And didn't I just screw up the courage to get a haircut the other day? No, it was five weeks ago.

Didn't I just visit with my oncologist earlier this week? No, it was more than a month ago.

And weren't Joyce and I married just last Christmas? No, it was fifty-one years ago.

Didn't I ...?

You get it.

I imagine all of this is a factor of aging. I mean, I don't remember feeling this way at all when I was younger--in fact, I thought time dragged. I actually recall sitting in study hall in 7th grade and realizing that I was only halfway through my school years. Tears formed. How could I endure it any longer?

And then it was over--and then college was over--and then grad school was over--and then our son left home to commence his own independent life--and then my teaching career was over--and then my parents were both gone--and then (let's not get into that!).

So I sit here wondering: Is it COVID that's accelerating things? Or is it something more ... insidious?

***

PS: This seems all familiar as I write it--didn't I write on the same topic yesterday? I jut checked: I did write on this topic back in early March--and used a similar title and some of the same illustrations, examples, and Dad's joke!

So it took me just about five months to forget I'd done it. Good sign or not? Let's not discuss it.

Maybe time flies because my memory is flying?

Missing Stratford

All week in my Facebook "Memories" I have been seeing pictures of Stratford, Ontario (like the one above from 2017--the city hall). And each day I feel--what?--wistfulness? despair? (nah) when I realize that those wonderful weeks Joyce and I spent up there from 2001-2017 can be no more.

And what were we doing there?

The Stratford Theatre Festival (used to be called the Stratford Shakespeare Festival).

The first week in August we would drive up there (via Detroit/Windsor or Niagara Falls), stay in our favorite room, almost always at the Mercer Hall Inn right on the main street (see pic at the bottom of this post). We would leave home on late Monday morning, arriving late afternoon (no plays on Mondays), park our car in the Mercer Hall lot, and not drive again until we left for home on Sunday afternoon (after the final matinee of the week).

While we were there, our main business, of course, was to see plays--eleven in six days (four by the Bard each season--usually). The theaters--all within walking distance--were very different, each from the other. The Studio, The Festival, The Avon, the Tom Patterson--each gave the audience a different way to see a play--from close-up-and-intimate (Studio) to traditional (Avon) to arena (Tom Patterson) to one resembling the Shakespeare Globe (but with no room for groundlings!).

We saw virtually all of Shakespeare's plays there (not all--we had to catch some others, like Richard II, at other venues here and there), but we also saw American classics (by Tennessee Williams), English classics (by Coward and Wilde), new plays by Canadian playwrights, experimental things by some international playwrights (Beckett, Sartre). One of my favorites (of the experimental type) was a version of Moby-Dick: no words spoken until the very end--just movements and music, the final and only words being "Call me Ishmael." It was a dazzler.

We also loved the town of Stratford. We had some favorite coffee shops and restaurants, bookstores (there were quite a few of them--from second-hand to newbies). We both loved a kitchen store, where I bought, over the years, a bunch of bread-making devices and other things. Joyce loved all of that + some stores where we bought gifts for family, gifts to distribute throughout the year.

There were, of course, some "Shakespeare shops," where I bought things I would use with my classes back at Western Reserve Academy (where I taught Hamlet for a decade). And speaking of that play: One year, at the Festival Theatre, we saw a production. The melancholy Dane was as far downstage as he could get, center, doing "To be." In the middle of it, a cell phone rang, right in front of him (not six feet away). The woman scrambled in her purse to find the phone and shut it off--Hamlet just sank his head and waited (growing ever more melancholy, I would guess), then, when the silence finally came, continued with the world's most famous monologue. As if nothing untoward had happened. (As Hamlet himself says--his final words in the play--"The rest is silence.")

We saw the actors on the streets, in the coffee shops, the restaurants, and that was always a thrill, too. I spoke to a few of them (in appreciation, of course), and they were invariably gracious.

But ... no more. Time's winged chariot and all ... There is really no way I could now do that walking, see two major play productions a day ...

Every fall Joyce and I think about it (you need to reserve a room downtown about a year in advance), but we both know it's impossible.

But ... there are those fantastic memories--sitting in the dark with Joyce--hearing those wondrous words coming from the mouths of some spectacular performers--and talking, talking, talking with Joyce afterwards ... and all the way home ... and, I hope, until my final breath ...

Mercer Hall Inn, 2016

"As I Was Walking ...

... down the Street One Day"--a 1970 song from the group then called the Chicago Transit Authority (later, just Chicago). I liked it. (Link to song.)

And it applied to me today, sort of.

At 6:30 this morning I had appeared at the local lab of University Hospitals to get some blood draws to see how my cancer is/is not progressing. I'd been tense, of course--as I will be until I get the results in a day or two.

As soon as I got home, I walked over to Open Door Coffee for my Morning Carryout Fix--I was masked, natch. I put it on as I approach the sidewalk on Main Street: You never know when someone will pop out of a building or car. Playing it safe.

I also leave it on until I get home (another couple of blocks): My balance is not good these days, and even a simple act like raising or lowering a mask (with a cup of hot coffee in one hand) is a bit beyond me. So, it's just easier to leave it on.

Anyway, as I was walking down the street, south on Main Street, a red pickup, northbound, slowed beside me, and the driver yelled "Fuckin' retard!" at me before gunning it on northward.

Well.

I actually laughed at first because I knew what he was probably referring to: my wearing a mask on an otherwise unpopulated sidewalk.

I sort of laughed again when I thought what my mother's response probably would have been: "Pronounce the participial -g!" (She often said that to me when I dropped the -g from -ing words--as did my older brother.)

I grew more annoyed as I walked on home because that wee encounter is such a metaphor for how so many of us behave these days--and I'm not really excluding myself.

We both look and judge with our eyes. He (probably) looked at me and saw an older guy wearing a mask on an empty sidewalk--and what else could I be but a ... you know?

He knew nothing about me. He did not know I'd been a teacher for forty-five years. He did not know I've published books and hundreds of book reviews and articles. He did not know I had just been to a lab for blood work. He did not know I've been dealing with cancer for fifteen years--cancer that is incurable, cancer whose progress medication and radiation and immunotherapy and (next) chemotherapy can only, well, retard, not cure. He did not know that these medications have made my balance very unreliable, that I have to focus on every step, or ...

And, of course, I don't know anything about him--other than that he felt compelled to yell what he did at a white-haired old man--a masked man--moving unsteadily down Main Street. I don't know what difficulties he's having with his life. I don't know why he is so angry. I don't know where he was going.

I don't know a thing about him, other than that he was in a red truck and got annoyed when he saw me.

But that encounter is, as I said, so representative of what's going on today: We look; we judge; we condemn--without really knowing a thing about our defendant, except how he or she looks.

This is not a new phenomenon, of course. Read about the disappearance of the Neandertals in that wonderful book I read some years ago: How to Think Like a Neandertal (2011). We see difference; we quickly decide that person is not in our "tribe"; we kill them--actually or softly or otherwise.

Or just call them names.

"Does anyone really know what time it is?" sings Chicago.

I do. It's time we change. In fact, it's way past time. In fact, it may be already too late ...

Another Old Song Interrupts My Night

Carl Dobkins, Jr.

There is no way that I could have come up with that name until, this morning, I checked Google to learn about another insistent song that somehow sneaked into my head during the night--and would not leave. (Link to song.)

He released the song "My Heart Is an Open Book" in December 1958. I was in ninth grade at Hiram High School, and the song became a regular on the radio, on our 45rpm record players, at our sock hops.* It would reach Number 3 on the top hits of 1959.

Written by Hal David (!) and Lee Pockriss (?), the lyrics--and there aren't many--are simple (see below). Lots of repetition.

Dobkins, Jr., born in 1941 in Cincinnati (!), died in Mason, Ohio (about 24 miles NE of Cincinnati), on April 8 this year! (Was it COVID-19? I can't find it easily, and so I quit looking--that's my Old Guy Response these days.) His musical prominence did not last--so short was his popularity span, in fact, that (as I said at the top of this post) I could not come up with his name--and even when I saw it this morning on my screen, I did not recognize it.

A little lesson in humility, eh? Our names--unless they happen to be, oh, William Shakespeare or George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans)--will not live long after us. (Can you name--without cheating--all sixteen of your great-great grandparents?)

Anyway, the song is a simple plea: Don't believe that guy who's telling you lies about me; I am not cheating on you. "I love nobody but you," he says.

But the song caught on, hung around for a while, faded, died.

Sound familiar?

* I was very surprised to discover that "sock hop" (or any other of its variant spellings--soc hop, etc.) does not appear in Merriam-Webster online, in  dictionary.com, in the OED--tempus fugit.

Lyrics:

Don't believe all those lies
Darlin', just believe your eyes

And Look, look
My heart is an open book
I love nobody but you (ah, ah, ah, ah)
Look, look
My heart is an open book
My love is honest and true

Some jealous so and so 
Wants us to part
That's why he's tellin' you
That I've got a cheatin' heart

But don't believe all those lies
Darlin', just believe your eyes

And look, look
My heart is an open book
I love
Nobody but you

Some jealous so and so 
Wants us to part 
That's why he's tellin' you
That I've got a cheatin' heart

But don't believe all those lies
Darlin', just believe your eyes

And Look, look
My heart is an open book
I love 
Nobody but you
Nobody but you
Nobody but you

Sunday Sundries (On Monday), 288

1. HBOTW: Our son and his family down in Green, Ohio. Last week--out of the blue--son Steve arrived at our door with all sorts of hand-wipes and disinfectant, things he'd bought for us, knowing that we're still pretty wary about trips to stores. No finer Human Being of the Week!

2. I finished three books this week ...

     - The first was the most recent novel by Joyce Carol Oates--Night. Sleep. Death. The Stars, (2020). Nearly 800 pages long, the novel is ominously prescient, beginning, as it does, with some local cops who are abusing a motorist at the roadside. Need I say he is darker skinned (though we learn he is from India and is an M.D.)? Driving by is an older (white) man, a former mayor of the town, who pulls over to stop what's going on--and he too is tased to the ground, where he suffers a stroke.

And so the story begins. We become intimate with the former mayor's wife and older children (each of whom has major "issues") and watch how each copes with the case--a case which darkens when the father dies in the hospital.

One son launches a lawsuit, another (a latter-day hippie) seems withdrawn and more interested in his art; one daughter (a Ph.D. who is head of a local high school), seems to be losing her mind and ends up in therapy; another daughter, who the family thinks is working toward an M.D. (she isn't), is involved with her boss at the lab where she works. And Mom? Deeply devastated, she nearly falls apart, then meets an artist--not "white"--and hooks up with him, to the alarm of the "children."

On and on the stories twist and turn (Oates deftly moves from one to the other), and by the end we have all kinds of insights on America and race, on families, on art, on education--geez, on just about everything! Loved it. Learned from it.

I did a longer post here about Oates a couple (few?) weeks ago, and this novel did nothing but increase the admiration I have for her work. She's a wonder ...

BTW: I remarked (here? Facebook?) that the title sounds as if it belongs to a Stephen King novel--then, reading the epigraph, learned it's from a (very brief) Walt Whitman poem, "A Clear Midnight" (link to it).

     - The second was a tightly focused book about Emily Dickinson, These Fevered Days: Ten Pivotal Moments in the Making of Emily Dickinson (2020) by Martha Ackmann, who for years taught a seminar on ED for Mount Holyoke, a class that met in the Dickinson home in Amherst, Mass.

Ackmann has hit upon a clever device. An Amherst professor in the 19th century had kept a daily log of the weather in town, and Ackmann picks key days from Dickinson's life to tell us about, each day accompanied with a weather report!

The days will be familiar to ED fans: the publication of her first poem, her meeting with Thomas Wentworth Higginson (her mentor), with Helen Hunt Jackson, and so on. But Ackmann fills us in on the before-and-after for each encounter, and so we learn a lot along the way.

And we can all be grateful that Dickinson's family ignored her instructions to burn all her poems upon her death; the vast majority had never been published.

We see ED as a writer who did not write quickly--who wanted to get it right--which sometimes took a long, long time.

      - The third was My Lover's Lover, 2002, the 2nd novel by Maggie O'Farrell, with whose work I immediately fell in love when I read her new novel, Hamnet (2020), about the life and death of Shakespeare's son (he died at 11; we know virtually nothing about him).

This novel--like the two others I've read--is a dazzler of organization. We never know where we're going next, but, having gone there, we see. We understand. The story involves two young women--Lily and Sinead--both of whom tell their stories about their involvement with a young hustler named Marcus, an obsessive, lying lover.

It takes us a while to learn what has happened--why Marcus did X and Y. Oh, and both young women are friends with Aidan, a young man who is temporarily sharing a flat with Marcus--and (not at the same time) the two young women.

A grand coincidence in Australia answers the questions--and raises a host of more as we turn the final page.

I've already ordered her third novel--and Joyce, having read (and loved Hamnet), has finished the first of O'Farrell's novels and is (patiently, patiently) waiting for me to finish this post so she can dive into #2.

3. We have started streaming an odd series (PBS) that Joyce  read a review of somewhere--Professor T--a Belgian crime show about an OCD (extremely so!) professor who gets involved with solving various ... situations. We've seen only about 15 minutes of the first episode--but we are hooked.

Link to some video

4. I'm troubled that so many young people on the sidewalks in town are in groups and unmasked--teens and a little older. Believing you are immune and invulnerable and immortal does not make you so. 

5. As a nation we have faced fewer moral questions of greater gravity than this one--and I am not kidding: Should we re-open the schools?

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

     - from dictionary.com

verecund [VER-i-kuhnd ]

adjective (Archaic): bashful; modest.

ORIGIN: The uncommon adjective verecund, “bashful, modest,” comes straight from Latin verēcundus “restrained by or sensitive to scruples or feelings of modesty, shame, or self-respect.” Verēcundus is a compound of the verb verērī “to fear, show reverence for, be in awe of” and the adjective suffix –cundus, which indicates inclination or capacity. Verērī is the root in the very common verb revere (and its derivatives reverent, reverend, and reverence). Verecund entered English in the second half of the 16th century.

USAGE:

Our politics is speckled with men who are so diffident and verecund they never say a word about themselves or their achievements. "WHO'S WHO—AND WHY," SATURDAY EVENING POST , FEBRUARY 10, 1912

If there is any pereptible shift between early and later Dickens, then that transition seems to be one where the verecund persona gives way to a performance imbued with Pancksian relish in the double face of wonder and monstrosity. JULIAN WOLFREYS, WRITING LONDON: THE TRACE OF THE URBAN TEXT FROM BLAKE TO DICKENS, 1998

A Dreamy Graduation

There are thousands of people here--thousands!

Which seems weird. I mean, Hiram High's class of 1962 (mine) has only about forty graduates--yet here we are in some kind of stadium, with tens of thousands cheering us on. And there seem to be hundreds of graduates--maybe thousands.

I don't recognize a single person.

But there comes a the time in the program (how do I know?) for a kind of open-mic policy. New graduates can perform something.

Someone hands me the mic--he/she must know I memorize poems. I confidently launch into "Summer Kitchen," by Donald Hall. It's a poem I recite silently almost every day. I love it

It doesn't cross my mind that Hall wrote that poem about forty years after 1962.

I glide through the first line: In June's high light she stood at the sink ...

Then blank ... I cannot remember a single word beyond that.

Noise swells in the stadium. We're in a stadium?

I sense some classmates around me urging me to do another one.

So I launch into Auden's "As I Walked Out One Evening": As I walked out one evening / Walking down Bristol Street ...

I blank again. Nothing.

Someone, mercifully, takes the mic.

I assume the fetal position and slump to the floor. Some other new grad is singing now.

I wake up.

**

That is what I dealt with last night--the old "frustration dream" that usually deals with my teaching career: classes that won't listen, rooms full of students I don't even know, a lesson I've forgotten, a class I didn't even know I had, etc.

Last night was the first time I'd had the "graduation dream"--the first time (that I remember) that I'd dreamed about forgetting lines to poems I know.

Oh, I can't wait for that dream to come again--it was so ... pleasant last night.

Actually, the only thing that was pleasant was waking up and realizing it had been a dream--I mean, I was convinced it was really happening ...

Link to "Summer Kitchen"

Link to "As I Walked Out One Evening"