“In spite of all the learned have said ...”

Philip Freneau

Philip Freneau (1752-1852) was a journalist and poet in the early years our country was forming. And, oh, by the way, I once wrote an undergraduate paper about him back at Hiram College (1962-66) and am surpassingly grateful that some copy of that paper is not swirling around on the Internet. If you read it, you’d know why I feel that way.

He wasn’t a great poet—or even a very good one—but because he was one of our earliest, he is still anthologized.

One of his poems (“The Indian Burying Ground,” 1787) I’ve memorized—principally because of that research paper I wrote decades ago. (Link to poem.)

Most of that poem doesn’t have anything to do with what I want to write about today, but the first two lines do—here they are:

“In spite of all the learned have said, / I still my old opinion keep ....”

Sound familiar—not the exact words but the message? It could very well be the mantra of much public behavior in our country these days—not just “live” behavior but on social media, as well.

There are a tremendous number of people out there who have come to reject “the learned,” who reject the research and the findings that the learned have advocated.

Part of the problem is that the learned so often publicly disdain lesser educated folks. So many of the learned have earned the noun/adjective elitist. We have forgotten that, in a democracy, we are all equal—if not in knowledge, in humanity.

Though we all have different knowledge, skills, and experiences, the elitists often seem to have forgotten the value of so many other people’s labor and knowledge to the welfare of our country. Elitists sometimes sniff when they ought to sing their gratitude.

One result of this has been that many in our country reject “all the learned have said” in favor of what they think—or what they hear on our wildly divergent social media and news sites.

And, by the way, our media have always been divided. From the earliest days of our country political opponents have published their own newspapers, published egregious distortions (and lies) about the other side.

Anyway, I’ve always tried to value people for what they know, not disdained them for what they don’t. I listen to the mechanics who work on our car, the lawn service crew who work on our lawn, the kind people making my coffee, the man who delivers our mail. And on and on.

Just as I, Back in the Day, wanted folks to listen to me when I talked about teaching English in a middle school (which I did for about thirty years). We need to listen to those who know.

My Facebook friends are about as diverse a list of human beings there could possibly be. I don’t agree with what all of them say, but I try to hear it. Try to understand it.

I don’t argue online. (It’s pointless, isn’t it?) And one principal reason is this: I love my former students (who compose about 90% of my Friends list), so I try to listen—and understand.

This is one of the reasons that our current, volcanic society is so depressing to me—people screaming in public meetings, people doubting the work of people in highly specialized fields, people who have decided that anything they hear that they don’t agree with is “fake news.”

Anyway, I am not long for this world, but as long as I am here, I will listen to my oncologist, to my other doctors, to my many friends who practice occupations that I know so little about.

Maybe—if we listen more, respect those who know things we don’t—we will never again write poems that begin with “In spite of all the learned have said.”

Yes, we are all equal but we must rely on the various talents and knowledge of people who are very different in superficial ways from us.

Writers Who Disappear

 

The evanescence of popular writers is the damndest thing. And as I’ve galloped toward senescence, I’ve seen it occur, over and over in my lengthening life.

Today, for example, having lunch in our family room, I noticed a couple of shelves of books by Ed McBain (see pic above). Who reads him anymore? Who even knows his name? He was once very popular.

Evan Hunter lived from 1926 to 2005 and wrote under some pseudonyms—including McBain. He wrote scores of books—it seemed that one was coming out every few months. He used numerous pseudonyms (check them out on Wikipedia). He also wrote screenplays, plays, etc.

As McBain, he wrote a couple of series that got me hooked: the 87th Precinct (about a group of cops), as Matthew Hope he wrote books with clever folklore-related titles, like There Was a Little Girl and Mary, Mary). I gobbled them up like bon-bons.

But I couldn’t read them all—there were too many. But I did buy a lot.

Later, after Hunter died, we were downsizing, and we tried to sell his books (all first printings).

Ha!

No one, it seems, had ever heard of him. Or cared to own—or read—what he had published.

And that’s when I began to notice that fictioneers like him—but also “serious, ” “literary” writers whose names, perhaps, still resonate—wrote books (I am guessing) that are not all that frequently read—not the way they used to be.

Norman Mailer, Saul Bellow, Thomas Berger, Gore Vidal, and numerous others—their books used to fly off the bookstore shelves and flap over to my house—as they did to the houses of countless other readers.

I could be wrong (I kind of hope I am), but I haven’t heard anyone talk about these writers in a long time.

Of course, I don’t get out much ... too much to stream ...

Middle Child

 

The new novel by Jonathan Franzen—Crossroads—arrived the other day, and I’ve dived into it. (I generally love his work.) 

So far—I’ve read only about 100 of its nearly 600–it deals with things so familiar to me: the 1960s and the related anxieties (Vietnam, civil rights, assassinations, etc.), high school and college popularity dramas, life in a minister’s family—a life that includes three children.

Of the middle son, Franzen writes, that “by his own rational assessment, he was the one child in the family with no rightful claim to a room of his own, being neither the oldest nor the youngest ...” (20).

I was the middle child in our family with three boys: One is older by three years; the other, younger by four.

I guess I displayed in boyhood some evident symptoms of “the middle-child syndrome” (maybe I still do?), but I don’t recall feeling a lot of resentment. We were/are so different from one another, you see.

My older brother was a reader, a lover of classical music, a winner of scholarships and academic honors. (He and my younger brother were both high school valedictorians; I was not.) He played the piano with great talent.

I was more interested in sports and spent my days playing games, specializing in basketball and baseball—doing very well in both in our tiny Hiram High School. I also liked music and played principal parts in our school musicals. I had nowhere near the musical knowledge of my older brother—or his musical talent—but I got by. I don’t recall being jealous of him—but proud at his piano recitals, where he had the honor of performing last.

My younger brother loved sports, too—but also reading and doing well at school. (His musical talent was, well, not impressive.) He ended up going to Harvard, where he also earned his Ph.D. in history. With some friends he later formed a company that writes and publishes business histories.

My older brother went to Hiram College (as I did), but while I was coasting along, he was working hard and earned his way into Harvard, too, for grad school. He worked for a while toward his doctorate, too—got very close—then got the opportunity to be the classical music critic for the Boston Globe—and that’s how he spent the rest of his career.

And I? I got into a grad school program, got no scholarship money, and ended up teaching in a middle school—a career I loved. I earned a doctorate at Kent State, where I met Joyce (also a grad student), and, fifty-two years later, we are still married, and there has never been a more fortunate man than I.

And so, yes, I am the middle child, but I mostly admired rather than resented my brothers. How could I not?

Now, as life is winding down, I am grateful for my family (I was so fortunate—wonderful parents and other relatives), so spectacularly grateful for Joyce and her wonderful family, so humbled by it all.

I won the SuperLotto, it seems—not the one that delivers millions of dollars but the one that delivers a lifetime of happiness—and gratitude.

“One’s Erring Fingers”

 

  

I’ve started reading my way through some of the novels by Dawn Powell in the two Library of America editions edited by my FB friend Tim Page.

In the second novel in the first volume—Come Back to Sorrento (1932)—I was struck by a bit of a sentence: “one’s erring fingers” (208).

It reminded me of ... me.

The quotation refers to a piano player—as if I needed a reminder  of my own “skills” on that instrument. I took lessons throughout my boyhood and adolescence, rarely practiced, as was quite evident to anyone who ever heard me play.

I still remember the puzzled look on the face of my high school basketball coach when I told him I had to miss a practice because I had to play in a piano recital that evening. It was the reaction he’d have had if I’d told him I was going to be orbiting the earth that night.

I played one of Beethoven’s German dances—loud and impressive (but not that difficult a piece)—and got a nice response from those in the small crowd who didn’t know much about music.

It was my swan song—the last recital of my career. I cared far more about basketball, and my older brother played infinitely better than I.

No, what resonated with me about that quotation was typing. I took typing in high school and did very well. We had our weekly timed tests, and because of the bells on the machines everyone could hear how everyone else was doing. I really sought to be the first each week whose bell rang. Often I was.

And, oh, has that skill served me well throughout my life. College and grad school papers, dissertation, handouts for my classes for my teaching, etc.  Probably the most useful high school course I ever took.

In my latter years (now) I occasionally lose (because of my balance problems) my ability to type accurately or swiftly, mostly because of my disobedient right hand. When things are going well, I can still type fairly accurately, fairly swiftly.

But when they’re not going well it takes quite awhile to complete a single line. I mis-hit keys like crazy. And it frustrates the hell out of me.

Even as I type this post, I’m having a few problems—not like my worst days, but not like my good ones, either. Lots of backspacing and correcting. 

Oh, and don’t get me started on my penmanship!

Discouraging Word

 

The other day my Merriam-Webster page-a-day calendar put up a word I didn’t really want to see: senescence = the state of being old : the process of becoming old.

How insensitive of them!

When I was a kid, all adults were old—from my teachers in their 20s to my great-grandfather in his 90s. Just various versions of old.

Earlier today I posted a “memories” pic from Facebook. It shows my dad in line to march into baccalaureate at Hiram College, spring of 1966–the year I graduated from that college. He was 53–twenty-three years younger than I am now.

He was about to head off to Des Moines, Iowa, to begin another career: He would be a dean at Drake University; my mom would begin her career as a professor there (she had only recently completed her Ph.D. at the University of Pittsburgh).

I thought both of them were old.

(I, by the way, was about to begin my teaching career at Aurora Middle School, just eleven miles west of Hiram.)

I didn’t feel old for a long, long time. And, like many other younger people, I figured it probably wouldn’t happen to me. How could it?

I felt young into my early 70s. I was still going to the health club 5-6 days a week, exercising vigorously—exercise bike, running/walking laps, rowing machine, weights. Prancing around the locker room like, well, like a 53-year-old man. Like my dad back when.

I was 61 when I first developed prostate cancer. Had the surgery, and since then have had two rounds of radiation, immunotherapy. And I still went to the health club—still did pretty much whatever I wanted to do. Going on trips, to the movies, to the mall (remember them?) ...

And then I couldn’t. My balance deteriorated (probably because of the stiff anti-cancer meds I’m on). For a while I rode our exercise bike here at home, but even that became unsafe—I felt at times as if I would fall off. I knew I had to quit.

I use a walker now and then around the house—and always when I go out (which isn’t often: just for medical appointments, mostly).

I don’t drive anymore. Which means I can’t do the errands I used to carelessly do—grocery store, post office, etc. I can’t go to the coffee shop I love here in town—Open Door Coffee Co. I tried once some months ago. Took a fall. Haven’t been back.

I used to do most of the cooking. And you know about baking bread (which I can do only rarely now—on “good” days).

All of which puts a tremendous burden on Joyce, who never complains even though she has her own health issues to contend with. I was more than blessed when our paths crossed in the summer of 1969 at Kent State.

Anyway, reading this over, I see that it’s turned into just another Old Guy’s Story—you know, King Lear raging in the storm.

But I am not King Lear, nor was meant to be.

Instead, I’m just a mortal guy who fooled himself for decades into believing he was immortal.

And the reminders are coming fast that I’m not.

Like a recent word from Merriam-Webster, probably chosen by some young, immortal guy.

Vaccine

Yesterday morning Joyce drove me over to a nearby CVS to get the Pfizer booster for Covid. I had registered online and had an appointment time, so I wasn’t too worried.

The site was busy but not overflowing and very well-organized.

Entering right behind us was an older couple and their daughter (this I learned a bit later). I was on a walker; he wasn’t.

Although I was inside first, they took an alternate route to the back, presumably accelerated, and reached the check-in area ahead of me. Did I detect a slight smile on their faces as they got in line.

I was ticked. I would not have done that.

They started filling out paperwork, and I needed to sit down. My dizziness is no joke.

I’ve been getting vaccines my whole life—and booster shots. I remember how excited we all were when the Salk polio vaccine arrived: That disease had been the terror of my boyhood. (Later, I remember the Sabin oral vaccine, as well.) In 1956 I remember lining up at the Hiram School to get the Salk; I was 12. And I don’t recall anyone not doing it—though there surely were some.

I never used to get the flu (or the shots), but then I did, and I’ve been getting the shot ever since—have not had the flu in many years.

Smallpox was the scourge of earlier generations. The vaccine has been around since the late 18th century, and when Mary Godwin (later: Shelley) was in Geneva for the “Frankenstein summer” in 1816 (the summer she began writing the story), she arranged to have her young son William vaccinated.

But she neglected herself, and in 1828 she contracted the disease, which did not kill or disfigure her but seems to have diminished the glow of her beauty.

I remember the scar of the vaccination on my mother’s arm, my father’s. But by the time I got it, the technique was different, and I bear no scar.

Meanwhile, back at CVS, a nurse called me to window next to where the Usurpers had slipped in ahead of me. “I’ll take care of you,” she said. I had registered online, so I had no paperwork to fill out—just show them my vaccine card (which I did).

She took me right back to the area where they delivered the shots, and I don’t think I’ve ever had so swift and painless an injection. We then headed over to the two chairs to wait to see if I’d have any bad reactions. (I didn’t.)

About ten minutes later the Usurpers came by, their smiles gone.

That’s okay: Mine replaced theirs.

NOTE: No bad reactions today—just some wee soreness in my arm.

Some Sundry Things

I've had a number of things flick across my mind recently, none worth an entire post—but all worth mentioning.

First ... I was thinking this morning about how slowly I now dress for the day. And it reminded me of the years I was going to the health club, and how young, healthy men would do almost all their dressing in the locker room standing up. From stark naked to ready to leave ... standing up. 

That changes as you age. Now I do virtually all of my dressing while sitting down. I stand up only to pull my pants up.

TMI? Too bad. It’s time you learned what to expect!

Second ... a word popped up on one of my word-of-the-day online calendars, a word I’ve never seen (I don’t think), a word with a very specific meaning that I could have used now and then ...

chosisme

 

PRONUNCIATION:

(sho-ZEEZ-muh) 

 

MEANING:

noun: A literary style which focuses on description of objects, not on interpretation, plot, characterization, etc.

 

ETYMOLOGY:

From French, from chose (thing), from Latin causa (case, thing). The idea is associated with the writer and filmmaker Alain Robbe-Grillet. Earliest documented use: 1960s.

 

USAGE:

“‘How are things?’ someone asks the author at a party. That sets him off. How are things? You mean, in what way do things exist? How should I know? What, even, is a thing? I’d better write a book about it. And so he does: a book of short meditations on everyday objects, a contemporary exercise in happy chosisme.”

Steven Poole; How Are Things?; The Guardian (London, UK); Nov 5, 2005.    

Third ... I woke up often last night trying to remember the name of one of my very bright Education professors I had at KSU Back in the Day. I knew there was a Z in it. But just could not remember the rest of it.

But in dawn’s early light, here came the name, drifting effortlessly into my memory. Dr. Robert Zais. A razor-sharp mind—his, not mine (obviously).

I remember once, early 1970s, he drove me (in his VW Beetle) down to Cincinnati to some kind of conference. My brain was drained by the time we got back to Kent!

Don’t know if he’s still with us or not ... don’t want to check, either.

Fourth ... I told you there wasn’t enough in any one of these three topics to merit a full post. But as I was writing (leaving things out), I realized there most definitely was.  Oh well ...

Unfinished Business

 

Sue Grafton, who died at 77.

Earlier, I was staring across the room at a couple of shelves of Sue Grafton mysteries.

Remember her? She wrote the “alphabet mysteries” told by the principal character, Kinsey Millhone—a P.I. The first was A Is for Alibi, and she went on through the alphabet, letter by letter. She ended with Y Is for Yesterday (2017).  She did not live to finish the Z novel; she died in 2017; her family says no one will finish the series.

I read almost all of them, starting, I think, with G Is for Gumshoe in 1990. Joyce was once on a panel with her, took her books, got them signed.

Anyway, this got me thinking of all the literary (and other artists) who died before they finished their work.

Norman Mailer died before finishing his novels about Hitler. Dickens didn’t finish The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Ralph Ellison didn’t finish Juneteenth. And on and on and on ...

So many writers died so early we don’t know what they might have done: Stephen Crane, Keats, Shelley, Byron, and so many others. What might Anne Frank have accomplished?

Others wrote so long ago we don’t know what else they did—or would have done. The ancient Greeks and Romans. Shakespeare. And on and on.

Some writers I know were writing on their death beds: Edwin Arlington Robinson, John Updike.

What we learn from this, of course, is what we already know: Life (and) Death don’t care about your plans. Death will arrive when he will and there’s nothing you can do about it.

All you can do is keep working until you can’t. Posterity will sort you out afterwards, will decide what remains (if anything does), what dies with you—or soon after.

Depressing? Yes. But also liberating in a way ...

Smile

 

Chaplin in Modern Times, 1936

Charles Spencer Chaplin wrote “Smile,” a song that appeared in his 1936 film, Modern Times. I used to teach a little Chaplin to my eighth graders when we were studying Jack London and the Klondike Gold Rush. Charlie has a great film about that Rush, The Gold Rush (1925). I showed that entire film to my students.

I was thinking about “Smile” today when I somehow got to thinking about the different ways people smile—I’ve seen much evidence on Facebook.

There are people who show virtually all their teeth, people who show no teeth, people who just purse their lips, people who seem not to smile but whose glittering eyes betray them, people whose smile much resembles a sneer, and so on (I’ll name no names).

Except my own. I show no teeth (if I can help it). This goes back to my boyhood when some in my family (alarmed that I rarely brushed my teeth) told me that I would grow up to have “yellow snags.” And so I quit showing my snags when I smiled. The only time you’ll see my teeth on Facebook is when I am laughing—or inattentive.

They’re actually not bad teeth—generally straight. And my dentist has never called them “yellow snags”—though perhaps she’s just being kind?

And Joyce married me, yellow snags and all, and she also told me, more than fifty years ago now, that if my teeth had been bad she wouldn’t have been attracted to me, literary brilliance and overall charm and “hotness” be damned.

My Osborn grandparents both had false teeth, full sets—which was far more common than it is now. Nowadays we have far better dental care options—implants for the yellow snags, etc.

Our dog Sooner showed his teeth a lot—this the dog we had from the early 1950s to the early 1960s when a driver hit him not far from our house in Hiram, Ohio, and zoomed away to let him die. I would still kill that person today if I found him/her. And every judge in the land would rule “justifiable homicide.”

Anyway, Sooner growled, showing teeth, when strangers or other dogs came around. And when my dad was playing with him (oh, he loved my dad!), he would, with Dad’s prompting, grin—wag his tail like crazy and grin! It’s one of my great childhood memories.

Not enough public grinning and smiling today. We’re too uptight. Too polarized. Too angry at ... whatever.

Maybe we all need need a dose of the great Charlie Chaplin. His films are on YouTube. And his song about smiling.

Link to song “Smile.”

Link to Modern Times.

Piecemeal

 

I’ve realized recently that I stream films and TV shows by using the same technique I use while reading books: piecemeal.*

Right now, for example, I’m reading seven books simultaneously (some via Kindle) at various locations around the house: Richard Osman’s The Man Who Died Twice, Jane Austen’s Emma, Tim Gautreaux’s The Missing, The Complete Poems of E. E. Cummings, Scott Turow’s The Last Trial, Ben Aaronovitch’s Moon Over Soho, and John Grisham’s The Rooster Bar.

I employ the same hop-skip-and-jump approach to the streaming we do at the end of the day when all we want is an hour’s entertainment ere we drop off to sleep. Right now we are watching bits of Ken Burns’ documentary about Muhammad Ali, Jack Irish, Fresh Off the Boat (we’re watching only because Joyce knows the actor who plays the next-door neighbor, Ray Wise: They acted in high school plays together), Hinterland, Schitt’s Creek (second time through), and The Cafe (second time through). 

We try to end the night with lighter fare.

I’ll confess that Joyce is not all that crazy about this streaming technique, but since I am the only one who’s bothered to learn how to use the remotes ...!

I’m not sure what all this piecemeal reading and viewing mean. Is my attention span fracturing? Am I trying to get as much in me before ... you know?

I don’t know. I know only that this is the way I function now.

When I was younger, I never read/viewed like this. I didn’t read much in high school (I was too busy preparing for my career as the catcher for the Yankees, the point guard for the Celtics). Oddly, though, bored in high school study hall (I had four in a row my senior year), I read Moby-Dick and Jack London’s Martin Eden—little did I know how his career would later consume me for about a decade!

And I had to watch TV shows all the way through because there were no recorders then—no Internet, obviously.

As a younger kid, I did read a lot more—Westerns mostly. Kids’ biographies of notable Westerners.

My mom was a big reader—read a lot until she no longer could.

Dad was less obsessive about it, but he did all right. He read enough to snort at my high-school reading patterns, such as they were.

My older and younger brothers both read far more than I did. Both ended up at Harvard. Both still read a lot.

Anyway, here I am, forever catching up, forever making up for those years lost in dreams of athletic fame.

And I’m having the Best Damn Time!

*piecemeal = made from two words that mean “in pieces” and “by a fixed measure.” Or at least that’s what the OED says!