Sunday Sundries, 217

1. HBOTW: The squirrel outside my study window, his nest in a nearby tree, a nest I can see, who works hard every day to keep him and his going. No complaints. No calling in sick (when he isn't). No knowledge of Hump Day. A hard worker (who can be profoundly annoying--to me, to the dogs that can't catch him). Virtues and vices abound in him--just as they do in the rest of us.

2. I finished two books this week ...

     - The first--one of my read-a-little-in-bed-most-nights books--was The Law and the Lady (1875), a later novel by Wilkie Collins (1824-89), a friend of and collaborator with Charles Dickens (1812-70). As some of you know, I've been slowly reading my way through all of Collins' novels, in the order he wrote them ... well, after, that is, I got hooked by The Moonstone, 1868, and The Woman in White, 1860.

I realized, about halfway through Law, that I was reading it out of order: I should have first read The New Magdalen, 1873; it's now on my bedside table. Oh well.

Law is narrated by its principal character a young woman named Valeria Woodville, who discovers not long after her marriage, that her new husband had been on trial for the murder of his first wife; a Scottish court found him neither guilty nor innocent--a final possible ruling at the time. "Not proven."

Valeria is convinced he is innocent, and he, ashamed, flees while she decides she will devote herself to discovering who the actual murderer was.

She does. (Ain't tellin' you who it was.)

Along the way, she gets involved with a witness at the trial--a truly bizarre character named Misserimus Dexter, a brilliant but wildly eccentric man who has legs that don't function; attending him is a violently devoted woman ...

Anyway, an early example of a "woman-detective" novel, and, somewhere, perhaps, Kinsey Millhone is expressing her gratitude.

Collins is a brilliant writer--every bit Dickens' equal. Maybe his superior ...

     - The second was a collection of forewords, prefaces, and afterwords by Michael Chabon (one of my favorites), pieces that that he has written over recent years to be included in the books of other writers--and, in some cases, of his own. It's called Bookends: Collected Intros and Outros (2018).

I had never read Chabon until I saw the film Wonder Boys (2000) with Michael Douglas as a writing professor who is stuck in his second novel, a novel that has swollen to thousands of pages with no end in sight. One of his most talented/interesting students is Tobey Maguire (who's not yet realized he's Spider-Man); another is Katie Holmes. With minor--but great parts--are Frances McDormand, Robert Downey, Jr., and Rip Torn. (Link to film trailer.) I loved the film--have seen it numerous times since its initial release--and it got me reading Chabon. 

I've now read everything by him. A confession: I wasn't' really looking forward to this one, but I really enjoyed it. Lots of cool things he says about writing, about specific writers. He's had a lifelong fondness for fantasy, so there are pieces about that. (I've liked some of it, too, but I'm nothing like the fan that Chabon is.)

Some cool things he says ...

• "realism is ... hopeless" (26)
• "the past is another planet" (37)
• "Writers are mutants" (45)
• "All short stories, in other words, are ghost stories" (57)
• "I did believe in fairies. I did. I did" (105)
• good writers "plant flags at the end of time" (138)

And on and on and on and on. Really loved his piece about his own 2002 novel Summerland (which I loved--a baseball fantasy novel!).

3. Last night, we drove down to the Cinemark in North Canton to join our son and his sons (13, and 9--both very close to their next birthdays) to see a film I'd kind of wanted to see before--but it had quickly disappeared from most local theaters: The Kid Who Would Be King (link to film trailer.)

It's a re-telling of the King Arthur story--set in contemporary England at a school where our "Arthur" is a bullied 12-yr-old kid (one of the bullies is Lancelot--"Lance" here). Fleeing the bullies, he stumbles into a construction site, where he finds ... the sword in the stone (yes, that one), and then the story changes and charges ahead.

About midway through my teaching career I became an Arthur fanatic (can't remember why): read scores of books, saw the films, even took a busload of kids to see Disney's The Sword in the Stone at the old downtown Kent Cinema. (Original release 1963--so it must have been a re-release ...)

I actually liked the Kid film a lot more than I thought I was going to. The writers knew the stories, had some sly references (and obvious ones) to various Arthur tales--from The Once and Future King to Camelot to ...

One actor that really stood out, I thought, was the young man who played Merlin: Angus Imrie. That guy just radiated intelligence and humor. I see on IMDB that he's been in a few things--but he has a future. (As King? We'll see!)

We end up with two titanic clashes between "Arthur" and his "knights" (classmates who are convinced of his "chosen" status)--both with Morgana (aka Morgan le Fay) who's come roaring back from her confinement to the underworld, supported by scary bony dudes with flaming swords on flaming horses. The big confrontation: They attack the school, but, thanks to Arthur, et al., the kids are ready.

I especially enjoyed sitting next to my younger grandson, who loves books and fantasy and legend, and who was brimming with questions, most of which I could actually answer!

4. Enjoying the Netflix comedy special--just available last week--with Ray Romano in a couple of NYC clubs where he began his career. He's funny ... (Link to some video.)

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

     - from wordsmith.org

nidifugous (ny-DIF-yuh-guhs)

adjective: Well-developed and able to leave the nest soon after hatching.

ETYMOLOGY: From Latin nidi- (nest) + -fugous (fleeing). Ultimately from the Indo-European root sed- (to sit), which is also the source of nest, sit, chair, saddle, assess, sediment, soot, cathedral, and tetrahedron. Earliest documented use: 1902.

NOTES: The opposite of nidifugous is nidicolous (remaining with parents for a long time after birth). Etymologically speaking, these words apply to birds, but there’s no reason you can’t use them elsewhere. For example, if your adult child suggests living in your basement, you could simply say, “Don’t be nidicolous!”

USAGE: “The young of all species are -- as you well know -- nidifugous, and ours will be no exception. And as they go, they will take some of their spirit with them, leaving us, the founders as mere husks.”

Malcolm Macdonald; Strange Music; Severn House; 2012.

Password Mania

Don't want to give away too much in a post like this--I might get online tomorrow to discover that all my accounts, everywhere, have been hacked, that "I've" ordered 423 books from Amazon (and several dozen exotic plants), have zero balance in any bank account, have subscribed to forty-seven newspapers, have maxed out several mortgages on our house, have received notices from all relevant financial institutions that I will soon be living in a van down by the river.* Or in a cardboard box under a freeway overpass.

Not to mention the messings with my Facebook and email accounts, with ... you know?

Of course, I understand the need for more and more passwords, for more and more password complexity. There are evil dudes (and dudettes) out there who would love nothing more than wiping us out. (I'm sure their grandparents are proud of them.)

I would still kill the phone-swindler who got about $10K from my aged mother before my younger brother found out what was going on and ended it all. And I'm not kidding about the "kill" part.

I was visiting Mom one day when the guy called--needing just a "little more money" before he could, you know, release the million he'd promised her. I yelled into the phone, warning him never to call again.

In ten minutes he called back.

Which shows how effective I was as a study hall supervisor when I was teaching.

Anyway, when I first got online back in the early 90s, I used a single four-digit password for everything. Banks, email, Amazon, whatever.

But soon those institutions requiring passwords started insisting on more complexity: more characters, capital letters, things like # and @ and ... you know. It's all so complicated that I can't remember a single password I have.

And so I must keep them organized in ...

You didn't think I was going to spill it, did you? I suppose you're selling vans suitable for life down by the river? And you need just a wee down payment?

*Link to old SNL skit about that van down by the river.

Streaming Mania

Things are getting out of hand, streaming-wise. We watch pieces of various shows at night in bed--after our reading is done. About an hour of TV--an hour sliced like bread: ten minutes of this, cut, ten minutes of that, cut, ten minutes of ...

Right now, here's what we're slice-watching each night:

• Wire in the Blood--a British show about a psychologist who's a consultant to the cops. Right now, he's dealing with a brain tumor--his own--and what it bodes for his future (if he has any).
• The Inspector Lynley Mysteries--a British-cop-who's-also-an-aristocrat + his working-class partner, a woman (some class and gender tension flare now and then); for some reason, we are watching the series backwards: We watched the final season first, then the previous one; we're now in Season 1.
• Vera--a woman DCI (an eccentric and brilliant woman) and her motley crew solving crimes in Northumberland; we're watching the newest episodes, recently released.
• Fargo: the FX series about odd goings-on in North Dakota, a solve-the-crime(s) show based on the eponymous Coen Bros. film. We're watching Season 2 right now.
• a new Netflix stand-up special with Ray Romano--his first in quite a few years--at the Comedy Cellar, where he began his career.

Now, here's the problem, especially watching the four cop shows, especially since both of us can, now and then, uh, nod off during the hour we're watching: sometimes we can't remember what's going on--we mix up the plots of the shows--we forget who characters are--and where we are. Etc.

Oddly, this slice-and-dice approach is the same one I use with my pre-streaming reading-in-bed: Right now I'm reading a half-dozen titles--10 pp/night (or so) in each:

• Wilkie Collins: Law and the Lady (a novel about a woman trying to clear the name of her husband, accused of murdering his first wife) (1875)
• Rob Dunn's Never Home Alone (a science book about the critters--microscopic and otherwise--that share our homes) (2018)
• John McPhee's The Patch (his latest collection of non-fiction) (2018)
• Haruki Murakami's Killing Commendatore (a Gatsbyesque novel about an artist and his rich, eccentric neighbor) (2018)
• Ken Bruen's latest Jack Taylor novel, In the Galway Silence (Taylor--beaten, bruised, not humbled--is once again solving some bizarre murders) (2018)
• Michael Connelly's latest, Dark Sacred Night (a novel featuring--and alternating the pov of--LA cops Harry Bosch and Renée Ballard, who are working together on a cold case) (2018)

Oddly, I don't confuse these stories and have no trouble entering their worlds each evening. Maybe I'm just a Word Guy? Or maybe I have to be awake when I'm reading? The pages don't turn by themselves--unlike a TV show, which keeps going whether I'm asleep or not!

True Confessions

When I was in high school (1958-62), I remember a magazine called True Confessions (the one above is from 1959). I just checked online and discovered that it began in 1922--and is still being published, aimed, says Wikipedia, "at young women readers." Okay. I used to look at it now and then ... which becomes somewhat more "interesting" as the story I'm about to tell you unfolds.

Anyway, confessions are putatively "good for you," so here goes ...

Yesterday, I was telling an acquaintance in the health club locker room about my ... error ... from a couple of days ago--the day I'd somehow pulled on my shorts inside-out, not noticing until I was about to exit the room to go work out. Oops. (Signs of dotage are everywhere!)

He laughed and told me a story about how, years ago, he'd gotten up early to leave for work and had somehow pulled on a pair of his wife's jeans instead of his own. Didn't notice till he got to work.

I laughed--and thought No way I could have ever worn Joyce's jeans! (She's slender; I'm ... not always so.)

And then I remembered a story I hesitate to tell you--but will do so anyway because another sign of dotage? Losing the "governor" on your tongue--or, in this case, fingers.

We were in the first year of our marriage (which had occurred in December 1969). We were living in a little apartment in Kent, Ohio. Our washer and dryer were in the basement. We were still figuring out our "roles" in our marriage. Nowadays, they're pretty fixed, our roles, our jobs: unloading the dishwasher, cooking, laundry, baking, carrying out the trash, shoveling snow, etc. There's some flexibility in all of it--but not all that much.

Anyway, I was still quite a Major Doofus then and expected Joyce to do the jobs my mom had done. I very quickly learned: This ain't gonna happen. And so I made ... adjustments.

I had begun my fourth year of teaching at the Aurora Middle School; Joyce was a full-time grad student at Kent State, working on her master's in English--she also had an assistantship and taught a section (or two?) of freshman English.

This is getting be a long lead-up, isn't it? Delay, delay--the shamed man's storytelling strategy.

Okay. One of Joyce's jobs was the laundry. I had done it myself during my three previous years of bachelorhood, so I also did it now and then in our early marriage.

One dark morning, getting ready for school, I opened my underwear drawer ... nada. Oops. I crept down to the basement, checked the washing machine: there were all my underpants--freshly washed and wet, wet, wet.

Now what?

There was no time to pop a pair in the dryer--I was already running a tad late.

I headed upstairs. And ...

... Oh, I really don't want to tell you this ...

... I opened Joyce's dresser, found a pair of her underpants, and pulled them on. (Rather tight around the thighs, I must say.)

And off I drove to school, terrified that I'd have a car accident--or a heart attack--would have to go the hospital, where ... you know ...?

It was among the longest days of my life.

After about thirty years, I got home, immediately changed underclothes (Joyce had employed the dryer in my absence).

A few years later--perhaps after a few beers?--I confided to a colleague what I had done that day.

He looked at me as if I were insane: "I woulda called in sick," he declared.

Why hadn't I thought of that?

I trust, by the way, that you will keep my secret? I mean, it's not like this is on the Internet or anything, right?

Body on the Road

Last night after supper we drove over to Aurora: I needed some graham flour for my bread-baking--got some at Marc's. We also grabbed a Diet Coke at Mickey D's and headed back to Hudson "the back way": Rt. 82-Herrick Rd.-Ravenna Rd.-Old Mill Rd.-Stow Rd.-Aurora-Hudson Rd.-home.

On Ravenna--at about 6:15 it was already dark--we saw traffic slowing ahead of us. We slowed. Saw some sort of figure lying on the road. Crept closer. It was a young doe--not in any evident pain (but who can tell?), her head up, alert, not looking particularly afraid or alarmed.

She was virtually invisible until we were almost on her, lying in the lane opposite from us. An approaching car did not seem to see her, was not slowing ... this did not look good. We braced ourselves for something awful.

But then the driver saw, braked, his lights illuminating the doe.

To our left we saw a man in some kind of uniform slowly, on foot, approaching the creature.

I don't know what happened next. We drove on (there were impatient drivers behind us), and the condition and fate of that doe will remain mysteries to us.

I prefer to think that it all turned out well. That the doe was not injured--just confused or tired (had something been chasing her?). That the officer helped her to her feet, that she dashed off, back into the woods where her life belongs, perhaps a flash of gratitude--if deer are capable of such--dancing across her mind before she vanished into the darkness, into a future she'd nearly lost.

Sunday Sundries, 216

1. AOTW: No one really “stood out” this week, so my default adjustment is always this: I am the winner ("let me count the ways," as Elizabeth Barrett Browning said). Some dumb moves in traffic, some impatience at the health club, some words I'd like to reel back in--in other words, a typical week for me.

2. I finished two books this week ...

     - One, via Kindle, was another of the Jack Taylor novels by Ken Bruen (the penultimate one; I've ordered the most recent one): The Ghosts of Galway (2017). As I've written here before, I got interested in Taylor a few years ago when we were streaming the TV series about him--Jack Taylor (there were three seasons). We loved Iain Glen as Taylor, the former Galway (Ireland) cop, dismissed for drunkenness, now an unofficial PI.

The TV series was dark--but, by comparison with the books? The TV series was bright and effervescent. Something destructive to him happens in every volume--physical damage, the loss of loved ones, an unintentional killing, etc.

He's something of a vigilante, is Jack, and when the law seems impotent, Jack is not.

In this latest novel there are some creeps running around Galway killing people for the fun of it; Jack eventually takes the fun out of it for them. But, as I've said, there are a couple of midnight moments in the story, moments I'll not reveal.

Read the books!

     - I also finished another of Kate Atkinson's PI novels featuring her (damaged) detective Jackson Brodie, a former cop in Scotland: One Good Turn (2006); I love its subtitle: A Jolly Murder Mystery.

As I've said here before, I discovered, reading Atkinson's previous Brodie novel, that there is little distinction between her "literary" novels and her murder mysteries: Both are intricate, surprising (the very last sentence in this one stunned me), often humorous, and downright brilliant.

This one starts with what appears to be a "normal" traffic accident in Edinburgh. It ain't. Emerging from one car is a brute with a baseball bat--an implement and a dude that make several return appearances throughout.

Atkinson artfully weaves a number of stories together here--the stories of Brodie, some witnesses to the accident (including the author of some rather tame and conventional mystery novels), some Russian women who do housework--and other things, a creep-o who builds and sells houses that are gravely defective, the creep-o's wife, a character from the previous Brodie novel (Julia--with whom Jackson is living), a woman cop. And others. Atkinson leaps from story to story, sometimes winding the clock back a bit in order to do so, and I sit there, reading, my jaw residing on the table where it has fallen so often that it figured it might as well just stay there.

Lordy, she's good. One of the best I've ever read.

Oh, and allusive, as well--Shakespeare appearing to be a favorite. "Ozymandias" is there, too--among numerous other references.

The next Brodie is on my pile!

3. We watched the first season of Fargo (FX) but somehow forgot about the show. No more. Last night we started streaming, via Hulu, the second season, which begins with a sanguinary murder in a waffle shop. Tarantino, Sam Peckinpah, Errol Morris--these are influences, I think--not to mention the Coen Bros., who made the original Fargo film (1996).

So far, so fun. (Link to some Fargo TV video.)

4. Final word--a word I liked this week from one of my online word-of-the-day providers ...

     - from the Oxford English Dictionary

addulce, v. transitive. To make sweet or pleasant; esp. to soften, soothe; to mollify.

Forms:  lME adoulce,   15–16 addoulce,   16 addoulse,   16 adulce,   16– addulce,   17 adulse.

Origin: Of multiple origins. Partly a borrowing from French. Partly a borrowing from Latin. Etymons: French adulcir; Latin addulcire.

Etymology: <  Anglo-Norman adulcir, addulcir, Anglo-Norman and Middle French adoucir, Middle French adoulcir (French adoucir) to sweeten (c1170 in Anglo-Norman), to mollify (c1170 in Old French) and (especially in recent use) its etymon post-classical Latin addulcire (5th cent.) <  classical Latin ad- ad- prefix + dulcis sweet (see dulce adj.).

 rare and poet. after 17th cent.

  1477  Caxton tr. R. Le Fèvre Hist. Jason(1913) 26 Shalle not the Rigour..of my noble lady be myned and adoulced [Fr. adoulcie] by my habondaunt prayers.

1552  R. Huloet Abcedarium Anglico Latinum  Addoulce or mitigate with swetnes, Permulceo.

1592  G. Harvey Four Lett.  xv. 69 Then would I so my Melody addoulce.

1622  Bacon Hist. Raigne Henry VII  90 With great show of their king's affection, and many sugared words, seek to addulce all matters between the two kings.

1655  T. Fuller Church-hist. Brit.  ix. 203 The Queen having lately..Adulced him with fair language.

1679  M. Prance Addit. Narr.  18 For the addulcing and ascertaining his Friends and Partizans beyond the Seas.

1824  T. J. L. Prichard Welsh Minstrelsy  22 Described in poesy and picture, With glowing strain and vivid tint, Addulced by taste's most finish'd dint.

1912  H. Church Poems  153 Fain would I bring to thee a happiness That never was thy girdle, would addulce Thy lovely heart.

I'm hardly one to talk ...

... about the misuse of Shakespeare's lines and language. I was slow--very slow--to come to an appreciation of the Bard and his works. We read Julius Caesar and Macbeth in high school, and to say I was clueless is to underestimate the dimensions of cluelessness. I just flat did not get it. And if I didn't "get it," it's pretty evident that I also hated it!

In college, I avoided Shakespeare, though, in English 101 (Hiram College, summer session, 1962) I again hacked my way through Macbeth under the tutelage of Dr. Charles F. McKinley, who must have thought I was the Dyer boy who'd been left too long in the sun as an infant. (Or in the freezer.)

I didn't take a Shakespeare course in college. The professor who taught it--Dr. John Shaw--was on sabbatical the year I could have taken it, and although I was an English major, I was thrilled to avoid another encounter with yet more texts that would demonstrate to me that I was unworthy.

Later, though, I waded back in Lake Bard, discovering it was the Sea of Bard instead--and nearly drowned. But I eventually dog-paddled, then swam a bit. By the time I retired from teaching I had read all the plays (some multiple times) and poems and sonnets, and Joyce and I had seen every one of his plays onstage in venues all over the place.

So ... what I'm saying: I was slow to come to the Bard, slow to understand, and so I "get it" when I see/hear people quoting things in ways that demonstrate that they, also, don't quite "get it."

Here's a few examples:

• In Hamlet, the prince arranges for a group of traveling players to perform a play whose plot mirrors the murder of his own father (he knows details because the ghost of his father has told him). The players act right in front of Claudius, whom Hamlet suspects of murdering his father; Hamlet stares at him relentlessly to see how he will react. At one point, Hamlet asks his mother, the queen, now married to Claudius, how she's enjoying the play (he's not sure if she's involved in the murder), and Gertrude (Mom) says, in a way that's a bit ... strained:

The lady doth protest too much, methinks (3.2).

Now ... just today I read a character in a novel, a character saying that a woman had protested too much--meaning, complained, argued. And I've seen this over and over again throughout the years. But all Gertrude is saying, basically, is that the woman is talking too much--declaring too much.

• Also in Hamlet ... Hamlet is annoyed with Ophelia, his gf, because he believes she's betraying him--not in a romantic way but by letting others use her to spy on Hamlet. Angry, the prince cries this:

Get thee to a nunnery (3.1).

I learned years later that nunnery does mean what you think (a retreat for nuns)--but it could also mean a, uh, "house of ill repute." A bit harsh to say to the woman you supposedly love, eh?

• Finally--in Romeo and Juliet: Juliet, on the balcony, cries out:

O Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo? (2.2)

She is not wondering where Romeo is--she's wailing about why he has to be Romeo. If he were someone else--not a member of a family in conflict with her own--then they could safely be together. But now ... being together spells t-r-a-g-e-d-y.

There are countless other examples of this sort of thing--in Shakespeare and just about everywhere else.

One of my favorites? The pen is mightier than the sword.  Everyone know this isn't literally true (If I have a choice of weapons, I'm taking the sword!).

But it's also out of context. The complete quotation comes from 1839 in a play by Edward Bulwer-Lytton: Richelieu; Or the Conspiracy. and goes like this:

Beneath the rule of men entirely great,

The pen is mightier than the sword.

So ... only in a place ruled by someone "entirely great" is the pen mightier than the sword. Everywhere else? Gimme a sword!