July 2009 Archives
I was reading in our favorite encyclopedia about juggling and this line stopped me:
Music and comedy transferred very easily to radio but juggling could not.To which I say that not everything in life is easy but that doesn't mean you shouldn't try, at least. Sheesh.
One of the benefits of being extremely nearsighted is that if you wake up in the dark after a thunderstorm, it's kind of nice to see all the electronic devices blinking because instead of a "12:00" what you see is an indistinct blob and the effect is similar to a field full of fireflies.
I refer, of course, to Gatesgate. Not having been on the porch in question, I won't comment on the rights and wrongs of that. Cops probably shouldn't arrest people in their homes if they're not committing any crimes there, I suppose. On the other hand, yelling at cops rarely produces a good result and personally I avoid it. Beyond that, as I say, I wasn't there.
But I distinctly remember rolling my eyes when a few fatuous commentators ventured to say, after Barack Obama was elected president, that the United States was now a "postracial" society. There's a certain symbolism to the presidency, of course. But the fact that a nonwhite achiever attains some high position doesn't necessarily mean that most people in a society have suddenly become blind to the fact of race. If it did, you could pick any number of dates and say that was when the U.S. became "postracial"—1947, when Jackie Robinson started playing for the Brooklyn Dodgers, comes to mind. But the United States didn't become postracial in 1947 and it didn't become postracial in 2008 or 2009. I think what happened is that some columnists had a deadline and nothing much to say. So suddenly we were supposedly postracial. But really, we weren't.
I live in the state of Pennsylvania. Lived here all my life, it's part of me. Love it, if you want to put it that way. Now, here in Pennsylvania we have a broad swathe of the Appalachian Mountains curving through the middle of the state and I've spent some time there catching trout and whatnot. People who know the area call the state "Pennsyltucky" for a joke. I remember looking at a county-by-county breakdown of election results the night they had the Democratic primary here. The Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and State College areas went for Obama. In Pennsyltucky they went very, very solidly for Hillary Clinton. I was struck by this because I had never before noticed rural Pennsylvanians being all that wild about Hillary Clinton. Was rural Pennsylvania an unsuspected bastion of postsexism? I really have no idea. But at least I'm willing to say so. The people who claimed we were postracial—well, let's just say you need to get out more, gang.
But I distinctly remember rolling my eyes when a few fatuous commentators ventured to say, after Barack Obama was elected president, that the United States was now a "postracial" society. There's a certain symbolism to the presidency, of course. But the fact that a nonwhite achiever attains some high position doesn't necessarily mean that most people in a society have suddenly become blind to the fact of race. If it did, you could pick any number of dates and say that was when the U.S. became "postracial"—1947, when Jackie Robinson started playing for the Brooklyn Dodgers, comes to mind. But the United States didn't become postracial in 1947 and it didn't become postracial in 2008 or 2009. I think what happened is that some columnists had a deadline and nothing much to say. So suddenly we were supposedly postracial. But really, we weren't.
I live in the state of Pennsylvania. Lived here all my life, it's part of me. Love it, if you want to put it that way. Now, here in Pennsylvania we have a broad swathe of the Appalachian Mountains curving through the middle of the state and I've spent some time there catching trout and whatnot. People who know the area call the state "Pennsyltucky" for a joke. I remember looking at a county-by-county breakdown of election results the night they had the Democratic primary here. The Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and State College areas went for Obama. In Pennsyltucky they went very, very solidly for Hillary Clinton. I was struck by this because I had never before noticed rural Pennsylvanians being all that wild about Hillary Clinton. Was rural Pennsylvania an unsuspected bastion of postsexism? I really have no idea. But at least I'm willing to say so. The people who claimed we were postracial—well, let's just say you need to get out more, gang.
I had worked very hard on an e-mail newsletter all afternoon yesterday, so after running around town to do chores I decided to reward myself with a cool beverage. There's a very nice bar uptown that's usually almost deserted on Saturday afternoons. That was true yesterday—it was so slow that the hostess's face positively lit up when I walked in, as if I were her oldest and best friend and we hadn't seen each other in months. By the time I had settled myself at the bar, she had subsided again into her own seat at a table by the wall, looking bored and sad.
I ordered a pear cider. Liquor made from pears tends to have an attenuated quality; it hints at the flavor, you catch it on the breeze, you might say, like the scent of burning leaves in the fall, or the sudden recall of some long-ago joy. So I'm sitting with my drink, deeply content, and mulling the young woman's problem. It must feel like she's invited the entire world to a party, I thought, and out of the whole world, only a few people bothered to show up. And then I winced.
How long ago was it—twenty years, possibly?—but the memory bit into my conscience. A friend had invited me to a party, and I said sure, and then something came up or I was tired or didn't feel like making the drive or something, but I figured I wouldn't be missed, really, and I'd apologize afterward. Well, this woman invited ten or twelve people to this party and everyone else did what I did—decided not to go. Not one person showed up.
I've done terrible, awful things in my life, and asked forgiveness when I could and sought to forgive myself, but not showing up at that stupid party will plague me a little forever. My own part in it was relatively trivial, a minor lapse, we were all very casual then about everything. But for everyone to fail to come! Who could have foreseen that? How the poor woman must have sat, like a bride jilted at the altar!
While I was sitting there, chuckling ruefully at this long-ago lapse and having another cider, they had a kind of changing of the guard as the dinner hour came on. The bored hostess went out the door briskly, revived, like school was letting out. A few minutes later, about five enormously fat men came downstairs from the upper deck. They lingered downstairs, milling around ponderously, and then went out. The new hostess and I grinned mean little grins at each other. Then I felt bad. It's the content of your character that matters, even if you look like the dancing hippos in Fantasia, which I have to say, in my defense, that they did. Sigh! My conscience was bothering me again and if consciences could be recalibrated like the timing system in old cars, it would probably be a good thing.
I ordered a pear cider. Liquor made from pears tends to have an attenuated quality; it hints at the flavor, you catch it on the breeze, you might say, like the scent of burning leaves in the fall, or the sudden recall of some long-ago joy. So I'm sitting with my drink, deeply content, and mulling the young woman's problem. It must feel like she's invited the entire world to a party, I thought, and out of the whole world, only a few people bothered to show up. And then I winced.
How long ago was it—twenty years, possibly?—but the memory bit into my conscience. A friend had invited me to a party, and I said sure, and then something came up or I was tired or didn't feel like making the drive or something, but I figured I wouldn't be missed, really, and I'd apologize afterward. Well, this woman invited ten or twelve people to this party and everyone else did what I did—decided not to go. Not one person showed up.
I've done terrible, awful things in my life, and asked forgiveness when I could and sought to forgive myself, but not showing up at that stupid party will plague me a little forever. My own part in it was relatively trivial, a minor lapse, we were all very casual then about everything. But for everyone to fail to come! Who could have foreseen that? How the poor woman must have sat, like a bride jilted at the altar!
While I was sitting there, chuckling ruefully at this long-ago lapse and having another cider, they had a kind of changing of the guard as the dinner hour came on. The bored hostess went out the door briskly, revived, like school was letting out. A few minutes later, about five enormously fat men came downstairs from the upper deck. They lingered downstairs, milling around ponderously, and then went out. The new hostess and I grinned mean little grins at each other. Then I felt bad. It's the content of your character that matters, even if you look like the dancing hippos in Fantasia, which I have to say, in my defense, that they did. Sigh! My conscience was bothering me again and if consciences could be recalibrated like the timing system in old cars, it would probably be a good thing.
I've heard for years that the French café was an institution in decline, and today I read this. At this rate there'll be no place to drink in public but (shudder) sports bars. Heaven forfend!
My sightreading of classical music improves daily, I'm happy to say. I owe that in large part to my current teachers, who are all stone dead but quite helpful nevertheless. See, what I'm doing is buying all the instructional books for children I can find by classical composers. My favorite of these composers is to the right there, Carl Czerny. Doesn't he look friendly? His music for children is friendly too, and when I play the little exercises he wrote for beginners like me I seem to feel his kindly presence. I bobble a passage, frown with frustration, and he just smiles. "You see zis quarter-note rest here?" he asks, pointing. "Zat is so you can move your hand here—ja, like that—to be ready for the new melody. Offen when you see a rest like zat at the end of a passage, is to help like dis. Soon you will notice without even tinking about it. Try again. Much better! Is easy, no?"OK, I should say that I don't actually think he's sitting there, saying those things. But doesn't he look like he'd be a good teacher and a nice fellow? You'd want to do well, because you liked him. The spectacles, the gentle, faraway smile—he looks like he's calm inside. Serious about music, though—he was a child prodigy, actually, and one of his teachers was Beethoven. He enjoyed being a piano teacher himself, published lots of instructional books, and one of his own students was Franz Liszt. That worked out well—Liszt was famous as a pianist—and as I say, I'm coming along myself.
One of the founders of what was once called New Journalism popped up in the Times today, and yeesh, it's amazing how dated the writing of one Thomas Kennerly Wolfe has come to sound. Tom Wolfe was one of the biggest names in writing years ago, and one of the things he's best known for is The Right Stuff, a look back at the Mercury space program. So of course they wheeled him out to say something about the anniversary of the moon landing, and he did so in his patented style, which suddenly strikes me as inflexible, insufferably self-indulgent, and as absurdly dated as a paisley ascot.
He had a reasonable point to make—in the long run, humans need to establish themselves in space, and a manned mission to Mars is the obvious next step in that, but nobody ever made the case strongly enough. Okay, coulda been a pretty good opinion piece. But no, Mr. Wolfe being himself, he has to natter on like Grandpa Simpson, and the style that seemed so refreshing in 1962 is just sad and annoying now. He mentions that John Glenn was regarded as a hero after his return from space, that he was given a parade in New York City, and that during this parade people didn't just cheer, they cried, police officers among them. Fair enough. But here's how he puts it:
He had a reasonable point to make—in the long run, humans need to establish themselves in space, and a manned mission to Mars is the obvious next step in that, but nobody ever made the case strongly enough. Okay, coulda been a pretty good opinion piece. But no, Mr. Wolfe being himself, he has to natter on like Grandpa Simpson, and the style that seemed so refreshing in 1962 is just sad and annoying now. He mentions that John Glenn was regarded as a hero after his return from space, that he was given a parade in New York City, and that during this parade people didn't just cheer, they cried, police officers among them. Fair enough. But here's how he puts it:
During his ticker-tape parade up Broadway, you have never heard such cheers or seen so many thousands of people crying. Big Irish cops, the classic New York breed, were out in the intersections in front of the world, sobbing, blubbering, boo-hoo-ing, with tears streaming down their faces.At some point between the beginning of the word "sobbing" and the end of the word "boo-hoo-ing," I decided that this was the journalistic equivalent of the '70s live-concert album staple—the drum solo that lasts 11 minutes or so. It only works if the audience has smoked a bunch of weed. And it also came home to me that there are two things you can say about Wolfe's style. One is that nearly a half-century ago he brought a new, distinctive voice to journalism and nonfiction, a voice that used rhythms and colors in arresting and often very effective ways. But Tom Wolfe is way too much in love with the sound of that voice. Good writing is concise. And it calls attention to its subject, not itself. Writers who remember this—Mark Twain comes to mind, and Jane Austen, and Sappho, while we're at it—are read decades, centuries, and milliennia after their deaths. "Eschew surplusage," Twain once said. Well, while Mr. Wolfe seems to still be alive, I've been eschewing his work for a while now, and I'm starting to understand why.
Maybe some other time I'll talk about my own feelings about the obligation journalists have to the public in a democracy, an obligation no less real for being so comprehensively betrayed. But the man had dignity, and I can't help think how sharply his dignity contrasts with the clownish unseriousness of so many—most, really—public figures today. It's an interesting coincidence that David Brooks wrote about dignity and mentioned a few people you've heard of recently "who simply do not know how to act."
There are people of integrity and serious purpose in public life these days. But there's one less on the planet. So I guess we should value the remaining ones more, for being that much rarer.
There are people of integrity and serious purpose in public life these days. But there's one less on the planet. So I guess we should value the remaining ones more, for being that much rarer.
My little literary magpie's nest here occasionally offers a feature I call "Those Conformist Fifties," where I rail against the idea that the 1950s were boring and nothing worthwhile happened. I like to point out all the cool stuff, the artistic and culturally interesting, the things that demonstrate tons of nuance, ambiguity, all that. It seems I'm not alone in feeling this way. Yay!
At any rate, I was watching The Bridge on the River Kwai the other day, and it struck me that we have some more "Conformist Fifties" fodder. It's 1957 and David Lean is making a movie about a British lieutenant colonel, captured with his men in the fall of Singapore, obsessed with keeping their morale up. And he's obsessed with building the Japanese enemy a better bridge than they could have done themselves, to prove the superiority of British methods. This isn't how things really happened in the war—according to Wikipedia, a commander who did this would be quietly killed by his fellow prisoners for aiding the enemy's war efforts. But it's an interesting character study, and I thought so especially at one particular passage.
The night before the bridge is to be formally opened, this Colonel Nicholson takes a slow, contemplative stroll along it. He leans on a railing, his swagger stick in his hand, and gazes about him, seemingly at peace with himself. The prison camp commander, Colonel Saito, walks up toward him, gazes out at the sunset, and says, "Beautiful."
Saito seems to have no particular thought at the moment for the bridge—hardly a surprise, since he was sidelined in its construction. He's a much less focused, effective person than Nicholson—he's the kind of person who simply wants to get through life without getting in trouble with his bosses.
Nicholson, by now unable to clearly distinguish between himself and the building project he pushed forward so obsessively, assumes that Saito is talking about the bridge. Saito politely switches gears and agrees that the bridge is, indeed, a "beautiful creation."
But for all of Nicholson's characteristic focus, tonight he's in a strange mood—where before he was driven, he now seems deeply pensive.
"I've been thinking," he says slowly. "Tomorrow it will be 28 years to the day that I've been in the service. 28 years in peace and war. I don't suppose I've been at home more than 10 months in all that time. Still, it's been a good life. I love India. I wouldn't have had it any other way. But there are times when suddenly you realize you're nearer the end than the beginning, and you wonder, you ask yourself, what the sum total of your life represents, what difference your being there at any time made to anything—or if it made any difference at all, really, particularly in comparison with other men's careers. I don't know whether that kind of thinking is very healthy, but I must admit I've had some thoughts on those lines from time to time. But tonight—tonight—"
And here, gazing at the horizon and the setting sun, he opens his hands to gesture, as if he can't quite put the feeling into words—satisfaction, contentment, happiness, peace—and the swagger stick falls to the river in a moment and disappears. Nicholson looks at the greenish water in mild dismay.
"Blast," he murmurs.
Then he straightens up, the contemplative moment passed. "I must be off," he says. "The men are preparing some sort of entertainment."
I just couldn't help being very, very struck by this scene. From what I've read, Alec Guinness gave the character more depth than Lean meant to. Yes, he's obsessed, and lost sight of what his real duty was in the larger scheme. But he kept his men's morale up, defying Saito in the beginning with great personal fortitude—he's an embodiment of a person who unswervingly upholds his or her morals and ideals even in circumstances where a bit of swerving might be appropriate.
But he's intelligent and strong enough to question the value of his entire life. And he's sensitive enough to know when he's experiencing a moment that makes all the effort worthwhile and obscures the uncertainty. Faith and doubt, meaning and absurdity, emptiness and fulfillment—for a moment, it all balances on a knife edge—and then the swagger stick splashes into the water. And I think people who believe that entertainment in the 1950s lacked subtlety ought to see this scene. This was no art film—it was meant to entertain, and it was hugely popular. But if you want nuance, ambiguity, questions that aren't resolved and may not be resolvable—it's all there, with a bag of popcorn too. Just sayin' folks.
At any rate, I was watching The Bridge on the River Kwai the other day, and it struck me that we have some more "Conformist Fifties" fodder. It's 1957 and David Lean is making a movie about a British lieutenant colonel, captured with his men in the fall of Singapore, obsessed with keeping their morale up. And he's obsessed with building the Japanese enemy a better bridge than they could have done themselves, to prove the superiority of British methods. This isn't how things really happened in the war—according to Wikipedia, a commander who did this would be quietly killed by his fellow prisoners for aiding the enemy's war efforts. But it's an interesting character study, and I thought so especially at one particular passage.
The night before the bridge is to be formally opened, this Colonel Nicholson takes a slow, contemplative stroll along it. He leans on a railing, his swagger stick in his hand, and gazes about him, seemingly at peace with himself. The prison camp commander, Colonel Saito, walks up toward him, gazes out at the sunset, and says, "Beautiful."
Saito seems to have no particular thought at the moment for the bridge—hardly a surprise, since he was sidelined in its construction. He's a much less focused, effective person than Nicholson—he's the kind of person who simply wants to get through life without getting in trouble with his bosses.
Nicholson, by now unable to clearly distinguish between himself and the building project he pushed forward so obsessively, assumes that Saito is talking about the bridge. Saito politely switches gears and agrees that the bridge is, indeed, a "beautiful creation."
But for all of Nicholson's characteristic focus, tonight he's in a strange mood—where before he was driven, he now seems deeply pensive.
"I've been thinking," he says slowly. "Tomorrow it will be 28 years to the day that I've been in the service. 28 years in peace and war. I don't suppose I've been at home more than 10 months in all that time. Still, it's been a good life. I love India. I wouldn't have had it any other way. But there are times when suddenly you realize you're nearer the end than the beginning, and you wonder, you ask yourself, what the sum total of your life represents, what difference your being there at any time made to anything—or if it made any difference at all, really, particularly in comparison with other men's careers. I don't know whether that kind of thinking is very healthy, but I must admit I've had some thoughts on those lines from time to time. But tonight—tonight—"
And here, gazing at the horizon and the setting sun, he opens his hands to gesture, as if he can't quite put the feeling into words—satisfaction, contentment, happiness, peace—and the swagger stick falls to the river in a moment and disappears. Nicholson looks at the greenish water in mild dismay.
"Blast," he murmurs.
Then he straightens up, the contemplative moment passed. "I must be off," he says. "The men are preparing some sort of entertainment."
I just couldn't help being very, very struck by this scene. From what I've read, Alec Guinness gave the character more depth than Lean meant to. Yes, he's obsessed, and lost sight of what his real duty was in the larger scheme. But he kept his men's morale up, defying Saito in the beginning with great personal fortitude—he's an embodiment of a person who unswervingly upholds his or her morals and ideals even in circumstances where a bit of swerving might be appropriate.
But he's intelligent and strong enough to question the value of his entire life. And he's sensitive enough to know when he's experiencing a moment that makes all the effort worthwhile and obscures the uncertainty. Faith and doubt, meaning and absurdity, emptiness and fulfillment—for a moment, it all balances on a knife edge—and then the swagger stick splashes into the water. And I think people who believe that entertainment in the 1950s lacked subtlety ought to see this scene. This was no art film—it was meant to entertain, and it was hugely popular. But if you want nuance, ambiguity, questions that aren't resolved and may not be resolvable—it's all there, with a bag of popcorn too. Just sayin' folks.
"I donated a kidney ... in November,
and it was absolutely one of the best things I ever did, and I would do
it again in a flash."
Full post here. I don't actually think the donor meant it the way it sounded. But it did amuse for a moment.
Full post here. I don't actually think the donor meant it the way it sounded. But it did amuse for a moment.
I'd gotten a little bored with my own cooking lately. And the food I really longed for was an impossible, utopian combination of desirable qualities, or at least I thought it was. I wanted it all: food that's simultaneously delicious, low in calories, nutritious, quick, and inexpensive. I know this is a lot to ask for. So for a while, I gave up the search, and stewed in discontent.
But yesterday I got to idly wondering about teriyaki sauce. I've known about it since I was nine years old or so, but I'd never made it. I hauled a book on Asian cooking off the shelf, checked it out, and found it was absurdly easy to put together. Usually it's a one-to-one blend of soy sauce and mirin, a sweetened sake, with some sugar added. Ginger is added at times too. I made an ersatz teriyaki sauce out of soy and honey, fired up the grill and cooked some fish—heaven. The solution to my food boredom, the ingredient that would put that Holy Grail of cookery within reach, had been known to me all along.
Mirin isn't that hard to find around here, and you can mix sake and sugar as a mirin substitute, so now I'm going to be much happier grilling fin fish, shrimp, chicken, pork, vegetables, all kinds of stuff. This is the answer I've been looking for. It's the whole package, dinnerwise. I feel like Scarlett O'Hara—as God is my witness, I will never be hungry again if what I want is food that's delicious, low-cal, healthy and nutritious, and cheap, and quick.
But yesterday I got to idly wondering about teriyaki sauce. I've known about it since I was nine years old or so, but I'd never made it. I hauled a book on Asian cooking off the shelf, checked it out, and found it was absurdly easy to put together. Usually it's a one-to-one blend of soy sauce and mirin, a sweetened sake, with some sugar added. Ginger is added at times too. I made an ersatz teriyaki sauce out of soy and honey, fired up the grill and cooked some fish—heaven. The solution to my food boredom, the ingredient that would put that Holy Grail of cookery within reach, had been known to me all along.
Mirin isn't that hard to find around here, and you can mix sake and sugar as a mirin substitute, so now I'm going to be much happier grilling fin fish, shrimp, chicken, pork, vegetables, all kinds of stuff. This is the answer I've been looking for. It's the whole package, dinnerwise. I feel like Scarlett O'Hara—as God is my witness, I will never be hungry again if what I want is food that's delicious, low-cal, healthy and nutritious, and cheap, and quick.
So I'm sitting here this morning, perusing the digital equivalent of the morning newspaper, and contemplating the Waning Days of the Grand Tradition of Journalism. I'm looking at the headlines, and one is from Time magazine about why people are fatter in the South. People are fat all over the U.S., of course, and they're getting fatter in lots of other countries too, but they're fatter in the South and by God, I was about to find out why.
Turns out they don't get enough exercise, is the problem.
Oh.
No but really, one problem is the roads are narrow because they don't have to put the snow anywhere because there isn't any, as a rule, so you can't walk along the roads. And there's little public transportation, so people don't get the soupcon of exercise you get from walking to the bus. They drive everywhere, see. Plus which it's too hot in the South to exercise outside in the summer. Ah ha! Boy, those high-paid journalists! They just get to the bottom of things.
But anyway, I was pondering solutions to the problem, and it came to me in a flash: If people in the North are getting a modicum of exercise by walking to the bus, let's establish a commission and study how far they're walking. Then you encourage the folks in the South to park their cars at other people's houses, at least as far away as the Northerners are walking for the bus. Now everyone is exercising!
If I say so myself, this is an elegantly simple solution. If you'd like me to try to solve any problem you might have yourself, just get in touch via the comments and I'll get back to you. No buzzwords, reasonable fees, just good old Yankee ingenuity, if you'll pardon the expression.
OK, 8 a.m., got my own problems to solve thnxbai.
Turns out they don't get enough exercise, is the problem.
Oh.
No but really, one problem is the roads are narrow because they don't have to put the snow anywhere because there isn't any, as a rule, so you can't walk along the roads. And there's little public transportation, so people don't get the soupcon of exercise you get from walking to the bus. They drive everywhere, see. Plus which it's too hot in the South to exercise outside in the summer. Ah ha! Boy, those high-paid journalists! They just get to the bottom of things.
But anyway, I was pondering solutions to the problem, and it came to me in a flash: If people in the North are getting a modicum of exercise by walking to the bus, let's establish a commission and study how far they're walking. Then you encourage the folks in the South to park their cars at other people's houses, at least as far away as the Northerners are walking for the bus. Now everyone is exercising!
If I say so myself, this is an elegantly simple solution. If you'd like me to try to solve any problem you might have yourself, just get in touch via the comments and I'll get back to you. No buzzwords, reasonable fees, just good old Yankee ingenuity, if you'll pardon the expression.
OK, 8 a.m., got my own problems to solve thnxbai.
My evening yesterday verged on being overly positive. (If you've ever been to a Pete Seeger concert, you know what I mean.) After dinner—a relatively light, healthy dinner, unfortunately—I walked (walked) across town to the community garden. I could go anytime, but Wednesday is the designated evening for people with plots there to garden together communally. Isn't that nice? And actually, it was. I talked to a few people about their gardens, and they talked about mine, in a low-key orgy of caring about each other's relative gardening fortunes. One lady said she'd never grown peppers before and her plant had disappointed her by putting forth just one pepper so far. Ever the pollyanna, I said that she was at least one pepper better off than she had been before, and she agreed. Glass half full!
Then this nice couple asked me if I was walking over to the park stage to hear the free concert that customarily happens every Wednesday night. Well, how could I say no? They lent me a chair, bless them, and we listened to a pretty good bluegrass band. How evil and debauched can you feel, listening to bluegrass?
After seven or eight tunes the band took a break, so I thoughtfully folded up and bagged the chair the nice folks had loaned me, expressed the sincere hope that I'd see them the next time they came to the gardening deal, and walked through the park toward home. People were having wholesome, outdoor fun everywhere—young men played volleyball; children swung on swings. It was an idyllic summer evening in a well-ordered, upstanding community.
So on the way home I stopped into a local hostelry and ordered a martini. Mind you, there's nothing wrong or bad about martinis per se, but drinking them is like hiking in bear country—you're usually going to be OK if you watch yourself, but there's always a bracing, stimulating whiff of danger involved. I could feel the evening, so positive and healthy just a few moments before, coming back into balance. All things in moderation, that's what I say, including and especially moderation itself.
The place was just about deserted, and the dark wood of the bar under my elbows stretched for yards in either direction, gleaming and unsullied. I sat there in blissful peace, taking the occasional pull at my drink. Before long the glass was half empty. After a while it was empty altogether. So I ordered another. It was delicious.
Lately my days and nights have mostly been devoted to looking at screens and tapping on keyboards, and I've felt generally underinspired. But when I woke up this morning the sky was just beginning to lighten over the treetops to the east, and Venus was high in the sky. No stars were visible, just the lovely silvery planet, called "Ishtar" by the Bablylonians.
And by the time I came downstairs and got the coffee going, the rising sun had painted some cloud cover with fierce, glowing orange and coral hues that I felt lucky to be up to see. Not a bad way to start the day. It's full daylight now, nearly 8 a.m., neighbors leaning on the fence talking about ball games and so forth. But still a bit of magic in the air from that in-between world when night gives way to day. Not a bad way to start at all, actually.
And by the time I came downstairs and got the coffee going, the rising sun had painted some cloud cover with fierce, glowing orange and coral hues that I felt lucky to be up to see. Not a bad way to start the day. It's full daylight now, nearly 8 a.m., neighbors leaning on the fence talking about ball games and so forth. But still a bit of magic in the air from that in-between world when night gives way to day. Not a bad way to start at all, actually.
First of all, I generally don't make political comments on this site, although at times, man, I'd love to. And this next isn't political, it's about the use of language and preserving useful distinctions. So I'd like to say something about Sarah Palin's spokesperson du jour Meghan Stapleton and her assertion the other day about Palin's post-resignation future, "The world is literally her oyster."
Now, language evolves and all, and I'm well aware that "literally" has become an intensifier in informal speech. People say about some startling news, "I literally thew up," or "I literally died." Except here's the thing: Used properly, "literally" explicitly refers to things in their literal, real, concrete, non-metaphorical senses. If you literally threw up, then your stomach contents were somewhere other than your stomach, and if you literally died, then you are no more, you have ceased to be, you have expired and gone to meet your maker, joined the bleedin' choir invisible and so forth.
And sometimes I wish that were true of people who misuse the term "literally." To say "The world is literally her oyster" is to assert that the world is, in actual fact, an oyster, and that it belongs to or is under the control of Sarah Palin. Certainly there are lots of credulous and imaginative people around and it's possible Ms. Stapleton believes that the world is, in actual fact, an oyster in the possession of Gov. Palin, and if so, she used the term properly and I excuse her from any chastisement on this score. But if she thinks that the world is a different thing from an oyster, she used the term incorrectly and someone in her business should know better. Just sayin.' Life is confusing enough; let's not muddy things further, eh, Ms. Stapleton? Thanks!
Now, language evolves and all, and I'm well aware that "literally" has become an intensifier in informal speech. People say about some startling news, "I literally thew up," or "I literally died." Except here's the thing: Used properly, "literally" explicitly refers to things in their literal, real, concrete, non-metaphorical senses. If you literally threw up, then your stomach contents were somewhere other than your stomach, and if you literally died, then you are no more, you have ceased to be, you have expired and gone to meet your maker, joined the bleedin' choir invisible and so forth.
And sometimes I wish that were true of people who misuse the term "literally." To say "The world is literally her oyster" is to assert that the world is, in actual fact, an oyster, and that it belongs to or is under the control of Sarah Palin. Certainly there are lots of credulous and imaginative people around and it's possible Ms. Stapleton believes that the world is, in actual fact, an oyster in the possession of Gov. Palin, and if so, she used the term properly and I excuse her from any chastisement on this score. But if she thinks that the world is a different thing from an oyster, she used the term incorrectly and someone in her business should know better. Just sayin.' Life is confusing enough; let's not muddy things further, eh, Ms. Stapleton? Thanks!
I saw a story in the New York Times yesterday about an old-time music festival in North Carolina that's been going on for 85 years, and my mind started wandering, as it often does. I looked up bluegrass music, and discovered it's not really folk music—it draws on folk idioms, but it was created in the middle of the last century by professional musicians. Well, fair enough. So I got to thinking about the banjo style that's the real folk deal—called "frailing" or perhaps more commonly "clawhammer." Something happens to me when I hear this music—it triggers a cultural memory in me, perhaps, which is curious because I don't belong to the culture that produced it. It could be a more prosaic thing—that we've all seen large numbers of movies in which mist enshrouds the distant hills as this music plays to signal that we're in Appalachia. But the fact is it takes me back, back, back, back to the hills of Wales, and Ireland, and Scotland, because that's where these folks came from originally. They came to the States to get out from under their Engllish landlords. They were tough, as ready as Afghans to fight and never much inclined to let themselves be pushed around, and they went up into the hills and farmed and made music in their spare time. And they were a big part of the American Revolution—they wanted to be left the hell alone, and kicking out the British came naturally to them. So anyway, yesterday I'm wondering if I might want to buy some of this clawhammer music, so I'm looking around for its truest exemplars, you know, and I settle on this fellow Wade Ward. He was a celebrated clawhammer player, but made his living as a farmer. And I noted with interest that he was born, lived, and died in a small town in Virginia called Independence. I liked that, today being a certain holiday and so forth. I like beer and barbecued food and fireworks, but I may add old-time music to the things I make a point of enjoying on this particular day. Just seems right, somehow.
Because the other day I was driving along and saw a sign for a laundromat with just two things on it: the name, and the words "Open to the public." Now, see, I could have helped that owner understand that "open to the public" is not the most important thing to tell the world about your laundromat. People pretty much assume that laundromats are open to the public—if there are snootily exclusive laundromats with huge fees to join that you have to be proposed for membership to, well, I haven't heard of them. A golf course that's open to the public? Sure, that would be good to have on the sign. Laundromats, not so much.
