Dr. Metablog

Another Brooklyn Memoirist: Robert A. M. Stern

I must confess that I had never heard of architect-entrepreneur Robert Stern until I read Martin Filler's NYRB review of Stern's recent autobiography -- which is called Between Memory and Invention: My Journey in Architecture. How could I have been so behindhand, so ill-informed?

Filler's evaluation of the memoir is sharp-elbowed. He plainly doesn't like Stern himself although he grudgingly grants that he was a successful dean of architecture at Yale. His critiques of Stern's buildings are unfriendly and a bit wicked: of Yale's two newly-constructed colleges, Filler claims that "first-year students might imagine that they've wandered into a themed Disney resort called Academialand." The Comcast Center in Philadelphia, he says, is of "surpassing banality"; the George W. Bush Presidential Center in Dallas "resembles a branch bank in a suburban shopping mall." Moreover, Filler is is both scornful (and possibly envious) that Stern married into lavish wealth (his wife was a Gimbel heiress). Is it wit or is it bigotry to deride Stern's progression from a working-class Brooklyn Jewish family to a big time Manhattan success as a typical "rugelach to riches story?"

It was when I learned that Stern was a Brooklyn boy that my interest was provoked and I trotted over to the Boulder Public Library to procure a copy of Memory and Invention. I doubt I would have read the book from cover to cover except for its neighborhood relevance. Robert Stern, it turns out, was not only a local lad but he was born in exactly my year, 1939. He attended public schools and had hoped to attend Erasmus Hall High School, which would have made him my  classmate, but, he claims, he lived outside of the district and so was shunted to Manual Trades High School (famously featured in the grimy novel and film, The Blackboard Jungle). It was a surprise to me that he grants a sentence to one of his junior high school classmates, the "diplomat" Matthew Nimetz, whose name I remember from my four years at Erasmus but whose person, as far as I can recall, I never encountered. I have to doubt that Stern was districted out of Erasmus. Manual Trades was a school that students chose, like Stuyvesant or Brooklyn Tech. Stern misremembers. He probably decided to cast his lot with Manual Trades because it was reputed to be a "hands-on" school. It's doesn't much matter: he would have been just as unhappy at Erasmus. He craved Harvard and Manhattan and notoriety and money, and none of the local schools would have filled the bill, certainly not EHHS.

Although the lengthy accounts of Stern's buildings might enlighten and inspire a specialized readership, I myself found the book dispiriting. There is lots of information about commissions procured by sucking up to the mighty and a heck of a lot more about infighting among the high-flying architects than I needed to know. In addition, the book overflows with self-congratulation and is replete with assiduous and triumphal name-dropping.

It's not for me to judge Stern's achievement, but I cannot disagree with his contention that architects should be fully steeped in but not restricted by the architecture of the past. I gather that Stern is a "neo-traditionalist' and Filler, his reviewer-critic, a "modernist."  I cannot say how many buckets of talent (Filler would say "none!") that Stern brought to his game, but however many they are, they are only drops in an ocean of ambition.  

Despite it all, I was intrigued by Stern's Brooklyn childhood, especially where his history bisects (or veers away) from my own. His grandparents, like mine, are folks of eastern European shtetl origin who struggled without much success to adapt to the new world. They landed in Brooklyn, which Stern seems to have resented. He yearned for "the city," Manhattan. I myself did not sufficiently appreciate Brooklyn, and like Stern, I wanted out. Nowadays, it's embarrassing for me to recall that the one big idea of this Brooklyn "yoot" was to leave the old country, Flatbush, behind. Stern, on the other hand, is unembarrassed: "I disliked Brooklyn--it was a place to be from and get out of (his italics). The difference between us is that he knew that he wanted Manhattan; I didn't know what I wanted, I just wanted to go somewhere else, which I have managed to do, having spent most of my life in the mountain west and in green New England.  

Stern also knows what all of us old Brooklynites know -- that our once provincial and disrespected borough has become a bit hoity-toity. The realtors have taken over. Stern says that his childhood neighborhood "is now alternately called Windsor Terrace and Kensington, but at the time everyone just called it Flatbush."  Which is exactly my recollection. If you had asked me in 1950 what part of Brooklyn I hailed from, I would have said "Flatbush." But now the PS 217 catchment area is called Kensington or Ditmas Park, expressions that I had never heard until the last decade or so.

One curiosity about Between Memory and Invention: unlike every other Brooklyn reminiscence I have ever read, Stern never mentions the Dodgers. Quite a telling omission, I think, if you think about it for a moment. Nothing about either food or sex, either. An uncharacteristic Brooklyn childhood.

In a Lonely Place (1950)

In a Lonely Place is a carefully written, economically directed, suspenseful, and sometimes menacing piece of work. Filmed in 1949, released in 1950, it has aged very well. I've seen it four or five times over the years, and it improves with each viewing. Humphrey Bogart is true to his natural bent as a half-crazed, paranoid, violent screenwriter, and Gloria Grahame is utterly convincing as a smart, vulnerable and ultimately self-protective young actress. It's a noir-y film, very satisfying, with only an occasional misstep (such as the five inexplicable minutes allotted to Laurel Gray's --i.e. Grahame's-- butch masseuse).  

On this last time through, I was struck by an element of the film of which I had not taken sufficient notice. It's a distinctly post-WWII movie. Dix Steele (Bogart) had been a successful writer before the war; he was, we're told, a good commanding officer; but now he's erratic, crazy jealous, his sanity at knife's edge. The film does not offer an explanation for his decline. When he's shown pictures of the brutally murdered Mildred Atkinson, he exhibits no emotional response;  it's as though he's so thoroughly inured to violent death that he lacks fellow-feeling. The audience must infer he's seen too many such deaths. In the past, I hadn't sought a cause for his symptoms, but this time, it was transparent to me that although the writers don't dwell on the war as a cause, they assume that the 1950 audience will get the point. It's shell-shock or battle fatigue or what is now called PTSD. When I came to appreciate the film's 1940s ambience, In a Lonely Place became not merely an intimate psychological drama with noir overtones, but a trenchant commentary on WWII devastation and disruption. And therefore a more profound and richer work of art.   

I was curious enough about what is left unsaid in the film to look for a copy of the novel from which the film is drawn. It's Dorothy B. Hughes, In a Lonely Place, first published in 1947 and now reissued in 2017 by New York Review Books (thanks NYRB!. Not a difficult search, because it was right there on a shelf in the Boulder Public Library.  

In a Lonely Place is a novel in the Chandler-Hammett-Gardner orbit. For those who love the genre, it might be a great read. For me, not an aficionado of mysteries or detective novels, it was, I'm afraid, a plod -- much marred by an arid, graceless prose style, with many a sentence so awkward that it pained both eye and ear. But just as I suspected, in the novel the WWII material is front and center -- and it's PTSD all right. The shocker, however, is that Dix Steele is not the Bogart-Steele of the film. Not even close. He's not a disturbed  ex-officer trying to adjust to the post-war world. Instead, he's a serial killer on the prowl for another victim. He's murdered his landlord and a former girlfriend, and a trio or quartet of young pretty women. He's a textbook misogynistic nutcase and therefore not nearly as interesting the film's complicated troubled Dix Steele.

I'm in awe of the brilliant transformation from book to script. The credit goes to two writers:  Edmund Hall North, who first "adapted" the novel, and Andrew P. Solt (a refugee born in Hungary as Endre Strausz) who wrote the screenplay. And of course to the director, the great Nicholas Ray.

(In the picture above, Dix's arm is around Laurel's neck. It should be an affectionate embrace, but he's too possessive. She's justifiably wary.)

The Anti-Bucket List

Here follows a list of some of the many activities that I definitely, excruciatingly, do not wish to perform before I kick the ol' kettle. My life is perfectly complete as it stands, and I feel no psychological pressure to engage in any of these anxiety-ridden ventures. Nope, all the pressure is on the side of safety, indolence and sloth. I'm mighty "fulfilled" just as I am. As fulfilled as I want to be.

I do not yearn to explore the depths of the Marianas trench in a submersible -- nor even go down a few hundred feet to view a shipwreck. I prefer the surface of the wine-dark sea, or better still, a quiet pond where, even if I'm a daring distance from the edge, my feet can still touch bottom.  

I do not want to take up diving into shallow rivers from rocky precipices. I'm not interested in being death-defying or picturesque. I can defy death just perfectly while lying on my couch. Also, no bungee-jumping, or, even more lunatic, jumping out of airplanes with a fickle parachute on my back. No thank you.  

I have no desire to smuggle weapons or drugs across the border or into Singapore or Iran. In fact, I don't think I'll do any smuggling at all. I consider my career as a smuggler, never flourishing, to be absolutely finito.

I do not need to take up a late-life career as a wild-animal trainer. No lions, tigers, bears. Though I do wish that I could do something about the broccoli-eatiing groundhogs.

I don't wish to train for a second career as a food-taster to the mighty. I wouldn't be good at the job; I'm chronically, almost terminally hypochondriacal. I would probably find poison in every forkful or sip --  and then display all sorts of bizarre symptoms. I especially don't want to be a food taster for people on Mr. Putin's shit list. No sirree.

I do not want to go dancing with the stars. Never, never, never, never, never (as William Shakespeare wrote in a slightly different context).  No televised tangos in my future.

I am not going to sign up for that trip to Mars. Or to the moon. Or anywhere that requires a pressure suit. I'm comfortable in my "relaxed fit" jeans and shirt.

Rapelling. I do not have the least inkling of a need to rappel. 

 

Words of My Life: Provider

I first encountered the word "provider" in its positive sense as a virtual synonym "mensch": "he was a good provider; he took care of his wife and his kids and his aged parents and even his employees" (if he had any).

But nowadays the word has been stripped of its warm associations and has emerged as a cool or neutral term. I encounter the word most often when I need medical attention. A doctor is no longer a doctor; he's been renamed a "provider." I believe this usage to be the invention of the nefarious insurance companies that govern and distort our medical system. "Doctor" and "nurse" are praise-words, rich in significance. "Provider" has no resonance. It reduces your doctor to an index or reference number and is therefore of great utility to the bureaucracy. I can't imagine that a doctor, asked what he does, would be happy to respond, Ir "I'm a provider."   

The word "teacher" has, for many, a positive resonance. I was a teacher; I was not an "education provider" -- nor would I have embarked on a career with the aim of being considered such. 

I believe that nowadays the most common use of the word "provider" occurs in the internet phrase, "content provider."  And so the word continues on its long downward path.

Falling

I suppose I fell an uncountable number of times in the days of my youth, but to these floppings I paid no mind. I started to take note during my first year in Ithaca, when, a creature of sidewalks and "gutters," I fell splat on my face in the slopes and snows far above Cayuga's waters at least a score of times. Lithe and springy, I did not a whit of damage to myself.

Falling became a real issue in my life only when my father, at age 74 in 1978, took a header down a flight of basement stairs at 539 East 9. From that moment, his life changed rapidly for the worse. Whether his  arthritis was a consequence of the fall, as his doctors claimed (they called it "traumatic arthritis") I cannot say, but from that time until his death eight years later he was crippled with pain. His once athletic body wasted and shrunk, and his lively step devolved into a sad shuffle. For me, it was a warning and a precedent. Don't fall.

Nowadays, even though I'm older by several years than my father was when the arthritis finally took his life, and am most definitely marooned in what he liked to call "extra innings," I'm most aware that it is a fall that could do me in. I take precautions: not paranoid, I hope, but sensible. Some years ago I moved to a building with an elevator -- no more second floor bedrooms or basement washing machines for me. For our West Bradford summers, I've put up rope banisters where the ground is steep or irregular. I carry a stick when I walk on the paths or in the woods. "Three legs good, two legs bad." Even so, this past summer I fell twice. The first time, because a cemetery groundhog had dug a burrow next to a gravestone and grass had grown to conceal his hole. I'm glad the fall was a gentle one, because I would have hated to have gone down in local lore as the guy who died when he cracked his head on an old, lichen-covered tombstone. Too much irony, too much black humor.

My second fall was when a rope snapped -- so not my fault at all. The ropes that we used for a banister on a steep path leading from the dike to the waterfall garden had simply rotted out. I tumbled slowly and gracefully. We've now replaced that old rope with a new one so massive that it could secure an aircraft carrier.

Moreover, I've stopped going up on ladders -- not even kitchen step ladders. If a ceiling light bulb needs to be changed, I'll hire someone or beg a favor from a young person. I'm aware of the tragic story of a friend of a friend who lived in a house with a two-story entrance foyer. Though seventyish, he climbed a ladder to straighten a wall hanging and lost his balance. He lingered for a few days, but never regained consciousness.

Some friends of a decade or so younger than I came visiting yesterday. In the course of a lively conversation, I revealed that I shun step stools and ladders. One of the guys said, "I'm not ready to give up climbing on ladders." I said, "Why not, it's dangerous -- you can hurt yourself."  He said, "I'm too young. It's a matter of self-respect." To which I responded, "Fuck self-respect."

I asked my cardiologist what was going to kill me. She said, at your age, and with your state of health, the most likely cause is either an infection or a fall. Which I take to be good news of a kind. I can be vigilant about infections and I can be very cautious about where I set my feet. Especially so if I remember my "mature" vulnerability and if I keep in mind my father's history. 

Nevertheless, I'm beginning to feel that I may not be immortal.

Jane Austen's Emma; Harriet Smith's Ancestry

Both partisans and skeptics of Jane Austen's Emma will remember Harriet Smith, the young woman who becomes the object of Emma Woodhouse's officious matchmaking. Harriet's ancestry is explained by JA; she is "the natural daughter of someone" -- that is, she is an illegitimate child of obscure origin. Harriet's patronizing friend Emma imagines, without a shred of evidence, that the poor dear must be the daughter of nobility. She therefore interferes with Harriet's romantic prospects, first by discouraging an "attachment" to an upright and capable farmer -- and then by promoting relationships which we readers are taught to believe should be beyond Harriet's aspiration. JA, for all her satirical spirit, is not one to challenge the rigid class distinctions of rural Highbury. 

But then, at the very end of the novel, other options having led to disaster, Harriet and farmer Robert Martin are allowed to marry.  Almost as a coda -- an afterthought -- Austen reveals to us that 

Harriet''s parentage became known. She proved to be the daughter of a tradesman, rich enough to afford her the comfortable maintenance which had ever been her's and decent enough to have always wished for concealment, -- such was the blood of gentility which Emma had formerly been so ready to vouch -- It was likely to be as untainted, perhaps, as the blood of many a gentleman, but what a connexion had she been preparing for Mr. Knightley -- the Churchills -- or even for Mr. Elton! The stain of illegitimacy, unbleached by nobility or wealth, would have been a stain indeed. 

It's a curious and I think distressing revelation.

There's an unpleasant sneer in the dismissive phrase, "daughter of a tradesman" where "merchant" or even "prosperous merchant" might have been more generous. Moreover, the pregnant phrase "illegitimacy unbleached by nobility or wealth" neatly encapsulates the hypocrisy of a society that can condone a rich bastard but condemn a poor one. 

But what is most bothersome about the paragraph is what it omits. Although JA pull back the curtain on Harriet Smith's father, she does not bother herself to reveal anything about Harriet Smith's mother. Surely even an illegitimate child had one, and surely that mother, in addition to her pregnancy and childbirth, had a story of her own -- both before and after she surrendered her child. If Harriet's father can be revealed (even though he is not named), why then, why not her mother?  What is implied by this omission? That the mother doesn't matter -- she was merely "someone's" mistress or concubine. Or perhaps a prostitute. That Harriet's status in society has nothing to do with her inconsequential mother.

Or perhaps that JA, raveling the loose ends of her story, preferred to avoid a distracting complication.  

My own theory is that JA just simply forgot. Because fathers matter a great deal and mothers matter much less, it's not of any moment who was Harriet's mother. In psychological terms, JA is guilty of a perfect parapraxis -- and unconscious forgetting, canceling, or, in modern jargon, an erasing. Harriet's mother is not even erased -- she's utterly non-existent.

Sometimes what is not represented can be as revealing as what is included.

In Which I Do a Good Deed

We were sitting on a metal bench in front of the Boulder Public Library, resting up for the half mile walk home. It was unusually peaceful; families in and out, borrowing or returning their bags of books. Once in a while, there's a discordant note: a homeless, drugged, or deranged person, muttering or sometimes shouting incoherently, dragging a dirty blanket or wheeling a stolen supermarket cart or bicycle. But yesterday there was an event. A large young man, 40ish, had lost his child. He asked us, "have you seen a boy with a red hat." No we hadn't, but we said we'd pay attention. The poor distressed guy ran from place to place in the park and in the adjacent parking lot, shouting "Zack."  As he became increasingly agitated, so did I. Is there a worse feeling of powerlessness than when you've lost contact with your child. As he became more and more frantic, I remembered Florence Dombey and Mrs. Brown, and Etan Patz, and Leiby Kletzky. After a few moments, I said to LERM, "if the boy with the red hat had come out of the library alone, we would have seen and noticed him. He's got to be inside the library and I'm going to find him." I walked into the building and almost immediately heard some high-pitched crying from somewhere in the stacks. In a few seconds I located the boy (four-years-old, I would guess). I said to him, "I know exactly where your father is and I'm going to take you to him." I took the boy's hand and walked out of the library -- almost immediately to encounter the crazed parent coming our way. I released the child and in a second he was in his father's arms. Father and son consoled each other. I sat back down on our bench, knowing that I had done a good deed. It was a very satisfying, human feeling. After a brief while, we walked home uneventfully.

Our Classmate Janet Reno

My first visit in four months to the new acquisitions shelf of the Boulder Public Library turned out to be fruitful, for I discovered J. H. Stiehm's 2023 biography of Janet Reno: Janet Reno, A Life (Gainesville, Fl). Janet was a classmate ('60) at Cornell and also proceeded with me to Harvard, where she was one of 16 women in her law school class, and I was a undistinguished graduate student in GSAS. I knew her slightly at Cornell; she "sat desk" at Sage Hall, where I was a frequent caller. Our relationship never advanced beyond superficial chat and I was surprised as all get out when she re-emerged in 1993, having been appointed Attorney-General by President Clinton. She served in that position for eight years and made quite a mark. 

I've been on a project of reading the memoirs of members of my age-cohort, especially of those with whom I've crossed paths, even if ever so slightly.  I think that so far, Janet Reno is the only one of my acquaintances who's earned not just an autobiography, but a biography of her own.

I was particularly interested in the paragraphs about Janet's Cornell and Harvard years, but I'm sorry to report that those sections are notably thin and superficial. Stiehm's account make Cornell seem archaic and primitive -- out of a 1930s movie. It is news to me that "freshman wore beanies, sophomores had Cornell sweaters, juniors had blazers, and seniors had straw hats." Mere mythology. It's true, though, that there was considerable drinking at fraternity and apartment parties, but for what college was that not true?

Careless errors: Janet did not live at Dickinson Hall, she lived at Clara Dickson Hall. She did not study political theory with non-existent Professor Mario Anatti, but no doubt she did take classes with the distinguished scholar-politician Mario Einaudi.

Stiehm passes over in silence the most egregious moment in Janet's career -- when she was suckered into allowing villainous Ken Starr to expand his probe into Bill Clinton's sexual adventures. Either an apology or an explanation should surely have been in order.

Awkward Question

I was at the old-age home (sorry, "retirement community") last week -- a place that gives me the creeps even though many of my friends and former colleagues seem to live there happily. (I'm on the waiting list but I hope that I'll never be constrained to move in.)  I was there to share lunch with a 90-year-old friend. At the next table over (in the rather luxurious dining room) was a woman whom I knew slightly fifty years ago -- as a neighbor and as the mother of a Flatirons Elementary School tudent. She's 89, a widow, and still healthy, still attractive.

She (let's call her Ms. GK) initiated the conversation with this question. "Is your wife still alive?"  

It wasn't the inquiry itself that took me aback. It was the casual way in which it was asked, with no more emotional resonance than, say, "do you want raisins in your cereal?" or, "is it raining outside?"  

Which made me realize that Ms. GK --  and all her fellow denizens of the facility -- live in a world of "sole-survivors" where the deaths of spouses "were as plentie as Blackberries." Therefore, there is nothing noteworthy or remarkable for her to inquire about the status of a long time companion, especially when more than half of husbands and wives have already kicked the old bucket.

Nevertheless, the lack of emotion, the cold bloodedness, the absence of euphemism, of Ms. GK's question produced in me a "take stock" moment. Whether we are in or out of the institution, we are in the same ninth-decade world.

But I do hope that I myself do not become quite so matter-of-fact about the death of friends and family.

Cemetery struck by fallen tree

I'm more or less reconciled to my anonymity. Just not a famous dude. Not an "influencer." Haven't been covered by newspapers or reporters in a generation or two. But now notoriety has struck. 

Careful and diligent readers of this blague know that the old West Bradford graveyard -- a couple of acres of bumpy terrain -- abuts our Vermont property. And now they will discover that "our" cemetery has been featured in the Bradford Journal-Opinion (formerly the United Opinion). Here's the story: 

The picture is of such poor quality that it's impossible to decipher. The story isn't that easy to read either so here's a transcription: 

Cemetery struck by fallen tree 

by Alex Nuti-deBiasi

BRADFORD--The Bradford Selectboard voted last week to spend $3500 to carefully clean up the West Bradford cemetery after a tree fell last week shattering limbs and possibly damaging headstones and gravesites.

"It looks like a bomb went off," Donnalyn Burgess Lyon told selectboard members at the meeting on August 24. I'm beside myself."

Lyon has several generations of family members buried at the bucolic cemetery located on Hackett Hill Road near South Road. She visited the cemetery to trim the grass and care for the gravesites.

A reporter who visited the cemetery ahead of last week's meeting did not see any damaged headstones, but at least one heavy limb rested on a stone.

Lyon told a reporter she visited the cemetery on a weekly basis to care for plots and trim the grass around stones until she broke her leg. Now she makes it every couple of weeks.

Board members said it appears that the tree was located on an abutter's property but that the town should spend the money to clean up the municipal property before pursuing reimbursement from the abutter. They solicited a quote from Thomson Logging for the clean up.

"We want it taken care of and not cause more damage," board chair Meroa Benjamin said.

Hey, we're newsworthy -- and a diligent reporter is right there on the case. We're a little taken aback that Donnalyn's sensationalist remark that "it looks like a bomb went off" was reported without comment.  A bomb didn't go off; a tree fell.

Moreover, we object to the story's headline: the cemetery wasn't struck by a fallen tree; it was struck by a "falling" tree. Once it's fallen it doesn't do any striking.  

For the record, the tree was a big tooth aspen, which folks around here call "popple." It was huge, and it was thoroughly rotten at the base of the trunk. The wonder is, "it hath endured so long."

And also: the "abutter" has reimbursed the town for the cost of the cleanup.

The "bottlebrush buckeye"

As a youth, I spent many a happy hour in the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. One of the plantings that I remember vividly was what I conceived of as a "wall" of bottlebrush buckeyes. It's been many a year, but what stands in my memory is roughly 40 or 50 linear feet of 20-foot-tall decorative shrubs in full flower.

So naturally, when I came to West Bradford, I tried to reproduce the effect. I just happened to have a perfect spot for a wall of buckeyes -- a fertile slope of the proper size and shape. In 1980 (plus or minus a year or so) I purchased two such plants from White Flower Farm in Connecticut and set them 30 feet apart, optimistically hoping that over the course of the years they would expand to fill in the allotted space.  

It did not happen. One of the plants lingered for a year or so before giving up the ghost; the other stood still -- grew a bit, then died back over the winter. Our Zone 3 Vermont weather proved to be too harsh for a plant that had thrived in Zone 6 Brooklyn. I resigned my self to the fact that my experiment with the bottlebrush buckeye was a failure.

But then perhaps 10 years ago, after decades of stagnancy, the plant began to increase in size. Global warming?  Wetter summers? Maturity? I can't say. And then this past summer, after forty-plus years of doing virtually nothing, the bottlebrush buckeye produced some flowers. And there they are -- long awaited and very welcome!

(The purplish plant in the background is Joe Pye weed, eutrochium purpureum, which thrives and multiplies without the least bit of assistance from me. And also a 20-year-old weeping willow and young Eastern cottonwood, which I set in place about 5 years ago.)

This past summer, dazzled that the buckeye produced its extravagant flowers at last, I gave it a few hours of care. Weeded it, pruned away the dead growth,  and gave it a small optimisitc dose of 10-10-10 fertilizer. I'm very curious to see what happens next summer. Could it be that my 40-year old experiment will succeed at last?

"At Home"

"And you're still at home," observed Mr. Henry, who had arrived to repair our on-the-fritz propane-powered clothes dryer. (Mr. Henry has been curating our appliances for a generation; he can diagnose a problem by a glance from several yards away, or perhaps he does it by magic. He's a kind of stove and refrigerator genius). 

"At home?" Mr. Henry had inquired about my age and I had confessed my longevity. "Confessed" is not exactly the right word. "Bragged," perhaps. I've reached the age when I don't mind if people ask about my years. I'm proud, I think, to have reached 84 and 5/12s still able to do a day's work -- when many of my friends and former colleagues have plummeted off the cliff or have moved to a "senior living" (formerly called "old age") residence.

But Mr. Henry's comment took me aback -- took me a few seconds to grasp. "Still at home?" Where else would I be? Ah, in an institution. 

I wonder about the difference between the 84-year-old person that Mr. Henry perceived and the 84 that I experience, internally, every day. To myself, I'm certainly not the geezer that I catch sight of in the mirror. Gray, paunchy, a trifle stooped. A bit unsteady on his feet. Even on my best days, I'm not as vigorous, even middle-age vigorous, as I once was. I tire easily and rest often. Work a bit, nap a bit. I no longer perform feats of strength, not only because my muscles have shrunk, but because I'm afraid of injuring my always-vulnerable back.  

I don't feel seventeen, but I feel myself to be myself. I'm competent. My brain, thanks be to all the gods and goddesses in the various pantheons, is still functioning well, though I'm troubled by "noun loss."  I know which plant is a delphinium and which a hyssop, but there are days when those nouns just disappear and can't be recalled. Same with the names of people. The recall system is as fragile as the dryer, but the storage system is working just fine (if I'm patient).  

I find that sometimes people who look only at my outside underestimate my abilities and give me credit and even praise for actions that I think of as routine. I find this phenomenon to be mildly insulting. It's no fun to exceed expectations when the expectations are so low.  At the same time, I know that the task that I can easily dispatch today, might be one that I won't be able to perform tomorrow. And yet I don't want to allow myself to be patronized or applauded for putting my pants on correctly, 

I no longer feel immortal. In fact, I feel mortality pressing in on me. I don't fear death, but I'm not ready for it. I'm enjoying life far too much. How I would feel if my various twinges and aches turned into chronic pains I cannot say. But for today the watchword is, press on!

My Summer So Far

It's the end of August 2023, and what an unusual summer so far. It's all about the rain -- constant, unremitting, monsoony.  Record-setting.  Last week we had three dry days in a row -- first time this entire summer. I've not once seen the stars. One of the great pleasures here is the shiny distinct Milky Way on a clear night -- but there has not been a single cloudless night in months. The pond, therefore, has been gloriously filled and the waterfall, characteristically only a trickle at this season, is still a veritable picturesque and noisy Niagara. We had a great blueberry crop this year, but not a single edible plum, perhaps because of the late frost. The vegetables have done well, especially the tomatoes and cucumbers. I don't know why I haven't seen a single cabbage butterfly this summer -- but I'm glad they've shunned us. Ditto the tomato hornworm. Is it the rain? We've had more tomatoes than we can eat even after giving away bagsful. LERM and I have had a great time, weather permitting, with the various flower gardens. Delphiniums and phlox have had especially good years -- and we've planted some new shrubs --hydrangeas and weigelas -- and extended the day lily borders. Mowing has been a challenge, because the grass grows so rapidly and there are so few days when it's dry enough to cut. As a result, when I do find an opportunity, the grass comes out of the machine in wet clumps and plugs. Unsightly, to say the least. NGP has not been impeded by the weather or by the surgery. He's out there every day tending to the forest and expanding his course. Not many guests (my friends are becoming too old to travel). BHP and his family were here for almost three weeks -a great pleasure -- but the daughter never appeared,.

And to think that last summer was so droughty that the well went dry.

I've done some reading but no writing -- not even on this blague.  

Still Another Republican Legislative Initiative

Alabama representative Ernie Yarbrough has introduced a bill called the Abolish Abortion in Alabama Act which reclassifies abortion as murder in the first degree. Pregnant women who abort a child, either surgically or through the use of drugs, would be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. According to the Alabama Political Reporter, Yarbrough contends that "abortion is murder, and justice demands that our laws treat it as such."

Representative Yarbrough has been one the nation's foremost advocates of what he calls "medical freedom."  He has long opposed face masks and covid vaccinations -- or in fact vaccinations of any sort. He "believe[s] that no person, entity or government has the right to force its citizens to violate bodily autonomy. The right, blessing and freedom as individuals to make personal medical, health and wellness decisions ultimately rests in the hands of Alabama citizens." Abortion is therefore an intrusion into the God-given right of every embryo (or unborn child) to be born. "All of us, including fetuses, deserve to make these personal decisions without threat of coercion, persecution or job loss."

Representative Randolph *Randy" Holman (R-Phenix City) has submitted a bill that would take Yarbrough's policy position a bit further. Holman's bill would require the "re-fertilization" of women who were guilty of abortion. In most cases this would involve identifying the father of the unborn child and requiring the couple to re-fertilize.  Otherwise, says, Holman, even if a child-murdering woman is fined or jailed, she hasn't made restitution to society. Only "re-fertilization" will do the job, Holman says. He calls it "compensatory pregnancy."

If the father of the unborn child cannot be found, surrogates may be employed. Surrogate fathers would include members of the legislature who voted in support of the legislation.

Representative "Randy" Holman:

More Republican Legislative Initiatives

Texas Representative Trey Moody (R-Flower Mound) introduced a bill in the lower house that would require all public school teachers, administrators, and other personnel to bear weapons during the entire school day. Weapons must be "carried publicly, in a visible manner" such as in a hip holster. 

Moody stated that "not only would firearms discourage shooters, they would also improve discipline and learning. An armed teacher is a respected teacher," he declared. According to the bill, teachers who refuse to carry sidearms would be immediately fired "for cause." 

The Idaho legislature passed a bill that would reinstate the firing squad as a method of execution. The firing squad would consist of six to eight citizen volunteers. Anticipating great demand for the position, the law states that members of the squad be chosen by lottery from Idaho citizens who can demonstrate that they are proficient with 'long guns, or AK-47s" and are certified members of the National Rifle Association.  

Tennessee senator Shelby Shatzline (R-Sequatchie) has sponsored a bill that would automatically expel professed atheists from the state legislature.  

Atheists, he contended, "lack the moral bearings to serve the public. They simply cannot tell right from wrong, inasmuch as they are not guided by a loving and  omniscient deity." The bill is expected to pass resoundingly in the Republican-supermajority Tennessee legislature, though its impact may be moot, inasmuch as there are no known atheists in either house. Senator Shatzline is also drafting a bill that would expel atheists from Tennessee. 

South Carolina representative Britt Brownfields, has introduced a bill that would penalize unmarried people who live together. It would impose a penalty of "100% of state tax liability" upon such couples. Brownfields stated that living "in sin" weakens the moral fibre of the nation and flouts Biblical law.  

According to the draft of the bill in addition to the tax penalty, violators would immediately be tarred and feathered and ridden out of town on a rail. Perdue Chicken will volunteer the feathers and Koch Industries the tar.  A donor or vendor of rails has not yet been selected. 

Kitsch? or the Epitome of Tacky?

We visited the grandiose Americana at Brand Mall in Glendale, California. It's gigantic, splendid, and luxurious.

I was, I gotta say, utterly transfixed by the artificial lake and its wondrous statue. Words cannot do it justice; here's a picture:

The statue is titled, "The Spirit of American Youth Rising from the Waves." It is 18 feet tall, weighs 2500 pounds and is covered with 23 carat gold, which, I'm going to guess, made it expensive to construct and to install.  It rises from the artificial lake and soars loincloth-clad above the neighboring Cheesecake Factory.  It's shamelessly, courageously vulgar. 

It is, in my opinion, the epitome of kitsch: crass, tasteless, crude, gaudy, flashy, pretentious, showy. Banal. I think the contemporary expression is "over the top."  No Stendhal syndrome for me.

I must say that it doesn't engage the intellect or require much in the way of interpretation. It might even be called fake art expressing a fake emotion. Nevertheless, it's lovable in a kind of melodramatic way. I'm glad to have encountered it, even though it doesn't speak well for American or Californian sensibilities. Perhaps it embodies tasteless nouveau-riche ambition. Bottom line: it's astounding. 

Written for Descendants of Sonia and Joseph Green

This is a picture of my maternal grandparents, my mother's parents, Sonia and Joseph Green. I imagine that it was the work of a professional photographer. I guess that the image dates from when he was about thirty years old and she twenty-five -- so 1910 or thereabouts. I have no idea why the photograph has faded to blue-purple; it used to be ordinary black-and-white. I believe that the costumes that the formal young couple wear were hired for the occasion, as was the habit in those days; I doubt that their wallets would have permitted such fashionable dress.

They're a handsome young couple, are they not?  She very feminine, even delicate, prominently displaying her wedding ring; he sporting a slightly rakish mustache and a full head of youthful hair. When I knew him, forty years later, his hair was white and very sparse.

Sonia Chafetz and Joseph Usilewski arrived at Ellis Island in August of 1904, traveling steerage from Rotterdam. I've written about my grandmother Sonia here. 

I know very little about my grandfather, Joseph Usilewski, later Green. I was thirteen when he died, in 1952, from the last of his five heart attacks. Although my grandparents lived just around the corner on Coney Island Avenue, and I found myself in their presence very often, we had little to say to each other -- mostly because I spoke only English and his English was halting at best. We sometimes played 500 rummy and fan-tan, and I can remember him saying, "Now I'm in a predicament" before discarding, but that's about the most intimate we became. He was aloof and unsmiling --not in any sense "fun." But why should he be? His life had not been easy. He was from Minsk in present-day Belarus and was trained to be a pharmacist, but he had been drafted into the Russian army for the usual twenty-year term. His pay, he told me, was "a ruble every other month, when we got it." So he did the sensible thing -- deserted and ran off to America with Sonia. The family story, which I heard from my mother, was that both Joseph and Sonia were engaged to other people when they met and eloped. My mother also said that when they arrived New York they had just one pair of shoes between them and that Sonia would wait at home until Joseph came home from work before she could leave the house. My mother also told me that when she herself was born (June 14, 1905), her father was not allowed to visit Sonia in the hospital because he could not prove that he was her husband (no ring, no papers). Whether my grandparents were ever legally married, I do not know; nor does it matter.  

My grandfather was a strict father; my mother said that he raised his children "with the belt." There was a two-year period when he wouldn't speak to my then young-adult mother because he disapproved of her male friendships.

I don't think his was a happy marriage; he was frequently absent and it has been supposed that there were "other women" in his life. Nor was he a great success in the new continent; he never found a home in the world of business although as far as I know he was always employed and never in debt. In his last years he worked as a messenger carrying papers and money from one downtown business to another. When I knew him, he and Sonia lived in a very modest two-room apartment (in a third-floor "walkup").  

I suppose I should mention that although born Jewish, neither Joseph nor Sonia practiced their religion. Neither of them ever attended a synagogue or even honored Rosh Hashanah or Pesach at home. Joseph was a socialist and an active member of the Workmen's Circle, in his day a mutual aid society for recent immigrants. I know nothing of his political commitments except that he had a deep loathing for the communist government of Russia. "Worse than the czars."

Joseph had a brother, Nahum, and a sister whose name I have forgotten. Neither of his siblings had children.

If I had been more enterprising, I might have learned from Joseph and his family what life was like in White Russia in the nineteenth century. But I was too young, too self-centered. Too bad.

Idaho Bill Would Restrict Female Travel

Representative Clay Hawkins of Eagle Hollow has filed a bill in the Idaho legislature that would regulate the travel of women of child-bearing age.

Hawkins' bill would prohibit fertile women (14 to 54) from leaving Idaho unless they could present evidence that they were not pregnant. "How else," said Hawkins, "can we prevent them from traveling to a child-murdering state like Colorado and killing an unborn child?" The bill would require women to present a certification from a doctor or the results of a recent pregnancy test.

The bill is expected to sail through the Republican dominated legislature. Governor Brad Little has pledged to sign the bill "as soon as it hits my desk." He called it "common-sense legislation."

Asked how the state plans to enforce the legislation, Representative Hawkins replied, "roadblocks."

[April 15:  I wrote this parody of Republican foolishness a week ago, fully confident that my readers would recognize it as a joke -- an April fool exercise. But to my surprise, almost everyone who commented or contacted me took it for real. Readers readily accepted the idea that an Idaho legislature and an Idaho governor would take seriously a proposal to examine the menstrual cycles of childbearing-age women.  It goes to show not that my readers are unusually naive, but that the present-day Republican party is so fanatic, dictatorial, and intrusive that it might just offer such legislation. Which tells us something about the sorry state of our beloved country. 

In truth, I do not believe it was my imitation of journalist style that deceived my readers. I think it was the accompanying photograph. The doofus-schmendrick in the photo is in fact a member of the Idaho House of Representatives (though he's not Clay Hawkins, whom I invented). But the so-called Clay Hawkins has the face of a person who would conceive of such a fascistic bill -- the foolish, fatuous eyes, the pseudo-patriarchal beard no doubt camouflaging a receding or slack chin, the general air of know-nothing simple-minded idiocy. It's the picture, not the prose, that sold the satire.]

Roux/ Rue/ Rue/ Rubaboo

"Roux" is word that everyone seems to know but me. To the best of my recollection, "roux" had never crossed my personal threshold until last week -- perhaps because I have never taken any special interest in fine cuisine. I've now enlightened myself, but at the cost of blundering into a bewildering etymological thicket.

"Roux," to reprise the obvious, is "a mixture of flour and fat cooked together and used to thicken sauces.... Butter or lard are commonly used fats." But why "roux," with its excrescent French x? Un nom étrange. Roux, if I have it right, means brown, or more precisely, reddish brown (as opposed to "brun" or "marron." In the case of the sauce, roux is an abbreviated version of "beurre roux," or brown butter and, curiously, comes unbuttered into English as simply "roux." Roux derives from Latin russus or ruber, reddish, both of which ancient words originate in the same Indo-European root. I've now learned of a kind of surgery called a Roux-en-Y, probably pronounced "ruin why," which is a kind of "anastomosis"--  or gastric bypass -- in which blood or intestinal vessels are configured into a Y shape. But although one may suspect so, this "roux" has nothing to do with sauces, thank goodness, but is named for the Swiss  physician who originated the surgery, César Roux. I suspect that Roux's roux does not descend from ruber but from rufus, red-headed, as in William II, aka William Rufus.

But then there's the English word "rue." I know it as the common wildflower that we allow to grow in our waterfall garden, and there are cultivated versions as well. This rue comes to English through French and from Latin ruta. The other English rue, as in "rue the day" is, as one might expect, of entirely different origin deriving from Old English hreow  -- "grief, repentance, sorrow, regret, penitence."

 

Exactly like Vivian de St Vrain, William Shakespeare was not familiar with "roux" but he knew and used both rues. Perdita offers the flowery one to Camillo and Polixenes: "Reverend sirs,/For you there's rosemary and rue; these keep/ Seeming and savor all the winter long." Ophelia, in her madness, also distributes rue, known also as herb of grace: "There's fennel for you, and columbines. There's rue for you, and here's some for me. We may call it herb of grace o' Sundays. O, you must wear your rue with a difference." The botanical rue is referenced by the poetical gardener in Richard II; "in this place/I'll set a bank of rue, sour herb of grace:/ Rue, even for ruth, here shortly shall be seen,/ In the remembrance of a weeping queen." The pun on rue/ruth is etymologically interesting. Ruth means sorrow and it is possible that ruth is to rue as truth is to true; that is to say, formed by analogy. 

 

It would be wrong to leave the subject of roux/rue without a mention of rubaboo, "an American stew or porridge of French and Métis people, consisting of bear grease along with peas, corn and other vegetables."  Rubaboo blends "roux" with the Algonquian word aboo, which, I have been reliably informed, means soup and is therefore  an unusual, perhaps even unique IE + Algonquian formation. 

Shadowlands (1993)

Recently some much-admired old friends recommended a movie called Shadowlands (1993). They pledged that we'd love it. But we didn't. In fact, we regarded it as a film that lacked value and integrity. Of course, we won't mention to our friends that we responded so negatively and that we now question their esthetics. I'm sorry but it makes me uncomfortable to doubt people whom I otherwise respect.

But gosh was this Shadowlands a pretentious stinker! It transformed into pure soap opera the peculiar relationship between novelist and religious apologist C. S. Lewis and his fan/correspondent Joy Davidman. We were not entranced by the "white marriage" of a reserved, asexual Oxford don and a smart down-to-earth Jewish-turned-Christian New Yorker. But the odd couple hardly had time for an idyllic picnic on the banks of a picturesque stream before Joy developed a terminal cancer, at which point the movie transitioned from merely dismal to full bore lugubrious, perhaps because the director relied on the "Pause Meaningful" (also called the "Soulful Two-Shot") for much of his effects. 

Joy Davidman was played by Debra Winger, who had died of cancer ten years before in Terms of Endearment (1983), so she was on familiar ground when pale and wan in a hospital bed. 

With such a story, a director should make every effort to avoid turning his film into a tear-jerker. Not this director, not this movie. Shadowlands ended with a shameless climax in which Lewis (Anthony Hopkins) indulged in prolonged tears, sobs, and theatrical snuffling. The old manipulative formula: if you want to make your audience cry, make your leading man weep. 

Over the course of Shadowlands' static 131 minutes, I found myself longing for old-fashioned movie action. If not a car chase, at least a mad dash --with a couple of fender-benders -- to the hospital. Perhaps Hopkins, excluded by a Nurse Ratchet from Winger's hospital room, might have gained entrance by breaking a window in an adjoining room and tip-toeing across a narrow ledge, twelve stories high.  And instead of yet another tepid scene in the college's common room, how about letting Hopkins punch a fellow don right in the kisser. Anything but another long shot of an o-so-green meadow and purling brook.

Carded at 84

Wow, carded at this great advanced age! Not, of course, carded so as to be permitted to purchase alcoholic beverages.  Those days are long since gone, and besides, I don't drink.

It was yesterday, at the Denver Art Museum, when I asked for senior tickets (a big $2.00 discount). "May I see your driver's license. I have to check that you're over 65?" "Are you kidding, I'm 84!"  "No, I need to see it." Needed to see LERM's also, although she's 79. Frankly, we were both a bit flattered, even if it was all because of bureaucratic procedure rather than guess-your-age eyeballing.

I remember that a score of years ago, a clerk at a some venue or other scanned my face and without the least hesitation charged me senior fare. I was then only 65 and was slightly insulted to be taken for my full actual age. Now, a similar but upside-down situation, and I'm mighty amused.

Can We Hope for a Locative Renaissance?

Here on Walnut Street, we're trying to make more and better use of locatives -- words that have long been underemployed and undervalued. We think that the language (and therefore the world) would be richer and more commodious if others would join with us in this endeavor. But we're not evangelizing, heck no! We honor and respect each and every person's private and personal linguistic choices, locatively-speaking. 

Nor do we refer to the common adverbial locatives, such as homeward, downtown, underground, or nearby.  The locatives that we wish to revive and reinvigorate are the neglected -- even forsaken -- classics of locativity.

Everyone uses the locative where -- the point upon which you metaphorically stand --  but how many of us remember to employ the excellent and useful "to" form, whither, or the "from" form, whence.  It's true that whither and whence sound a trifle obsolescent, but with frequent use the flexible ear will soon accommodate. One might be tempted to say "wither goest thou" or "whence com'st thou", but with a little effort, "whither do you go" and "whence do you come" will sound perfectly natural, I'm sure.

Similarly, we regularly use the word here, but by golly, we have slighted hither (to here) and hence (from here).

Equally neglectful is the abandonment of thither and thence ("to there" and "from there"). Extraordinary useful words, relegated thoughtlessly to the rear of the locative line.

And then of course, there's yon, yond and yonder, all related varieties of "there" but further off than "there." At a distance. Shakespeare, as one would expect, is a most skillful deployer of yons. From Hamlet: "But look, the morn in russet mantle clad/ Walks o'er the dew of yon high eastern hill."  From Julius Caesar. "Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look;/ He thinks too much; such men are dangerous."  From Romeo and Juliet. "What lady's that/ Which doth enrich the hand of yonder knight?"

A yonnish locative that is not endangered and continues to thrive is the word beyond. Shakespeare's most remarkable and I daresay most beautiful use of "beyond" occurs in Cymbeline, when Innogen learns that her exiled lover Posthumus Leonatus has returned to England. She is impatient to meet him at Milford Haven; Innogen's speech that begins with the plaintive cry, "O, for a horse with wings" includes the most transcendent barrier-busting locative in the entire history of the English language. Her longing to see her lover is, she claims, "beyond beyond." A superlative locative, beyond anyone's imagination but Will's.  

Outdoor Gear Shops

Although I regularly walk our many nearby scenic mountain trails, I'm not a genuinely "outdoorsy" person. I don't ski, or snowboard, and I certainly don't rock climb. No climbing at all if I can help it. At this time, I have no plans to "summit" anything, not even my step stool.  My camping days are long over; no more sleeping outside even in a fancy modern tent. So it's not I who is the target of the two dozen outdoor gear shops that are within neighborly distance of my well-heated home and welcoming mattress.

 

These "gear" stores are ubiquitous; a guy can hardly take a few steps on the semi-famous Boulder Mall without stumbling into one or another. Perhaps you think that I exaggerate? Let's look at the facts. Right within a block or two there's Red Fox Outdoor Equipment ("crafted for adventure"); HIMALI ("apparel that stands up to the highest and harshest conditions on Planet Earth"; Teton; Black Diamond ("designed for epic outdoor adventures"); Stio ("built for Alpine pursuits"), Burton (snowboards, boots, outerwear); Mount Inspiration Apparel; The North Face; Eddie Bauer; Arc'teryx ("weatherproof footwear and apparel"); Fjäälraven (a Swedish outpost); Amundsen (Norwegian); Moosejaw ("funky fun-loving climbing gear"); Epic Mountain Gear; MontBell; Backcountry ("gear up for fresh powder"); REI; Neptune Mountaineering; Helly Hansen; Patagonia; Nomad ("a mountain lifestyle retailer"); Cotopaxi ("sustainably-designed outdoor gear"); Volcom "skating & snowboarding-inspired apparel"); Norrøna Concept Store (outdoor apparel plus espresso bar); Christy Sports; Rapha "world's finest cycling clothing"). In addition, there are also several "previously owned" -- formerly called "second hand" -- outdoor gear shops.

 

Who buys all this stuff? Boulder doesn't contain enough bravers-of-the-elements to support so many enterprises. Perhaps it's the tourists. It's also been theorized that most of the gear business is internet-driven and that the various manufacturers like to boast a brick-and-mortar presence in prestigious Boulder. I wouldn't know; I'm perpetually gearless.

 

Should a slug-a-bed like myself feel indolent and guilty in the presence of such passionate mountaineering energy?  Maybe a little, but mostly I'm amused by what seems to me conspicuous equipment consumption. Life is not about "gear." 

 

Question: does our Mall have more outdoor gear shops than it does marijuana outlets?  Or coffee shops? A census is warranted. 

 

What would the Boulder Mall look like if I myself were the target audience. Well, it just so happens that many years ago I designed a mall of me. You can look it up.

Old Age Home/ Retirement Community/ Senior Living Center

We were invited for dinner at the place to which a number of my "senior" friends have retreated. The experience was cordial and civilized, but somehow troubling. I know one thing: I don't want to wind up there. I'm staying put as long as I possibly can.  

Too many old folks. I want to live where there are people of all ages and varieties. Babies and toddlers and tweens and teen-agers and young adults. More activity, fewer canes and crutches and walkers.

The place, though handsome and well-appointed, seemed to me to be inhospitable. Supervisors at every entrance. We had to check in at a fancy kiosk where some sort of electronic device took our official data and printed out a visitor badge, which I pocketed. It felt much too "policed."

The dining room was hushed and mannerly. The food was institutional-plus, but nevertheless institutional. I much prefer my own cooking; I've made a fetish of self-sufficiency all these years and I'd like to continue so. I like to stir my own pot.

The apartments are splendid, but the long narrow corridors between apartments are oppressive. Too reminiscent of hospitals. Or jails.

My principal objection: friends who have moved there become subsumed into the society of the place. They participate in the home's "activities." It's good and healthy for them, I suppose, but my friends become lost to me. Swallowed in a kindly maw. It's scary, to those of us who don't want to be swallowed.

I'll stay here on Walnut Street as long as I can. As in the traditional resolve, I plan to leave "feet-first." But we shall see what the future brings.

Words of My Life: Boot

Is there another common English word that exhibits such varied meanings as "boot?" Or one that has shown such continual transformation during my years on the planet?

Like much of my early vocabulary, "boot" entered my life through the medium of radio baseball . In my mind's ear, I can hear the voice of Red Barber announcing that "umpire Babe Pinelli has just given the boot to Leo Durocher." "Given the boot" does not make the claim that Durocher was presented with footwear; it means that he was kicked out of the game as if with a metaphorically-booted foot.

Nor was it only obstreperous managers who were "booted." "There's a two-hopper to third, but Cox boots it" -- meaning that he bobbled it, even though the ball never touched his foot. In baseball, curiously, you can boot a ball with your hand, which is, logically speaking, as nonsensical as gloving it with your foot. 

As everyone knows, a boot primarily protects the area from the shin down to the toes. But there's a second common meaning to "boot": "something extra," as in the phrase "to boot." "He's a great pitcher -- and a good hitter to boot." The shoe-ish meaning comes through old French from a Germanic source; the profit or use or something-extra meaning derives from an unrelated OE (Old English) word; moreover, in latter stages of its development "boot" has also been influenced by its phonological neighbors booty, and, I suspect, butt. 

In order to gain some historical perspective, let us consider the ways in which Shakespeare makes use of the word boot. "To boot" meaning "in addition" is employed frequently, as, for example, when Henry IV swears "by my scepter and my soul to boot," or when Macduff says to Malcolm that "I would not be the villain that thou think'st/ For the whole space that's in the tyrant's grasp/ And the rich east to boot." A less familiar use occurs in The Winter's Tale, when Hermione, accused of adultery, concedes that  "it shall scarce boot me/ To say 'not guilty.'" Her "boot" means that it will not be to her advantage or profit to assert her innocence. This signification can shade over into gain or even into a coin itself, as for example when Camillo passes money to Autolycus, saying,"hold thee, there's some boot." Contemplating his gain, Autolycus muses, "What an exchange had this been without boot! What a boot is here with this exchange." Just as boot is gain, so bootless means without gain or helpless, as when Henry V explains that he will be powerless to restrain a rampage: "We may as bootless spend our vain command/ Upon the enraged soldiers in their spoil."

Shakespeare gets some punning mileage out of the multiple meanings of "boot." Glendower boasts that "[T]hree times hath Henry Bolingbroke made head/ Against my power; thrice from the banks of Wye/ And sandy-bottom'd Severn have I sent him/ Bootless home and weather-beaten back. "Bootless" means helpless; but sardonic Hotspur, never noted for a sophisticated sense of humor, cannot resist the obvious: "Home without boots. And in foul weather too."

So a boot can be a shoe, an advantage, an addition, a reward, a help. But look what's happened to the poor helpless word in more recent times. "Boot Hill" is a cowboy frontier cemetery.  Across the waters, a "boot" is the trunk of an automobile. The infamous "Denver boot" is a wheel clamp that immobilizes a vehicle. In the army, a boot is a recruit or rookie: "boot camp."

But then, along came the computer, where one "boots" or restarts one's machine. This use, I'm told, originated with the phrase, to "pull oneself up by one's own bootstraps" -- i.e. perform a difficult task at one's own initiative, just as a computer starts itself. There's also the warmboot, which sounds little too much like the old torture device, the Spanish boot and which can also be called a softboot (but not by me).  

In Shakespeare's day, boot was not always distinguished from "booty" as in the case of the Archbishop of Canterbury's famous bees, which "like soldiers, armed in their stings,/ Make boot upon the summer's velvet buds,/ Which pillage they with merry march bring home." Booty as pillage survives to this day, but is, I think, obsolescent. Nowadays, booty is more likely to be used in the phrase "booty call" which means (and here I'm relying on the invaluable Urban Dictionary) a "telephone call made to request a sexual encounter." Who would ever have devised or imagined such an innovation?  Does this booty derive from "shake your booty," meaning to move your butt or bottom in a sexually suggestive way?  Not a meaning known to Shakespeare, or at least, not one that the Shakespeare concordance acknowledges.

 

Other words of my life:  slouch, cishet, yips, ramps, jot and tittle, worship, mucilage. spatchcock, umpire.

Words of my Life: Troll

"Troll" is a word that has strangely metamorphosized in the course of my lifetime. While It once had warm associations; now, not so much.

"Troll" came into my life in the late 1940s at Makamah Beach on the Long Island Sound. My grandmother Sonia taught me how to "troll" for bluefish or sunfish. Here's how you do it. You paddle slowly and let your "shiner" dangle on fishing line a few yards behind the rowboat. "Troll" is very like "trawl." Perhaps the two words are variants; or perhaps "troll" is a distant descendent of Latin trahere, to drag." Troll is related to "trolley," a device used to drag things from place to place, as a trolley does its passengers. "Troll" seems to incorporate the meaning "wander" or "wander into."

From my early interest in northern mythology (a "mythology," by the way, is someone else's religion), I learned that a "troll" is a clumsy ugly monster who hides out under bridges or in cemeteries. Trolls were troublesome, provocative, perhaps even cannibalistic. 

But nowadays, the older meanings of "troll" have been superseded. A 'troll' is now a person who participates in a conversation, usually an internet conversation, with the intention of sowing discord or causing trouble. I am not sure about the origin of this usage, but I would like to guess or hypothesize that it combines the sense of "wandering into" with the malevolence of the Scandinavian figure. A troll is therefore an electronic ogre.

 

Other words of my life: slouch, cishet, yips, ramps, jot and tittle, worship, mucilage. spatchcock, umpire.

Is Safety an Illusion?

Am I just plain nuts to think that I live in a safe and secure world? All the evidence says "perpetual vigilance" and "it can happen here" and "keep a close watch? 

Let's look at the situation. 

Our state has a violent history. In the far past: at Sand Creek in 1864, several hundred Cheyenne and Arapahos were brutally murdered. In 1914, a century or so ago, the Pinkertons, employed by the Rockefellers, killed no-one-knows-how-many miners when they shot randomly into the Ludlow tent colony.  

More recently, killing has become the work not of army or paid professionals but of heavily armed civilians. In 1999 there was the horrible Columbine High School massacre in which twelve were killed and twenty-one wounded. Just thirteen years later came the mass killing inside a Century 16 theater in Aurora, just a few miles south of where I live, in which twelve people were killed and another seventy injured. Then in 2015 there was a shooting at a Planned Parenthood clinic in which three were assassinated and nine others wounded. In March of 2021, just two years ago, in the Table Mesa King Soopers, a "gunman" killed ten -- customers, employees, a police officer. And last year, we had the nightclub shooting in Colorado Springs where five were murdered and twenty-five others wounded.

I didn't happen to be in any of these places, but I might have been. Although I wasn't at the Columbine school, I was at that very moment in a different classroom in Denver; I didn't go to the movies to see the Dark Knight, but I do go to theaters. It wasn't "my" King Soopers that was terrorized, but nevertheless I've bought stuff at that very store many times when I've happened to be in south Boulder; I wasn't at the Colorado Springs bar but I've certainly patronized bars. In any one of these cases, It could just as easily have been me that was shot dead or maimed. I've been one lucky fellow, but people much like me have not been so fortunate.

Two days ago, a vicious prank phone call set off a scramble and shelter-in-place warnings at two-block away Boulder High School. BHS is where AGP and our three children spent many a year. This scare turned out to be a case of "swatting" -- a disgusting new practice in which a nasty sociopath calls an institution to see if he can get a reaction from a SWAT team. Deliberate malice. Such false alarms are not mass killings, but they're still hair-raising, anxiety-provoking, and potentially dangerous events.

It's coming close to home, isn't it. Luck of the draw, so to speak, that I'm still whole.

When I was a teacher, I was never in real danger but, like everyone else on the faculty, I had a few deranged students. I remember once that a particularly odd young lady asked to make an appointment for a conference. Wary of her, I proposed that instead of her coming to my office that we meet in the public cafeteria. l can't remember what she wanted to talk about, but I recall vividly that at one point she asked, "do you think I have a gun in my purse?"  I replied "I don't know whether you do or not, but I know that this meeting is now over." I stood up and walked away, half convinced that I was about to be shot in the back. But I wasn't. 

It's a violent world; no one has ever been truly safe. But all we can do is go blithely about our business, hoping to be spared.

I shouldn't complain; we're not in a war zone; it's not like Ukraine, where at any moment Russian drones and shells and missiles can drop on you from the sky. 

Words of my Life: Hack

I cannot think of a word that has undergone greater change during the course of my lifetime than the plain monosyllable "hack."

"Hack" entered my language, like much of my early vocabulary, through the medium of baseball. "He took a good hack at that fastball;" "he's up there hacking away." A hack was a hard swing, not necessarily a successful one. [There was also Stan Hack, the great Chicago Cub third baseman whose career was just coming to an end as I was becoming conscious.]  In the days of my youth, "hack" was also slang for taxicab and a cab driver was a "hackie." I don't believe I've heard that particular use of the word in decades (except in 1940s movies). In seventh-grade "shop" class at PS 217, Mr. Kaminsky introduced me to the "hacksaw." The hack in hacksaw derives from a medieval word meaning "cut into pieces," but the taxi hack has an entirely dissimilar origin. It comes from hackney, a breed of horse and later the carriage itself that the horse drew -- the name of which then migrated to our big yellow taxi.

When did I first hear the expression, a "hacking cough"?  And why hacking? Perhaps because the noise of a cough is similar to the sound of the short sharp blows when one hacks through a forest or the jungle with a machete. Maybe that's how it originated-- but I'm not entirely convinced.

Hack has another older meaning -- mediocre or failing, or not good at one's trade, as in a "hack writer," or a "political hack." This usage is probably a shortened version of "hackneyed," meaning trite or overused. When you waste time, you're just "hacking around." In such cases,"hack" denoted incompetence.

Nowadays "hack" has come up in the world. To hack into a computer implies not laziness but skill. In this usage, "hack" is also malicious. Hackers may be smart but they're also dangerous; they can cause crashes when they illegally intrude to alter a program. 

The most common contemporary use of "hack," if I'm reading the data correctly, occurs in the recent coinage "lifehack," which is defined as "a strategy or technique adopted in order to manage one's time and daily activities in a more efficient way." I can't be the only person whose junk mail folder is regularly inundated with recommended lifehacks, most of which seem mighty silly or simplistic. 

And then there's an even more specialized use. Here's one that's new to me: "scientists announced that they had genetically hacked tobacco plants to photosynthesize more efficiently." This usage seems to retain something of the older meaning of cut or slash although it is a stretch to envision a genome being attacked by a sword or a snickersnee. 

Goodness gracious, it's a long road from waving at an inshoot with the old hickory to inserting bits of DNA in the tobacco genome. But here we are.

Other words of my life: slouch, cishet, yips, ramps, jot and tittle, worship, mucilage. spatchcock, umpire.

Strangest Dream Yet

In this one, I was lying in restless sleep in my own bed, when a figure, a man, came at me. He tried to get under my covers, and I cried out, "You can't get into bed with me. I'm a married woman!"  Very theatrical -- and strange enough, but the details are even more peculiar.  Of course I'm not a woman -- I'm an octogenarian man -- but not in the dream. Secondly the man who was trying to attack me, though identifiably male, had the face of a stereotypical witch -- long crooked nose, verrucose almost echinulate skin, etc.  In addition, my bedmate, who in real life is a woman, was, in the dream, male. That's a heck of a lot of gender confusion for one dream fragment.

What is most memorable, however, is my plaintive cry -- "you can't get into my bed.  I'm a married woman."  How to interpret this sentence?  I can invent any number of bizarre "'Freudian" theories, but in fact I have no idea, except for the opinion that I've expressed before on this blog, that I'm a mighty dull, conventional fellow from 7am to 11pm, but from 11pm until morning, I'm crazy imaginative, unconventional, and possibly even interesting.

My Life with Telephones

In the course of my lifetime, the telephone has gone from relatively rare to ubiquitous, from wall to pocket, and from rotary dial to cell. From no intelligence whatsoever to smart and then to very smart. Revolutionary changes.

When I was growing up in Flatbush, our family was prosperous enough to have a telephone (not everyone did), but the device was only employed for local calls, never for "long distance." Non-local calls were prohibitively expensive and were only for deaths. To be called to the phone by long-distance was ominous.

Before the innovation of seven-digit dialing, we were Windsor 6-2077. Sometime after WWII, our exchange was altered from WI 6 to GEdney 6. To me, this was an early indication that the world was unstable and would be filled with ups and downs. One day we were a Windsor, a royal house, and the next day we were a Gedney, a brand of dill pickle. 

Every telephone in existence looked exactly like this one.  The idea that they would ever look otherwise was inconceivable.  

For a month of so in the late 1950s, I had a job operating an old-fashioned switchboard at the Sears warehouse on Utica Avenue -- definitely my most satisfying telephone-related experience, lifetime. Ah that lovely click when the plug fully entered its receptacle! A delight!  The one I sat at looked almost exactly like this:

In my short time at the console, I became quite a proficient operator, only cutting off important calls a handful of times. It's hard to believe that such an antiquated-looking machine was still in use when I was a lad.

We must also recall the almost extinct telephone booth -- often out of order, because someone wielded a crowbar to make off with nickels and dimes. And smelly. Plus, one never had the right change when needing it most.  I do not mourn the passing of the phone booth.

When we moved to Vermont in 1968, the Topsham Telephone Company had not yet switched to seven digit dialing. Our home number was high-prestige 21, but we were jealous of the family whose number was 9. Ours was a four-party line -- also a thing of the past. I wonder whether my grandchildren have ever heard the phrase "party-line."  Or "rotary dial," for that matter.

When AT&T was deregulated and the market was thrown open to innovation, there came a great explosion of telephone styles. Phones blossomed into many odd colors and configurations. For a while, we owned one of these:

The Simpson phone was not my initiative but that of one of the younger members of the family.

But more change was in the works. The prediction that there would be pocket phones in the future seemed fantastical science fiction-y.  All phones had to be connected with wires -- otherwise how could the sound get out of the wall and into the handset. I scoffed.

Nowadays, everyone carries a cell phone. But it's not just a phone -- it's a computer. It does everything -- perhaps too much. There is substance to the frequently heard complaint that some individuals, especially young 'uns, relate more readily to their cell than to the person sitting next to them. It's a paradox: with more potential communication comes more loneliness. I myself must admit that there's a fascination to the cell phone that is disarming.  I'm trying not be allow myself to be addicted. But there is something wonderful about a machine that lets you not only speak with but to actually see your daughter, who is a thousand miles away. Not a trick that a rotary phone could perform.

Not to be an alarmist or a Luddite, there's a serious downside to the cell. It seems as though the machine  might be reorganizing youthful brains-- with unknown consequences,

Scenes like this one have become scarily familiar:

Look up, children, look up! Please look up!