CAPE COD REPORTS, 2002These Cape Reports were originally letters to friends and family. They were meant to follow the sound email policy of never saying anything you wouldn't want the world to read, but I suspect that push the limits at times. If you see something here that offends you, let me know. I’ll probably take it out. No offense was intended, and I apologize.
February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December
JANUARY We seem to have become embroiled in inertia and small activities, but things move along. We have completed the house refinancing (to get the lower interest rate). I gave the Fellowship's annual financial report on Sunday. Nancy has the ladies this Wednesday. The car finally goes in to Tinknockers for its fender fix next week, to be followed by its 120,000 mile servicing at Hyannis Honda. With our school and writing groups, book group, and the tendency of activities to fill the time available, our lives seem about normal for the 21st century. We know yours are far busier. Being busy isn't bad of course, it's just a lot of work. We had our first lovely little snow this morning. By pointing out the individual needles and twigs, the snow gives shape to whole boughs and trees. It makes the character of things stand out. Too much snow of course, reveals too much character, until the village elders finally have to leave you in your hut to become the snow. Everything in balance, said the Greeks, on their well-tempered isles. It's important to us to stay in touch. My mother calls weekly to see if we are still here. My grandmother Chenoweth wanted my father's letters, even though he suspected she didn't read them: "Oh good, the dear boy is still alive." But we don't need to interfere with your complex lives and don't mean to. So, we'll enjoy the snow before it melts. My writing projects keep me busy. I'm planning a couple of pieces of furniture: a CD case and a rack for papers. Nancy asked if I could make a duplicate of the end table for the sofa, (I can). She allows as how it might be okay if I replaced the kitchen formica and added a hardwood edge, and (ta dah) even suggested I might be able to make the bed which she found a picture of in a catalog. (I think I can). A friend says his grandson decorated their Christmas tree but first had to organize all the ornaments into various obscure classes, by age, size, quality, etc. Some of us must make a universe at every opportunity. As to reiki, etc. there is a lot of interest around here in reiki, tai chi, yoga, karate, and similar activities, as well as literature and the arts. Retirees who don't play golf come here. Kids too though. Linette, one of our Common Time 6th graders, (the most kinetic non-hyperactive child I've ever seen) is not only heavily into karate but wrote a short piece about it off the top of her head that was brilliant. Equine therapy sounds great. I wore my "Humans aren't the only animal…" t-shirt the other day and got amusing but appreciative comments. I think animals in general are companionable, and we should perhaps change "humanism" to something more encompassing, (though perhaps not "animalism"). I needed cheering up. I got a letter saying that my high school friend, physician and author, father of two adult children, lively and nice guy, left a note on the refrigerator and walked out on his wife. He must have lost his marbles. I said I'd write him if I had his address. I don't know if it could help them, but it would help me. -- Worse, I sent a holiday email to Al and Frankie. Al is the Penn professor I'd gotten friendly with in the last couple of years. His wife, Frankie, taught English for 30 years at Girl's High and writes books on Shakespeare. Frankie wrote back that Al died, December 19th, of a massive stroke. It can't have been too long after my son saw them at the theater. I was really socked by that. The nicest people in the world. Funny, kind, wise. He spoke 5 languages and wrote a dozen books on world politics plus hundreds of articles. I was looking forward to his new book on Israel. They say religions, philosophies, and most of our other activities are devoted to staving off, explaining, hiding, avoiding, or overcoming: death. Well, as the sports announcers so like to say, "Guess what ..." Nancy is on an oyster stew kick. Great stuff. -- In desperation we had to spend $35 to buy "John Adams" for our book group. First full price book we've bought ourselves in decades. Gasp. Good book though. -- A new woman came to the Friday writing group. She read a marvelous piece on growing up in Teaneck, N.J., the daughter of Jewish immigrant communists. McCarthism destroyed her father's dream. And this woman is only 63! I've seen the past century from dozens of new and different perspectives since we've lived here. There's no end of it, as many worlds as minds. Well, I DO love the Shopsmith. It's partly the Pygmalian effect I think. I rescued it from a grimy garage, oiled and polished it, and it came alive like a magic lamp. And now I'm dadoing with Norm Abrams! [Chew on that one, spell-checker!] Life is full of sorrows and satisfactions. What can I say. Oh, yes, ‘love’. It's mysterious certainly, and no doubt useful along neo-Darwinian lines, but my take (hardly original) is that it's mostly (ideally) a matter of giving, prodigiously, wastefully, and without any thought of return on investment, of everything. (Well, everything except that small but essential core of what you are that makes you YOU. You give THAT up and, whoops, you're someone else, and probably not as attractive.) It takes two (at least) to tango, of course, but for good or ill, we can dance only in our own footprints. And that's hard enough. And that's also quite enough, for now. Busy here. The candidate’s coffee for Peter went off well. I don't think we'll go heavily into politics however. We're having supper with the president of the local Chamber of Commerce. Who knows why. I'll report. Fellowship potluck last Friday. We're giving a dinner party for a local artist, retired sea captain, songwriter, and a co-developer of the H-bomb next Friday. And going to a Super Bowl party on Sunday. -- Good grief! And to Philadelphia the following weekend! Looking forward to it. We'll be at the Summerhill Suites (Marriot) at Plymouth Meeting (where Matt's house used to be and Dave cut the grass! ‘I am the grass; I cover all.’) About music. There's a bit of framed calligraphy in the WC in the Chapel in the Pines (classy place, what?): "After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music." -- Aldous Huxley "Music fathoms the sky." -- Baudelaire "Music is humanity's gift to itself." -- Beethoven I've taken to putting down my book and just listening to the "Evening Classic" each night on WFCC. Except when it's Shaherezade; then I put on a CD of something else. Yes, I'm glad to be retired! I find it almost impossible to remember working. It sounds so excessive. I did experience a brief but instructive funk two years ago, on quitting my job, selling our house of 30 years, kicking out the last two kids, and moving to the Cape, all within a month and a half. Since then, we're in heaven. We read "John Adams" for our book group this morning. Great book, good discussion. There was a man who used his retirement to read and write! Someone said his papers occupy 5 miles of microfilm. Sounds like a lot to me. I guess it helps when Thomas Jefferson writes you back. We'll be in Philadelphia just for a day and a night on 9 February, seeing the "children". Well they are children, in their own complicated ways, as are we all. They sound good. Odd chaps. Proud of them all. We have become embroiled in inertia and small activities, but things move along. We have completed our house refinancing (to get the lower interest rate). I delivered the Fellowship's annual financial report on Sunday. Nancy has the ladies this Wednesday. The car goes in for its 120,000 mile servicing at Hyannis Honda. With our school volunteering and writing groups, book group, and the tendency of activities to fill the time available, our lives seem to be about normal for the 21st century. We know other’s lives are far busier. Being busy isn't bad of course, it's just a lot of work. FEBRUARY
Shakespeare is such universal stuff. All over the world I think. Very popular in German translation as I recall. And so amenable to setting in other times and places. Isn't Denver the city where all the public school kids join in an annual Shakespeare festival? There's a book by Harold Bloom, about Shakespeare and the making of the modern man, or mind, or something, that I've meant to read. Probably controversial. The first wave of welfare limits and the advent of so many new temptations to 'use' animals, in genetic research, organ transplants, etc., as opposed to working with them, must keep you guys busy and thinking. An interesting article in yesterday's Times Magazine, "The trouble with self-esteem" by Lauren Slater, says the conventional wisdom may be wrong. In most cases people with low self-esteem seem to do as well in life as people with high esteem, and maybe better, as they try harder. Some people with high SE can be mean and dangerous: violent or racist because they don't feel bad enough about themselves. -- Many folks don't buy this of course. Self worth has a long history (Emerson, Thoreau and Franklin are often mentioned, Goethe too). -- The author says maybe the important thing about the self is not about how good it feels, but how well it does, in work and relationships, etc. Self-esteem would be a product of our worthy actions. Sounds a bit Calvinistic; she does say "I don't mean to sound Puritanical..." Yeah, sure. It sounds reasonable, but I don't quite buy that either. Being happy, "feeling good about oneself", being useful to others or society, and being "worthy" are probably related in complex ways, but they are separate ideas/characteristics that you can have in any combination(s). There are plenty of unhappy good guys (lots of them poets?). Why not jolly bad guys, worthy wastrels, useful miscreants, etc.? But all are fellow creatures. My own view, stretching back into the mists, is that everyone, myself included, is worthy, regardless of accomplishments, and in about the same degree. (Also every squirrel and chickadee). Which doesn't mean that people don't do good things and bad things (spectacularly so in some cases), and that these aren't important. But that all people are always worth knowing, caring about, helping, learning from, etc. and should value themselves. (In theory anyway. In fact I find it difficult to warm up to John Ashcroft, Osama, W, and others. But theory is important. A few bad guys and a theory CAUSED the holocaust, not the thousands of bad or weak men who carried it out.) -- Worth seeing the article. Dija watch the game? I did, probably the first football game I've watched for more than a minute in 35 years. Nancy watches some of course. We went to a Superbowl party, and it was fun. A little too much good food, but that's the breaks. The announcers were saying it was the best SB ever, etc. Well, it certainly was exciting. And although my cynical view of professional sports in general remains intact, the post game excitement of Brady, Vinatiere et al was rather endearing. -- One of the guests runs the B&B next to Meadow Marsh. She says business is down. I wonder if it isn't just that business has stopped going up. Is it impossible to live with a stable economy? I have to poll-watch tomorrow, while Peter gets his lunch. The Cape Codder picked him and one other candidate as the best of five. We'll see. He plans to run again in May if he doesn't get in. -- The Eastham ocean beach seems to have a new life. It may pass unless economics do it in. We think it's dumb, but we are tree huggers at heart. We're glad to see the beach enjoyed, but we treasure the few occasions when we've stood at Coast Guard and seen no cars or people for miles in any direction. I was the leader for the writing group on Saturday. I had volunteers read poems by Stafford, Larkin, Levertov, Ginsgerg, and O'Hara, and then played a recording of the poet reading the same poem. It went well I thought. -- The writing groups are fascinating. They double as therapy groups for many I note, but the writing is good and the atmosphere warm. We're having supper tomorrow with the couple who started the Eastham group. One retired and one active psychotherapist. Nice, funny people, heavily into becoming poets. I've almost finished the CD cabinet for the living room. It looks almost like a real piece of furniture. I've also finished “The Green Pig and the Windmills”, first draft anyway. I think the science content needs checking and re-writing. I'll put it on the web shortly. Our Philadelphia hotel was fine. Very comfortable and sort of luxurious on a small scale. It was quiet inside the hotel but we noticed parties of revelers outside, returning from NBA parties throughout the night, the last chorus of "good nights" at around 5:00 am. After a generous continental breakfast, we bought turkey hoagies at the Flourtown Wawa and drove past Crest Road. The house looks good, painted light tan (a fashionable color these days). We never painted that house in 31 years. Just touched it up. Must have been good paint. They are replacing the second story on the back but not the first. And really the second floor was a bit odd, built in several stages. Guess they just wanted it to be "normal". So it goes. Otherwise the neighborhood looks unchanged. Nancy drove until Connecticut, so I looked at the passing scene, fully revealed behind the bare trees and bushes. Strange, evocative. It may have inspired a poem. We got to the Cape around 4:00 and had a slow pleasant drive up 6A to home. Good weather here, a bit seasonably cool at night. The trees look like they want to bud. We hope they restrain themselves for another month. We saw a golden crowned sparrow in the Red Maple Swamp. That's a Western bird, known as an occasional visitor. Must be the bargain air fares. A cooper's hawk sat on top of our bird feeder for a while. The scene was very quiet until he/she left. I'm carefully dismantling the kitchen. We plan to order the new stove (flat top), dishwasher, counter top, and floor within a day or two. Then tile for the wall behind sink and stove and materials for the island (peninsula really). -- The kitchen lady at Mid-Cape started off high end but quickly dismounted and admitted to being an impoverished college student when she discovered we were 'just folks'. This is always entertaining. My impression is that the local trades people are quite nice to everyone, but perceptibly soften when it's clear that money is an object. Good for business no doubt, but it didn't happen ‘back in the states'. Our lives go along. Many book group members were in Florida for our meeting yesterday, but we had a good discussion of Anne Michael's strange and poetic Fugitive Pieces. I loved it. Some others found it confusing. We all disagreed with the author about part II. It could have been left out. She's a bit defensive about that, I gather. Understandable. -- Next month Boyle's "Tortilla Curtains". The Green Pig and the Windmills is finished, first round anyway, at 60 pages, and on the web. My writer's group was sad that it ended, so I said I'd write another one some day. The group waxes and wanes but continues to be enjoyable. I get the sense that there are writer's group junkies around, who come and tell their, usually rather personal, tale and move on. Well, it's interesting. My 85 year old friend Lella, on the other hand, has developed from being a good oral story teller to an excellent writer with a wonderful story to tell about growing up in rural Texas and Louisiana. There are an awful lot of memoirs being written, these days, at least 5 in our group, but they're good. Nancy got lots of yarn and is planning projects. She means to knit small, and very lovely, sweaters for some local children. I note that in addition to the Agricultural bill excluding rats, mice, and birds from protection, the House wants to tie unemployment to tax cuts for the rich, and NPR is threatened. Something for everyone from the administration.
MARCH
We share good taste in landing spots with our friends. Nancy and I washed ashore for a cascade of reasons. The weeks on the Cape were the only time her family would leave her in peace when she was a child. It's been our refuge for 3 decades, and it was the logical safe harbor when we decided to run for our lives two years ago. They've been the best years yet. -- I hope I didn't malign Newark, etc. I like cities. I liked living in Queens and West Philadelphia. By comparison, and for all their amenities, places like Westfield, N.J. barely exist. I write mostly for pleasure, although I can't help sneaking in a few of my wholesome values. That's part of the fun. I think I've said I started writing when I couldn't find a sequel to The Lord of the Rings. I found writing to be the purest delight I'd ever experienced. It still produces the kind of highs that people must get from drugs. I may have finally given up on the classical guitar and Attic Greek. I might still try water colors and canoeing. I'll write as long as I can. I don't understand what's going on with poetry, but I'm prepared to learn. I like Alan Duggan, Billy Collins, and the poems my comrades write. Poetry is packed with energy, like shaped charges in depleted uranium shells. I value the critical comments of our colleagues, and the technical knowledge some bring to the group. I wish I'd taken a more orderly approach to writing decades ago, but if I had to wait until I knew what I was doing, I'd never write. I don't suppose people can safely reveal their feelings in every writing group. I hope they can in this one. I've found amazing openness and honesty among our Cape acquaintances, and dozens of world views to supplement my own. The Times article casting doubt on the value of high self-esteem would naturally be controversial. We've so much invested in the idea. The article intrigued me because I don't think self-esteem, pride, guilt, or similar feelings have played a major role in my internal life. Somewhere, early on and probably from my father, I got the notion that life was a struggle but not a contest, and that everyone was worthwhile. My report card in first grade said, "Russ is doing satisfactory work." I remember being pleased at the time, and I haven't thought much about it since. I protested the rise of a complex employee evaluation system at Penn and was glad to see it fade away by the time I retired, not through my efforts but because it didn't work. It makes sense to monitor whether a job is being done, but can you usefully value the worker per se? I'm reading the new biography of Churchill by Roy Jenkins. Churchill did many good things throughout his life, but until 1940 he was better known for his failures of judgment and personality. -- He was also, of course, the world's greatest argument for self-esteem, just ahead of Hitler. Gee, I wish we had a Writer's Hangout. Could we endow a chair at the Hole-in-One? Would "Poet's Corner" be inappropriate for a live poets society? Speaking of technique, I must show you my invention, the Writer's Portalette. Nancy crinkles her nose at the name. No, it's not a Segway with a keyboard or a motorman's pal for novelists. Our first off-Cape adventure in nearly a year went well. It was good to see people, and good for us to stretch our comfort level. It's so easy to enjoy our routines. The folks at Springhill Suites were quite jolly. They asked how our trip had been and how many nights we planned to stay. A longish but pleasant drive, Nancy explained, and as we'd come really just for dinner, we were going back in the morning. They looked a bit startled but said nothing. We noticed later on our receipt that they had us coming from Nebraska! Oh those lively seniors. -- Enthusiastic NBA All-Star fans rolled in all night from parties. The outside world is still there. I've been trying to write a poem about New Jersey, inspired by our drive through it on our way back from Philadelphia last month. Usually poems come easily to me, for what they're worth, but this one hasn't. I don't think I know what I want to say about New Jersey. I make an acerbic observation about, oh, the giant warehouses that line the Turnpike, or the old factories and houses along the Parkway, and then I gradually soften it until it becomes almost affectionate. Poetry is a poor second to music in expressing the inexpressible. The trouble is, I like New Jersey. I've liked most of the places I hung out in for any length of time, such as Queens, Missouri, Philadelphia, Germany, and Florida. Granted, Lewisburg, PA. and New Haven were only so so, and neither Nancy nor I cared much for Arlington, Massachusetts, but none of those places inspired poetry. There's a great deal of anger in much of poetry and probably too little in me. Oh well, there's always prose. And cabinet making! I wish I had discovered writing sooner; I might be better at it. I wish I'd learned to play the violin when I was six. I think it may be just as well, though, that I came late to carpentry. I'd probably have done it competently, because I like to read complex directions and do detailed work, but I can see that it could easily become addictive. I'd have wanted a workshop like Norm Abrams, and to justify the expense I'd have had to turn out armoires, credenzas, and chifferobes by the dozens. When would I have time to read? Starting in my later years, I limit carpentry to 3 to 5 in the afternoon. -- The kitchen island I'm working on is, not too surprisingly, a weird combination of skeleton and case construction and is made chiefly by doweling together ten 3 foot pieces of 1"x12" pine being sold as cheap shelving at Mid-Cape Home Center. The Transfer Station has been a poor resource lately. They have a mad dozer driver whose goal is to scoop construction debris into a giant dumpster before I can get at it. The kitchen is moving along. I called the stove man, and he said, oh gosh, sorry, the stove came in, but the paper-work was in the wrong folder and....you'll get it Monday. Then I can put in the floating floor, which is currently living in the guest room. The kitchen cabinet lady called the laminate company who told her our order was a special order for them and they should get it from the factory in two weeks and would ship it immediately. As the tile waits on the countertop, that pushes things off a bit. At least, doing it ourselves, we don't have to cook on a microwave in our bedroom for three weeks like our neighbors. Craftsmen are rare and cranky on the Cape, if they return your calls at all. -- I'm tempted to go into the business myself, but not that tempted. I'll confine my homely efforts to house and chapel. Speaking of the chapel, we had as our speaker last week, Joe Gouveia Slam Poet, talking on "A liberal reaction to September 11". He was a cheerfully angry poet who brought some of his own supporters, and it was quite lively and entertaining. At one point, he said he thought our (the country's) trouble was that we had lost touch with God. There was a strained silence, and then Harry said, "Well, God...." Joe may have been misled by the "chapel" business. (And we have a steeple too.) He saw his fire had missed the mark and began to weasel a bit on God, but, despite Bishop Spong, the idea of God seems to be thoroughly wedded to theism, and the Fellowship, while properly religious and variously spiritual, is not particularly theistic. (And I don’t think we need to take Joe too seriously either.) I'm reading "Freedom at Midnight", by Collins and Lapierre, about India in 1947. Talk about being forced to relive history! India has never escaped its history for a minute. You know, I hate to say it, and I'm sure that, like George W. Bush, he would have been charming to meet, but I don't care much for Gandhi. In his quiet way he was a thorough fanatic. And that was before I discovered that, apostle of non-violence that he was, he didn't care how many millions of lives it might cost to keep India from being partitioned. -- I've wondered sometimes about Lincoln and the Civil War. If we'd just let the south go, millions of lives would not have been destroyed, and the slaves would probably have been freed within 20 years, and with less acrimony. Maybe not though. Isn't it a good thing we can't mess with the past! I don't remember what inspired me to write "The Hoover". Maybe I saw "the Hoover sucks" somewhere. The TR quote is genuine I think, although I can't find it, but I'm sure it wasn't the goal. Or maybe I thought: what if Rush Limbaugh suddenly came out of the liberal closet. Really it was just meant to be an amusing story, somewhat in the spirit of Saki. (Were H.H. Munro's stories ever taught in English classes?) In Jane Langton's new mystery, "The Escher Twist", a character observes that shadows and mirror images are truly two-dimensional, whereas a picture, on even the thinnest paper, has depth. I might have said that was Zach, three-dimensional but only a few atoms deep. But you're right. We can't even read a story unless a character comes alive for us, and I do like Zach. He's certainly more alive than the cardboard figures that inhabit the typical best selling action thriller. He's not autobiographical, but I suppose, like it or not, his 3d dimension comes from me. So what's with Zach? He was hurt by his childhood experiences. Did he stay angry or embittered? We don't get over childhood trauma easily. Did he support the lunatic right out of distain for the establishment and later change his mind? Who knows, but my guess is that he was hurt, poor, and cautious. He followed the path of least resistance and did what he had to do to survive. His radio work was a combination of need, naiveté, difficulty in distinguishing the good guys (who had beat up on him) from the bad guys (who were nice to him), and most of all, kindness. He was nice to the crazies because that was the only way he could be. Maybe he considered them no worse, and no less in need of consideration, than his old classmates. Kindness is my elusive personal grail, particularly elusive for a very self-contained person. It characterizes my rats, mice, and pigs. For the Buddhist, benevolence is the earthly equivalent of nirvana. Tree Hugger I heard the phrase used for the millionth time the other day, favorably for once. I haven't thought of myself as a tree hugger, because I'm not an activist. I support most of the legal activities of environmentalists though, and I wonder if they make their case as well as they could. Animals and plants are valuable in and for themselves of course, as valuable as we are. We're all part of the same family. They give us beauty and inspire creativity in our artists and writers. They're reservoirs too, of chemical and physical tools and techniques that might someday be useful in the preservation and enhancement of our lives. They can be renewable sources of wealth and power, if we take care of them. Most of all, and whether we know it or not, they're simply necessary. When Thoreau said, "In wildness is the preservation of the world," he knew what he was talking about. Can we go through life sealed up in our SUV's and live in concrete shelters, shielded from pollution, fed on manufactured food, informed and entertained by electronic media, and remain truly human? Air, water, noise, and visual pollution, resource scarcity, and climate deterioration have already blighted the lives of the world's poor, and now they're coming to our neighborhoods. I hadn't noticed much leaf burning in Eastham until this year. I love the smell. It evokes Saturday afternoons raking and burning leaves with my father and talking about the world. On very good Saturdays we had dinner at the Lennox Hotel in St. Louis, where they had thick red water glasses, and then went to the "picture show". My father got permission to pick leaves from the exotic trees in Shaw's Garden in St. Louis and mount them on cardboard. I remember sorting mindlessly through a hundred or so preserved leaves. Eventually they turned brown and were thrown out. Nancy's house in Plainfield was on a small lot with no trees. She had to borrow a few of her neighbor's leaves to scatter on her lawn and make it look like fall. By the time we lived in our own house it was illegal to burn leaves, although it was still okay to burn the world's oil, coal, and rain forests. You could leave them bagged for garbage pickup. I made a huge compost heap instead, but we never got around to digging our compost into the garden. Now we watch our grass grow to 54 inches and let our leaves lie where they fall. Whatever Darwin might think, I consider this to be progress.
APRIL
Spring is, as always, hesitant on the Cape, and wisely so although this year the temperature ranges between 40 and 50 instead of holding at 40 for months on end. The honeysuckle bushes are leafing, the trees are budding, and the garlic mustard is appearing in its tiny millions in the swamp. The moss, of which we have a lot in Eastham, has turned intensely green. Our bulbs are up, and the daffodils in bloom. Our periwinkles are blooming too, although the foliage is not more enthusiastic this year than last. If periwinkles could speak to us, we’d give them whatever it is they lack. The redwings are back. We've just noticed that besides the gaak and braaaack they have another call, a rather sweet trill. Perhaps it's a spring song. The peepers are in force in several ponds. They sound more like birds than frogs. We've heard some froggier frogs in the swamp. The shucked oysters are kept in the back room at the fish market these days, but we know to ask. We had stew last night. Quite heavenly. Sea bass is on sale this year as well. Steve at Trees called. Our kitchen tiles, for the wall behind the stove and sink, are in. So that's just about the last of it. I have the wood to make the island drawers. (Odd concept ‘island drawers’, like Bikini shorts or legal briefs.) The whole business has been easier than we feared and is quite satisfactory. We look forward to showing it off in its cheerful imperfection. An interesting thought: for whom do we do things? We've just finished, "Galileo's Daughter", April's book group selection. There are constant, doubtless genuine as well as politic, references to God, but it's clear that, like us, the religious accomplish things to please themselves as well, and one another. Galileo loves his discoveries and rather wants his credit, and his fame. Suor Marie Celeste wants her father's happiness and well-being, but also his approval, and she enjoys her own downplayed competence and occasional humble treats and minor perks. Is it the editor who makes them so human? We do have the letters. I love to do things, makes things, fix things, cook things, grow things, report on my reading, write stuff. I do it for myself, of course, but about as much for a vague potential audience. For Nancy and my children guys primarily, although I don't insist on their taking note. That they might is generally enough. I write for a few email friends too and now for my writing group. The latter is quite satisfactory, as we always try to support each other and will suggest improvements if we see them. If you listen carefully, you can usually tell when something is liked a little more, or less. I thoroughly enjoy hearing my colleagues’ contributions too, some more, some less, but really all. I sense it's very genuine. You learn about people in a book group, but you learn more in a writing group. These seem to be people who, while not exhibitionistic, shy really, are willing to reveal themselves. Why? For what? For honesty, one senses. Logic says that thousands of people have read Shadow Walkers. I hope they liked it. I take pleasure only in the few dozen who've said so. Millions, after all have read libraries full of dreadful books that stultify, kill, and debase. Not to mention vile movies and TV! Odd, odd. I used to spend days cleaning the yard before my grandparents came from Florida for a visit. I don't recall their ever commenting on this or my even thinking about it after they'd come. That wasn't the point apparently. It would be handy to have 'the glory of god' as a permanent goal or vision. I have the odd notion at least that no good deed is undone, whether it's remembered down history or reverberates though the universe or not. How can it be undone? All the best laid plans could go awry, the final shreds of matter/energy be squeezed into a superpea and vanish with a last faint foop, and it would still have happened, the kindness done, the beauty revealed, the pleasure given, the freedom enabled. You've probably seen "Anyway"? Someone handed it out at the Fellowship. "[Blah, blah, blah, blah, etc.]............. but give the world the best you've got, anyway." Good idea. I always got great vicarious pleasure out of my parent's trips to far places. They enjoyed them so much. I'm delighted our children had a fine time in San Francisco. Having them all airborne at once was nervewracking of course. I never worried about my parents when they were flying from Bombay to Cairo on Egypt Air, among the goats and chickens. I guess we older folks start to feel we've gotten our money's worth, and each new day is icing. Well it is. April 10th on Cape Cod. It rained hard last night. There are still puddles in the road, which is almost the only place you find puddles here. There's a swath of clay in south Eastham, so you find a few stubborn mud holes on the Fort Hill trail. The kettle ponds perk up though, and we've never seen more water in the Red Maple Swamp. For 30 summers I'd thought it a bit of a fraud, but in late fall, with thirsty summer visitors long gone, the water table rises, and you get to see its surface in the swamp. Today's a swamp day. The bush honey suckle is leafing, the garlic mustard is an inch high, and the peepers and redwings are back. The winter robins are on the ground eating worms rather than swarming frenetically in the treetops. There are more people too. The other day on the bike trail Nancy did a quick turn. "Oh, hi," she said. "Just had to be sure you weren't a bicycle." "Or an elephant," said a large and swiftly trudging woman. Nancy's off to school today, to educate kindergartners, collate papers, listen to teacher's troubles, or do whatever else is needed. Junior seniors can be gems, able to ply still serviceable skills at any task, without much ego involved. The kitchen is almost finished, a detail here and there, but mostly just making drawers for the island. Only god, or nature some would say, can make popcorn, but anyone can make a simple drawer, and it's a very satisfying accomplishment. Undoubted utility and rough beauty, or at least simplicity in an object which typically goes on doing it's job long after its maker has moved off stage. We have a few drawers like that, in the blanket chest that Nancy's father refinished and the little cabinet that we bought in Maine over fifty years ago, dismantled to take back to New Jersey, and reassembled only in the '80s. I guess there is some ego in the writing group, real saints don't write. There isn’t much, considering. We hear of other less relaxed groups and have acquired some of their escapees. We're getting bigger, 10 to 12 some Saturdays, with many drop ins and outs. It doesn't matter. I read a poem or five pages of a novel instead of ten, and the chance of hearing something really good is that much better. It's probably the most self-revealing kind of group there is, receptive to joy as well as angst, a sort of thinkers non-anonymous. I've mentioned Galileo's Daughter. This is the book for next Monday's book group. Bea's husband Ted, who worked with Edward Teller, is coming along to explain about the moons of Jupiter, etc. The moons of Jupiter are great. I used them in a mystery novel once, and they were the best thing about it. My mother, who sometimes acts as a distant auxiliary to the Nauset Fellowship, sent this article by the minister at the Clearwater Unitarian Universalist Church. He and his wife came from India not long ago. I've always viewed church doctrine, and indeed almost everything else, as either metaphorical or meaningless. I think this is particularly good, particularly now: "Rolling Stones" by Abhi Janamanchi. At a time when violence, hatred, and suffering are so prevalent, and hope, peace, and gentleness so elusive, I am seeking a meaning for Easter this season that will make a deep-down and sustaining difference in my spiritual life. Easter is not a day in the spring calendar, one more excuse for a big family diner, nor is it about theological suppositions regarding the end of the earthly life of Jesus and his miraculous coming back to life. Easter is rather a decision of the human heart that is not limited to one spring Sunday. Easter is a decision to live with hope -- fully, recklessly, courageously -- even in the face of death and despair. Easter is our story, the improbable story of human resurrection, rebirth, renewal and return. Resurrection and the magical rolling away of stones are not supernatural events. They are possible for any ordinary person, like you and me. And resurrection is not an annual event. Its season is any season of the human heart where grace and welcome meet, where stones are moved from inside or out, to reveal the path of return. Easter means we can know something of that justice, mercy, healing, and forgiveness that formed the climate of Jesus's life. It means that we can know something of the courage that enabled him to face shame, grief and agony. It means we can know something of the honesty, patience and compassion that were the hallmarks of his ministry. It means that we too can be resurrrected, again and again, not simply at some future time or in some future life, but here and now.
We look forward to our visit. The weather report says rain next weekend in Philadelphia, but we all need it so badly that we can hardly grouch about it. It'll be fine. Not much new. Like Francisco Franco, the kitchen is still finished, although of course there are always the small imperfections that theoretically I'll get to in time. The new dinning room chairs are highly successful. With a bowl of grapes and a pair of sunglasses artfully splayed at one corner, they look like the picture in the ad that attracted Nancy's attention in the first place. We were glad to see them. I'd had an email from L.L.Bean, with order numbers and the Fedex web address, so I tracked them down Tuesday morning and found they'd been delivered Monday noon, while we were still at the book group. A bit of consternation, thoughts of calling Bean, and then a small dawning. The garage! And there they were, six coffin-like boxes (well, coffins for shortish, two-dimensional cadavers). We skipped the mid-cape madrigal singers on Saturday, a Fellowship fund raiser. We were headed out the door when Nancy said, "We don't have to go, you know." "We don't?" I said. "Oh, well then." So we didn't. I like madrigals in their place, which is possibly medieval England. Oh I still like them okay, but I've noticed that my taste in music has been edging forward in recent years into romantic and modern. Who knows. A local realtor and president to the Chamber of Commerce gave a good talk on at the Fellowship on affordable housing (which on the Cape is a euphemism for servant's quarters). With median home prices now at a quarter million, the EMT's, police, firemen, teachers, etc. find it tough to live here. She spoke well, very straightforward, no vague solutions. As in so many cases, things will have to get worse before anything is done, such as changing the zoning to permit some affordable cluster housing. She didn't say that, I did. As it is not yet raining, I’m off to the Library to join the grounds crew for an hour. -- Worked a little and then it did rain. I brought home some more baby pines from the Chapel's peat pit. Don't plant them too close to the house, cautions Nancy. -- I have to go tonight to open the Chapel for the Library's "Companion Animals of Cape Cod" program. Dogs must stay outside. I think I will leave after opening the doors so if it rains and they want to bring the dogs inside (against local ordinances -- "companion" is not the same as "seeing-eye" evidently) I won't be there to tell them not to. Other than that, I finished the book about India, which concludes that it's a great experiment in multicultural democracy, but it is falling afoul lately of greedy regionalism, professional politicians who are interested only in the money, and a bizarre surge of fundamentalist Hinduism. Hinduism is supposed to be a primarily personal religion, with room for all gods and religious practices, which recognizes the truth of all other religions. Well, guess what: we can wreck anything if we put our mind to it. Now I'm reading a very fat book on Berlin, from pre-history to last year. I'm enjoying it. Berlin seems to be the world's most reluctant great city. Berlin attracts great thinkers, artists, and scholars and then periodically drives them out. They build marvelous buildings and get them demolished. Interesting.
MAY GOING BACK - A CONTEMPORARY MEMOIR We'd all like to visit the past, especially those times and places that were good to us. But the past is history. People change and die, houses come down, fields are cemented over. Life is in flux. Existence is a raging fire. Heraclitus had it wrong; you can't step into the same river even once. [The spell-checker suggested ‘herbalists’; computers have no common sense.] And yet, despite its officially expired status, what's more solid than yesterday? Certainly not the speeding dot of the present moment, or even the hopeful promise of tomorrow. Yesterday is packaged and delivered. We left the house Saturday morning, with a bag of turkey sandwiches and a carafe of coffee, and headed back to Philadelphia. It's 400 miles, but the distance shrinks each time we drive it. We listen to Car Talk and What Do You Know on public radio and switch to WQXR at New Haven. We can tell roughly where we are by looking out the window, like tuning into the middle of a familiar symphony. Spring rushes to meet us as we drive south and west from Cape Cod in late April. The leaves are fully out in Pennsylvania, and the dogwoods and azaleas are in bloom. The lawns are almost obscenely thick and green, and every surface that isn't grass or asphalt is neatly spread with mulch. The suburban world is firmly ordered here and quite attractive. The view from the Springhill Suites takes in an amazing sweep, from the shining Plymouth Meeting Mall across the immensely complex intersection of the Pennsylvania Turnpike, the Blue Route, and Germantown and Plymouth Avenues, to another giant shopping center to the south. This is a highway theme park really, a ganglion in the mid-Atlantic transportation web, the colorful illusion of productive activity. After checking into our hotel, we drove north on Germantown Pike, past shopping centers and fast food restaurants, to meet our children for supper at our daughter's spare but cheerful apartment. Sara is a devotee of feng shui. Max the immaculate black rabbit twitched his nose at us, wary but not intimidated. His bunny bowl was overflowing with sprigs of tasty timothy. It's good to find your children enjoying and dealing with the ups and downs of life, despite 9/11 and the uncertain economy which has done their various enterprises no good. Contributions are off, and the farm bill dashes the American Anti-Vivisectionist Society's hope of adding birds and rodents to the laboratory animals afforded humane treatment. The Philadelphia Shakespeare Festival and Tigerman Productions (which teaches non-violence in schools) have suffered funding cuts. Case workers are overwhelmed at the Transitional Work Corporation's welfare-to-work office. Still, plans, and hopes, and possibilities remain fresh and positive: graduate school, a theatre administration internship, equine therapy, a horse farm, career changes, curiosity, friends, a companion for Max.
As we age, and family ties stretch thinner, our children aren't less important to us. Their lives become larger and more complex, and we're thankful they make their own decisions, but our concerns are all still there. We so wish them well. It's no wonder retirees take up absorbing hobbies and go on long sea voyages. It was some years ago that we last stayed in a hotel. It's an entertaining experience. I can see how we might enjoy travel for a time, before we tired of it. The impersonal friendliness and efficiency make a nice change. I went down to the dining room twice each morning for the free continental breakfast. I'd go alone to drink coffee and eat a muffin while I puzzled over our complimentary U.S.A Today in the company of solitary business men and women and groups of casually dressed tourists. Then I'd go again with Nancy. We went back to Sara's for a Sunday brunch of vegan pancakes and sausage. My third breakfast of the day was delicious, even without the demon coffee. We talked about animal rights. Nancy and I aren't vegetarians, but we eat less meat these days, partly for our health and out of principle but mostly because we're fond of beans and rice. From an Olympian point of view I don't see that cruelty to non-human animals is worse than cruelty to humans, especially to children, but it's so much easier to avoid that it seems particularly perverse. It may be a while before we all share Schweitzer's reverence for life. The Conshohocken State Road runs for a few miles through the steeply rolling hills of Gladwyne. The handsome stone houses, sculptured gardens, and mature trees of large estates are separated by deep wooded ravines. The Main Line is at its best in the Spring and Fall, especially after a good rain. Wealth is gracious in these hills. It seems to recognize its advantages and to want to give something back to the eye. It was fun to see old friends. We don't change much, unless something goes wrong with our brain chemistry. Our circumstances alter. We age, though just a little. We may even become wiser and better people, although it rarely shows, but we're still the same, and we continue to like our friends for the same obscure reasons. This isn't really going back in time, or if it is, it's doing it in the midst of several million people going the other direction. In our case it was mostly a matter of hinching over a touch of longitude, but it was more than tea and conversation. We went on into the city later that afternoon. Philadelphia was festive but not too crowded. We found a parking place on the street at Broad and Pine, near a $10 an hour lot. I love this city. The Liberty Place skyscrapers give it a distinctive shape. City Hall and the broad avenues are impressive, but the narrow streets and cranky buildings are what make it special. Much of it has just grown up and grown old on its own, without being improved by war or urban renewal. You see tiny gardens at the rear of many houses. I noticed that the deservedly pompous Concerto Soloists have a pied-a-terre in a crumbly brick building. We walked up Broad Street through the theatre district just as the matinee performances were spilling out. Pairs of elderly women in black pant suits strolled companionably. School groups waited for their bus. Long queues snaked from every parking garage. We went into the new Kimmel arts center and gawked at the two huge auditoriums built inside a mountainous glassed arch. Philadelphia is becoming fortunate in its excesses. In the next block Robert Goulet was starring in "South Pacific". Some people can go back in time it seems, if they've ever left the past at all. We walked by the exclusive Union League where I once attended a funeral luncheon and afterward wished my friends could see me strutting down the wide front steps in clerical garb. Today each block had a single comatose panhandler, sprawled on the sidewalk behind a hand lettered cardboard sign that said "Homeless Vietnam vet." We met John and Megan at 15th and Locust and spent an urbane hour socializing at a mid-city coffee house. Nancy bought me a pound of Sumatra Decaf. Afterwards we walked to Rittenhouse Square, which looked clean and well cared for, and free of dogs. We saw where Megan works for the Philadelphia Music Project, which gives out Pew Foundation grants to worthy recipients, and John showed us the Philadelphia Shakespeare Festival's theater on the second floor of a fine old building. The minister of the church that occupies the first floor stuck out his head and waved. The predicted rain held off until 7:00 pm. We'd driven up Lincoln Drive, through the blossom filled Grand Canyon of Philadelphia, where John Travolta saw the fatal blowout in the movie of that name, and were having a bowl of clam chowder at Friendlys in Fort Washington when the storm hit. The next morning we stopped at the Plymouth Meeting Mall, so Nancy could buy the last two pairs of Tretorn canvas shoes that existed anywhere in the world and qualify for the special deal on underwear. We drove through Erdenheim Farms, a wealthy family's splendid folly, which sits just outside the Philadelphia city line where it has inspired frustrated lust in generations of real estate developers. School children used to be taken to see the annual sheep shearing and to admire the herd of donkeys. We picked up a turkey hoagie and drinks at the Wawa in Flourtown, where we've bought sandwiches for 30 years. And we headed home. That's a nice thing about trips these days. Coming home is as good as going. We thoroughly enjoyed Philadelphia, without the stress and angst that inevitably accompanies anyone's real life. It was at its Spring loveliest, sunny and cool, smart and stimulating. We were delighted to see our children and sorry to leave them. But our home is on Cape Cod. Before dusk that evening, we drove up an almost empty Route 6A from Sandwich to Orleans, past two and three century old houses, cranberry bogs and salt marshes and came home to our twenty year old ranch house on its half acre of pine and oak woods, to three days of newspapers, empty bird feeders and irate chickadees, and soup and sandwiches. What really makes this possible for us is that the Cape has been a home for Nancy for over 50 years, ever since her family began vacationing here in the late 1940's, and she was allowed, here as nowhere else, simply to be herself. For a few weeks she could read or play or stare into space. She didn't have to perform or produce or try to please everyone at once. It was the only place in her life that didn't change, a part of her childhood she could go back to because it was as much inside of her as it was set down between the ocean and the bay. At her gracious invitation, I brought my own best times down along the Maine coast to Cape Cod's gentle sands and came ashore. May 7, 2002 We were glad to hear that Karen is getting full support from her colleagues. Hope someone is keeping track of the ‘troubled lady’. I have a Times article about welfare in NYC that I'll send in our next snail mailing. I'll send Sara a headline from Episcopal Life (I just get this stuff) that caught my eye and made me laugh: "PRIMATES JOIN CALL FOR PEACE. Church leaders urge..." . We were pleased to hear that John's Philadelphia directorial debut went well. I'd like to hear about it. Could you use a nice one act play? Not mine; I haven't tried playwriting yet. My friend Barry wrote a nifty short story that he said he'd considered writing as a play. I'm not sure how, but writers are nothing if not inventive. I have several teeth that hurt a lot from time to time but always get better and don't interest dentists. I have other teeth that fall apart. I'm lacking two molars that I don't miss at all. I'll follow my natural inclination and send clippings to everyone. I really enjoy some of my mother’s. I wish I could send the whole paper. Many years ago Jane and I used to buy the weekday Times together. She'd take it home and bring it back the next day for me to take home. A day late and a dollar saved. I hope I will always love to learn, and of course formal education and degrees and all that are necessary for some purposes, but I don't plan to take more courses. Well, maybe a course in watercolor painting. My sister takes two or three courses a year and has for decades. We went to Town Meeting (ta dah) last night. It ran 7:00 to 11:00. The non-binding beach resolution won 345 to 100 (as expected though we voted against). The selectmen have to decide (and were unanimously against, but may have to bow to pressure.) If we get it, you guys may find it useful. I expect it will take a year or two, although the advocates are compulsively eager. I noted to my amusement that both my picture (back row of winners of poetry competition) and my name (paid $136 for my windmill services) are in the 350th town report. Being a small fish in a small pond won't get you anywhere, but it can be fun.
May 14 We are nature friendly. The birds and squirrels move just a few feet to the side now when we fill the bird feeders. (And don't be too long about it, paleface!) A pair of catbirds has begun to visit the feeders, or rather the ground below them. Catbirds are spunky. -- The skunks continue to uproot a portion of our wood chips every night. -- And we've picked up a semi-resident fox. We've seen him, or her, half a dozen times in the last week. This morning he came racing into front yard, then stopped, then trotted slowly into the back yard and spent a long time checking out the contents of our tall grass before disappearing into the woods. -- That's a possum isn't it, Nancy called out yesterday afternoon. It was a possum, white and baldish, and looking very annoyed not to be in bed. It waddled through the front yard. -- We've now seen many frogs in the Red Maple Swamp, which is overflowing at the moment. For decades we saw none. We did used to see turtles there, and now we don't. I have to set up chairs for a turtle talk on Monday night. We do see them at Audubon. There were 8 or 10 on a little raft in the pond last week. It was a sunny day, and they all had their necks stretched full out and up, in the same direction, like a scene out of “Close Encounters of the Amphibians.” -- I saw what I hoped was a Cape Bear on Bridge Road, but it was just a huge and rather unkempt nuffie. Hey cool. The Times this morning had an article about the Kimmel Center and a photo of the audience during the Brahms symphony last Friday. I couldn't pick out John and Megan, but I'll send it along. The article was a bit New York snooty actually. I'm about 30 pages from the end of Faust's Metropolis, the 900 page history of Berlin. I've enjoyed it a lot, although I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who doesn't have too much time on his hands. I have to quote a passage: "The crisis of 1958 is not often remembered today but it marked one of the 'hottest' moments in the Cold War. Although the debate raged around the future of Berlin it raised the very real prospect of a nuclear world war. The crisis began on 10 November 1958, when Kruschev...suddenly demanded that the western powers leave West Berlin immediately." They gave the West 6 months, after which the Soviet Union would 'exercise its sovereignty on land, water, and in the air.' I went into the army on 5 November 1958. My poor parents! I can better understand their surprising lack of enthusiasm when I telephoned from New Mexico, all excited about being sent to Germany. Being fully occupied by basic training, I knew nothing about this until after it was clear we'd called Kruschev's bluff and there'd be no war. Just the same, we were sent out into the hop fields with live ammunition on the six month deadline. Our sergeant explained with obvious pleasure that the nearby villages had communist governments (which much was true), and we would be attacked by partisans if war broke out (by Burgomeister Meisterberger and his hefty frau.) They took the live ammunition back before we could shoot anyone. I imagine New York would have been in far greater danger than Darmstadt, Germany. Still and all, it's fun being present at history, safely after the fact. I'm hacking away at Katherine Graham's autobiography for the book group. Nancy's finished it. I'm sure it's partly envy, but what dreary lives the rich and famous appear to lead. The part about Watergate is interesting. KG gets credit for okaying the series, although she isn't much involved otherwise. I liked the t-shirt, with the picture of Jerry Ford and the caption, "I got my job through the Washington Post." May 21 We took a picnic to the Beech Forest last week on the spur of the moment. It was at it's best, the ponds full and the beeches spouting big shiny new leaves in a green that was iridescent in the shade of the deep dune canyon. Nancy spotted two big shaggy coyotes, and I caught just a glimpse of them. I love coyotes. I almost wish we had bears. She also saw a rufus sided tohee (hence to be know as an RST) and a day or two ago she found her first snake. She's excellent at snakes. I must admit that we've actually started looking for birds. Just casually, we don't usually carry field glasses or set out to find them, but we look and listen. An oriole has been enjoying our bird feeder for the last few days. Unfortunately the goldfinches find him too rough and go to the other feeder. My telephoto lens waits for a color collision. Yesterday, in the back yard, behind the garage, I saw my first ever scarlet tanager (from Tupi by way of Portuguese, meaning 'to walk around'. Makes sense.) I mentioned this to someone at last night's turtle talk, and the director of the Audubon sanctuary (who's a herpetologist; go figure) heard me from across the room and pounded over. You can practically dine out around here on a tanager. A couple inches of rain have helped our water table, if not solved Boston's problems. The swamp is afloat, and the ponds are brimming. All the strange little things that have decided to grow in our yard look pleased. The sarsaparilla have popped up from nothing to a foot tall in a week. The Siberian iris that Rhoda gave us because she was having an addition put on have all flowered and are so exquisite they make ordinary flowers appear a bit dowdy. (Unfortunately, the contractor moved to Vermont, and the addition is on hold. Craftsmen are rapidly being driven off the Cape.) All the pepper bush, lilac, pitch pine, maple tree, and salt spray rose transplants have taken. It's like the West Bank though, something will have to give eventually. On Wednesday we go with the book ladies to see the Adams House. John's not Charles's, but we look forward to it, although it's all the way to Quincy. Everyone now feels that John and Abigail are practically part of the family. I do rather think they'd fit in, although I imagine they'd find most of us rather feckless wimps. May 27 Rain, thank goodness. We're nervously aware of being our own aquifer. Every drop we drink, and we consume plenty over Memorial Day weekends, has to be replaced by local rainfall. When the Red Maple Swamp goes dry, it's because the water table has dropped out of sight. We also just planted a couple blue pacific junipers, two English lavender plants, a wild geranium, and a buddleia, aka butterfly bush. One lavender, the geranium, and the bush went in MY garden in the back yard. I also added a clump of long stemmed dandelions and what may be a clod of cheerful chickweed. The rest of the yard is encouraged wilderness. I'm still waiting for the gypsy moth caterpillars to appear, and they seem to be waiting for me to be distracted. We'll get together one of these day, and some of us may survive. No more foxes, skunks, or possums for the moment. The horseshoe crabs are mating at Nauset Marsh, but this doesn't require a Hemingway to document. We may have seen a Eagle the other day, and we may not. Birds are difficult. Nancy has been trying to identify one that sounds, she says, like a wolf whistle, or the 'white' part of 'bob white'. But a wolf whistle goes 'weet wheeo', I say, not 'wo weet', and the 'white' part of 'bob white' is just 'weet'. We imagine, briefly, what the sarcastic author of the birdwatchers column in the Cape Codder would have to say: "I heard this bird. It said 'cheep'." I rarely read "The Rural Life" at the bottom of the Times editorial page, by Verlyn Klinkenborg. I'll send today's, about a dying fox, to Sara. I thought it was quite moving. I'll also write Maria Berks, the Nation Seashore supervisor, about the outrageous partridge hunt. So it goes. I've written a couple more short stories. I don't know why I didn't try this before. We have a literary picnic scheduled friday with Lois and Barry, our retired psychotherapist friends, a pot luck Friday night, and a supper invitation on Saturday. We enjoy our mild social life but cherish any day with no planned activity. We are good for no more than one thing a day. I'm sure we seniors would run the world no better than the great unretired (and less weary), but we might have more fun doing it. The Fellowship made $1000 on the tag sale. I bought a 1977 Roget's for a dollar, to replace my 1936 edition. Patience paid off. We found a 4' by 4' piece of brand new CCX plywood at the dump and tied it to the top of the car. This will do for the last two sliders in the kitchen island and the shelf in the second end-table. Every few days, literally, I drop into Ace hardware and buy a dozen or two screws of various sizes. I feel I should soon qualify for frequent screwer bonus points. I've had a brief correspondence with Bill Herdon, Nancy Fairbanks's son, re Frohock genealogy. He seems to be tracing his family (our mutual connection is the Lowes) in all possible directions. To what end is unclear. I'm interested too, but only in the doings of the more scandalous and preposterous of my ancestors. Have I mentioned our visit to John Adams's houses in Quincy? Six of our ladies literary group went. Nancy drove (and was complemented later for her excellent driving!) It was a lovely day, and fun, although we were startled (goodness knows why) to find the 18th century houses right in the middle of a 21st century city. The big house he lived in by the time he was President stayed in the Adams family (John Quincy, Charles Francis, Henry, and Brooks) until 1926 and is filled with authentic Adams junk. Very attractive and evocative, with a handsome formal garden and 250 year old miniature boxwood hedge. The free standing Presidential Library looks a lot like the Furness Library at Penn. Not surprising as it was built, I think by CFA, in the latter part of the 19th century. A real gentleman's library. One book at a time. Admire, don't touch. We had lunch, inadvertently, at an outdoor Mexican restaurant in Hingham, and, unaccountably, it was excellent.
JUNE June 5 02 A flurry of activity here. I must have mentioned the visit to the Adams' houses in Quincy and al fresco lunch at the Mexican restaurant in Hingham with the literary ladies. The tag sale came next. We made a bit over $1000, which always amazes me. Our stuff looks just like the discards at the Stock Exchange at the dump. Some of it is, I gather! Last Friday we had lunch on Barry and Lois's deck, a very pleasant sunny location surrounded with jungle. A couple of retired psychotherapists who are good company without being very talkative, perhaps an occupational holdover. Then the Fellowship pot luck at Barbara’s. Her husband was Elmer Rice a well known playwright until his death in the late 60's. Then supper at Bea and Ted's in Wellfleet, she a teacher songwriter and he the H-bomb, NASA fellow. Their house is small, semi self-built, like a fairytale cottage and deep in the woods near King Moses Pond which is chuck full of peepers. Ted drives a couple of 60's cars which each have over 200,000 miles on them, and he and his physicist son have rebuilt a half dozen dump bicycles. Bea's my age, but Ted's 80 and swims several miles a day. The kitchen island lacks one sliding shelf. Nancy says all my projects taper off like this. It's true. I'm always ready to move on to the next. I did plant my own perennial garden behind the house: a wild gernamium (the spell checker suggests germanium), a black eyed susan, a butterfly bush (buddleia), a lavender plant, and a salt spray rose. One small squirrel is close to conquering my 'unbeatable' baffle. Darwin at work in our own front yard. I'll try to put my latest short stories on the web shortly. Aunt Elizabeth and Beverly are coming for a week at the end of June. We'll hope to get Aunt E together with her old friends Bobsie and Stan (former owner of Trees and frequent contributor of fiction to the New Yorker, etc.) I was asked to be vice president of the Friends of the Library but declined. The vp automatically becomes president. I had meant to quit anyway after my 3 year term was up. I don't mind doing the minutes (I'd fall asleep otherwise), but I enjoy committee work no more now than I did for 32 years at Penn. I'll continue to help out. I'll send you Bill H's web address. He has a massive genealogical table with includes all of us. I'm not sure why. Magical incantations? I've finished Clash of Civilizations. A scary book. Easy to see why it's controversial. Sinic, African, Islamic, Latin American, Orthodox, Japanese, and Western (US and Europe) civilizations will be at odds. Multi-cultural societies don't work. These civs. must stay fairly unified to survive. Places like Sarajevo (and California?) were a dream. Because of demographics, Islam will be aggressive for another 50 years or so. Note! He thinks Western civ. must maintain its unity (up with Shakespeare), but NOT its tendency to universalism (i.e. everyonce has to be like us, democaratic, indivisualistic, law based, etc.) Nice passage: "As Asian and Muslim civilizations begin more and more to assert the universal relevance of their cultures, Westerners will come to appreciate more and more the connection between universalism and imperialism. Western universalism is dangerous to the world...and to the West. ...with the collapse of the Soviet Union, Westerners see their civilization in a position of unparalleled dominance, while weaker Asian and Muslim societies are beginning to gain strength. Hence they could be led to apply the familiar and powerful logic of Brutus: Our legions are brim-full, our cause is ripe.
June 8 Interesting confluence: I'm reading Isaiah Berlin's collection of essays, "The Crooked Timber of Humanity," (from a favorite Kant quote of his: "Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made." His translation of: "Aus so krummen Holze, als woraus der Mensch gemacht ist, kan nichts Gerades gezimmert werden." -- Reminds me that German cartoons always come with a paragraph of explanation. Anyway, the first essay "The Pursuit of the Ideal" seems neatly to foreshadow "The Clash of Civilizations," saying that civilizations/cultures are ultimately incompatible. They may, with difficulty, coexist, but they can't merge. There is no "final solution", no final truth. A precarious equilibrium may be the best we can do. I've always liked the idea of a multicultural society, but I think I (and probably most other multiculturalists) see this really as Western civilization ascendant but pleasantly spiced with curry and hoisin sauce. A real mixture won't hold. I thought the picture of Sarajevo at the long ago winter Olympics was ideal: Muslims and Roman and Orthodox Christians living peacefully together and intermarrying. But alas…. I gather that neither India nor China really lets go of their emigrants to other lands and expects them to continue to be more Indian and Chinese than, say, American. The U.S. has of course absorbed many immigrants who maintain cultural traits but have become Americans in the "essentials", such as: liberty, equality, individualism, separation of church and state, etc. This is not multicultalism, however. For Muslims anyway, society comes before the individual. For American Muslims? For Chinese in China? In America? Of course, JFK said, "Ask not...", which my father held against him. And some/many American families might as well be their own country, for all the support they give their community or their nation. I just read about a new book which is presently horrifying China. "I'm Mediocre; I'm happy;" a response to "Harvard Girl," a guide from age 0 to getting your kid into Harvard. I'm also reading Joseph Wood Krutch's 1948 book on Thoreau. I’m a mediocre thinker and writer compared to HDT, but I'm at least almost as ambitious as he was. June 28, 2002 We think of our children’s endeavors. The fine art is to enjoy life while you prod it along. Never a great skill of mine, but a constant goal. I suppose cherry blossoms have been replaced by heat in DC, but maybe one can snatch time to see a museum, Sara? Does the summer bring any relief from clients, Karen, or is the pressure even worse? Especially as the magic 5 years is about to start being up. I suppose it's a lot easier to do it all better in Sweden, etc., but we do seem to make a national muff of so much. I enjoy starting the day with the Times, and it’s also the only time of day I can stomach the news. Nature seems to be in good shape this year. Of course nature is always on top of things regardless of conditions, as she IS the conditions. I suppose what I mean is that we find our surroundings particularly agreeable. The Gypsy Moth fungus must have been active this spring. The oaks around town, including ours, still have most of their leaves. Old Mother West wind is committing genocide with biological weapons. Right on! The woods seem particularly thick and protective around our house. The marsh is fully green and already shading to gold in spots. We see frogs every day in the Red Maple Swamp. Well-formed frogs are supposedly a good indicator of environmental health. The invasive species, the common reed, the garlic mustard, bittersweet vine, and such, are doing just fine. We have mixed feelings on invasives. Wrecking havoc is one thing; being historically incorrect seems a lesser crime. On a rough and overcast day last week we saw a dozen seals, swimming doglike with their heads out of the water, just beyond the surf at Coast Guard Beach. I reported this to a friend who said 3000 seals were spotted at South Monomoy Island. Oh, well, we saw our ten. We took Aunt Elizabeth and Beverly to Coast Guard Beach after supper last night. I was telling Bev about the seals when another group of ten popped up on schedule. It was a lovely evening, clear and cool. We stopped at the bay also, to see the sunset. As the overworked and understaffed acting Dean of Admissions at Kenyon College, Bev was clearly intoxicated by so much beauty and the momentary freedom to enjoy it. She went off today for an 18 mile bicycle ride. Nancy's school duties and my Common Time activities have ended for the summer. There are Library activities, and I'll have some gigs at the Eastham Windmill, as both of the other millers will be away a bit. I enjoy this but also sometimes resent having to do anything at all. "Life is a compromise" should be spelled out in beads on baby bracelets. I'm leading a discussion of Thoreau at the Chapel in three weeks. The preparations for this are quite enjoyable. I like almost everything about HDT. He was a nice person, who enjoyed and helped his neighbors and his warm and loving family. A bit unusual among the Greats, but he was an odd Great. His relative non-participation comes too naturally to me. He values what I value. He's funny at times. And does he ever have the great lines! Like Shakespeare, he's all quotes. I'm sort of mastering my new Dell, dude. I guess Hotmail will do, as I can't make Outlook work. I haven't had full Word since work days and didn't much use it then. It's awfully gimmicky, but it lets you write simple stuff if you insist. This is my 5th computer in 22 years. I always think I know what I'm doing until I get a new one and discover that the world has moved on since my last upgrade and I'm a freshman again. One is always a freshman again. At 67 I'm the new kid in several endeavors. I hope my home page will be available again soon, as I have some short stories to post to it. Talkcity has been moving to new hardware for two weeks. "Any day now," they say. Our writing group seems quite healthy. There are around 20 people on our list, although only 7 to 10 come on any particular Saturday. Talent varies but all are interesting and enthusiastic. It's sociable and fun. Everyone should have a willingly captive audience for 15 minutes a week. We'd need no therapists. I'm pressing on with The Makers at the moment, my retelling of The Water Rat saga, this time with humans turned rats. Makes sense, right? But occasionally short stories pop into my head in the middle of the night. -- People ask me what I do up here in my retirement, and I say "read and write". I sometimes feel I have to add a few other more respectable activities. Shame on me. What is any of it for if not to read and write. Thoreau had no such doubts. It occurs to me again that I wish I had concentrated some of my spare time over the last 60 years to learn something really well, another language, a musical instrument, painting, even writing! Instead I rode off in all directions. Oh well, it's been interesting. I could do something now of course, and will to some degree. But I mean REALLY WELL. But then, pursuing many interests has its own intoxication. I'm enjoying the Metaphysical Club, the neat new book about Holmes, James, Peirce, and Dewey, who apparently set the philosophical foundations for 20th century America. We had a splendid visit with Bobsie, Aunt Elizabeth's schoolmate from Hartridge back in Plainfield in the '30s. They are both sociable women with good and long memories and evidently had hundreds of mutual acquaintances. Most now "dead you know" to use Aunt Oriana's expressive phrase. Nancy and Bev knew most of the people or their children. I at least knew Plainfield. Peter came in, and we chatted about computers and his new role as selectman. Town politics looks up even as national politics looks grim. Today (after my filling; I said to Bev, at least YOU don't have to associate the Cape with dentistry) we're having lunch with Stan Goldman, who apparently once worked with Uncle Harold in advertising, started Trees (the big gallery in Orleans), and wrote stories for the Atlantic. Small world? This is it.
JULY What happened to July? I’m sure we had one. AUGUST August 8, 2002 Yesterday was a real beauty, cool and bright. We could use some rain though. I set out early on my morning walk and mused over a poem for the Eastham Library’s Poetry Night. I was policing up a few nips and beer cans as usual, so some of the time my eyes were on the ground. Of course: I’d write a poem about sand. I roughed it out when I got home, made coffee, wrote a couple of letters, and finished a chapter for the writing group. Everyone said he or she would be away this coming Saturday, so I agreed to be a place holder in case occasional members showed up. Writing groups, and some writers, are fragile and require attention. It was such a nice day that, after errands and lunch, we decided to take our walk at Audubon. Audubon is a 500 acre nature preserve on the bay, with a huge salt marsh, a sand beach, two freshwater ponds, forest and open uplands. It’s especially good on warm days when there’s a bay breeze. Because it’s private and fee-based, its trails are in better condition than the National Seashore’s. When our public facilities equal our private ones, we’ll know we’ve matured as a civilization. Goose Pond has always puzzled us. It sits well above the marsh, behind a dam, but it may be visited by high tides. We see the occasional duck on its muddy margins. Today there was a small crowd at Goose Pond, a naturalist with a spotting scope and bird books, and an inundation of shore birds. There were 8 large white cattle egrets of the sort that stand around as lizard-eating lawn ornaments in Florida, and many yellowlegs, a variety of large sandpiper. There was a green heron, which has short legs and neck and resembles the great blue heron only in the shape of its head. A black ibis, with a head and bill straight out of the Book of the Dead was vigorously slashing its bill among the tiny fish which seemed to be the main attraction. It’s the beginning of fall migration the naturalist said, and the birds are binging on energy food. We watched a bob white whistling from ten feet up in a small tree. It’s hard to image these schmoo-shaped birds flying anywhere. Before supper, we went to meet Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor and presently Democratic candidate for Governor of Massachusetts. When you stand on the top of Fort Hill and look south over Town Cove, you see a large modern house set in the trees. Inside it’s big and beautiful and full of lovely art. The cathedral living room, (with a hypocaust floor) has a 180 degree view of the marsh and cove. As is so often the case around here, the owners were quite elderly, but they appear to have had a good run. We saw a number of people we knew, and I talked with a man who had worked at Bell Labs and lived a block away from us in Westfield. He was enthralled with the Internet. Nancy talked with a former soap opera star. Her parents had been very supportive of her career she said. Someone called out, “He’s here!” and I looked but couldn’t find him. It sounds like a bad joke, but honestly I was looking a head too high. Reich is 4’10”. We talked with him. Mostly Nancy talked with him. I’m still amazed, though not surprised, that she can carry on informed and enthusiastic conversations with teachers about special education, financiers about finance, politicians about local politics, and taxi drivers about hockey (though that last one may have been a bit of a tour de force). We both liked Reich. I know politicians are SUPPOSED to be likeable in person, but they aren’t all. I talked with a candidate for county DA last winter, while I was holding a campaign sign for Peter Whitlock, and the longer we talked the surer I was that I would vote for his opponent, any opponent. Our only question is whether Reich or Shannon O’Brien is most likely to beat Mitt Romney. Mitt is tall, handsome, well-financed, and made of #5 plastic. Having spent several years in Utah with the dubious Winter Olympics, he wasn’t even a legal resident of Massachusetts, but money can do wonders. After supper I finished reading The Metaphysical Club, by Louis Menand. This is a terrific book. It’s written by a CUNY English professor and is very readable as well as informative. It’s about the intertwined lives and ideas of Oliver Wendell Holmes, William James, Charles Sanders Pierce, and John Dewey. These were the thinkers who developed pragmatism, which Menand says was the philosophical basis of American society until the Cold War (During the Cold War we temporarily replaced pragmatism with a firm anti-communist ideology.) and has been taken up again since 1990. Basically it says that beliefs and ideas are like hands, they’re instruments for coping. Very Darwinian. Many non-fiction works tend to continue long after the author has run out of things to say, but this one gets better as it goes. The last section “Pragmatisms” is the best one in my opinion. Not to be missed. August 21, 02 What a treat. It’s a breezy 60 degrees this morning. Our heat wave was nothing like Philadelphia’s, but 9 days of humid 80’s and 90’s on Cape Cod is grim enough for us. Bob Brown, who’s going to put in a new furnace and oil tank for us, complains about the “New Yorker’s” who call him in off the beach for an “air conditioning emergency”! Better yet, there was a brief shower yesterday. We saw small children looking at the sky in amazement and opening their mouths to catch a few drops. It wasn’t enough to help the plants, but it was great for our morale. We can’t wait for short cool days and long dark nights. I’ve worked two days so far this summer. Two of the hot ones, but it isn’t bad in the mill. It was pleasant, lots of fathers and small sons, looking pleased with each other but a little uneasy on an “educational” outing. I have two to go on Labor Day weekend. Work always reminds me of…, well, work. Even though it’s just 10-5, with a lunch hour, there’s a laboriousness about it, a having to get up and go and stay until it’s done. It reminds me of the nightmare I had a year or two into our marriage in which I found myself unaccountably back in the army. Aaaaaargh! All of which makes me feel a little guilty. About the great grandmothers who man (as it were) many of the Cape’s counters. About our doctor, a really nice fellow who works long days and looks a little like he doesn’t know how to relax at his own 4th of July picnic. Like my friend Jane, presumably enjoying being a big shot at the Princeton library. And my children, job hunting and working at jobs that are valuable and satisfying but hard and not wildly well paid, in a world that’s uncertain at best. I admire and honor you. I was fortunate in having work I liked, but it wasn’t perfect, or easy, or without its various discouragements. All I can pass along is the hoary secret of life. You know, one foot in front of the other. Sometimes it gets worse for a while, but eventually it gets better too. Thoreau had a thing about mornings as salvation, like Li’l Orphan Annie and Scarlet O’Hara after him. That was what I resented most about my brief experience of depression when we first moved up here. Mornings lacked their customary sparkle. But with a little help they soon resumed their function. We are all mortal presumably, but several of our good friends here are more obviously and immediately so than most. And yet there is an admirably steely resolve on their part to live out their days with grace and celebration of life which we are all glad to collude in. It’s an odd place to live, but not a bad one. My new web site is almost ready for unveiling. A few minor problems in data transfer. I hope Prohosting doesn’t immediately go bankrupt like TalkCity, but one thing at a time. I recommend The Metaphysical Club by Menand, but it’s long and much of it is about personalities. Isaiah Berlin’s The Crooked Timber of Humanity is a wonderfully readable survey of major themes in western thought from the Enlightenment to Fascism. Berlin was a professor at Oxford, college president, and president of the British Academy. I’ll write a few pages about the book and send them along. Better yet, is the book I’ve just started (50 pages so far), The Invention of Art, Univ. of Chic. Pr., 2001, by Larry Shiner, a professor of philosophy at the Univ. of Illinois. It discusses all the interesting guys and topics: Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Michelangelo, Goethe, Schiller, Herder, Kant, Mozart, Baudelaire, Horace, Gropius, Shakespeare, William Morris, theatre, poetry, etc., etc. “Part I, ‘Before Fine Art and Craft,’ explores some striking cases from the more than 2000 year period when ‘art’ still meant human making or performance of any kind dedicated to a purpose and when the distinction between artist and artisan was not yet normative.” “Part II, ‘Art Divided,’ describes the great fracture in the older system of art that occurred in the course of the 18th century, finally severing fine art from craft, artist from artisan, the aesthetic from the instrumental…” Part III, Counter Currents. Part IV. Apotheosis of Art. Part V. Beyond Fine Art and Craft. August 26, 02 Nancy is off to a class reunion. Sort of. It’s a St. Margaret’s get together in Orleans. It’s a very unknown quantity, but she’s been active for the last year with their alumnae and class news, etc. and has met the woman who’s in charge of their alumnae affairs and who summers on the Cape. We’ve had some lovely cool weather and some desperately needed rain. I may have brought it on with my rain barrel. I’d wanted one for some time, for just this sort of drought, but couldn’t find a barrel. Then a friend said he used 6 garbage cans as rain barrels! We don’t need 6, but we did have an unused can in the garage. We produce so little garbage that we haven’t needed it. Our one bag a week goes right to the dump. I set it up and immediately we got ¼ inch of rain. I lay in bed and calculated that ¼ inch of rain on ¼ of our roof would just about fill the barrel. And lo, it just about did. I was quite proud of my calculations until it rained again a couple of days later. I thought the barrel would overflow, but it was at the same level the next morning, 4 inches from the top. It seems that water leaks slowly from the handle until the small holes are uncovered, 4 inches from the top. Oh, well. I went to writers group a bit early Saturday and waved at the war protestors who stand along Route 6 in front of the windmill on Saturday mornings. I may join them if things get worse. ‘Group” was good. There were only 5 of us and the others were very enthusiastic about the latest chapter of “The Makers”, my man into rat epic opus. Playmate, come play with me, And bring your dollies three, Tee hee hee hee. Call [or possibly ‘look’] down my rain barrel. Slide down my cellar door, And we’ll be jolly friends, For evermore. No mention of having a gay old time though. My mother used to sing this, and many other things, as she did her housework. Now that, my dears, WAS the olden days. August 28, 2002 I took my usual early morning walk and enjoyed the cool, cloudy weather. There were small flocks of grackles moving about restlessly and a vague change of season feeling. It can’t come too soon. Noel Beyle, our local historian, posts a sign on his house a few blocks from here announcing, “x Days until Labor Day!” I read about someone with Reverse Seasonal Affective Disorder. We’re not that bad, but neither Nancy nor I care much for the bright hot days of summer. Thoreau was right that the Cape is best in October. My cousin says October is the best month almost everywhere, including wherever it is you live. He and his wife travel a great deal to visit art museums, which sounds good to me. We hope to get to San Francisco in the Spring to see Nancy’s sister and mine, but we have difficulty overcoming the inertial forces of our present life. Spring and fall auto trips to see our children in Philadelphia and an annual flight to Tampa to visit my mother are all we’ve managed in 3 years. Otherwise, in addition to our daily walk in the National Seashore, a single errand seems to fill the day, the Stop and Shop, CVS, the library, a medical appointment. I write in the morning. We do our errands, eat lunch, and take a walk. I invent work to do around the house in the afternoon. I‘d hoped, when I retired, to write, market my books, paint, improve my French and German, read a lot, and travel a bit. Painting, French, and German are still off in the nebulous future. Travel seems daunting. I do write a lot, in all directions, but I now realize that while I was employed I could disguise the fact that selling is hard work. A few days each summer as a fill-in Eastham Miller (at $8 an hour!) are as much employment as I want. Mostly we read. I thoroughly enjoyed The Metaphysical Club, by Louis Menand. If you haven’t read it, it’s about the intertwined lives and ideas of Oliver Wendell Holmes, William James, Charles Sanders Pierce, and John Dewey. These were the thinkers who developed pragmatism, which Menand says was the philosophical basis of American life until the Cold War (During the Cold War we temporarily replaced pragmatism with an explicit anti-communist ideology.) and has been taken up again since 1990. Pragmatism maintains that beliefs and ideas are like hands, they’re instruments for coping Menand led me to Jacques Barzun’s 1983 book, A Stroll with William James. I love Barzun. The only thing of his I’d read before was From Dawn to Decadence. I thought he felt free to comment wittily on 500 years of Western civilization because he was 93 when he wrote it. Evidently he felt just as confident at 75. Larry Shiner’s The Invention of Art is about the late 18th c. division of art from craft, the 19th century resistance, the 20th c. triumph of Fine Arts, which has gobbled up everything from Dada to Rock, and 21st c. efforts to reunite art and life. This led me to Isaiah Berlin’s essays on Herder and Vico, who together evidently invented the contemporary world. All great stuff. I’ve started the annotated book list I should have begun decades ago. SEPTEMBER September 2, 02 We received a nice note card with a 1930 Associated Press photo of elephants in New York City. Nancy, rather uncharacteristically, didn’t think they were actually escaping elephants. I thought they were. We have agreed to disagree. I will preserve and enjoy the picture, dated five years before I was born and looking like another world. I can remember wearing knickers. I wore either knickers or shorts until I was 8 because I thought long pants looked weird. I’ll add Malaparte to my book list, which now extends beyond my possible life span but gives me comfort. Fascism is not a central interest. -- I’ve read something of Feynman’s. Nancy is a fan, although more of the man who wanted to go to Tuva than of his physics. Her subjects at Bryn Mawr were history and musicology. Her father graduated summa from Princeton in mathematical physics. He was offered a graduate scholarship at Harvard but turned it down for a job with Equitable and marriage to my mother in law, for which I am grateful. I haven’t read The Meaning of it All and will track it down. I have the normal tendency to want to read the latest non-fiction book on any subject, but I realize that sometimes the Greeks and the Romans may have said it first and best. Certainly Thoreau hasn’t been surpassed. Vico and Herder evidently had startling insights. I was turned on to William James by the Metaphysical Club and am halfway through Jacques Barzun’s A Stroll with William James. James was/is amazing. Barzun is always clear and witty, but I want to try to read at least a little of James himself. For one thing, he exactly spelled out what has always been apparent to me, that we live in the past, the future being non-existent and the present just a point of logic. I hadn’t realized that Fruitlands still existed, except perhaps in the mind. Utopian communities are not my thing. I knew a man named Lyman (my young son heard ‘Lemon’ and was overjoyed) who once lived in a commune. He left when he realized he was the only one doing any work. I’m glad to have people comment on my poems or to say nothing if that seems kinder. I appreciate advice and follow it when I can. My son greatly aided my one published novel. At 67 I’m well acquainted with rejection and not much affected by it. I care more about my stories and still more about my 6 completed and 3 uncompleted novels, but they aren’t as portable except electronically The talk at the Fellowship on a trip down the Colorado was well done. The air was 110, the water 50. He allowed as how 8 days of this was too long for a man of 78. Nancy complemented the speaker, and he said, “And now you don’t have to go.” “You got it!” she acknowledged. A friend was offered a chance to be “Poet of the Year” as Disney World, under an incorrect name unfortunately. Of course, when she was at the Wyndham Palace swilling champagne with the Mouse she’d have the comfort of traveling under an alias. There were so many great lines in the brochure: “Everything your poetical heart could desire!” or "As a poet you are always doing nice things for others." Human kindness is of course a well-known characteristic of the great poets, and of the great bunkum artists as well. It occurs to me that someone wrote all this. Do you suppose he, or she, has an MFA from one of our great universities? For me, the omnipresence of Mickey Mouse would be the strongest attraction. I've been fond of the rodent ever since I was a child. Perhaps it explains my predilection for rats. Our daughters shook hands with Mickey at Disney World in the early 70's. To be honest, there were clues at the time that the mouse might be androgynous if not actually female. Fortunately this didn't seem to confuse our young. We enjoyed Disney World in 1972. I commented at the time that it was a shame we had to fly 1500 miles just to walk down a clean street. We feel no need to go back We had rain. I had just installed a rain barrel that afternoon. Nancy said ¼ inch was expected, and I mentally calculated that ¼ inch on the 400 square feet that the spout drained would fill the barrel. It did, to within 4 inches from the top. My pride was dampened by additional rain two days later, which left the water still 4 inches from the top. There was a small hole where the handle is attached. Dave’s talk on his trip down the Colorado was well done. The air temperature was 110, the water 50. He allowed as how 8 days of this was a bit much for a man of 78. Nancy complemented him, and he said, “And now you don’t have to go.” “You got it!” she acknowledged. I’m afraid that flippancy r uss. I spent 32 years at the Penn Library trying to convince my betters that I was in earnest.. I haven’t read published poetry since college, although I’ve been impressed by the poetry of Billy Collins and other contemporaries that has been read at ‘group’. I don’t read many short stories either, which is most unfair, as I enjoy writing both poems and stories. Mostly I read non-fiction and mysteries, and struggle through a monthly book-group novel. I do value editors. Scribner’s brilliantly asked me to remove two chapters from Shadow Walkers, and my son brilliantly suggested a better ending. Some of Scribner’s other comments were more amusing. They objected to rats joking about talking clams and other un-ratlike behavior. I had to point out that rats talk and clams don’t and that imaginary rats can do anything I want them too. I enjoy a rare hearing of the Beatles or Joan Baez, and I don’t mind when my son plays his Blues Traveler CD. Otherwise I’m fairly ignorant of pop culture, including music, movies, TV, and professional sports. My estimable children like them all, and even Nancy is a Phillies fan, but unfortunately my reaction is the same as it was to bridge lessons, instant terminal lethargy. I’m sure I’ve missed a lot, including Janis Joplin. 11 September 2002 We had a delicious and entertaining lunch with a friend on Sunday. We enjoyed the other guests, although I don’t think we learned a lot about them or they about us. Somehow the talk just flowed pleasantly. Nor did we say much about Plainfield, our theoretical common denominator, which was okay too. My parents never looked back. I admired that trait in them and seem to have inherited it. I am sorry that they also regularly jettisoned their possessions as they went. I would have liked the set of 20 graduated German beer mugs that they abandoned in St. Louis. Some reminiscing is pleasant of course. I have many thousands of pages of my father’s letters and writings that I’ve been trying to incorporate into a fictional biography. The hash was wonderful. It brought back my youth, only in much improved form. My mother made “wet hash,” which was one inch cubes of meat and potatoes in a thin broth with perhaps a wisp of onion, and “dry hash,” which was just that, dry as toast. This one was a 21st century version of moist dry hash with flavor. My mother was a good cook Her hashes were simply standard fare in St. Louis, Missouri in the 1940’s, as was crusty fried chicken, over-cooked vegetables, and mashed potatoes swimming in a quarter pound of butter. Her cooking improved dramatically when we moved to New York in 1947. I began cooking one Cape vacation 20 years ago when Nancy wasn’t feeling well. I said I’d do it all, the planning, buying, and preparing. The children would ask her what’s for dinner, and she’d say ask your father. I thoroughly enjoyed it and just about made it to the end of two weeks. We’ve shared more kitchen duties ever since. When I was a child I thought the ambition to “live in a house by the side of the road and be a friend to man” was an attractive one. I imagine the original vision was of a dirt road and occasional horse traffic. Living by a quiet waterway is much more appealing now. We enjoyed the stately parade of watercraft. 17 September 2002 Last Sunday Morning in a tribute to Donald Baker who died earlier this summer here on the Cape, Joan Sparrow read some of his poetry. It was well read and great stuff, a lot of it grimly humorous. Sunday afternoon we went to a memorial service for our friend Adrienne. Her children, a few relatives, and several members of the Fellowship spoke, and it was quite moving. I remember this was done at Uncle Harold’s and Earl Rich’s funerals, but it’s still a new concept for me. At all the Episcopal funerals I’ve been to we stuck to the prayer book. Summaries of other people’s lives always seem to put mine to shame. Adrienne did a lot of impressive stuff, including dance with Isadora Duncan (I was thinking Josephine Baker, but that would have been a good trick.). I suppose it’s possible to gild a eulogy, but I’m sure Adrienne did a lot. At Adrienne’s request, Bill O. sang Browning’s “The Potter’s Wheel” (a cappella) and very nicely too Monday we went to our book group at Vivian’s house. This is an 18th century farm house which has been largely preserved on its original footprint. She and her husband are restoring it, and it looks quite good. Nancy and I agreed the rooms were a little small and a bit full of (quite elegant) stuff for us. Our 25 year old plain piperack ranch is more our speed. We discussed A High Wind In Jamaica, a very strange book which bore no resemblance to the movie starring Haley Mills. Wednesday was Men’s Group. Harry played a tape of a Palestinian comic, and we talked about politics and septic tanks. Thursday we got our new furnace and oil tank. The furnace looks like a furnace, but the oil tank looks like a Startrek teleportation chamber. Friday we took the car to Hyannis for its 130,000 mile servicing, ate hot and sour soup, and looked for futons at the mall so I could see how to build one. They didn’t have any. I admired 50 feet of philosophy books at Barnes and Noble, and we stopped at the Parnassus Book store on the way home. This Sunday Art spoke on the first American Revolution (which took place in Worcester, Mass. In 1774), and Rhoda loaned me a tape of Janis Joplin’s Me and Bobby Magee. We were pleased to hear of J & M’s apartment. Our first apartment was on the 3d floor of a large private home in New Brunswick. (I carried the refrigerator up 3 flights of outside steps in pieces and reassembled it.) It was big, but you could here everything said on the first 2 floors up the center stairwell, and the wife wanted to teach Nancy Hungarian cooking. After two weeks we were offered an apartment in student housing and took it. It was the size of an NYU dorm room, but we liked it. OCTOBER OCTOBER 11 October 2002 To put it kindly, our life here has fallen into a pattern. Nancy enjoys the two weekly sessions at the elementary school in which her child development expertise is appreciated. The Nauset Fellowship may eventually expire of collective old age, but it thrives for the moment; I must remember to send our yearly donations to charities and cut the grass. Common Time has started up again. Mostly though, we read, take our nature walks, and listen to music. Nancy knits, and I write and fiddle with the house. It’s an odd sort of paradise. The writers group, which had collected 25 members over the past year seems to be faltering. Perhaps there are patterns operating here too. Some folks do seem to come to deliver their personal message and move on. Others test the water and find it too hot or tepid. Maybe some just get tired of producing work week by week. If it fails, I may eventually look for another group, but this one was so laid back and convenient. I don’t need the motivation. I do enjoy the comradeship. Common Time has 15-20 participants this year, 6th-8th graders. I like them, and they seem glad to see me. I suppose we see them at their best, but the middle school age doesn’t seem as difficult as it is reputed to be. I was startled yesterday though. Andrea asked us to write about the difference between work and play. These children have a very grim notion of work. Does this come from their parents? Some are builders and tradesmen, and some are professionals and white collar workers. I read Studs Turkel’s Working long ago. There is decidedly ‘bad’ work, but my own and most that I see going on around me seems to have its satisfactions. Perhaps work has taken a turn for the worse in the last three years? Certainly the shenanigans of the CEOs present an ugly picture. I find the ads for Sprint on the back of the 1st section of the Times intriguing. “Troy gives 110%,” but he’s hamstrung, out of touch, a loser, etc., because he doesn’t have PCS Vision. What is a 110% effort? It sounds fatal. The skunks have been digging up the wood chips in the back yard for weeks. I looked into bricks, but bricks on Cape Cod are as scarce as…well, bricks. New they cost 48 cents per brick, and there are no supplies of used brick as there would be in Philadelphia. So, I have put in a lawn! Roughly 12 by 15 feet. That is, I have seeded such a plot. Mother Nature needs to provide the grass. Nancy disapproves. Not of Mother Nature but of lawns, but I promise to use rainwater and no chemicals. I will have to borrow the lawnmower from the Chapel. It should be pleasant under the feet in our picnic area. Paul, my Rutgers engineer friend, pointed out a slight bulge at the eaves in our garage. This is normal in this type of building he says, but I should install a steel cable to keep it from getting worse. Easier said than done, but I found the perfect solution at the dump. Four 8 feet sections of steel garage door slide that can be bolted together and toggled to the garage wall at the ends. I also found a lamp base that will be ideal for mounting a heat lamp in the bathroom without making a hole in the ceiling. Nancy wishes no holes in the ceiling of this house. I was a bit too free with them in Pennsylvania. I have also devised a plan for a larger attic exhaust fan which does not require a ceiling hole. So you see. We work it out. – Next I want to build a room around the furnace and water pump to damp the noise. No problem here. The basement is my domain. We find it very difficult even to contemplate crossing the canal and leaving the Cape. We did, however, very much enjoy our two night visit to Philadelphia and were delighted to find the children thriving in their own ways. We take a 3 day trip to see my mother in Florida in November. I hope it’s not hot. What do you think about Iraq? We feel we should work through the UN and are distressed at the cowardice of the Democrats. Of course we feel about W the same irrational distain the Republicans felt about Clinton. A friend points out that W graduated from Yale and the Harvard Business School. But did he? Or was he just let through in the same way he acquired his wealth? I guess if he ever wanted to know something he could ask Laura. -- I was listening to Brian Lamb on C-SPAN this morning, when a caller said, “I don’t think it’s a good idea to try to bring Christianity to Iraq.” Turns out he was confusing Christianity with Democracy, an understandable mistake these days. 24 October 2002 I’m inclined to think that transcendence and imminence mean about the same thing, which I call daily life, and which includes head colds and epiphanies. I decided to become an Episcopal minister at the age of 12, and I stuck with it intermittently until I became one. The reasons were habit (I was raised an Episcopalian); peculiar insights such as my experience on a mountain in Wyoming of being one-with-the-universe; and because the ministry looked like something I could do. It almost was. I have no sense of changing my mind over the course of my life. Does everyone feel that way? Is it because we really don’t change, or because it’s easy to disguise our changes? What I think now (and perhaps then too) is that life originated with the accidental replication of large protein molecules some two billion years ago, and that Jesus Christ, Shakespeare, Einstein, and you and I are direct descendents. Mind and spirit are handy metaphors for molecular activity in the nervous systems of complex organisms, and our search for beauty, truth, and justice is meaningful. Paradox R us, but I see this as daily life: the best there is, the worst there is, and all there is. This is Faith, big time. Jesus, Bach, Keats, Cézanne, and Camus’s fictional Dr. Rieux lived daily life more effectively than I, but we’re in the same business. On that basis, I figure I believe in God as much as anyone ever has or can. Thoreau says:--“A man of true religion finds his open temple in the whole universe,” and also “God himself culminates in the present moment, and will never be more divine in the lapse of all the ages. We are enabled to apprehend at all what is sublime and noble only by the perpetual instilling and drenching of the reality that surrounds us. … Let us spend one day as deliberately as Nature.” I’d love a Church in which I could join with kindred spirits in an elegant liturgy of music, poetry, and prose that characterized and symbolized our common quest. My search for truth hares off in all directions. I’m enjoying The Story of Philosophy by Morton Hunt, and am looking forward to Steven Pinker’s How the Mind Works and his new book The Blank Slate. A woman in our book group, spying my copy of Herman Wouk’s The Winds of War, asked innocently, “rereading an old favorite?” No, I hadn’t read it, and it’s terrific. I know the historical background pretty well, and Wouk is wonderfully believable. Pug Henry lives. I read Friedman and Krugman and occasionally write my congressman, who agrees with me about most things except about having 170 windmills in his front yard. There are a thousand other daily paths to enlightenment: writing, painting, talking, walking, caring, loving, what you will. All my life my ‘colleagues’ have accused me of amusing myself. Call it that. As Thoreau says, “Have the gods sent us into this world to do chores, hold horses, and the like, and not given us any spending money?” NOVEMBER NOVEMBER 4 November 2002 We had our quick trip to Florida, and it went well. Our reluctance to leave the Cape is mostly satisfied inertia. Air travel seems threatening in the abstract, but we don't actually mind flying. (Personally I disapprove of flight as wasteful, but I notice that we don't consider any other means of transportation.) It's a long day though, even when everything goes well. To be sure of getting to the airport the requested two hours early we left the house at 5:30 and took a 6:40 bus from the Park and Ride in Barnstable. Despite jammed traffic on Route 3 we go to the airport by 9:00, spent $5.00 on two coffees and one muffin, and read our books. Long ago people dressed up to fly. I can remember my grandparents climbing down the rolling stairs from a small airliner at Lambert Field in St. Louis in the early '40s, business-suited and furred. In recent decades people dressed down, in sweats and sneakers. Currently it seems to me that we don't dress at all. People look the same as they do in the mall, at church, in a restaurant, or at a dinner party. I consider this progress in some uncertain direction. I'll suggest bringing our own muffins next time, two for a buck on sale at the Shop and Shop and much better than the airport's offerings. The president would tell me this is un-American, like stuffing my pockets with shelled peanuts when John and I used to go to Phillies games, but what does he know. Truly. I noted that a cup of Starbucks decaf at Tampa Airport was only $1.45, not $3.50 as one might expect. I realize it's a cliché, money in your pocket, time to kill; what better occasion in which to consume. Despite constant announcements on the speaker system, many signs, and messages on all the computer screens, the woman next to me abandoned her two bags and large paper sack for twenty minutes. I had seen only her back as she left. I considered her luggage, wondered what was in it and whether our plane would come and go before it detonated, and did nothing about it. If you abandon a paper cup in some neutral territory the bomb squad will descend on it, but if you leave your luggage leaning against your fellow travelers no one will notice. The security was quite a bit more evident than on our last trip and very courteous. I can see that on a busy day, things could get difficult. We had some good talks and enjoyed looking through the photo albums. The ancient relatives look younger each time. Mother recounted some intricate and fairly spicy genealogy. We should all tell our stories, but I can see why we don't. On Friday Mother cleverly got a free Regency Oaks ride to her lawyer in Dunedin. We were going to take a taxi, but she wanted to see her lawyer anyway. We met a friend for lunch at the Bon Appetit. Claire is 80ish, as are nearly all Mother's friends, has poor bones, and walks with a cane, but she will soon be off on a cruise to Rio. She is a powerhouse, Mother says, and a thoroughly good person, and when her younger sister comes to visit they are overwhelming. I had an amazingly delicious seafood crepe once at Bon Appetit. They have excellent food, often marked by some jarring touch. Perhaps it's necessary to surprise their aged clientele. The weather was lovely, 70's clear and dry. We took several pleasant walks in the cemetery. This is always one of the high points of our visit. It's a very nice cemetery, with few stones or mausoleums and many beautiful live oaks hung with Spanish moss. The oaks looked unwell on our last visit, but Florida has had abundant rain, and this time the trees and shrubbery were luxuriant and the palms properly outrageous. The cemetery oaks are large and old, one at least 100 feet tall with a 150 foot spread. Some trees had died and their stumps had been carved into handsome bears, owls, dolphins, and the like. At one end of the large cemetery a funeral was breaking up; at the other end a hearty crew was tamping someone down with a backhoe. On Saturday night we attended a dinner party for 9. A party at Regency is mostly arranging for a large table, providing a centerpiece and colorful napkins and a bottle of wine. It was fun. The other guests were lively women in their late 80's who seemed to enjoy the occasion. We promised to do it again. We admired the Jersey Shore, Montauk Point, Cape Cod and the Boston skyline on our sunny return flight, and rode the bus into the fall colors and sunset down route 3. We were home by 5:30 where we were greeted by 3 days of New York Times filled with depressing news about Harvey Pitt, the mid-east, and the elections. I'd brought a paperback D.C. Somervell's "English Thought in the Nineteenth Century" to read on the plane and got through half of it. It's a delightful book, even Somervell's sometimes amusing 1929 judgements. I was surprised, and I guess not cheered, to find that the political arguments going on back then are much the same ones we're having now. I think I knew this, but it's still startling to read. 10 November 2002 I admire Jimmy Carter and his wife, how could one not, but I find the Clintons more fun. How interesting it would be to talk with them over whiskey and cigars. The Bushies are immensely depressing from all angles. Do ichneumon flies receive awards for accomplishment? -- The election was so sad. The Democrats were reluctant to take a position on anything because they were afraid they might lose! Will it matter? I don’t know. On odds I expect to die of more or less natural causes in a still vaguely familiar world. I worry about our children’s world, but perhaps they’ll simply adjust. – Couldn’t someone have politely pointed out that Mitt Romney is a Mormon, and that while that’s fine for him, the Mormons received their holy scripture from Joe Smith who claimed he found it under a rock in upstate New York on a tip from an angel named Mononi. Not politically correct of course. Offensive. I shouldn’t include these comments. Perhaps I misunderstand Mormonism. I can well understand anyone’s reluctance to endure a Sunday morning program on Alzheimer’s. I feel that way about the Holocaust, Hiroshima, slavery, the Civil War, cancer, famine, pollution, race relations, almost everything come to think of it. But there they all are whether I like it or not, and “Pop” was a wonderful video: funny, sad, moving, beautiful. I didn’t know anything about Joel Meyerowitz. I doubt that next week’s program on Haiti will be as upbeat. (It wasn’t). Michael Pollan ("The Unnatural Idea of Animal Rights") trumps his own article in the NYT Magazine in the next to last paragraph. He says he's become comfortable with eating Free Farmed animals. A desire to further both human and animal welfare comes from the heart, not from reasoning or demonstration. Whatever puts it there and whether it's a happy tendency or a brief aberration, it's an attractive impulse which I hope more people will become comfortable with. 14 Nov 2002 We enjoyed having a friend to lunch. A neat guy. At 90 he enjoys driving in NYC. His children despair I gather, but he appears to be one of those oldsters who become bolder with age. The men’s group was very entertaining. We discussed all things, including modes of transportation. I considered bringing up the monorail blimp but thought better of it. I just finished Morton Hunt's The Story of Psychology. The title suggests a light treatment which I suppose it was, but it was plenty long. I skipped a bit towards the end, and I understand now why I never read much about psychology before. Current studies of the mind and the brain are another matter. I've been very much enjoying Steven Pinker's How the Mind Works. In his convincing view the mind is a “system of organs of computation”. The book is full of entertaining examples. I skipped through the chapter on vision, as this is Pinker’s specialty, and he cares more about it than I do. I think the picture of life and mind that’s emerging from current research is more interesting and inspiring than the vaguely mystical views we've held in the past. It seems to me that our lives, values, decisions, and activities are all the more significant for having wrenched their possibility out of chaos and constructed themselves of elegant dust. I read Herman Wouk's two enormous WWII novels, The Winds of War and War and Remembrance. 2000 pages of entertaining and convincing historical novel, in which enough of my favorite characters survived that I didn't feel cheated. I began to skip some of Von Roon's internal history from the German point of view. Evidently the freedom to skip comes with age. I used to feel I had to read every word. Just more to forget. I started Wouk's novels about Israel, but they don't seem as well done. Too bad, as it's a great story, which I hope will have a happier ending someday. We're reading Brookhiser's Founding Father, about George Washington, for the book group next week. Is the desire to know in spite of the evident impossibility of knowing very much a perversion, an addiction, or less than sane? Why do we want to know? How does it help us to know? I have no answer. Like the impulse to improve human and animal rights and the physical environment, it seems to be an unaccountable desire of the heart. I'm sure you're right about the biologically useful aspect of mind. This seems to be E.O. Wilson's broad conclusion. I haven't read Richard Rorty, but I think The Selfish Gene probably agrees, as does Pinker, like Dennett a thorough-going evolutionary biologist. I'm sure you would like his How the Mind Works when you have time for the 550 pages. I found his discussion of stereo vision (his specialty along with language) a bit hairy; you’d have less trouble. I'm only half way through Pinker; his remaining chapters are "Good ideas", "Hotheads", "Family values", and "The meaning of Life". I mean to see his new book, "The Blank Slate" in which he of course debunks the notion of a blank slate, although he acknowledges the importance of 'learning'. -- Certain ants use DED reckoning to find their way to and from a food source, which means doing complex, if non-conscious 'mathematical' calculations in their little heads. Migratory birds learn the position and relationships of the stars while fledglings in the nest. Nancy breaks in at this point that children are born with a raging desire for knowledge and that certain people are prime examples. They can remain knowledge explorers all their lives unless school beats it out of them. A side bar: Pinker suggests that folks who theorize that the brain has continued to develop physiologically in order to deal with the complexities of contemporary life are wrong. The brain was developed to its present sophistication by the quite complex needs of ten thousand generations of hunter-gatherers, and in that long established condition it still serves us fairly well. But not perfectly: Given that memes are an even fuzzier metaphor than genes (you can’t find them with a microscope), one does have to wonder if we haven’t outrun evolution altogether. The habit of eating your enemies’ brains (and getting kuru) has been pointed out as unproductive, but are modern war, factory farming, mass media, industrial development, and SUVs any better for individuals, groups, and our DNA? None of which gets us much past hyenas. Everyone, from William James to E.O. Wilson ends up saying, there's no justification for it, but I find I HAVE to believe in free will, (and truth, beauty, kindness, justice, etc.) It's been suggested that consciousness too may be just an irrelevant meta-phenomenon. But maybe not: Pinker says it may function as a bulletin board which makes ideas and experiences available simultaneously to the large number of special purpose calculators that make up the brain, and therefore provide for flexibility and creativity in the practical business of living. So, perhaps truth and justice are LIKE THAT, handy peg boards. -- The trick of thought seems to be to make bits of matter/energy serve also as symbols. What are truth and beauty symbols of? Are symbols 'real'? Could symbols drive their mental vehicles off into the unknown and then park them and proceed on foot? Stay tuned. Pinker is an amusing guy. He makes a point that the mind has to get something out of the work of forming categories, and that something is inference; the most useful categories are mid-range: car, not vehicle or Ford Tempo. He quotes Borges' Chinese encyclopedia that un-usefully categorizes animals as: “ a) those who belong to the emperor, b) embalmed ones, c) those that are trained, d) suckling pigs, e) mermaids, f) fabulous ones, g) stray dogs, h) those that are included in this classification, i) those that tremble as if they were mad, j) innumerable ones, k) those drawn with a very fine camel's hair brush, l) others, m) those that have just broken a flower vase, n) those that resemble flies at a distance. “ Sounds like committee work. November 19, 2002 A former colleague of mine had a good letter in the Times last week. He pointed out that although the U.S. electorate may deserve what only 40% of us turned out to choose, the rest of the world doesn’t. I hear from a friend who just returned from Europe that the rest of the world is plenty angry and frightened. What occurs to me too is that the strongest military in the world and security measures beginning to resemble 1984 can’t protect us. Every country, group, and individual will has an increasing ability to cause mass mayhem. What could help is greater international cooperation and justice. What do you think? How bad does it have to get before we turn the rascals out, or is it already too late? We had a good book group discussion, on “Founding Father; rediscovering Washington,” by Richard Brookhiser, which no one liked. What was good was that the discussion ranged well beyond the book to contemporary politics. Although we are usually somewhat to the left of these well-to-do retired career women, there was much agreement on our current predicament. We’re going to order a double bed futon mattress from L.L.Bean, and I’m going to make the frame by Christmas. I have rashly promised that it will look like the frame in the Bean catalog. We are bringing salad to the Fellowship Thanksgiving dinner on Friday. This is a very pleasant annual occasion which is well attended by folks with and without much connection to the Fellowship, some of whom may just be hungry. I MC’d the entertainment for this two years ago. We’ve done without entertainment since. No, I did okay, but even at the time I didn’t think we needed it. I did like the two pot lucks and programs with the Ah Ha Yam and hope we repeat them. -- Consider groups. We didn’t for decades; too tired, too busy, too involved with people all day. We gained some time but missed some human contact. Groups are much like individual friends, imperfect but helpful, and possibly more reliable. DECEMBER DECEMBER 3 Dec 02 I do own a text of Wallace Steven’s The Emperor of Ice Cream. It’s intriguing, seems vaguely sexual, and I note the references to sheet and feet, but I doubt that I have enough decades left to comprehend either the poem or life and death. I’m reading Harold Bloom’s Genius and thoroughly enjoying it. His chapter on Stevens (who he says he has admired practically all his life.) didn’t help. Bloom calls himself a Jewish Gnostic. “Gnosticism…is a knowledge that frees the creative mind from theology, from historicizing, and from any divinity that is totally distinct from what is most imaginative in the self. A God cut off from the inmost self is the Hangman God, as James Joyce has called him… Gnosticism, as the religion of literary genius, repudiates the Hangman God.” (Genius, xviii) -- [my spell checker doesn’t recognize ‘historicising;’ it recommends ‘historic zing. Clever.’] Well yes, dead crabs. I could call my poem : DEAD CRABS, EBB TIDE, WRACK AND RUIN? I know it’s a pathetic plaint, but I like the last line. Horse shoe? Luck run out? Oh dear. I entered Lights Out in a seniors Halloween poem contest which was mostly for ‘true life’ ghostly experiences. This sort of thing is “so fun,” as my daughters used to say. My English great great uncle Samuel Lowe, an energetic Victorian poet himself, reportedly spoke of ‘wick things.’ It took a lot of looking, but I found it in the OED. Wick = wicked. I’m not sure I knew about a Guggenheim in the Pyrenees. I did see a photograph of a celebrated new museum in Barcelona that I rather liked. I don’t know why Gov. Romney is against wind farms. Perhaps he’s in favor of our squeezing every last bit of petrochemical juice out of the natural world before the Second Coming, like James Watt. Wasn’t he a sweetie! I don’t know why Mormons collect genealogy either. I’m sure they’d tell me if I asked. As a librarian emeritus I approve of the result. We saw the windmill at Hull from Logan Airport, around 6 miles away. I thought it looked cute. I think oil wells off the coast are an abomination. My suggestion is a peddle-operated generator in every home. We went to Provincetown where my son conjured up a 40 foot humpback whale just moseying around McMillan Wharf. Quite thrilling, and so much easier than a queasy whale watch voyage. I don’t know if the NYT editorial page is good for us, but it feels like healthy rage.
9 December 2002 It’s finally cold here, as everywhere along the North Atlantic coast. We had to go to the mall in Hyannis to find the last of the Christmas items for the Fellowship’s supported family, so we had hot and sour soup and wandered in Barnes and Noble. I looked through the entire two sections of philosophy books. It makes me feel good that these books are being published, and presumably read. – I see also that there has been a Tolkein explosion this season, owing to the movies of course. I love LOTR, but I wonder if it’s quite suitable for the general public, with its violence, sorcery, elitism, and peculiar view of women. It would be the holy scriptures of a rather strange religion, more readable than any other except Walden. -- On the way home we stopped at Mid-Cape Supplies and bought more wood for the futon. The sun was setting by the time we finished our walk at Coast Guard. It was very still and crackling cold. A red tailed hawk glided 20 feet above our heads, completely soundless, which is their thing. It continues to amaze me how involved I get in doing nothing much. One event fills the day. We’re determined to get our walk in despite weather and appointments. I feel torn between several writing projects. Planning the futon frame I’m constructing in the basement can keep me awake at night. I’m not sure how I ever dealt with real life. This is not a complaint, quite the contrary. A very smart and interesting woman I know through the Fellowship, has me writing poetry, which I find to be a pleasant but unnatural act. It’s vastly entertaining to wrestle with words and ideas, but it takes so much time for so little product. Still, good poems are even better than good snapshots for capturing a time and place, and that seems to be a human instinct I may have mentioned Steven Pinker’s How the Mind Works, my ‘big’ book for last month, everything explained in terms of evolutionary biology. It’s a good antidote to received truths and moralism, and as Pinker himself says, we think and do what we please anyway. This month’s big book is Harold Bloom’s Genius. I’m fond of Bloom and even agree with some of his grumpy thinking. Genius is full of information (a word he despises as much as he dislikes the Web) that I didn’t know and of Bloom’s great sour remarks, but best of all it inspires me to read other books or at least to put them on my booklist, which is now several times longer than any life I can reasonably expect. Samuel Johnson, Goethe, Shakespeare, Mann, Emerson, Proust. The book group book for December is Uncle Tom’s Cabin. I voted for Invisible Man but lost. Nancy is getting through it. I may fail for once, although it’s far more substantial than I realized, and I certainly can understand its historical significance at a time when the theory was still held by many that Negroes were not human beings. John was here for Thanksgiving and read the first 130 pages of The Makers, a rewrite of the great rat epic with the rats turned humans turned rats and having both a human and a rodent past (and future?) He liked it but said it felt like I was rushing and that I should develop it more thoroughly, with more characterization and a deeper ‘historical’ background. What a happy thought. I will plunge back into that fantasy world. I am to be relieved after two years as the Fellowship’s treasurer. A clever semi-retired stockbroker, will take over. I didn’t really mind doing this, although I don’t like handling money. I could never make the books balance, but as I always thought we had less than the bank thought we had I didn’t worry about it. I’ll be a trustee. I don’t believe the trustees have any functions at all, which is about right. The Fellowship’s activities continue to be entertaining and eclectic; it’s like making a religion out of life. What a clever idea! December’s programs are: 8th: Tim Sweeney, Where Music Comes From [his grandmother evidently]; 15th: T.R. Dickson, Anthropogenic Nitrogen; 22d: a play reading; 29th: Michael Gardiner, Japanese Traditional Music. (Which in the event turned out to be Basho’s poetry instead. As to the state of the world, things are looking up in Louisiana at least. It’s a start. 17 Dec 02 I did like Pogo although the politics was often beyond me. Remember ‘Good King Wencaslaus looked out, on his feets uneven.’ -- As a child I thought the chorus sang, ‘Lord God of cotton fields, hallelujah.’ -- Cartoons? Good idea. I can draw my own. My son and I used to see Farsides everywhere. I wish I’d written them down. I was, and remain, very respectful of adult criticism. I didn’t necessarily follow it however, and this was noted. Serious about ‘poems’ I thought at first, then ‘forms’ (like a good bureaucrat?), and finally ‘farms’. I find farms a little frightening. We used to drive north from Philadelphia into the Poconos to visit relatives. I would feel frissons of terror as we passed though quaintly dead little towns. What if we lived here! So we retired to Eastham? But it’s not country. I like Barbara Kingsolver on rural life better than Jane Smiley. My father seriously considered chicken farming before he was transferred from St. Louis to New York. My mother remains thankful to L&M to this day. -- I contend that I’m serious about everything, but I’ve rarely been able to convince anyone. Call me flip; it’s how I see thibgs (sic). Thank you for the chapter of the prehistoric epic. I like it. I can imagine reading it to someone. Is 75% as accurate as it’s practical to be at this distance? Excellent idea: humanity, values, and dreams eons before the Yahwist, Jesus, Mohammad, and John Ashcroft. 31 Dec 02 I’ve never cared much for my name, Russ (not Rus), but I’ve gotten used to it, and it seems a small cross to bear. I was named Russell Martin after my father in order to avoid an impending family squabble. My father was named Russell Martin after his biological parent Martin von Engle and my grandmother’s once and future boyfriend Paul Russell Chenoweth. You can imagine…. Martin deserted Lulu when my father was two. Paul was an unsatisfactory stepfather to Russell. So it goes. Names can be cleansed. John and Sara both have Martin as a middle name, after my father the first-of-his-line. I rewrite things 20 times, but on the computer this is easy. I am grateful for advice, whether I take it or not. About the story “Arcadia”: this is fantasy AND science fiction. The conceit is that at a future time there are arcades where you can take a realistic virtual vacation, a bit like those dumb machines that cluttered the malls for a while in which you got (presumably) wrap-around sound and picture in a seat that bumped, only much advanced and fed directly into the brain. It’s all a psychedelic computer produced experience, include Macy and Philadelphia. But Rolly’s machine is infected with the Klezmer Virus. Macy is damaged or freed by the virus or perhaps is the virus. At the museum they descend accidentally into the hardware or software itself and threaten the illusion. The Universal Bootery restores (or re-boots) the program. Norton Utilities is anti-virus software. – I think most of this would be understood by the average computer user, though maybe not. It could end on page 5, but I like page 6.
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