August 2013

A U G U S T      2 0 1 3

Thursday evening August 1.  Turned into a cold, rainy afternoon.  Everyone getting a wee stir-crazy.  Everyone in a panic about not getting Emma out to run around enough.  At least we got out for a swim this morning and while Emma napped the kids went off to the rocks in Rumney to take a dip--for their anniversary. 

Perfectly quiet email from Mark C.  He's not that great at navigating new email sites and such.  Calm reply and news about one of his upcoming concerts, he's now a singer. 

No one bites on the hooks I throw them.  Might as well forget faux barbs and fantasy baits.

Friday evening August 2  About 11 this morning the weather cleared and it became a beautiful day of the most perfect kind: breezy, cool-warm, sunny with splendid white-white clouds against the bluest sky.  Gorgeous summer.  The concert went off super-well.  Dave and Dane set up the stage behind the Boy Scout statue which created a good arena space uninterrupted by the cross walk and away from the formal and imposing Bullfinch bandstand.  Nice crowd of worthies.  Bob and Susan Miller, Ken and Carole, Zita, Mickey Ireland and his mother, a group of challenged people with their staff, lots of kids, one mother who brought a push-along tricycle which Emma got to ride once all around the lawn.  And the whole McLean summer cleaning crew on lunch break in their matching blue t-shirts.  Rachel said she just got some new ultrasound images of the baby yesterday.  Kristin was here for a short while and I told her we drove by the new house to check it out and totally approved.  Belita's friend Irene was there all the way up from Nashua. Various passersby and some people sitting in their cars with the windows down.  Lots of trucks circling the Common at different times, heavy gears in the lowest and loudest levels.  Last night in Concord and the radio station with Rob Azevedo and Fred Boomer they had warned Dave that Plymouth Common was a famously noisy gig.  Last night was fun too.  Dusty Gray led off, rhythm and blues singer from Concord, maybe 23.  Has a contract to got to Nashville once a month and write songs for a week.  Next was Shea Spillane from Boston, Somerville, stand-up comic.  Then Dave.  Rob does the show in fast-paced, focused style, minimal talk but great questions of the guests.  We had a chance to chat a bit and Cummings came up of course since he had just bowed out of the show completely to do moonlight journalism for the Union Leader.  I said something about the screwey Hoops for Heroes project Cummings had done and Rob said there is a heavy back-storey to that---Dave was imposing some redemptive penitential project upon himself for some dark doings Rob would tell me about sometime when we had enough time for a longer chat.  Wonder if that will ever happen, but it confirms the sense that Dave likes to get into trouble.  I'd forgotten he had gone from Bates drunkenly dropping out to getting the shit kicked out of him at UNH because in a drunken spree some big guy was bullying him about being faggey so Dave called his bluff sarcastically by kneeling down in front of him and taunting him to pull it out so he could get the foredestined blow job.  The guy pummeled him in rage.  Then Dave transferred or came the next year to PSC.  He and Cosgrove and Rob got blindingly drunk and did some shenanigans at Jamie's sailing club house.   That was finally Dave's last drunk; he got into AA after that.  Rob has a boy, Leo, 8, and a girl, Danielle?? now 11.  So his wedding was 10-12 years ago.  We went to it.  Also went to Dave and Heather's about two years before that.  Dave is about two or three years older than Rob.  Rob was real enthusiastic about the show and Dave's performance last night.  He said to Dave "wow, if you were a woman I would be falling in love with you."  Perfect set-up as it turned out from coming home to find Cécile and Willow watching "New Girl."  D & C like it a lot.  We watched two more episodes before going to be. 

Now, 6pm  Emma snacking on banana and cheese.  They are going to Micah's for a cookout.  We might go over to Docks.  Or not.  Seems we're watching Emma, but all is not clear yet. 

That phrase Rob used turns out to go all the way back at least to Napoleon=="The Czar was a huge, handsome man, with an engaging smile and a winning way.  Napoleon said of him, "If he were a woman I would fall in love with him;" and, judging the caresses and embraces he bestowed on Alexander, he became inordinately fond of the young ruler."   book by Wayne Whipple  on google

Saturday late afternoon Aug 2   Dave had a rough gig this morning at Cafe Mt Alto.  Noise from the whole shop and friends gathered with kids to chat was pretty intense and the acoustics of the place made it worse but he soldiered through the two hours and later things quieted and the local crew of McLaneies gave him lots of loud hoots of approval.  Later he said it was difficult to play to a smallish crowd of people he knew.  But of course he had spent the previous evening with most of them at the cook-out and maybe that added to the hemming in of audience feel, or however he would put it. 

Turns out Tom Untersee went through a recent divorce and has a new girl friend.  Saw her yesterday in the photos I took.  They were there this morning by themselves. 

We had a good time talking with Sam Demers who I finally met.  Part of Micah's inner core but had never really talked.  turns out he and Dave jammed a lot last night and Sam said to me how much he likes Dave's music, how it has so many neat layers and influences, from bossa nova to jazz to pop.  "I'm sort of enamored of him" he said, something very close.  So I picked up on that word enamored which he did use and brought in Napoleon's crush on Alexander Czar.  Demers was a philosophy major at Plymouth, mainly David Haight.  I compared notes and asked him gossip questions on that score.  Have to give him Lars Iyer's book, either Exodus or Dogma if I can find it. 

Another incredibly gorgeous afternoon now.  Last night was really chilly and this morning all foggy and wet.  Trio took long naps because Emma was awake four times last night. 

Scibona it turns out is teaching two courses at Wesleyan this fall.  Annette Holba at Plymouth left Comm dept and joined the Philos dept--hooray for that. 

Emma seems to have had a good time this morning with running around in Chase market and hanging with the other kids there.  She is dying to go out on her new push velo tricycle.  Boon was the name of the little blonde boy, Erin O'Donnell's boy.  He seemed a bit younger than her.  There was another girl, oh, yes, Alyssa Rioux's Alice, exactly same age as Emma but blonde an a bit more delicate looking.  Alyssa said she is going through a divorce right now.  I'm glad.  Never got a good picture of that marriage with some older guy.  She said she had to take out a restraining order this winter. 

Sunday afternoon August 11  almost 2 pm.  Perfect, beautiful beautiful day.   Le Trio out in Rumney at the Eatons for a play date with Else's step-daughter who speaks French, Haitian, we think. 

Last three days of the visit tomorrow.  The trip to Dover for the Cocheco Festival was successful in spite of heavy downpours all day.  We lunched at Uno's and then got to the high school a little after six.  I had dropped Dave at five for his prep.  Terrific soundboard guys so he sounded awesome in the nearly empty auditorium but there were probably fifty or sixty of the faithful there and he gave a super fine concert.  He said later he enjoyed hearing how good the sound sounded. 

What else?  We saw "South Pacific" on Thursday at the Geezers' Matinee with Helen and Ted.  Terrific performance, sweet cast, great voices in all the principals except maybe for Cable.  Flood of nostalgia brought tears to my eyes at the outset and I realized how deeply woven the whole show is in my consciousness.  Memory of hearing the music on our hi-fi in the Memorial avenue living room and memorizing the words and songs.  The guy who played Cable was tall and lean just like Uncle Joe had been and reminded me of how he had looked in his Naval khaki uniform.  Either in my memory really or just in black and white snapshots of childhood. 

Last night we watched "Beginners," movie Dave and Cécile had told us about soon after they arrived.  They saw it on the plane.  Really well done, great acting by Christopher Plummer and Ewan McGregor.  Plummer got the oscar.  Kids were out at the McLane's again for the evening. 

Emma now comes in to say hello every morning.  Sweet and cute as possible.  I think her talking has definitely increased during their visit but probably not perceptible to mom and dad.  Annie and Renee-Paul will notice it at once. 

Mickey Ireland and Kath Gorman stopped and they all had thai food.  We went to the Korean place in Lebanon with Helen and Ted that Jessica likes the other day.  We (two) wouldn't go back.  Mick and K had been on a canoe trip with 14 friends on the Saco river over the weekend.  River was too high plus drunken twenty year olds got themselves washed away and wiped out, creating more havoc than others trying to enjoy the river needed. 

Dave is going to an open mic at Sunset Grill with Dane and Sam and who else, local crew.  We went to docks for a walk---gorgeous sun and breeze and not as crowded as last night.  Father and son speaking Scottish, another family at the big wedding on the point speaking something we couldn't place.  Lots of big boats.  One seaplane brought a family to docks for a lunch and then flew away.  Couldn't tell if the pilot was the dad or a hired pilot.  Mom wants us all to go to gypsy cafe or squam lakes inn before we take off on Tues but time is running out and what is open on Monday (tomorrow)? 

Now the watering is finished.  Nothing pending duty-wise for the moment.  Mom busy on her Rachel Beatrice stories.  Emma just up from her nap---6:40 pm, latest ever.  They are all going out to the open mic.  Va and I are passing it seems.  Is that era over? 

Now is the time for me to record trenchant insights, poignant observations, memorable quips and thoughts.  I got nothing.  The day is too perfect and beautiful for art, thought or feeling.  Music would ruin it.  It is as still and perfect as a nun in adoration.  Or something like that, as someone formerly famous once said. 

Time to chat with Emma.  She is having a yoplait tube for gouté.  In her striped pink pjs. 

Two projects have emerged:  how to buy Proof glasses frames and what readers on Goodreads have to say about Cohen's book.

People say pretty much what you would expect about the book.  The most recent comments seem more willing to praise it and recognize it as near-great or much better than anyone thought back then.  Which is where I am with it.  Cohen approached being 30 when he wrote it and channeled everything about the zeitgeist he could find a way to allow in.  I think you can hear the lyricist about to emerge in the lines, straining against the need to toe the line of narrative demands.  The phrases of songs are embedded in the paragraphs on nearly every page.  Especially the jazzy riffs, the prose poems, the rant-ish wallows.  I will have to push on through.  It is not compelling exactly and the final part, F's letter to the narrator of the first part (name?? don't think we know) seems a bit more "rhetorical" than the more private first-person journal or memoir of the opening. 

10 pm  Back from our second dinner at Ledgewater overlooking Newfound.  Dave and Cécile let out the news that they are expecting, same due date as Emma's birthday.  They got positive test results just before they left but a definitive sonogram needs to be done so no one else knows until September when they will know for sure for sure.  Very delightful news from our point of view and definitive explanation of why they were being sketchy about whether they would visit next summer for sure or not.  Not next summer because the baby will be too young.  So we can figure out how to visit over there again.  Meanwhile, Emma seemed to have had a delightful evening too---was very good except for letting one spoon drop when her Papa made clear she should not do that.  Beautiful sunset, even better than two weeks ago.  But chilly and we moved inside for the meal after appetizer and salad.  Desserts disappointed because their long list had sold out by the time we were ready to order.  Tomorrow Montreal. 

Saturday afternoon August 17

Sunny and breezy day.  As Va said, it is sad to have the kids all gone now but nice to have our space back and the house quiet again and slowly getting back into order, at least order as we live with it versus how five people lived in it.

Emma was got to see at her two year old best.  She is learning to be feisty and ornery.  We had a big discussion, the two of us, about the meaning of "ornery."  V thinks it applies only to crusty old men.  I have never had that sense of the word.  And it means something other than "naughty," which is what it means to Va.  Well, the dictionary citations that come up first say that it is more about cantankerousness and meanness more than I had thought.  Interesting that wiki distinguishes between Appalachian meaning vs Southern meaning---

ornery (comparative ornerier, superlative orneriest)

1.            (Appalachian) Cantankerous, stubborn, disagreeable.  [quotations ▼]

2.            (humorous, southern US) Mischievous, prankish, teasing, disagreeable but in a good way.

3. (obsolete) Commonplace, inferior.

From this evidence and my own memory and experience, the culture I grew up in was much more Southern than it was Appalachian

We walked at the Docks, beautiful late afternoon.  Not as many people as a week ago, two weeks ago.  Summer is over.  Starting school now takes over the rest of the summer.  Now watching tv.

Neat chapbook from Rupert.  Two poems on Agnes Martin.  Very clever, brilliant. 

Va wants to try the Fast Metabolism Diet for 28 days.  But what will she say when she sees no dairy?  Hmm we'll see. 

Sunday early afternoon Aug 18

Off to buy things for the Diet.  Going to get down below 200 for the first time in . . . twenty years??  See how long we make it.  Big shopping.  Hazy evening.  Silvery.  Lovely day though.  Quiet restoration of the touchstones. 

Monday   got the cats vetted, Dylan Spitzer the doctor in charge.  From North Dakota via Colorado.  Perfect vet.  Va walked in Wally's and is waiting for Colin to show to practice more piano.  First day of our weight loss and I can already feel the loss burning off the fat. 

Nice breeze has picked up so maybe a walk to take the big towel down to Micah's and back. 

Did so.  Very hot out too even with the breeze.  Finally took the crucifix and holy card to St Matthew's church---now called Holy Trinity I think.  Holy card from Blessed Francis Xavier Seelos? that Mimi must have gotten in New Orleans.  Metal crucifix I've had for how long?  Where and when did I get it?  Could not just pitch either item into the yard sale pile at the dump.  Important it was to me though to hear from Dad before he died that it was Mother's family who had converted to RC---Nanny did---no doubt after she had lost her oldest son, Dick, in the motorcycle accident that scarred them all for life---especially, perhaps, Mimi and Dot but maybe Mimi most of all.  She tried super hard to make everything right again by being super and perfectly Catholic.  Perfectionism to a fault.  For many years.  Wonder how and when in her own mind into her eighties and onward she eventually softened on all of it.  If she did.  Maybe in her mind and heart she did not.  She did ask me as her last question if I were still Catholic and I had to disappoint her once more by giving a flip answer rather than say no directly.  I said well, being Catholic is much like being Jewish, one is never able to not be what you are.  She said, "That is not a good answer."  Well, so, there we are. 

Even stepping inside the outer storm window door of the church just now felt . . . so familiar and so distant now and in its own way now, wrong.  Or off kilter now.  But walking down the hill in that direction went with the weather and felt like the compulsion to "go back to school" and get back into shape and discipline.  Goes perfectly with the sense of starting the 28 day diet.  Whew.  The Patterns we slave ourselves to whether we want to or not. 

Back to books too.  Trying to make my own out of the blog and writing one out of the so-called Copenhagen notions. 

And reading.  See if I can give up Facebook and other web stuff for this August-lent---28 day fast/diet.  Spiritual cleanse-celebration. 

Article on Slate on why people overshare and how the boundaries are falling. 

quote    author Paul Hiebert on Slate

In sum, the traditional line separating what’s private from what’s public is disintegrating with each and every overshare, and while some offenders may not be thinking about their actions this deeply, Belk’s research suggests it’s our ongoing quest for identity—or as some prefer to call it, “personal brand”—that’s propelling this disintegration. We want to be interesting. We want to be memorable. We want people to follow us, but we need their attention first. And if there’s one thing reality TV and advertising has taught us, it’s that the lowest common denominator is both the easiest and most efficient way of getting people to notice.

This article originally appeared on Pacific Standard magazine's website.

and

Social scientist and author Sherry Turkle thinks we’re losing a healthy sense of compartmentalization. Last year, researchers at Harvard found that the act of sharing our personal thoughts and feelings activates the brain’s neurochemical reward system in a bigger way than when we merely report the attitudes and opinions of others. Meanwhile, Elizabeth Bernstein of the Wall Street Journal asked around and concluded that our newfound urge to disclose is partially due to not only the erosion of private life through the proliferation of reality TV and social media, but also due to our subconscious attempts at controlling anxiety.

timely explanation, then, for my email to Mark C when news of the Tess Reed murder popped up so unexpectedly and why he found much less need to reply much after one hello. 

Now my efforts to be noticed continue however in the publishing a book idea---forward on that front.  Even thinking I should include the two essays posted on the Kindle because I doubt that anyone would see those and ebook activity seems to be flattening way off.  Who wants to use those things, really?  Even in travel I might go back to taking one classic or big paperback (Knausgaard) and making do.   Forget all the browsing.  Can't believe I would ever say that.  Browsing is how we figure out who we are but think of Greg, who has never touched a computer.  How did I figure those things out for the first 50 years of my life before the web?  How did anyone? 

Ha. 

Phil had sent an email on the nature of Cumberland while we were growing up.  To wit:

Well, I hadn't heard of the southern interpretation, nor Va's, of "ornery."  To me, ornery is cantankerous and stubborn, but not "naughty" nor "prankish."    Often it is applied to old men, but I've seen it applied to children and even infants who are stubborn and slightly troublesome.
 
Appalachian:   I knew as a boy that the Allegany (or Allegheny?) Mountains were part of the Appalachian Mountain range which extended up into New York State.  But I never, once, considered Cumberland to be part of Appalachia.  I was really offended, even in my mid-20s, when a cousin from Connecticut said that "I can always tell I'm getting close to Cumberland when I see all the pick-up trucks on the road."  I felt that this cousin was simply wrong about his assumptions.  To me Appalachia was WVA and south, and Cumberland, in my mind, wasn't part of anything other than the middle Atlantic states, which is how my father referred to it when he was advertising his practice for sale in 1962. 
 
Of course, my cousin was more right than I realized.  Cumberland was becoming far more "rural" and "Appalachian" than it was when we were growing up.   When you and I were 14 we didn't give a damn about Chevies and Fords and all that NASCAR nonsense, but we damn near wet our pants when the new Jaguar XKE came out. It was "so cool, so hip, so European."  And I well remember you driving aVW (hardly an Appalachian or NASCAR vehicle.)  I never once listened to a c&W radio station but regularly went to NYC with my parents to see new Broadway musicals.   When I was small mother took me with her when she flew (on Allegheny Airlines DC-3s) to DC to shop for a day and came back in the dining car of the Capitol Limited on the B&O.  She always had a Manhattan with her dinner.   I'm sure some people in Cumberland still travel to NYC for musicals and DC to shop for a day, but over the years as substantial prosperity has left Cumberland, the folks from WVA moved in (to take the place of people like you and me) and changed the overall feel of the town.   Today, it seems quaint and cute and pretty, but the urban feeling is totally gone.   And the local accent is more pronounced.
 
You once said that a linguistic prof at UMD exclaimed that you had a southern Appalachian accent.  If you did, I was never aware of it.  And because my father grew up in a family that had an Alabama accent and my mother was from Philadelphia, I don't think I had much of a Cumberland accent.  But I remember lots of classmates in LaSalle who did, although I considered it more of a local "working class" accent.
 
You don't need to see the film "Fruitvale Station."  It's not as good as I implied to my friend who wanted me to see it.  It's not bad, though.   The reason I sent this thread to you is my friend's comment to me that I write "like a theater critic or English prof."   I thought you would get a kick out of that.  I think he said that because I pushed him to explain if the depiction of white racism in the film was, in fact, factual.  And he couldn't.   Just another typical Harvard grad.   Full of "proper, politically correct opinions" that he can't really defend. 
 
P 
 
PS Peg and I are planning our trip to California for the past two weeks of September and, my god, it will be a lot of driving.  Probably 1500 miles at least.   LA to SF to mountain parks and back to LA. 

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Monocle gave me a little Copenhagen incident or seed of such--offices of a media company which architects come to see because the building is historic, the offices famously well-designed and beautifully restored and remodeled or redesigned recently.  Google has an office staff there.  It was expensive to do but they wanted it to be beautiful because they would all spend so much of their lives there.  Not just Google but Google and others who lease the space now.  Next page in Monocle told of a similar fine space in Madrid and so I thought, there, I could be hired to take envelopes of import across town for these people and between Copenhagen and Madrid.  Or Julian Silver could.  Julien might be too Assangist a name these days.  Perhaps Jerome, but I don't want that Elkins Park echo either.  Whatever, there could be some material there for the novel. 

Virginia is watching Carmen Jones.  She earlier had loosened the diet rules by having some blueberries and coconut milk after dinner.  Earlier she had thought she was getting a bit dizzy, before dinner and asked for some fruit and rice crackers. 

Tuesday

note to Phil

Hi

Some one else mentioned Fruitvale Station, so now it is on the radar.  Glad you said I didn't need to see it though.

Emma sure taught me in three weeks more than I've ever learned before about gender issues and nature-nurture.  Being with a little girl from almost start is such

a revelation.  Already she as all or almost all the move and poses and body postures and eyes and looks and attitudinal nuances of Brigitte Bardot!  I mean it is truly amazing.  So French already, so feminine.  Lots of running and jumping and ball throwing and other "rough and tumble" stuff too, tremendous energy, but the essential femininity of her "style" so early is just a revelation.  Maybe just because we raised one boy and that was it.  

Your California trip sounds really nice.  Luckily that whole coast is still pretty splendid.  It is a ton of driving.  I now do all the driving and my parameters have shrunk.  We were due to drive back home Thursday evening after getting the kids to the airport around 6 pm.  But I woke Thursday morning and imagined how it would all go and said No way.  Sure enough, the drive to the airport was all construction detouring and by the time we said all our good-byes at the curbside I was too exhausted to think of a two hour drive let alone a four.  So the hotel was a welcome relief for one more night.  

But Peg drives too.  We read some time back about switching drivers every hour.  That seems at first too often, but under two hours is a really good marker for the switching.

I'm breathing a sigh of relief---looking into renting a place in Spain for next year has made Va say at last "I guess we'll put India on hold for another year."  

Plus Dave and Cecile told us they are expecting, again in March.  But still a

secret, so don't breathe a word!   We have no idea how they can possibly handle two kids in the teensy apartment they have, but the roll of grandparents is to keep your lips sealed on the crucial topics!  They put in for a larger apartment, public subsidy, about a year ago, but the wait is up to ten years.

Let's hope the arabic suburbs around the city don't explode for a least ten years !

But if I were a London bookie I don't think I would give those odds.  

Nice summer weather still here.  You going to wrap up your book before the Sept trip?  A carrot for your donkey brain?  A reward for proofing?  

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We fell off the diet wagon late last night After we had gone to bed.  Va got worried that she wasn't feeling well, would not sleep.  So we got up and she ate a small bowl of granola and milk.  She then got on the right side of the bed farther over than ever before, a great success of turning and rocking, and we both then slept like logs the rest of the night.  Hooray.  Today we are saying we will use the recipes for variety prompts and use the Phase 3 mostly. 

More talk about Javea and mentioning that India will have to wait another year. 

Going to be a hot afternoon but we might go to Docks anyway.  Great swim this morning.  Eric Bouchard has a 19 yr old daughter starting as a freshman at Plymouth, living at home.  He owns the two craftsmen houses on Gould terrace behind the bank and rents those to students.  Also one or two other small apartment buildings.  Not sure if he owns Prep or just works for them.  Should ask them to give a bid on siding though.  As well as Toomey. 

Weds night

On a high this morning after we decided for sure to rent the house in Javea.  Took the car for the oil.  Lunched at Pan.  Walked in blistering heat at docks. Big mango smoothie here.  TV show marathon tonight.  Perception. Covert, Royal Pains and Camp.  Learned on Facebook via Colin Nordman, that a woman has written a new book on Introversion (vs. the corporate team-ism of the world) and she gave a talk about it at ted.  Whoo hee.  Her father was a beloved introverted rabbi in his neighborhood too.  He read lots of books.  She recommends books. 

Hannah McLane surprised the heck out of me on facebook by quoting Thomas Merton's Bystander.  Holy Cow. 

the Javea project has pushed India back to 2015.  Meanwhile I should map out an all air tour of India. 

on second thought, friday night.  second good swim of the week this morning and lunch with Ken and Carole.  Great talk about the sweet movie Way Way Back which we did see last night.  All the right touches about a fourteen year old boy going through divorce and tough times and falling in which a bunch of goofs who run Water Wizz on the Mass shoreline.  Great cast of comic actors---they must all know each other and hang out. 

Finished Beautiful Losers and then read Mark Migotti's essay on how much it owes to Nietzsche. 

I found my vocation to be a whirling dervish in the country club swimming pool. Frank, my jock older brother, played baseball every summer, all the other sports every other season.  Father golfed.  I never took to it.  Mother dropped us off and went off on her endless string of errands or back home to her cooking.  My little sister Gladys liked tennis lessons from when she was ten years on. I never liked those either.  I liked crafts at camp but the country club didn't have those.  I was left to float for myself in the pool most of the summer.  There I learned to wile away the time by spinning in circles with my legs straight down, ankles twisted together, back slightly arched back.  I made myself into a sort of top that I could spin in either direction, head slightly back so I could watch the sky and clouds spin.  I got good at it, getting the right slowness or speed so I would not end up dizzy.  It took thirty or so years to even hear that there was such a thing as a dervish even though the phrase was something one heard now and then without ever knowing what it was or was about.   In Cambridge one fall I went to Harvard's Sanders theater to see whirling dervishes from Istanbul perform.  By then I had read enough about Sufi thought and poetry to know that the event was not to be thought of as a performance in our Western sense of the term.  The essential search at the heart of the whirling itself I recognized in an instant.  Release, escape, ecstasy, union, loss of individual consciousness, merging with something else, some other reality, longing, desire, prayer.  But in the pool those summers I never learned to link the swimming and turning with what we did in church or at home with rosaries and holy cars.  Mother had converted I learned years and years later when she was maybe twelve or fourteen and her mother went from being Methodist to Catholic and learned to teach her eldest children what to do and how to behave in the new surroundings and services on Sundays.  Her first-born, Richard, Dick he was when he got that motorcycle at nineteen, killed himself in an accident on that thing.  Mother must have been twelve and she took it hard without knowing quite how long and hard it would shape her life.  She became as Catholic as possible, more devout and religious than anyone else of her seven remaining brothers and sisters and even more so than her best friend who had been born into the faith and who after high school joined the convent and became a nun.  Mother often wondered if she should have done that but she felt she wasn't really worthy of that high calling.  She decided I was, though, sometime when I was around fourteen.  She never said she wanted me to become a priest but she was so in love with the priests and the brothers and the nuns that I could tell it because I was her favorite and Father's were Frank and Gladys.  Our family was pretty much us against them, Mother and me against the other three.  They were all about fun and pleasure, sport and drink and wasting time with friends.  Mother was intent that I would have cultural things, galleries, musical events, lessons on the piano, church events, serving at mass as much as possible, selling raffle tickets for spaghetti dinners so the nuns could raise extra money for school things.  But Father read lots of books and Mother never read anything but magazines and papers.  She never sat still.  I liked to read and read all the time in my room.  Father read in the study, in his favorite red leather chair where he would fall asleep while reading.

         After we left the nuns to go to the high school where the brothers taught I could tell Mother wanted me for something much more precise than the priesthood and she could tell that I didn't really like the priests of the parish even though I served lots of masses and even went early enough to knock on the rectory door to get them up for the seven o'clock mass before their housekeeper even got there to fix breakfast.  Mother said to me one day "you're going to go to college and you're going to go on then and get your doctorate."  She and Father had not been able to go to college because of the Depression and then the war.  That much I knew.  Father's youngest brother was the only person they knew who had gone to university after the war and then he wasted it, they secretly thought, by coming to work in the family grocery store.  He should have gotten better work somewhere else. 

Mother wanted me to study and it came easy to me and I liked it.  She wanted me to be as devout a Catholic as possible and when I finally announced that after having prayed and talked to my teachers and sought counsel I had decided that I might have a vocation and I would join the teaching brothers right after high school she approved a bit readily more than Father did.  Getting a college degree would be part of it.  He had gone to the same high school with the same brothers and he thought they were ok but he was not as crazy about them or about the priests as Mother was.  He mainly wanted me to not be queer.  Right before high school started he took me to see his own doctor and asked him to check me over and make sure there was no chance I would turn out queer.  I didn't know what that meant.  It was something paperboys did while they were waiting for the bags of fresh papers to be delivered down at the printing building behind the main post office in the center of town.  Something about the men along the railroads and in the rail yards too.  The doctor looked me over in the usual ways and told my father outside in the other waiting room that I was fine and there was nothing to be worried about.  I wasn't interested in sports like Father and Frank, I was quiet and alone a lot.  My parents didn't know what to do with me.  I liked being dreamy and wandering around the town and riding my bike.  When high school started Father told me I would have to work in the store after school to help out with the money.  I didn't want to do that but I couldn't say I had to go to practices for any teams.  I knew he wanted to keep me where he could keep an eye on me, keep me out of trouble, learn to work and be more practical.  I didn't like it much.  If there was not much to do there would be extra busy work. I learned about how Father would say things at the meat counter while he was cutting meat for customers to please them and make them happy.  I learned something more about prayer without really knowing what that was in the cold silence of the meat locker where I could go to get away from the customers and things that need to be done.  I would stand still among the hanging sides of beef, super cold, sawed rib bones, red muscle, shiny tendons, marbled layers of white cattle fat, hollowed out innards. 

The summer right after graduation I went off to the first session of joining the life of the teaching religious brothers.  It was called the Novitiate.  We were about forty novices, fresh high school graduates.  Boys from the middle atlantic states as far away as Ohio who had all attended Catholic schools and who thought they had vocations to the religious life.  We played rugby, touch, not tackle, during recreation time, and loose games of pick-up basketball and maybe there was some tennis but no swimming pool.  We took lots of walks in small groups after meals.  Classes in bible study and religious books most of which were turgid old-style spirituality books about prayer and devotion, saints and church topics.  I really missed the kinds of books I loved to read.  I really didn't like what I had gotten myself into at all but I could not admit it to anyone or even to myself.  It was much more like what I imagined army life to be like than I had imagined.  I never knew every moment would be organized, duties, work detail, classes, prayers, masses, sleep. 

26 pages, double spaced, of my vocation my crack-up.  hmmm.  some repetition I don't want to take out just yet.  But a start.  The voice seems to have come into being---or something.  why the heck not. 

Tuesday almost 6.  Have to get Va to promise not to go upstairs tomorrow while I am away for any reason. !  Of course she hates the idea that she has to be watched over, but at least we are trying a "day off" for me tomorrow. 

Where should I go, what should I do?  What will I really enjoy doing?  Portsmouth or Montpelier?  I could try to set and read in barnes or bam in either concord or hanover.  Hanover has everything portsmouth has except the sea air and the cool and the hip and the texture of place.  Two hours in the car, four hours all told, instead of one and two all told.  long tiring day of nothing much and same old same old no matter what we decide to do.  Oysters, martini, fish at Jay's or elsewhere, that other place on the curve?  or something else again in Han/west Leb?  japanese steak house?  (tomorrow is Phase 2 of the Diet). 

Kirsten mentioned Rosey Jeke's in Hanover and that may cinch the deal.  Could hang out there a while for sure.  Also helps to clarify the fact that the drive over and back will be way less tiring and the things available are in a small radius.  And if one thing doesn't click, moving on to another thing is pretty easy and close.  Also, no big expectations, no big discoveries necessary, no big disappointments.  Also much less likely to be mobbed with tourists.  Satisfying enough?

What do we want?  Rest and relax?  Change of pace? 

Trouble is, Jekes closed in December, just found out. 

So silly worrying this thing.  What would Karl Ove do?

hmm  Not the best question, it turns out.  Night now on weds after my day in Portsmouth.  [27th]

Karl Ove turned out to be a drunken crazy guy, at least yesterday when I read the passage about him cutting his face to shreds while I was sipping a martini at Surf .   today is now thursday [28th]  and Paula is here and we are setting off.  [we went walking and for lunch in Concord]

Aug 29 

Last night after our steaks (diet phase 2) we went walking at Wal-Mart while a big lightning and thunder storm raged over the mountains.  Va complained that her foot was not working, turning inward and she seemed very withdrawn and responseless.  I panicked and thought "seizure" and borrowed a cell phone from a teenager to call "911."  By the time they got there I decided it was a false alarm and I told them so and they watched as we got into the car and came home.  We watched tv and Va seemed to stay tuned but also seemed detached.  Finally I decided she was super tired and worn out while I was super wired from my day off and coffee and food and driving.  We got to bed and got up to the bathroom many times but still seem to have slept better and now things seem back to normal.  Very humid.  Va said she had been awake all night the night before worrying about what might happen while I was off and she was alone except for Colin coming to play piano at 2 for an hour.  She said last night that she had practiced before he got here for over an hour and that was too much and so their session together wasn't as fun as it could have been.  So basically I think she was just super tired and we neither really realized it.  Plus we did that stupid diet all day, phase 2, which is all animal/fish protein and a few vegetables, not to either of our tastes. 

In Portsmouth though I did have my two martini lunch, ordinary quality food at the new Surf overlooking the harbor.  And it was then that I was reading Karl Ove's terrible moment of slicing his face up with a shard from his broken computer screen.  Painful to even read.  But his book keeps going and I do still like it. 

Not sure yet what we will do today.  Va at her computer and already 11:34 am.  I penned this response to Phil's email abut the big march in Washington yesterday. 

Yeah, from up here you can see how regional a thing the whole thing was even though the national media backed it---both the original and the memorial.  Once again, there is real pleasure in being 50 years removed from events and looking back with very different perspective.  

We both noted that back then we had no idea of what.  I was in the seminary and we had news only of the vatican council then starting up.  Otherwise nothing for the first 14 months.  Pretty amazing really.  Virginia out in New Mexico lived at her parents house in Abq and was a freshman at UNM and she also had no idea about anything regarding the march or the whole civil rights movement.  

Not that it wasn't indeed important.  But fifty years after, how fragile all such things look.  History weaves everything in ways no one can see for sure.  And the fragility of political movements is very great in some ways.  I suppose in some ways communism and socialism had a pretty long run of it in terms of political movements being really powerful.  But capitalism will out and onward.  

What feels so dated now of course is King's whole tone and style---now much closer to Melville than to Jonathan Franzen or whoever else.  

Heard a good NPR piece on how important Walter Ruether and labor was to King's success.  Just remembering that, the power of big labor when we were in grade school, say, railroads and factories, etc, brings back so much and reminds of how so very different things are now.  We would never have dreamed that "labor" would have evaporated from the scene so quickly and so deeply.  King would be astounded.  

And that alone makes the whole agenda of The Root and the movement etc all the more wistful.  Black Americans can still feel the racism that exists for sure in so many ways, but the dumbfoundedness on all our faces and especially theirs is that it might not be after all the racism itself but the much bigger economic and technological politics that have left us all pretty breathlessly wondering what the heck just happened.  Add in immigration policy, wars, Israel, population movements, banks etc etc and King's achievements and the whole set of issues feels more and more like another chapter in the late stages of recovery from the civil war in the South.  

Oh, and mention affirmative action too.  Bright guys (not women) did get more of an upward push around the country----but from the larger perspective, a mere handful.  And what has Cornel West and his generation produced?  Henry Louis and Cornel and all the others---generally ok academic careers, like anyone else, (moi) and middle-class survival at the upper edge of the economy.  But the deepest structures of society and all---did affirmative action really help those much?  

Did I send you a doo wopp video?  

off for now,  

B

On Wed, Aug 28, 2013 at 10:22 AM, J. P. Jones <jpjones33@hotmail.com> wrote:

I don't know how much the 1963 march on Washington is dominating the news in NH, but dear god it's EVERYWHERE ALL THE TIME here in DC.   Today Obama is speaking from the Lincoln monument on the mall, but there have been events all over town for a week.  Public TV last night was nothing but "The March."

I don't know about you, but I remember being at Deep Creek that summer and expecting the worst in DC, mainly because my brother lived near the Lincoln memorial and was fairly racist - as were my whole family and most friends, although not rabid and totally opposed to the Bull Connor brutality in the south.   When the march took place without incident everyone just heaved a sigh of relief and went on with their jobs.  A recent book about the march points out that King's speech didn't get much notice until he was murdered five years later.   Yet now it has been sanctified to a degree that nothing else in American history seems as important as that march, King's speech, and King himself.  Yet Philip Randolph was the real organizer and when he included Walter Reuther in the leadership, the primary goal of the march became "JOBS and Freedom" - i.e., jobs first.   You see that in all the signs that people carried:  Reuther and the black leadership wanted a big public works program.  

The march occurred between my freshman and sophomore years at Brown, and I was working at a boat company at Deep Creek.  Where were you?   I think you must have been at the Christian Bro's seminary in Philadelphia.  If so, what was the mood there?  Did people go to the march?   Did you?  What were people's attitudes?

----------

Friday August 30

already!  scanned a new article about Beckett and Blanchot and Bram Van Velde in new issue of Beckett studies from Edinburgh.  Yeah, still on their list and given admission even though I have not paid for a subscription renewal for a while now. 

Lovely sunny afternoon, bit of breeze.  We swam this morning.  No one there in spite of the big weekend.  Now Obama and Kerry are talking about war against Syria and Assad.  Good gravy.  Kerry worries me---the New England moralist on crusade?  Poor Obama.  He had a great presidency and now "they" are going to manage besmirching it with this stuff.  Of course it might be no backstory at all but just as they say on the news---gas being used, chemical weapons, stand up against it no matter what. 

but the string always unwunds---gunpowder, nuclear, gas, chemicals, drones, germs, robots, rays, genes,

note to Phil

trying not to say nuttin about Kerry and the news---

Good take on MLK's nose in the air tone.  Never had heard the criticism about being like Hitler but when you think about it the line is sure enough pretty direct----

MLK---Hitler---Martin Luther----Ignatius of Loyola--St Francis--Pope who Crusaded---St Thomas (just war)---St Augustine---Cicero---and, ta da, Moses da Man hisself

whereas Malcolm X---really cuts the cloth the other way.  Omaha, crime, France, Black Muslims, prisons, true prophet.  

I wish I had read X's autobiography.  read selections way back.  I think I never really heard of islam until seeing the Black Muslim church in Chicago.  And I

think the four years in Illinois, three in Chicago, one down in Decatur---soybean capital of the world---woke me up more than anything else

in those days.  Got me truly out of the Northeast and out of the South.

MLK definitely in link with the Kennedy's and the whole  northeastern carpetbagging liberal fear of violence hence they loved him for channeling Ghandhi, if he

could bring that off.  

Malcolm X much more American---western---mexican---hell, grab your guns and let's shoot it out.  Which is where we're heading more and more it seems.  

I distrust Kerry here.  Way too much of that moralistic new englandish crapology.  Feels like we live in Mexico---a One Party system for sure.  

=========

Agree with pretty much all else in your long post on MLK.  And I think you're especially right about The Southeyness of it all.  We been up here way too long, not that I

want to be down there.  

But finally at last, a true divide has emerged, nay, sir, an abyss.  You hate the Beatles and love the Stones?  My God the end is nigh.  Well, those terms are

too violent, as befits the time, but while I liked the Stones now and then I did like the Beatles mostly but they did become tiresome after Yoko.  Whereas the

way the Stones have kept on keeping on is wonderful.  Plus the basic fuck you approach lasts much longer and has more power than the

phoney sweetness of the Beatles.  Stones Malcolm X.  

We did see the world or national premier of the stones movie Sympathy for the Devil---(just found out it was by Godard) in Chicago.  In Mandel hall

at the university.  Packed crowd, big build-up.  Boooorrriiinnnggg movie even though it was Stones and Black Panthers etc, it was till

French and 1966/ French.  The crowd watch dutifully until about one hour in people just started to quietly leave and within twenty minutes the

hall was nearly empty.  so much for the UC intellectual Left. 

I probably couldn't name more than three Stones hits though and have none of their music on the car stereo--ipod.  

You do need to listen to more of Leonard Cohen.  Try Chelsea Hotel or The Future or Greatest Hits. The times have caught up with him and he's now

very very popular.  Years ago he went through many long spells of no one giving him much notice and being overhsadowed by Dylan and others. 

(again, Dylan I like once in a while but am not a devotee).  Cohen is a good poet, lyricist and summer-up of the geist, the age.  His lyrics are

really good.   

I just re-read his second novel, Beautiful Losers.  I probably read it thirty years ago.  He published only two, haven't read the first.  This one captures

the period so well----like listening to the Platters call forth memories.  Cohen grew up in Montreal, he is ten years older than us, and this

novel is his attempt to figure out how the hell Quebec got to be so screwed up.  There is more about catholicism and the French and the

Indians in there than the Jews.  Those he knew about.  He writes in an imitative manner, trying, young, to be like both Joyce and William

Burroughs and to sound like he's tripping.  says he wrote it one year on the island of Hydra.  So it is not great and takes a push

every so often to keep going with it, but it really conjures the times, now, in hindsight.  And in hindsight you can see the emerging  poet--song writer.  

I like it because it is the sort of novel that would never make it through a creative writing program these days.  Like Melville in that respect.  

How are you doing with Ahab?  I love that book.  Read it ten years ago again.  Rather listened to it in the car while I drove back and forth 

to Va's various hospitals over three months.  Then I took a short trip to New Bedford and the whaling museum there.  I think I've read all

of his books at least once.  Course at MD where he was teamed up with poet Robert Lowell---Nantucket Graveyard and poems like that.  But

Lowell was for the "contemporary" and pretty unimportant in the long run next to Melville.  And I wouldn't put Melville into "new England authors"

bookshelf.  

On that note---great news here---we lunched in our capital yesterday, Concord, now about 40k people and found out that while Borders there closed about five years ago, the much older local bookstore has just moved to a bigger new store with cafe.  Now I have some place

to go at least once a week.  Am getting a "day off" every wednesday now.  Took the first this week and went down to the

shore, Portsmouth.  Nice light salt air.  

We mean to get to Exeter soon to look around.  Send me $50 and I'll send you photos of anything at your alma mater I can manage to find!  

Nostalgic old paving stones or something?  well, how about 50 cents?  

==========

Did Virginia have a slight stroke or seizure a few days ago? 

Now Saturday morning, 31st.  She is sleeping in.  Ruth Millar came to visit around 5 yesterday and upset us both.  But before that Virginia was upset, thinking her mind was not right, her sense of time and sequence was off, her sense of everything just not as it had felt before.  She was anxious about this for a good while.  Maybe even for two days or so.  Weds I went to Portsmouth and she was home alone and Colin came in for an hour to play piano.  The next evening or was it that evening that we went for a walk in Wally's late and the big thunderstorm hit and it was there that she felt her foot wasn't working right and when we called the 911 ambulance because I thought she was withdrawn.  Next day I decided she was just super tired but it might well have been a stroke or seizure----even affected by the thunder and lightning storm I wonder later.  She had said that she had not slept well Tuesday night worrying about all that could happen while I was away for most of the day.  I had not known that on Weds.  So if anything happened to her it might have been Weds evening or Thursday.

Just looked back on these pages--it was Aug 29th when the walk at Wally's took place---today is Sat the 31st, so that was Thursday evening the 29th.  So something might even have happened on Weds the 28th while I was away or even when I came back, we watched tv that evening and maybe she wasn't quite as alert but I thought she was just tired from everything in the usual ways. 

Yesterday is when she complained about the time and sequentiality problems and talked in ways a little like when she is having a seizure or hallucinations---a bit too revved up and on obsessive loops.  Twice in the two previous days she thought she was going to throw up but didn't.  Both times were when she was getting up out of her chair to go to the bathroom.  Maybe getting up from the pot too?

Very humid today and the past few days.  very very humid this morning.  Good morning to sleep in.  I'm going to try to have a really quiet day for us today. 

We did have a brief FaceTime with the Parisians yesterday.  Emma had had her bangs cut.  They were in Annie's car going out to her place.  Not quite clear exactly what the weekend projects were.  More changes to the kitchen are in the offing---larger fridge and something else. 

I'm trying not to be scared but Virginia says things like "will I be better and get back to where I was?" and "I hope I'm not becoming like Ruth and losing my mind." 

9:08  She is resting, sleeping, deeply now.  I think I will try to sleep a bit more too.  Or at least chill.  We had an ice cream binge last night for comfort and restoration.  But we did the dark chocolate chips, forgetting that they would have a strong caffeiney wakiness effect all night.  Dumb, on my part. 

Still, this pattern, a morning when Va really wants and needs to sleep in a long time---this is a very old pattern and may still have more to do with ordinary patterns of stress, energy, and relaxation than with stroke or seizure.  A lifelong pattern, really.  Being here on a silvery, muggy morning waiting for her to wake for the day feels so familiar. 

past 4 pm  I had a good nap.  Rain starting right now. Heavy air all day.  we drove out for corn and around and Va seemed sluggish but ok.  Nice lunch and now she's resting in her chair.  Maybe she should lie down.  TV seems to wear her out. 

Other causal factors I wanted to note---we swam twice this week---and V had a pedi-mani late last week.  Germs, bacteria, etc?  Low grade infections? 

But the big "mystical" moment of the week was in Portsmouth when I ran into Jody Brenamen, Bob Sprankle's wife, at the Ceres Bakery around 2 pm.  We had a great, short emotional chat about their six years of hell with Bob's surgery and chronic pain.  Now he is back to work, the surgery to remove the groin mesh worked, he's out of pain, feels re-born. 

So there was that.  Whether Va will bounce back now----

later

eating ice cream, froz yogurt, cherry garcia and watching Roman Holiday

seems fully back

Tom Toomey came by to measure the house for vinyl siding, this was around 1 pm. 

so wet feels like we are at the bottom of the ocean, or the underbelly of a huge rain cloud, rain for the next four days

sure enough on the Wunderground map you can see the huge system/cloud hover over us

Va has been reading her mother's diary over the past week.  typed pages in a three ring binder.  Not in perfect chronological order and so a bit disorienting for her.

Last day of August today  31st

Long stretch of reading Karl Ove this evening.  My man.  Even if I don't like some things---it is the way he speaks about feeling that is on the money.  Feeling and embarrassment and the inner life.