November 27, 2010. Saturday.
Situation: As it turned out Jazz didn’t bring Atlas with her yesterday – the cage outside remained unused (I’m not sure but I think I heard her telling other people “I didn’t bring Atlas because he makes my dad nervous.”) Woody, and Squeak too, frightened by the many tall legs stomping around, hid upstairs. I was happy about that: I didn’t have to keep tossing a cat off the countertops. Mway hung around downstairs, milling about the kitchen below table level. Moi and I both work later tonight. She’s just finished up in the bathroom and is standing at the doorway fully dressed. She says she’s going to take Mway for her morning walk, and that I can come too, if I hurry.
State of the Path: While I’m still buttoning up my jacket and putting on my boots, Moi goes outside – I hear Mway barking, Moi yelling at her. When I finally get ouside, she’s still yelling at Mway and, while she futzes with feed and water dishes, tells me to take Mway down the path away from the chickens. Very light snow flurries are blowing around. Moi soon catches up with us. At the juncture to the side path, I ask her which way she wants to go. “It doesn’t matter,” she says, “as long as we walk fast so I can get some exercise.” We continue straight on the main path, the way Mway has already taken. “You’re going to have to get your snowsuit out. Aren’t you cold?” Moi asks. “A little,” I say. At the tree stand, Moi stops to gaze around. She yells at me as I turn around rustling the leaves. After standing quietly for a moment or two, she points toward Hutchinson’s woods at a red band tied around a tree, which she says is a sign that somebody has been up there turkey hunting. Moi takes the lead along the creek. Past the swale, she points toward the feed channel and asks me if I have to go that way. I tell her it doesn’t matter, and we head straight to bug land toward her pines, where I spot the long stick with the gash that I prefer to the thick birch branch I’m already carrying. I ask Moi if she had thrown stick down here in bug land. “No,” she says, “Maybe the Boy did.” When I pick up the stick, Mway starts hopping up and down, but I hold the stick high, intent on not throwing it until we get to the clearing. On the other side of the ridge, the path becomes a long strip of water to the anthill. Moi, who’s wearing some kind of fashionable work shoe, has to straddle the path, but, in my good rubber boots, I can just trudge straight through the water.
State of the Creek: The stream, lower than yesterday, is losing its green color and turning brown. Moi pauses to look at the green plants she discovered in the cascade by the big logs the other day and asks if I ever identified them. “No,” I say, “unless they get some sort of flower, there’s probably no way I can.” Further downstream, we see two more places where the plant is growing. Moi mentions a plant name (I can’t remember now what it was) and talks about how people buy plants for the yard and sometimes they invade the wild surroundings. I point out to her the underwater plant with the spiky leaves and ask her if she knows what it is. “Duckweed?” she answers. “Duckweed?” I say, “you sure that’s what it is?” She shrugs, then says “I took some of these plants from the creek like this one time and transplanted them in my garden pond, and I used to know the names.”
The Fetch: Up in the clearing I throw the stick with the gash in the two directions I’ve been liking to throw the stick. On the third or fourth toss, I lose my grip on the stick before it leaves my hand (probably because I’m holding the other two sticks), and it flies high up in the air and starts falling right down onto Moi, fortunately only nicking her. She yells at me, and I apologize. As I’m still tossing the stick back and forth, suddenly she whips out her iPhone and starts talking on it, heading down the path back toward the house. I keep on throwing the stick for Mway until she starts coming back with it without dropping it. Walking toward the path, I see a spot of water in the middle of the clearing has started to turn to ice. Back in the house, while Moi’s still talking on her iPhone, I feed Mway then sit down here at my computer. After a while Moi comes to the doorway. “You know,” she says, “that was my mother on the phone. I have a special ring tone for her calls, the sound of crickets. When we were outside, I started hearing these crickets and started looking around for them, wondering how they could be out in such cold weather, before I realized, oh, that’s my mother calling on the cell phone.”
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A few minutes ago I had to drag my digital keyboard and PA system out of the music room to put them in Moi’s car. It was like wading through and pushing back snow to get to them – with all the papers lying about! I don’t know about this – your deadline is two days away, you have at least 14 letters, 14 chapters, to go. I see no sign you’re going to make it – nothing but disarray and disorganization. A lot of the papers I had to shove aside even looked blank! I don’t know what you’re expecting from me this morning. Perhaps you want me to set out the “N-O” volume, but I hardly feel like doing that. When I get back this evening, it would be nice to see some of this picked up!
It’d be nice, but you don’t really have to set out any more volumes. The rest of the novel is practically writing itself. As for the disarray of papers, now’s not the time to be obsessed about that – I’m in the midst of creation for godsakes. Remember (as probably someone has already said – but I don’t have the time now to garner a quote): a thing of beauty is most often accompanied by a big mess. MM.
Plenty of kitchen countertops materials to choose from and there are good looking but cheaper alternatives to granite and polished marble if you want a stunning kitchen.
Anyone reading or re-reading this blog will have realized by now that, since my last entry on December 24, 2011, I’ve been adding comments here and there on back posts, filling in here and there, at my leisure, a little bit of the relevant information (some of it updates) that I didn’t have the time to set down while keeping my journal and posting it in the first place. In the back of my mind, although I was attracted by the apparent infinity of cyberspace, I knew I could not keep this up forever, and today, because Moi went over to Ezra’s to feed his chickens because -- I don’t even want to say what happened and dishonor Ezra with the mention of it here – today, I realize, I haven’t the heart, guts, spleen, or whatever it is, to ride this blog anymore.
But I feel bad that I still haven’t said much about Moi’s and my Saturday night gig, which is the work usually alluded to whenever I mention in a Saturday post “have to work tonight.” This summer, Katie, the owner of the historic tavern (the longstanding stone building figures appears at least three times in the stories of early 20th century talesmith John Shoemaker – no books currently on my shelves, available only at the public library), has reduced our bookings from every Saturday night down to the second and fourth Saturdays of the month – a move which, though understandable, makes it difficult for patrons to remember exactly when we will be there (I put a notice in the local newspaper, but advertisements there are not as widely dispersed as they once were). I guess Katie has been having trouble with the business. She lost a lot of money from the floods last years and has seen a decrease in customers in recent years, which she blames on the recession. She bought the tavern at the height of the housing boom (sheriffed from under the previous owner, Ralph, whom we had worked for for 12 years, but who, I guess, got burned out from hanging out with the Houtz family – he had converted a dining room to a pool room just for them -- and left for North Carolina to work as a carpenter – but that’s another story). She did not get the place cheap, having to bid in excess of the amount of the mortgage owed to the bank, and she had to make extensive repairs to the wiring, roofing, and plumbing, plus put in a whole new septic system. Who knows if she currently has any equity in the place – an appraiser would not calculate how many times the place is mentioned by Shoemaker. I appreciate the difficulty in running a restaurant, especially with the competition from such franchises as the Red Robin, the Longhorn Steakhouse, Applebee’s, and what not along our Golden Strip (none of which has “live” entertainment by the way). Yet Katie has been pursuing a business strategy of contraction, reducing the number of nights she is opened to Friday and Saturday and so on, when I can’t help but think the best thing for her to do is charge less for her prime rib than the other restaurants do, as I believe Ralph used to do (a suggestion I’ve made to her). At the height of its popularity, in 1996, when it was voted the favorite local restaurant, as many as a 120 people would cram themselves into the small rooms in front of the double fireplaces, lean back in their chairs, bellies full of sauerbraten and spaetzle, swilling Paulaners and Warsteiners, as Moi, in her homemade breeches and vest, and I, in what was jokingly referred to back then as my “puffy shirt,” would regale them with practically every request imaginable, In Heaven There Is No Beer, Du, Du Liegst Mir Im Herzen, Blue Danube Waltz, Beer Barrel Polka, Lili Marleen, even Panzerlied for Ralph’s friend ein Berliner Hank, If I Were A Rich Man and Sunrise Sunset from Fiddler on the Roof, Al Jolson’s Anniversary Song for anyone celebrating an anniversary, the Tarantella and O Sole Mio for Larry, the more effeminate half of a male couple that would come in about once a month, the Orange Blossom Special or I’ve Been Working on the Railroad whenever a train came by (sometimes I would sneak in Meade Lux Lewis’s Honky Tonk Train Blues), the Battle of New Orleans for a sample of Cajun fiddling (if I didn’t sing it we’d call it the Eighth of January), Old MacDonald and Pop Goes the Weasel for the kids, Ashoken Farewell from the Ken Burn’s series along with songs by Stephen Foster, Daniel Emmett, Henry C. Work, Richard Milburn, and a host of Irish or Scotch folk tunes such as the Girl I Left Behind, Flowers of Edinburgh, Garry Owen (don’t forget Danny Boy), Aura Lee (if I sang it we’d call it Love Me Tender), the British Grenadiers and The World Turned Upside Down
from the Colonial period, a piano and fiddle rendition of Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven, Puff The Magic Dragon, Vince Guaraldi’s Linus and Lucy, Rocky Top, Someone To Watch Over Me, Redwing, Misty, something by Simon and Garfunkle, Summertime, how ‘bout Nola, how ‘bout The Devil Went Down to Georgia, The Alley Cat, Frere Jacques and Alouette, Only You, something by George Cohen, the Marine Hymn, the Air Force Hymn (Off We Go into the Wild Blue Yonder?), In the Good Old Summertime, Memory from Cats, It Had to Be You, La Cumparsita, Oh Dem Golden Slippers, Somewhere in Time, the Yellow Rose of Texas, Anytime, anything by anybody, Elvis Presley (“I’m all shook up”), Jerry Lee Lewis (“whole lotta shakin’ goin’ on), Louis Jordan (“ain’t nobody here but us chickens”), Ray Charles (“baby, oh baby, don’t treat me this way”), Frank Sinatra (“if I can make it there”), Paul McCartney (“hey Jude, don’t make it bad”), Billy Joel (“son, can you play me a memory”), Billie Holiday (“why not take all of me”), Peggy Lee (“Captain Smith and Pocahontas had a very mad affair’), Patsy Cline (“crazy, for feeling so lonely”), don’t you know Celery Stalks at Midnight?, the Flight of the Bumblebee?, Freebird?, Purple Haze?, often ending up with the sing-along Those Were The Days (“once upon a time there was a tavern….in the glass I saw a strange reflection”), or the waitresses coming up to sing Don McLean’s Miss America Pie (“and good old boys were drinking whisky and rye”), followed by, to calm things down, Louis Armstrong’s chart-topper of the 60’s (“and I think to myself,” someone inevitably coming in to growl on the hook, “what a wonderful world”) Since Ralph left the place in a cloud of dust (he had begun disconcerting some patrons by playing paintball with the Houtzes in the yard, with replicas of panzers sitting about) and Katie bought it five years ago (she had been an enthusiastic customer and has cleaned the place up, duplicated Ralph’s recipes, and hired a very good wait staff ), a lot of people still do not even know the tavern has reopened – Moi played at an International Food Festival downtown a couple days ago, and people were asking her what was the status of the tavern, whether it was open or not. Unbelievable. But who am I to talk about running a business or the state of Katie’s finances? – yet I must note that just a few minutes ago Moi (who in her mid 20’s was a contractor in the painter’s union in upstate New York) left to go over to Katie’s house to do some painting for her (she’s repainting her entire house), Katie having told her that other painters charge $40 an hour whereas Moi is charging $25, the same price she once charged 35 years ago. The latest Saturday night we played at the tavern was one of the slowest we’ve ever seen. The bridge to H______ is being repaired, so that had something to do with it, but still there are other towns where people used to come to the tavern from. There were probably only about 12 customers all night. The Berkheimers, Don and Emma, two of the few remaining regulars from earlier times, were there, with other members of their family, to celebrate Don’s birthday (Don used to provide us every New Year’s with some sauerkraut he made, but last year he said he’s getting to old to make it anymore). Moi and I started out with our usual opening numbers, “The Battle Cry of Freedom” followed by “Edelweiss.” We made sure to play “Unchained Melody” for Emma (which must have been somebody’s request many years ago and now has become Emma’s standing favorite. This is one tune I had found the chord changes for in one of my fake books and Moi could play the melody from memory). (Anyone curious about what a fake book is can peruse a great assortment down in the music room, not only the first one I picked up when we started at the tavern, Hal Leonard’s The Greatest Legal Fake Book, but also those necessary to supplement the first, namely Hal Leonard’s The Ultimate Fake Book, The Most Amazing Colossal Ultimate Fake Book, The Best Fake Book Ever,
The Ultimate Jazz Fake Book, The Classical Fake Book, The Wedding and Love Fake Book, and, after HL obtained copyright clearances on the tunes once illegally circulated among jazz musicians in what is called the Real Book, The Real Jazz Fake Book – again, all easily accessible in the music room to anyone who, having mastered the skills of reading one set of symbols and using one kind of keyboard, might as well go on now and also learn how to play the piano and perhaps write songs too). Eventually we played Happy Birthday for Don. We asked if he had a tune he’d like to hear, but he deferred to his wife’s request for McCartney’s “Yesterday” (similar arpeggiated piano to “Unchained.”) I played “The Entertainer” (better known as “that song from The Sting”) and began “Maple Leaf Rag” because I know Don likes those songs, but he and his family were already standing up and getting ready to leave. Next to us was a couple we hadn’t seen before who requested some Irish tunes. Because we had already played that week at Kiernan’s Irish Pub (where Moi had been playing with Ezra, having groomed him on bodhran drum, spoons, jaw harp, octave fiddle, and pennywhistle for a duo they had, even playing festivals all over the state, until a couple months ago he, to Moi’s dismay, suddenly decided to quit playing music), Moi kept the tunes to a minimum (“Crossing Over to Ireland,” “Irish Washerwoman”), figuring that I could only take playing so much Celtic music in a week. When she found out that the couple was from Wilkes-Barre, she called out to my surprise for Les Brown’s “Sentimental Journey” (music from the coal region, Brown being from Pottsville), which we hadn’t played in a while and which I followed with “In the Mood,” forgetting that this was a tune more identified with Glenn Miller than with the Dorsey Brothers (from Shenandoah) as I was thinking at the time. (Come to think of it we could have played Henry Mancini’s Theme from the Molly McGuires, as we hadn’t played that at the pub.) When the couple left, the room was empty. There was another couple out on the deck, but Moi asked Debbie to inquire whether or not they wanted to hear music. Apparently not, so we knocked off at a quarter to eight, an hour and fifteen minutes early. We each had duck for dinner. Moi told Katie she didn’t have to pay our full compensation for the night, but Katie did anyway (on the way home Moi thought maybe Katie remembered that a few months ago Moi had painted a room in her house, which later showed bubbling on the walls because the paint was an inferior quality brand Katie had picked up from Lowe’s, and Moi hadn’t charged her for any of that work).
I know that’s not much to say about 20 years of playing at a place, but at least I got something in here. (Did I say it was 18 years before? It’ll be 20 years this August, minus 2 years between owners, making it 18 years.) Part of what we’re seeing happening with the tavern is a generational change – more and more people younger than ourselves coming in, many of whom have never even heard “live” music before. I recall a couple years ago playing something some oldsters were singing along to, and a young lady was sitting at the bar, twirling her head around in bafflement, until she finally nodded and exclaimed “Oh, I get it. It’s like karaoke!” And the tunes that have become the bulk of our repertoire over the years (and seem most appropriate to the setting) are no longer in the airwaves and are unfamiliar to many younger listeners. I suppose that, just as we worked up Stairway to Heaven for fiddle and piano, we could do the same with Beat It or Smells Like Teen Spirit (see youtube, Racine doing the one, Paul Anka the other). But these are tunes that Moi doesn’t have floating around in her head, and I would have to look for yet another Hal Leonard Fake Book, or we’d have to do some rehearsing together, which we’re not inclined to do, and even these tunes are 30 and 20 years old. Just now I’ve paused for a moment, a not uncommon moment for me of aporia before the past and the future, and looked up from my computer screen. Usually this act would be just a mindless staring into space, but today my eyes alight on a painting on the wall behind my hard drive column, a collage of American Indian symbols done by a friend of mine who gave it to me about 20 years ago. It’s funny now to think that we got this gig at the tavern through a tip from this friend, Jor-El, as Jordan Ellroy called himself (no doubt still calls himself – I haven’t heard from him in about 16 years, but I believe he is still working as a bartender in the Connecticut gambling casinos). I knew Jor-El before I met Moi; he used to live at a hotel where he would jam on his harmonica with whatever musician was playing there, and when Moi and I first moved into this house, he and another friend of mine, another relentlessly jamming blues harmonica player who calls himself Sunny Boy (it’s funny to think, but he first introduced me to this house in the 70’s), would periodically show up here, blow their brains out on their harps for an hour, crushing out their cigarette butts in Jazz’s toy tea cups, and then just as suddenly leave, like a thunderstorm on a summer’s day. When Moi, some years later, began going to a local “old time” jam session to hone her fiddling skills, Jor-El would often go with her, sometimes scaring her on the way home after a long night of drinking by talking about M-16 machine guns and by huddling in the car at the approach of a “Falling Rock” sign, warning Moi that one could fall at any minute….
Yes, you see, if I mention this, why shouldn’t I also mention…but I can’t mention everything and everybody: what, to illustrate my point, does Jor-El (who never claimed to have any Native American blood) put in his painting? A bunch of Indian symbols (birds, dancers, a sun, typical emblems, although personalized in their free-hand formation), which I believe he told me he painted because he was hoping to sell some of his stuff and people like that kind of thing (in the middle of it, flying over two abstract human figures, is his trademark, a winged rose, which he told me he put in all his paintings). And now that I’m looking at this painting, I wonder if a certain someone ever paused in her writing, looked up from the computer, and maybe gazed perplexed at it too (I mean, that is, with even more perplexity). Next to Jor-El’s painting is one that Moi did of Jazz playing “dress-ups” when she was about 4 years old. And next to that is another painting by Moi showing me holding the Boy, when he was less than a year old, against my chest in a denim tote sack as we’re sitting in a carriage on an amusement park carousel. Would MM have recognized the 4-year old as Jazz, the baby as the Boy, the young man as me? Would she have even known that the brown structure that swoops around me and the Boy, but does not appear as a complete object, was a carriage seat?
Oops: I just notice a mistake in one of my comments above. The first name of the early 20th century talesmith I talk about above was not John, but Henry – Henry W. Shoemaker. You can find an article about him in wikipedia. A good think about consciousness: being able to correct errors. I mean, of course, “thing.”
Again, I remind the reader (or re-reader, or no one in particular) that I don’t have any of Shoemaker’s books on my shelves. But Moi does recount one of the stories he tells about the tavern in an article she wrote for a small magazine devoted to paranormal phenomena in Pennsylvania (coincidental alliteration there), which I’ve just taken down from the shelf and which will be lying on my armchair for the next couple days. Like many old buildings the tavern is suppose to be haunted – as Katie often says, “I don’t know what it is, but there sure are a lot of weird things that happen around here” – and Moi, who often tells about these weird happenings to patrons, has gathered a number of them together in her article. One is some poltergeist activity: a hook latch in the women’s restroom that latches by itself. Then there are a number of apparitions: one of a group of men in Colonial or Civil War garb who appeared before a woman who came in to order a six-pack of beer and who, just as astonished to see her as she was to see them, suddenly vanished in thin air. Then there are the orbs captured in a photo by a group of ghost hunters who came in one Saturday night when Ralph still owned the tavern (Ralph, by the way, says he never saw a ghost during the fifteen years he lived there), and which manifested themselves while Moi and I were playing “Ach Du Lieber, Augustine.” (Moi also has a photo taken by Arnie and Connie, who dropped in one evening after a visit to their daughter in Baltimore, showing a smoky plume looming over me while I’m playing the piano – which, by the way, Katie still hasn’t had tuned, though I’ve been bugging her to do so for several years). Finally, there are the apparitions of a woman, sometimes in a blue dress, sometimes a red dress. This, Moi speculates in her article, might be the ghost of Mary Cox, and then she goes on to relate the story that Shoemaker tells in one of his books. This is the story of William Penn’s grandson, John Penn, Jr., who falls in love with Mary, a woman from a low-class family. John Penn’s father, John, Sr., doesn’t approve of the romance, but the two young ones go off to England to elope anyway. Soon after they arrive back in America, Mary is kidnapped by Indians (hired secretly for the task by John Penn, Sr.). John, Jr., spends his life in grief over the missing Mary, until one day, traveling into the north woods to look over some lands, he stops in at the tavern. He hears a woman in a back room, coughing. After inquiring about her, he goes to see her. It turns out to be Mary, and she and John embrace one last time before she dies. I don’t think I’ve spoiled this story for anyone who would like to read it in the magazine, for Moi tells it a lot better than I do here.
A couple weeks ago Katie (god how slow I write when I don’t have a daily deadline… and, indeed, just now I find myself staring up again at Jor-El’s dumb painting. What are those figures he’s put there? Representations of Kokopelli maybe? Some thunderbirds? A phoenix? Some things he made up? I don’t know, but I like the painting, and feel honored that he gave it to me. What I was going to try to do here was describe the night Katie invited some new ghost hunters (they have a TV show, or access to a TV show, it’s not clear to me) to the tavern to investigate the hauntings and poltergeist activities there and interview some witnesses to the phenomena that Katie picked, including Moi. But that was already a couple weeks ago – no, more like almost a month ago, looking at my calendar just now (we’ve even had a gig there since then, which went much better than the one before). I was going to write all about that night -- the long delay while waiting for a publicity hearse to arrive because the tavern doesn’t appear on Google maps, the chief ghost hunter wanting to take a big hunk of prime rib from Katie’s buffet but leaving it sit there out of politeness, Bret Burke, owner of the tavern before Ralph, singing Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues” and later, during his interview, stomping out of the tavern to point up at a second story window, Moi on the way home telling me about ghosts in our own house (mainly apparitions appearing to Jazz when she was little) -- but I’m losing my steam to write about any of this – maybe it’s this hot and humid weather we’ve been having. (Plus, my wireless connection for my computer keeps going on and off – I’m going to have to have Moi look at that, but she’s been busy with a lot of stuff, including re-doing the laundry room, where we had black mold form on the walls last year when it was raining so much). No, if one wants to read about the ghosts at the tavern, one is just going to have to be satisfied with what I’ve already written, or read Moi’s article. Or if one wants to read about ghosts in general, Moi has plenty of books of ghost stories in her bedroom, or one can pick out something by Poe or even Shakespeare from my shelves, or re-read the Circe chapter of Ulysses. Or I might recommend the book I’ve just finished re-reading, Nabokov’s Pale Fire (the last time I read it was 37 years ago or so), which, other than ghosts, has some striking parallels to this blog (one must be sure to read both the poem and the commentary). Interestingly, I re-read this book during the same month that the character John Shade writes his poem “Pale Fire,” which made my reading all the more intense. Anyway, the book is a small paperback lying on the floor beside my bed, orange in color, more like the hue of an intense fire than a pale one. But what am I doing talking about the book’s color? The book is grayish, rather than white or black. Also, I might add, because the paperbook is so old, the print has faded on some of the pages, so I don’t know if some parts might be hard to read.
By “one” I mean, of course, MM, who I know has been re-reading this blog lately the same as I’ve been doing, because a number of times, coming up the staircase, I’ve caught her hopping off my office chair then slinking away guiltily across the room with her eyes bugged out. But I have to admit. So far when I’ve checked the computer to see what she might be viewing, if I found it located on this blog, it’s only been on a post between November 29, 2011, and December 24, 2011.
But is a blog even supposed to be re-read?...See what expert Alan F. Kirby implies in an article (I’m not even sure he wrote it) in The Scavanger (you’ll find it online) called Postmodernism is out, digimodernism is in (he used to call it “pseudomodernism”) where he describes “ a revolution in the nature of the text itself, seen vividly in the platforms of Web 2.0 (blogs, chat rooms, message boards, Wikipedia, Facebook, Twitter etc.). Such a textuality is onward, haphazard, evanescent, and fluid-bounded: it exists in its own current expansion or elaboration; its content is up for grabs, though surreptitiously patrolled; it does not last and is not reproducible in its original form; and its temporal and spatial boundaries are, though perceptible, very hard to fixa revolution in the nature of the text itself, seen vividly in the platforms of Web 2.0 (blogs, chat rooms, message boards, Wikipedia, Facebook, Twitter etc.). Such a textuality is onward, haphazard, evanescent, and fluid-bounded: it exists in its own current expansion or elaboration; its content is up for grabs, though surreptitiously patrolled; it does not last and is not reproducible in its original form; and its temporal and spatial boundaries are, though perceptible, very hard to fix.
NEW YORK (AP) — As superstorm Sandy marched slowly inland, millions along the East Coast awoke Tuesday without power or mass transit, with huge swaths of the nation's largest city unusually vacant and dark. New York was among the hardest hit, with its financial heart in Lower Manhattan shuttered for a second day and seawater cascading into the still-gaping construction pit at the World Trade Center. President Barack Obama declared a major disaster in the city and Long Island. The storm that made landfall in New Jersey on Monday evening with 80 mph sustained winds killed at least 17 people in seven states, cut power to more than 7.4 million homes and businesses from the Carolinas to Ohio, caused scares at two nuclear power plants and stopped the presidential campaign cold. SELINSGROVE (Daily Item) - A raging fire apparently sparked by an oil lamp engulfed a home along Middlecreek Road in Penn Township Monday evening. Flames fanned by high winds from Hurricane Sandy burned at the Martin family home, 3500 Middlecreek Road, for more than 2 and a half hours before nearly 60 firefighters were able to bring the blaze under control, said Selinsgrove Fire Chief Dawayne Betzer. No injuries were reported. Betzer said the home, located just south of Kantz, was fully engulfed in flames when the first fire units arrived shortly after the 6:54 p.m. alarm. Volunteers were able to protect another home just south of the fire site, the fire chief said. An excavator was called to assist with salvage operations after the fire was extinguished. The home was destroyed with losses set at $55,000, the fire chief said. Members of the Martin family are staying with relatives. It is unknown if the dwelling was insured, fire officials said.
Perhaps the best thing about this blog is that, being written on the computer (except of course for the novella – I guess I should call it “novel” – that appears shortly in the comment boxes) and being published online, it has not generated any paper, other than (on my part) an occasional scrap paper for a para-note to help negotiate cyberspace. This nongeneration of paper is especially good since Moi’s been doing some major cleaning and throwing-out-of-things lately, first in the laundry room, where she had to get rid of the black mold that formed during last year’s floods, then in the spare bedroom, then in the music room, where she found under the sofa the remarkably preserved carcass of the Boy’s iguana which had gotten loose in the house 7 years ago. I’ve even gotten a little in the spirit of throwing things out myself – found some tax receipts for 2004, which I believe I’m correct in believing I no longer need to keep, and threw those out. In the process, I came across a little notebook where I kept a journal (seems like I’m more of a journal keeper than I ever envisioned myself to be) about a trip to New Orleans that Moi and I made in early March of 1983, where the most important event was Moi’s discovery that Jazz was beginning to grow inside her. Since I’ve already appended one journal about a trip to New Orleans to this blog, I thought it might be appropriate to append this one too (and at least put this notebook, just cluttering up space in my office, to some use). Given that this piece of writing was written so long ago, one might think that it would appear very alien to me; to a certain extent this is true, especially pertaining to some of the details of the trip that I’ve forgotten. But the journal is written in my own handwriting, which, even if that has changed over the years, I still recognize as mine, so the action of my body appears very much in those words of old – besides, I remember very well generally what happens in the journal since it is was written, after all, during Jazz’s first appearance to the world. Before I copy it down here, I guess I should give a little background info. Moi and I had been living at her parent’s house for a little over a year. I had worked part of the year at a metallizing factory where Arnie was the night manager, and I was playing with Rochester’s foremost bluesman (see past issues of Living Blues magazine to find out who this is). Moi and I also had a side act, where I accompanied her on piano and she sang songs from the repertoire of the classic blues singers (often called “vaudeville blues”) as well as some more modern blues tunes. Moi’s father had died the past year, and May was happy to have us around, but we knew we eventually had to find a place of our own. We had long planned to save up some money to go down and settle in New Orleans, where a friend of mine from high school, with whom I had originally learned the lingua franca of American pop and folk music, was now living. Although we hadn’t saved up much money, we were now executing those plans. To spruce up the journal a little bit, I’ve made some changes that will be readily apparent to anyone reading it – these changes have been inspired, however much I hate to admit it, somewhat by the – I guess I must call it a novel -- that will debut in the comment boxes of this blog exactly two posts following. (By the way, it’s taken me a couple months to get this all ready to put up online.)
3/5/83
Left behind dog with nose between its paws, mother-in-law with cast in the air. $12 for gas. May weather in March here in PA. Daddy demonstrated inefficiency of sugar canisters at Elby’s restaurant. Worst shrimp to be had at Big Wrangler’s on the strip. Played extra hour to excited audience at Weiser Inn. Joined by Gus Aiken and Garvin Bushell. Meet inn owners, husband and wife: she falls off her chair around 1:30 am. Today Sweet Mama Stringbean and I buy supplies for long haul to Nashville, pick up care package from Robert’s mother. Stringbean in mean mood all day, says because she dreamt of being pushed around by a steam roller. Greeted her in the morning with sweet words: “How’s my second favorite woman?” Sitting here right now listening to tapes of Professor Longhair. Moms making steaks for supper. Daddy plays videotape of Rotary and Kiwanis dinner. Cameraman has recorder on while Daddy is commenting, “Ed Burgess would be a millionaire today if he knew how to take care of his money.” Had to be edited out. Zutty, who backed us on drums, comes by, and we have a laugh recalling the inn owner saying all night, “I’m nothing but a douche bag, nothing but a douche bag.”
3/6/83
Off by 7:30 am. Sweet Mama Stringbean in bad mood. “Why did she have to pack him cheese? Will stink up the car.” I drive for first 50 miles. Stop for coffee and Stringbean takes over driving. Better mood. $12 for gas. 67 miles outside of Roanoke, stop at 76. Audio tapes no longer $2.99, but $4.99. I eat fruit and nut mix, lose two huge chunks of filling from left molar. The drive through the Blue Ridge Mts. is long and boring for Stringbean. No billboards to keep her entertained. Enter Tennessee around dusk. Stringbean lets me drive for an hour, then takes over again. Stringbean tired, napless for four days, irritable. Long drive into the night of Tennessee. “I’m tired of traveling and having to worry about money,” she moans. “Well,” I shout, “I’m sorry you married a fuckin’ poor man.” Before Knoxville, we begin looking for a campground. Find KOA. Stringbean says we appear to be one of the homeless to the night manager. We get our hatchback bed ready. Stringbean breaks out whiskey, and we drink and talk about our lives. Discuss psychological legacies, complexes, mimicry. Stringbean sweet and lovable, tells me about her travels to California, dust storms of the Mojave desert, wearing clothes for four days until they’re ripe. Befriend a Pomeranian. I become sick and have to sleep on cot outside the car, until Sweet Mama calls me into the hatchback to keep her warm.
3/7/83
Wake up in hatchback to dawn. A cramped, uncomfortable night’s sleep. Pack, have breakfast, I have hangover. Stringbean drives to Nashville, out of the hills, across Cumberland Plateau. Fireworks for sale. Billboards to make highway interesting. Arrive in Nashville around noon. Find good cheap motel. Have hot roast beef sandwiches served by a very slow petulant waitress. We go back to motel, take a nap all afternoon. Right now dressed, showered, feel all rested up, getting ready to go out.
3/9/83
Right now on way to Memphis. Had stayed extra, unplanned night in Nashville. First night wandered from motel into downtown Nashville. Check out Printer’s Alley. Spurn one club with female Wayne Newton impersonator. Begin look elsewhere. Sweet Mama Stringbean trying to allow memories from a visit ten years ago guide her. We don’t know where to go, looking for that street she remembers. Finally, exasperated, stop near club with music blaring out onto street. Stringbean recognizes Ernest Tubb’s record shop. Street run down. Broadway near the old Ole Grand Opry, now Ryman Theatre. Club with music too loud for Stringbean. We try to decide what to do. Stringbean is depressed. I ask man on street if there is any acoustic music around. Derelict next to him petulantly points across the street. End up at Hitchin’ Post. Full of drunks. Performer asks where we’re from, introduces herself as Janis, formerly rock singer, now in Nashville doing solo country. Very nice person. Tells us about waiting. Sings “The Boys on 16th Avenue.” Courts the drunks. She is happy to talk to us, someone other than the drunks. She has talked to Buddy Wilkens, and is now waiting, grabbing nickels and dimes here, working in a factory. She fills Heineken bottles with water, takes beer home for the evening. Has vocal history of nodes, instructs us how to cough. Say goodbye. She recommends we go to the Stockyard. Find it, order ginger ale, very tired watch band Cedarcreek, example of the “new country”? Lightning outside. Go back to motel, very tired.
Next morning, pack up car. Eat sausage & biscuits at Mrs. Winners. Go to Country Music Museum and Hall of Fame. Go to Loretta Lynn’s Western Shop, Conway Twitty’s record store. Plan to leave town. Sweet Mama Stringbean buys a Coke and we sit down on bench across from Hall of Fame motel. Stringbean asks the guy on the bench next to us to take our picture. Guy is wearing a “Faron Young” cap, says Stringbeans’s accent sounds like the Canadian comedians of the “Great White North.” He tells us he’s from New Orleans, a composer and producer, introduces himself as Williams. We tell him who we are. Asks us if we’ve “knocked on any doors.” Says we should come along with him to his “office,” the lounge of the Hall of Fame motel.
-- Right now arrive in Memphis. 7:00 pm. Looking around for motel, see blank block that used to be Beale St. Snowed all the way to Memphis. Sweet Mama Stringbean calls her mother. It’s sunny in Rochester.
Sitting in his “office,” Williams introduces us to several men in checkered flannel shirts, songwriters. Been here for ten weeks. Sweet Mama Stringbean and I go to piano, play for Williams and songwriters. We’re introduced to a guy named Carr, entertainment for tonight. Williams arranges for us to sit in tonight, “the next superstars.” Meanwhile we walk up Music Row to BMI. Williams is bumming cigarettes from us. Seek out free coffee at BMI, then go to MCA. Williams flirts with secretary. He shows us the way to Mack’s for lunch on Division St. Williams refuses lunch, then decides yes. We pick up tab. He identifies me as a Virgo. Williams sees personality as responsible for fate. “You are selling yourselves.” Tells us he used to be in a gang in St. Louis, asked to fight, and fought even if he didn’t want to. In Nashville you need not fight, he says, you must not fight. “You have steel-blue eyes,” he tells me. Stringbean, he says, is Karen Carpenter, who thankfully he discovers is not anorexic. “You must not be afraid of success,” he advises. We walk back to the “office.” Williams tries to secure a room for the night at musician’s rates, but fails. “Bitchy night manager,” he complains.
We meet Williams again at the Hall of Fame that night. He orders water. We meet a drunk songwriter who looks like Waylon Jennings, complains about shitty deals When he goes to the restroom, Williams gulps down half his beer. Williams turns to me,” I can’t take this guy. He’s always saying ‘life is relative’.” We play to unreceptive audience. Williams goes over to the bar.
Next morning we meet Williams at his room at the York Motel. He talks to us half-dressed in his bed, offers us cigarettes. We give him 3 demo tapes, phone numbers, instructions to check out bars, colleges, etc.
3/10/83
In Memphis, staying at Peabody Hotel. Last night went to Blues Alley. Blues Alley All-stars, same personnel as a PBS special about Beale St.: Rufus Thomas, Ma Rainey II, Little Laura Dukes. Talked to their bass player, asked him how the blues scene was in Memphis. “This is about it.” Talked to two guys, distribution managers for Glamour magazine. One guy said he never heard the blues before in his life. Next morning, call up the Blues Foundation, an organization working to revitalize Beale St., talk to a guy named Hammond. We tour the street, see all the abandoned buildings. Also talk to a guy named Lomax at Off The Wall talent agency. [These two gentlemen arranged for Sweet Mama Stringbean and me to perform a few songs at a revitalization promotional gala held at a large theatre near Beale St, which I think we did on our trip back from New Orleans. Oddly I didn’t write anything about this in my journal, and I don’t remember the name of the theatre.] Head back to Beale St., only place opened on it, Schwab’s, buy long-awaited T-shirt. Head down into Mississippi. [I’m sure we stopped for a brief time at the Presley mansion, but I don’t mention this in the journal either.] Trucks without license plates. Gray skies, slight flurries. Unable to snap picture of Mississippi vine jungles. Stringbean plays game of facts to keep her entertained while driving. Question: “What is the state motto of Mississippi?” Answer: “Mississippi.”
3/21/83
Back in Memphis after a week in New Orleans, staying at Lamplighter Motel. No opportunity to write in New Orleans, so this is a reflection back on the past week.
Thursday 12:30 am -- Arrive in dark at Robert’s no problem. Robert very talkative, excitable, edgy. Says he hasn’t had anything to drink all day. Had prepared big dinner of beans and rice two days earlier when we were expected. I tell him about who we saw at Blues Alley. “Has beens” he calls them. “The French Quarter sucks, but you might like it.” Weary, go to bed.
Friday morning – Sweet Mama Stringbean and I do laundry, directed to laundromat by Shines, who lives in the basement apartment next to Robert’s. Afternoon: Robert, Stringbean, and I take car down Napoleon Ave. to Tipitina’s. Not open. Robert tells us what neighborhoods to avoid, “Mau Mau land” he calls them, “knifings daily,” “shoot at you from cars,” “city only few years from miscegenation laws,” “place where Caletta was raped” – all part of Robert’s introduction to New Orleans. Back at apartment, Robert tells me our version of “Keep Sittin’ On It” and “Baby What You Want Me to Do?” all wrong. Our music “unethical,” according to Robert. He complains that our mutual friend from PA, Edwards, “is acting crazy, porkin’ every black chick that comes along.” That night, Stringbean and I take bus and trolley to French Quarter, while Robert stays home. Tells us how to ask for transfer. Stringbean very uneasy, Absinthe Bar, everything on Bourbon St., garish and loud. Stare at John Stephens’ paintings, boy on carpet, girl holding cat. Return to apartment. Stringbean argues with Robert for not turning on any heat. Dampness bothers her.
Saturday morning – Robert out early to “blow off a pint of whiskey down at Audubon Park.” Stringbean has craving for pancakes, search 2 hours for a pancake place, down Napoleon to Magazine, then to French Quarter and Canal Street. End up at Tastee Donuts. A student takes us to a sales pitch for timeshare condos. Don’t get free Bayou Cruise or vacation to Pocono’s. Get directions to a pancake house. Take trolley uptown to Maple Leaf. Eat at Flame ‘n’ Grill. Stringbean worried, disturbed by Robert’s description of the city. At Maple Leaf, while Stringbean tries to take a nap after several napless days, I play piano. Good reception from Mike and Wendy, the plant waterers. Stringbean says she no longer wants to stay at Robert’s, wants to check into motel. Receive imprecise directions from a drunk Mike to a hotel on Tulane Ave., also invitation to stay at their place. No, Stringbean wants to stay in a motel. We head back to Robert’s to get the car. Robert more accommodating, explains he meant no insult to music, explains that when he is sober he is edgy and obnoxious. Although Mike and Wendy said we should come back to the Maple Leaf to see Little Queenie ($4 cover), Stringbean takes nap. Robert and I talk in kitchen. I tell him he talks in “absolutes.” Robert says Stringbean wants things like “family.”
Sunday – Robert takes us for a walk to Tulane and Audubon Park. The way to get any kind of gig in the city, according to Robert, is to have a “story line.” Everybody’s a talker in New Orleans, even more of a talker than Robert, says Robert. Sweet Mama Stringbean buys beer at K & B. Rest up. Late that night she tells me she thinks she might be pregnant.
Monday morning – While Robert is at his typing job at Tulane, Stringbean and I go to the Delta Women’s Clinic for rabbit test. Women rude, “only like you if you want an abortion,” Stringbean says. We go to Tulane and Loyola to look at job postings. Stringbean calls back clinic from pay phone at K & B on Oak and Carrollton. Positive results. Sweet Mama cries. When she settles down she has me take snapshot of her holding the phone and smiling. Go back to Robert’s apartment. Robert really excited and happy at news of Stringbean’s pregnancy. Watch Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Robert makes jokes about kids banging on the piano in the movie. Remembers things he and his brother did: overflow bathtub, dare each other to drink soapy water. That night Stringbean and I go see James Booker at the Maple Leaf. Try to think of kids’ names.
Tuesday – Work at job applications in the morning, Delgado college, Tulane Funds Corporation. Sweet Mama Stringbean says she had a nightmare about pregnancy – idea of parasite. Sweet Mama takes nap. That night Stringbean and I have steaks for supper, Robert sticking to beans and rice. Robert and I talk in kitchen. He takes out guitar for first time, plays “Kind Hearted Woman,” “Terraplane Blues.” “I like a place where the paint is crumbling,” he says. That night watch first part of Gone With the Wind. Joke about how they will cut the film for commercials, “milk this one out.”
Wednesday – Work again at applications in the morning. Try to call agents. Go to University of New Orleans in the afternoon. Buy 2 lbs of shrimp at Seafood City on Broad St. As Sweet Mama Stringbean walks about town, complains that jeans are too tight. Tries to buy new pants at Thrift City, depressed at buying pants at second hand store without being able to wash them. Stringbean takes nap. Robert and I go to Cooter Browns. He says he doesn’t want a woman who “gets underneath his mind.” When we get back, Sweet Mama says she ate burnt bread, needs charcoal in diet. For supper have shrimp, beans, and rice, first and only meal with Robert. Fart and belch and watch second half of Gone With the Wind.
Thursday – Sweet Mama Stringbean and I do laundry. Clothes irreparably wrinkled. Stringbean gets on my case for “liking dirt.” Return to Robert’s, arguing vehemently. Get back in car, I try to take Stringbean someplace clean. Start driving around aimlessly. Sweet Mama has craving for filet mignon. End up at restaurant on St. Charles, order stuffed cabbage and oyster sandwich. Start driving around again. Down Tchoupitoulas. St. Augustine waterfront “dirty.” Head up Canal St, down Rampart, past Armstrong Park, up Broad to City Park. Up to Lake Pontchartrain. Upper-class neighborhoods. Back down Carrollton. Pass Canal Villerie. See nice looking supermarket. Inside I make crack about how clean it is. Stringbean explodes, rushes out. I plea for understanding. We go back in, buy round steaks. Return to Robert’s apartment, eat. That night go see Tuts Washington at Pontchartrain Hotel.
Friday – Sweet Mama Stringbean and I go to Bourbon St to look for souvenirs. Buy T-shirt that says “Mom and Dad came to New Orleans & all I get is this stinkin’ shirt.” Sweet Mama has reservation about the word “stinkin’.” Buy mug that says “Mama.” ET T-shirt. I moan about having to go through stores. Stringbean explodes on Bourbon St. Walk to Jackson Square. Open market. Check out ferry rides, but don’t go because Sweet Mama fears seasickness. I eat jambalaya on Prytania St. Back at Robert’s apartment, Shines and Edwards come by, say people are parking on median, threat of flood. Robert says not to worry about it. Robert and I in kitchen, while Stringbean takes nap.
Saturday – Go to Tulane for outdoor concert. Don’t realize til we get there it’s all punk. Find Robert in Audubon Park “blowing off bottle of wine.” Return to concert, Robert eager to meet women, has no success. Return to Robert’s apartment, Robert becoming irritable as stock of alcohol depletes. Gets Christian Science newsletter from mother in mail, tosses it angrily on the table. Robert and I decide to go to Maple Leaf, where there’s a piano, to play together “like the old days,” Sweet Mama Stringbean stays home. But Maple Leaf has new bartender, band is setting up, so no opportunity. Tipitina’s closed. Buy beer and drink in car. Robert says he’s living in the “wrong place, wrong time.” That night Stringbean and I go to Chinese restaurant. Back at Robert’s, watch Still the Beaver.
That’s pretty much all of the journal I find in the notebook. Scribbled on pages following the journal there are a number of drafts of letters to prospective employers that I wrote while on the trip. It might be worthwhile transcribing one of these here:
Thank you for your job description in response to my letter of application for the position of Director of the Writing Center and Basic Writing Instructor. The position is of great interest to me, and I believe my qualifications merit your attention.
The State University of New York at Binghamton granted me a Master of Arts degree in English in January 1982. During my year and a half residence at Binghamton, I worked as a teaching assistant while pursuing a general course of study.
One assignment of my assistantship was the position of tutor at the university’s Writing Center, a position that rendered me very familiar with the Center’s purpose and sensitive to its administrative procedures. In my perception, a director of a writing center has the primary responsibility to communicate its purpose to students and faculty, to oversee the tutorial program, and to keep a close check on its other operations and its resource materials.
Also under the assistantship program at Binghamton, I served as an Instructor of Freshman Compostion (Rhetoric 115). Although the students in my class were “advanced” in composition, I used the Basic Writing method of sentence-combining to help my students achieve economy and clarity in their writing styles.
My studies at Binghamton included a course in the Teaching of College Composition in which Mina Shaughnessy’s book Errors and Expectations was read and discussed. It would be an honor and a pleasure for me to work at a university, such as yours, that recognizes the value and importance of Shaughnessy’s work in a Basic Writing Program.
Further details of my teaching background appear in the resume that follows. Other application materials are available upon request.
Thank you for your consideration.
Sincerely yours,
Little Brother Montgomery
I find a bunch of other things I wrote down in the notebook after we returned to Rochester, which we had to do as I didn’t find any work in either New Orleans or Memphis. One of the things I find in the notebook seems to be a draft of a letter to a friend, in which I mention making $80 a week playing with Rochester’s foremost bluesman (see archived issues of Rochester Patriot newspaper), with whom I was immediately able to go back playing when we returned. In the letter I also talk about my previous job packing louvers at Luster Palace, which I couldn’t very well go back to because I had quit in a huff the summer before, having been reprimanded by the daytime supervisor, Charles P. Bailey, for reading a newspaper (even though there was a lull in work) while his bosses, Messrs. Keith, Starr, and Turpin were partrolling the floor (and Broncho Billy, the forklift operator, had made a big celebration of my giving my two weeks’ notice, affixing a calendar to the wall that said “Little Brother’s Countdown to his Last Day” and holding a party in the warehouse the day the last check was marked in). It’s hard to read my handwriting in the letter, which moreover is also very scrambled, but here are some of the things I wrote:
….Broncho Billy festooned the packing area with pages from the newspaper I had been reading, poured his stash of whiskey into our empty Coke cans, and we finished off the day delighting in the sight of Bailey’s bald head flushing red all afternoon with indignation…”What? There’s no gentlemen who work here!” Billy shouts back to Bailey, who had poked his head into the warehouse door, asking “How are things going back here, gentlemen?”….Billy twists in his bar stool [this must be at the Bijou House, the only drinking spot in town that still allowed Billy to enter, and where we must have continued our celebration after work], chews on his swizzle stick, then spills his whiskey as he stands up to say: “Jim Bowie, uh, Davy Crockett, those guys, not this phony are you going to fight or aren’t you? – that’s when I shoulda lived”….He whirls around as some customer heading for the door leaves only a nickel on the bar: “Is that all the tip you’re going to leave, you pilgrim!”….I ask him [apparently after he calms down] how Lars is doing, a 77-year old Swede who still worked part-time at the factory but had been out sick the last few weeks: “Lars! I love that guy. I hate that word, ‘love.’ But I love Lars”….
Also in the notebook are a number of addresses and job descriptions from colleges all over the country, which I wrote down in my continuing search for a job that I could raise a kid on. These are copied from the MLA job bulletin – it must be remembered that this was before the invention of the personal computer and the internet, so I had to go to a library, find the bulletin and read through it, then copy the information by hand. Following are just a few of the job descriptions I copied down:
Stetson U., English, Deland, FL 32720. Instructor of English. Sept. 1983 – June 1984. MA in Eng. required. (Intro. to Lit./comp?). Eddie.Foy, Sr, Chairman.
DeKalb announces full or part-time temporary emergency Freshman English Instructorship. Aug. 5, 1983. Contact: Fanny Brice.
McPherson C., McPherson, KS 67460. 2/3 or ¾ teaching position in composition. Abililty to teach freshman speech course helpful. Dr. “Fatty” Arbuckle, Vice-President Academic Services.
Mississippi S.U., Miss State, MS 39762. Possible temporary instructorship. MA, 1 year college teaching full or part-time. Letter & vita to Burns and Allen, Head.
Marymount Manhatten C., 221 E 71 St, NY, NY 10021. Humanities. Possible position for teacher of critical thinking. Oliver Hardy, Chairman, Div. of Humanities.
In the middle of the notebook I even find some newspaper clippings from the want-ads in a Massachusetts newpaper, apparently from when Stringbean and I paid a visit to her sister Alberta – a listing for technical editor, another for developmental editor (“Join the team that has established the ‘leading edge’.”) I also find directions to a school where I had gone for an interview: “East on Lamar – to Central – left – Paterson St. 3 or 4 mi. corner of Paterson and Wallace before railroad track – left Eng. building.”
Apparently in the notebook I also tried to keep up a little with the journal that I had begun on the trip to New Orleans, jotting down things in particular that Sweet Mama Stringbean told me about her pregnancy. But again my handwriting is pretty bad – the journal’s sporadic, my jottings scattered, and it’s apparent I wrote things down in a hurry:
Learn growing fetus cause of Sweet Mama’s copious and frequent farts – fetus expels waste through her gas. Pees, shits, and farts twice as much, fetus sensitive to music, sounds. Tells me about cutting farts in supermarket – two guys following her, tries to rush ahead of them quickly.
Sweet Mama’s favorite complaint: “Boy, I sure do feel fat!” said while sitting on the toilet. “But nature takes care of things,” she says, “Pregnant women fart a lot, but their noses are also clogged up.”
Stringbean tells me about lawn and house when she was a kid [this would be her mother’s house, where we were still staying]. Big tree, no sun for grass. Parents couldn’t afford grass seed. One year at school, bean shooters became a fashion. Kids shoot beans in yard, bean plants start growing. Ma says let them stay.
Stringbean comes with me job hunting. I start out driving. Woman with baby carriage almost walks out in front of us, Sweet Mama screams at me, punches me on shoulder, calls me “fuckin’ stupid” for not honking horn. Stringbean takes over driving. Parks, but parking hurts her inner organs.
Sweet Mama describes her image of the soul when she was a parochial student. Soul was clean white underwear with a head hanging on the line. “Spot your soul,” Stringbean imagined God taking bingo marker and splotching underwear.
I also find a passage written about Easter Sunday:
Told to look for my Easter basket, along with others. Watch Star Trek II on HBO. Lon [18 year-old son of the lady who lived next door] asking “who’s the bad guy?” Take Maggie for walk. Stringbean tells me what nauseates her. Lon told it’s time for him to go home. Ma goes to her room at 3, to sleep off pain of broken wrist. We have ham dinner. Ma mumbles prayer to herself. Eat delicious ham. All throughout meal I feel pressure of different outlooks between Ma and me, wish I could express my religious beliefs to her as freely as she expresses hers. We all praise dinner, cloves, sweet potatoes, pineapple. I eat hard boiled egg, crack pretty shell. After dinner, Ma tells us about her dream she had that afternoon. She is lying down in upstairs room, looking out window. Neighbors think she is staring at them. She tries to move away. Neighbors still scorning her. She moves to middle of room. Then hearing footsteps coming up the stairs, shouts out “Mom!” Stringbean and I tell her about hearing her moan in her sleep at night. Stringbean asks her if the room in the dream is the one upstairs. “No,” she says, “it was just an upstairs room.”
I also find something I wrote about visiting Lon one afternoon:
Lon invites me over for cake. Tells me he’s been singing, doing exercises, growing a goatee. Says everyone resembles someone in the Bible. He looks like Joseph. His portrait looks like Jesus. Gives me garbled account of Jewish, Christian, Greek history, American TV, Christopher Reeves, Krypton, Karen Carpenter, Mary and Joseph, John the Baptist. He tells me about the door at RPC. “It was the Door of David.” “Yes,” I reply, “it resembled the Door of David, but it wasn’t really the Door of David.” “Yeah,” he says, “it resembled it.” “Look at this cane I found,” he says, “it’s the Staff of Joseph.” “Well,” I say, “it looks like a staff. But it’s just a cane.” “Yes,” he says, “it’s just a cane.” “The things on TV,” he declares, “some of it isn’t true.” “That’s right, Lon.” He tells me he’s shrinking, then argues with his mother about his weight, about eating food, about her babying him when he soils his trousers. She tells me while he’s out of the room that she’s never told him about Will’s death because that would upset him. He comes back into the room, wearing a robe and imitating Father Fitzgibbon.
Then I find these notes about some temporary work I took while still looking for a full-time job, work that involved a crew of about four of us moving office furniture from a warehouse to a bank:
1st day. Elevator breaks down first thing, everyone cheers, hugs each other, “Alright!” Sit in warehouse. Guys fondly recall other places they worked where there was no work to do. One guy telling stories about army days, parachute not opening, He finds rolled-up carpet, makes a “fit pillow” so he can lie down and sleep. Talk about eatin’ pussy, women able to go all night, Richard Pryor joke, “niggers brag how many times they can go, hell I can go for 5 minutes then I need a good 8 hours sleep and a bowel of wheaties.” Someone finds sign among office stuff that says “More Breaks,” laughs, says we should put that up as a protest sign. “Arizona, I don’t like Arizona,” the guy everyone’s been calling Stepin says, “got picked up there with a credit card, ended up in the penitentiary.” Start talking about Mother’s Day, when is it coming up? I say it was just this past Sunday. Everyone laughs: “Not that Mother’s Day! We’re talking about the day the welfare checks come!” Joke some more about sitting around. Foreman, Al, arrives, says we’re done for the day. “Shit, we’re not even getting paid for a full day!” “It’s a nice day,” Al says, “You can go home, have a beer.” “What if you don’t have no money for a beer?”
2nd day. Elevator’s fixed. Load up truck. Al says we’ll have to drive to bank building, gives directions, next to unemployment office. “Well, that’s a good place,” Stepin says, “Cuz as soon as we’re done here, we’ll be going there.” Pile in car. Properly introduced to Stepin Fetchit (“You don’t want to hear his full name, cuz you’d be listening to it all day”), Man Tan, and Bert. Someone takes out a joint. Asked if I smoke I say I “haven’t in a long time.” Bert: “That usually means they haven’t.” Pass by liquor store, stop, pick up fifth of vodka. Drive around looking for place to park. Stepin says, “Police picked me up last night for robbing Bell’s. That’s why I was late for work this morning.” Man Tan imitates honky policeman: “Jesus fuckin’ Christ. Didn’t listen to my fuckin’ warning, didja? Fuckin’ A.” Bert says he’s tired too, had put cocaine on his cock and was “up all night.” Stepin tells me he usually sells dope for a living, “not just nickel bags either.” He gives me his assessment of our foreman, Al. “Al’s a cool dude. You don’t have to worry about him, don’t have to watch out what you’re doin’.” “Hey,” Man Tan says from the front seat, “What you doin’ with that bottle there? Pass it back up.” We swing by liquor store again. I end up paying for second fifth of vodka. Joke about eating pussy, getting a lot of pussy. “Okay,” Man Tan says, “we just going to drive around all day tellin’ lies to each other?” We find office building. Stepin and Man Tan go on the truck, yell out to women pedestrians, “Hey, baby, you busy for lunch?” Al catches Stepin doing this. “Okay, Stepin,” he says, “You’re out of here.” “What?” “You’re fired.” Stepin bounds off down sidewalk, looking back at Al over his shoulder.
On other pages of the notebook I find more drafts of application letters, addresses, names, and phone numbers. I even find an address, cost information, and a schedule I wrote down for a short course of study, taken to further my job prospects, for a Certificate of Mixology (ultimately unused) at the Orpheum Bartending School. Then on another page I find the address for the place where I was finally to get a “real” job, doing Henry Miller’s least favorite kind of work: Metro Monotype, 360 North St. (The president of the company, Mr. Mayer, said he liked my “calm demeanor.”) Coinincidentally this typsetting firm (mostly setting advertising copy, from Kodak and other firms, but also composiing the type (theme song for Twilight Zone here) for Audubon and Gourmet magazines) was only a few doors down from where I had been playing music at Ruth and Irv’s Astrological Fish and Steak House (though that place had closed and Rochester’s foremost bluesman was now trying out other venues, the K and T Tavern, Zett’s Bar and Grill, the Palm Gardens, BK’s Lounge). Apparently I was still in a journal-writing frame of mind when I started my new job, for I find these few scribblings:
Ray [the proof copier] apparently starting to feel comfortable enough with me to show me gun he brings to work with him. Says he also owns a 40/57, just like the barrel caliber used to slaughter buffalo and Indians by Custer. Margaret [early-morining proofreader, originally from Georgia, whose shift partially overlapped mine] tells me she’s a ghost nut, feminist, has lawsuit against Metro Monotype, battalion of women’s quotes around her desk. “The TVA was the best thing for Georgia’s battle with Georgia Electric.” Billie [the second early-morning proofreader] she tells me is a grandmother, saddled with babysitting – “Fortunately, I’m not.” Judy [night proofreader], aspirations to become a “mark-up man,” warns me about Margaret, whom she calls Almira. Tells me about time Almira turned on her, called her “whore” etc., heard throughout entire office. Tells me Billie also has lawsuit against Metro Monotype. Women snooping through trash. Advice: “Don’t tread on Almira’s plantation.”
That’s all I find about my job at Metro Monotype, though I worked there for 4 years and certainly could have written more about it. My guess is that perhaps I was now too busy to keep up with my journal on a regular basis, having two jobs (and eventually a third, for I did finally find some part-time work as a writing instuctor, teaching a night course per semester in the adult education department at the Paramount Institute of Technology and reading papers on operating an “extruding” machine and the like – my supervisor, Marlene, told me many years later, when I was soliciting a reference letter from her, that she had principally hired me because I “didn’t mind that she smoked cigarettes”). Coincidentally, as I’ve been persusing my notebook I’ve also been reading Ethel Water’s autobiography, His Eye is on the Sparrow, a book, published by the Jazz Book Club of London, given to me along with about a dozen others by Basil, a typesetter from England (whose speech I had the damnest trouble understanding), who apparently collected these when he was young and was now in a position in his life to start pitching things out of his house. It’s taken me about 27 years to get around to reading Ethel’s autobiography (co-written with Charles Samuels), but I’m glad I finally have. It’s chock full of information about a singer who began her career at a time when to perform “St. Louis Blues” on stage you had to get written permission from the publishers Pace and Handy (as a musician I can especially relate to the description she gives, at the nadir of her career in the late 40’s, about playing at a bar in Philly where she has to compete with the sound of two televisions blaring). But for as much detail as she gives about her life, there’s also a lot she remains silent about, which creates a curious effect (the same thing happens, for example, reading Miles’ autobiography): behind the images stirred up by the words, I can almost hear, just short of perceptible, but still quite distracting, the buzzing of the shimmering unsaid. (By the way, as I write this, Stringbean’s gone to Jersey to help the victims of Sandy, her fifth hurricane with the Red Cross. The Boy fared okay during the storm – when the subways were still down, CBS picked him up in a limousine to take him to work. Jazz and Matt lost power for only a short time, Jazz grateful that Matt was well prepared with a generator, flashlights, etc. And I might as well mention this – just days before her employment ran out, she finally found a job: no longer in banking, but at a shop that sells snowboards, where she can keep her hair dyed blue; she’s also picking up photography gigs at weddings.)
It’s striking to find I didn’t write anything in the notebook about Jazz’s birth and her early years. But again, I’m sure it was that I was too busy, not only with work but with Jazz herself. Once I found a full-time job, we immediately moved out of Ma’s house to a two-room apartment (I find some notes about moving truck rentals: “U-Haul, 11 ft., $389 + tax & deposit, recommend 2 weeks reservation,” “Ryder, 12 ft., $349, $100 deposit, $32 insurance, $100 at least 3 days in advance,” “Jartram 12 ft., can’t let it go one-way unless it is over $600). My notebook might even have been packed away in a box or gotten mislaid for a while, plus I can’t remember anywhere in that apartment I could have gone to to write anything down. Also, we brought along with us a Camcorder that Stringbean’s father had bought before he died, an early cumbersome model, and a rarity at the time, which I’m sure supplanted my notebook for a time (those dozens of videotapes are now in a bookcase in the living room). The remaining entries I find in my notebook were all apparently written at the house which we could, after a year at my full-time job (and with the help of a $5,000 gift from my parents for a down payment), afford to buy, and where I even had a little room for myself where I could supposedly go off and write things. One of the things I find are some notes I wrote down about Stringbean being pregnant, but this time (considering the entries around it) it’s apparent she’s pregnant with the Boy (note that, whereas before I used the word “fetus,” I now use the word “baby”):
Sweet Mama Stringbean growing plump, baby active inside her. She explains how it steps on her bladder, first slightly to suggest need to pee, then little harder, finally both feet on bladder. Wakes her up to pee 5 times a night. Stringbean cute in maternity blouse, long skinny arms flopping, looks like toad.
I find this note I wrote about Stringbean doing the wash on a Saturday:
I wake up to sound of Sweet Mama doing wash in used washer. I go play piano for hours. She has me help hang up wash. I go back to piano, she tells me to try to unclog bathtub. Calls me to lunch. Begins complaining about washer, having to bail out water, squeezing clothes five times to rinse, then about the clog in the bathtub, bee in the window, hot day. She throws pepper shaker, then smashes dish and eggs all over the kitchen, runs into the bedroom, says she wishes to die, claws her face. Afterwards, embarrassed.
Then there’s this little entry I wrote down about Stringbean taking care of her mother one weekend and having a fight with her sister Bessie:
Ma, exerting herself getting ready for garage sale prompted by Ida’s move to Texas, strains her back. On the way to some wedding with Bessie, tells Bessie to take her back home. Rationalization: “Well, God didn’t want me to go to that wedding.” Ma totally incapacitated. Feels better couple days later, but running up and down stairs, strains back again. Stringbean goes to help her out, empty her bedpan, feed her, etc. Bessie calls on Sunday. “Oh, I’m tired today,” she tells Stringbean, “We were up at the lake all day. How was your weekend?” Stringbean tells her she was helping out Ma. “Oh, I’ll pick up some eggs and coffee,” Bessie says. Stringbean waits around half the day, finally goes to grocery store herself, comes back as Bessie is finally arriving, launches into her. “Oh, fuck you,” Bessie replies, “I’m leaving.” But she turns around to “justify herself.” I physically lead her out the door. “If you don’t want me intruding, call me,” she tells Stringbean. “You’re intruding now,” I tell her.
I also find that for some reason I jotted some notes down about Buddy Bolden. Buddy had figured more prominently in my life a couple years earlier, the year Stringbean and I worked as apartment superintendents and he and I were playing in a band led by the notorious Robert Jr. Both guys appear in a photograph of the band I have hanging on my wall (which is up pretty high and not visible from the office chair). Posed in Buddy’s living room, Buddy stands in the back holding his trumpet and Robert Jr. sits in the middle with a National steel guitar on his knee. A bottle of Jack Daniels sits on the piano. Though Buddy played trumpet in the the band, he made violins for a living. Somewhere on his living room wall is a shotgun that Buddy twice greeted everyone with at band practice, warning everyone that he was going to kill himself and threatening to kill anyone who tried to stop him, and which shotgun Robert Jr. twice had to wrestle away from him. The band, which Robert Jr. had dubbed the 12th Street and Vine Blues Band, was rather successful at the beginning, but bookings dwindled as fights among Robert Jr.’s friends would erupt at the gigs, with Robert Jr. himself joining in, and because he would argue with bar owners over the amount of whiskey he had drunk (at one gig where the audience was calling out for “Hootchie Cootchie Man” or some such song, and I tried to prod our bandleader into playing it, saying “the audience wants to hear this song,” Robert Jr., falling into the mike, blurted “Fuck the audience”), and because a series of drinking and driving convictions forced Robert Jr. to spend several months of weekends in the city jail. On these gigs also, Buddy would only last for about a set, and he could usually be found at the end of the night slumped somewhere in a chair, his trumpet being kicked around on the floor as people walked out. The last gig of the 12st Street and Vine Blues Band was in Naples, NY, after which Robert Jr. sold the Fender Rhodes I used for the gig out from under me (I had given it to him for safekeeping because Stringbean and I had wrecked our car hitting a deer on the way to the gig) and went on the lam to avoid a drug conviction. Eventually Robert Jr. ended up in New Orleans, where he became an infamous busker, and even met up with my friend, Robert, who periodically reported to me with complaints about Robert Jr.’s sloppy guitar playing, hopelessly addictive personality, and fights with his girlfriend, Minnie. At the time I wrote these notes I think that’s where Robert Jr. was. Buddy I hadn’t seen in a while, but for some reason he had started calling up Stringbean a lot. He was now operating a violin factory, where Stringbean, although she was not then playing the fiddle for money, sometimes got her instrument repaired. I think at the time I wrote these notes, the newspaper had just run a feature article on Buddy’s factory (notes follow in next comment box):
Buddy on 4th of July [I can’t remember now if this was the 4th of July when poor Jazz, just a little under two years old, spent the whole fireworks display crying in fear under a blanket) – brags about drinking, boasts about not drinking. Tells story about dock owner shooting through boat. Drives us to fireworks, “I know the best way there.” Talks about success: “Sometimes you just get tired of people coming up and congratulating you.” On way to fireworks, pontificates on how hard it is for our generation, nuclear threat, high divorce rate. Says he misses Marie [his ex-wife], says he’s grateful to be rid of her.
8/16 – Buddy calls Stringbean. Tells her she is the only one he can talk to because she was once famous too [referring to the publication several years earlier of her two books, Bow Wow and Meow, which by then were probably already out of print]. Says fame and success a burden, forfeits artistic aims for factory production (although factory gave attention to artistic aims). Talks about loan he is getting. Says to Sweet Mama, “If there’s anything you want, just let me know.” Sweet Mama says, “Well, a new washer and a dryer would be nice.” “Well,” Buddy replies, “if you ever need a credit reference, you can use my name.”
On the same day, 8/16 (year?), I also apparently felt compelled to write down this dream that Stringbean told me she had:
8/16 – Sweet Mama dreams that street cleaner comes by us in parked car. She tells me to roll up window, but I don’t in time, and consequently we get sprayed.
How pathetic this notebook is – haphazard, evanescent, fluidbounded. And again, I can’t believe I didn’t write anything down in it about Jazz, or anything about the Boy either. What was I trying to accomplish with it? What was my purpose? I suppose I have the excuse that I was very busy – but what it comes down to, I think I’ve now learned, is simply a lack of discipline, a failure to commit myself to writing in it everyday. Compare it to my present journal, whose regularity, if nothing else, merits, I believe, public attention and which makes Walks with Mway, if nothing more, the best dogwalking and see-what-my-dog-can-do blog on the Web. As I leaf through the old notebook, memories of things I didn’t write down in it keep popping up (the funny frowns Jazz would make when we accidentally banged into her crib, Stringbean taking Jazz and the one-year-old Boy to Burger King and throwing french fries on the windshield to attract the birds, Jazz’s first simile -- when she compared Maggie, standing in her way, to the gates we put up in the doorways (“Maggie yike gake”)). Of course these are things I remember (and shared memories with Stringbean) – but why didn’t I write them down in the notebook? There appears to have been a difference in criteria held between my memory cells and my writing hand regarding things. As best as I can tell, if something a little out of the ordinary happened and I wanted to remember it but thought I was likely to forget it (given I had some free time and the notebook was handy), I put it down there.
One of these things is something I wrote down about playing at Zett’s Bar and Grill (and about the only thing I wrote about the gigs I was doing then). This is indeed an example of something I was likely to forget -- and if I now remember some of the details without the help of the notebook, it might be only because around this time Stringbean, while rifling through my wallet for some cash, found a pack of rubbers there and forced me to quit playing with Rochester’s foremost bluesman:
….She tells me she hates her name, Edith, and says I look like David Bowie Meanwhile guy who’s been praising my piano playing follows me, taunting me to do more Jerry Lee Lewis antics. She asks me to buy her a drink. I tell her I have no money, and ask her to buy me one. She says “what will you give me in return?” Guy doing air piano and demonstrating Jerry Lee Lewis overhears this and says, “Dick! Tell her you’ll give her some dick!”….
The ellispses above shows that I wrote some more details down about what happened there, but this is all I want to relate right now, and anyone who wants to know more will just have to consult the original source, the little red Mead 3 subject notebook – which I should now toss into the trash, but which, because I have trouble throwing anything out, I’m just going to put back in the toy box where I found it. This is the toy box that sits under my office desk, with a broken top, which I think Sweet Mama long ago originally made herself to keep the kids’ toys in, but which I now keep a bunch of papers in, most of which say who knows what? But before I put the notebook back in there, there’s one other thing I find in there that I want to relate. This is something that Stringbean told me around the same time about her friend Susie and her husband, Butterbeans, the incident that brought about the break-up of their marriage:
Stringbean tells me that Butterbeans bought some flowers for Susie this past Valentine’s Day. Susie, stunned by this rare act of thoughtfulness on the part of Butterbeans, asks him, what made him think to get her flowers? He tries to put her off, but she keeps prodding. Finally, after days of bugging him about it he gives in and says, “well, if you really need to know, Susie, I was getting some for this girl I’ve been seeing and I thought maybe you’d like some too.”
WASHINGTON (AP) — As questions swirl about the extramarital affair that led to the resignation of CIA Director David Petraeus, the retired general and his biographer, Paula Broadwell, have been quiet about details of their relationship. However, information has emerged about the woman who received the emails from Broadwell that led to the FBI's discovery of Petraeus' indiscretion.
A senior U.S. military official identified the second woman as Jill Kelley, 37, who lives in Tampa, Fla., and serves as an unpaid social liaison to MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, where the military's Central Command and Special Operations Command are located.
In a statement Sunday, Kelley and her husband, Scott, said: "We and our family have been friends with Gen. Petraeus and his family for over five years. We respect his and his family's privacy and want the same for us and our three children."
The military official who identified Kelley spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to publicly discuss the investigation. He said Kelley had received harassing emails from Broadwell, which led the FBI to examine her email account and eventually discover her relationship with Petraeus. The FBI contacted Petraeus and other intelligence officials, and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper asked Petraeus to resign.
(There are a couple other things I find written down in the notebook that I have not transcribed here. One is the things Stringbean told me about a guy she worked for one summer who owned an ice cream truck business. During the winter off-season, he would drink heavily and talk to the TV: “asking Dick Cavett if he saw his ex-girlfriend in New York.” There are also a bunch of notes I made about Stringbean and her sisters, particularly Ida, making the discovery that Ma was (at least) half Mohawk Indian – a fact that none of them knew before and that even Ma didn’t know herself. But my notes about this are very brief and preliminary – and this is a story that Stringbean and her sisters should tell themselves. I’m now putting the notebook back in the toybox.)
A few more memories of Jazz’s birth and early years evoked by looking through the notebook and whose omission from that notebook I now want to make up for by writing some of them down here: the romper-room-like Lamaze classes Stringbean and I took and our meetings with a midwife in preparation for her birth, the football-game-like atmosphere in the ambulance when the day finally arrived (the midwife was stranded somewhere with a dead car battery) as the paramedics and I shouted to Stringbean to “Push, push, push,” the sensation of “choked-up” feelings in my throat whenever I held Jazz against my chest, her first cold shortly after I looked into her crib one day to see why she was bawling and I accidently dribbled snot from my own runny nose into her open mouth, the pleasant trips to a sunny doctor’s office (I don’t remember worrying about medical bills so I must have had medical insurance from work) where one of the nurses was this cute woman who used to come to Rochester’s foremost bluesman’s gigs, little Jazz shaking with fright like a cartoon character before the big expanse of Lake Ontario when we took her up there to look at it at Charlotte Beach, our weekend walks in Ellison Park with Maggie where one winter afternoon we took her sledding and suddenly, with Stringbean and I staring with open mouths, she took off on the sled on her own down a big hill, Jazz clutching an ice cream cone for an hour as she gamboled with other children when we went to watch the municipal authorities tear down a water tower, the cone still largely intact and ice cream dripping all over her hand after all that time, the time at the supermarket when I pulled on Jazz’s arm to keep her from grabbing something and I felt a ligament move and I feared I broke her arm and when I found Stringbean in another aisle and told her this Jazz started holding her arm staight out to her side and swinging her forearm back and forth and kept doing this until we got home and Stringbean called the doctor who told us to distract her by letting her play in the bathtub where finally her “broken” arm was suddenly “miraculously” healed – but you see (or maybe you can’t see), putting these memories down in words fails to convey all the connotations and meanings that the memories hold themselves, as my memories in the context of our lives – let the memories speak for themselves I’m inclined to say, to paraphrase Miles’ famous statement about music (although if his music hadn’t been preserved on records, so it could speak for itself, I’m sure he would have complained all his life that “the critics should be saying something about this shit I’m playing”).
“--‘Twould be a pity, Trim, quoth my uncle Toby, thou shouldst ever feel sorrow of thy own – thou feelest it so tenderly for others. – Alack-o-day, replied the corporal, brighening up his face – your honour knows I have neither wife or child – I can have no sorrows in this world.” from The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, this passage appearing shortly after Walter Shandy learns that his newborn son’s nose has been crushed by Dr. Slop’s forceps. This novel I’ve taken from my shelf and am reading again after some 37 years and, by the way, has, what might be for some readers, the most exciting ending of any novel ever written.
I would like, with your kind leave, Madam – to record one more memory, this one involving both my kids – although betwixt the memory per se and the words used to draw it out it may be impossible to say which is which – but no mind. When I was yet a young father, the kids yet young kids, I would oftimes, after a long day of toil in the offices of whomever I was in employ, come home and, Stringbean occupied with her pan of chops, engage in some sort of game with the tots. --- Let’s play AGENT! they would cry. -- See, then, the scout for talent, with his New York accent, -- calling to the children to audition their various showbiz skills, -- sing a song, dance a dance, tell a joke, – the outcome of the game being this – the Agent, overcome by the talent on display, would start dancing madly, singing hysterically, laughing deliriously, himself, until, collapsing on the sofa, he cried out – Enough! Enough! Where’s my cigar? – Or, see the Japanese wrestler YAK-A-DA -- grunting a continuous stream of Japanese-like nonsense -- YAK-A-DA AH-MA-KA JAH DA-KA YAH AH-DA-KA-MA – tossing the children (particularly the Boy) around on the bed. As the children grew, and their intellects expanded, we abandoned these pastimes of my own meagre invention, and ventured into the amusements of the great authorities – the esteemed Parker Brothers and their game of MONOPOLY, the renown Milton Bradley, genius behind the GAME OF LIFE. – ‘Tis this last game I wish to focus upon now.—Your worships are no doubt familiar with the rules and goals of LIFE – the player pushes a miniature replica of an automobile along a segmented pathway, amidst mountains and fields, his moves determined by a spin of a dial, his fortunes dependent upon the instuctions of the square his carriage lands on – his worthy goal to complete a career and finish his life at MILLIONAIRE ACRES as the WINNER, with an accumulation of wealth greater than any of his opponents. – Permit me, your reverends, to stare a moment into the vast dimness of my gray matter – The countryside spreads out before us, flanked by bank notes in dominations up to $100,000 -- we each have our car, our salary, a peg in the hole to represent our self, another for our spouse, ‘tis my turn again to spin.-- The pointer stops at 3 – ONE, TWO, THREE --- what pecuniary transaction shall unfold now? – I read aloud: Add a child or collect $4,000 – Mmmmm, I ponder, looking around at my children. --- You, dear Sir, will understand the choice I eventually make, for in the game a child is but a liability, a debit on the balance sheet, ‘twill not spur me to Millionaire Acres but merely drag me towards Poor Farm, and there is no such thing as death and inheritance in this realm – But, Madam, you frown -- Why, Madam? – What do you expect, except I play my best? ‘Tis but a game, and an opportunity for the children to learn a lesson, to play always to one’s advantage – Add a child or collect $4,000? – I say aloud, casting my glance from pegbox to bank till, -- Besides, an irony inheres in the situation, the difference betwixt a choice made in life and one made in the game – ‘twould make a good jest-- But, you say, Madam, ‘tis a joke better made betwixt parents. – Madam, perhaps you are right. -- I announce my choice. – No, Daddy, cries out my daughter, add a child! You want to add a child! – I count out my cash. – No, Daddy! A child! –The Boy, slower in perception by his fewer years, now blubbers too. -- The heavens are astorm, the sky raucous with wailing, over our fair countryside.
You’re more than halfway through.
The best tutor of a child should be himself a child, sayeth Rousseau. – But also he sayeth, – Treat your pupil according to his years. -- Yet, as Erasmus reminds us, no one can properly till a field which he does not understand: a lesson, my greater understanding bound by duty upon it, seemed in order: the children could but gain by instruction upon two points, the difference betwixt life and a game and the goal of a game -- perhaps even a lesson upon the game of language itself was due. – ‘Tis but stupid obstinacy to have insisted thusly, you say, Madam. – But – quoth Rousseau again – let no importunity overcome your resolution; let the no! once pronounced, be as a brasen wall. – Stringbean (who did not play such board games with us, because once, when a child herself, she overturned a Monopoly board in anger) -- Stringbean – did you lower the heat on the stove, and come to my aid? – Or did you but shake your head and mutter – work this out amongst you, you three? – The dimness grows thickest here. Like breeches, their buttonholes unfastened, hanging loose, so hangs my memory. Certainly the sky must have calmed, the sun returned, its beams bent like golden cornstalks across our bountiful demense – The game continued, I believe, my children probably adding pegs to their cars as fortune allowed. -- And who passed the day of reckoning the richest in the land? -- No doubt he whose backseats were empty. – Did my children, thus, take my points? Did their understandings increase? Yet I cannot rid myself of the persistant ache that my actions worked some inadvertant long-term detriment upon their psyches. -- Who can flatter himself, sayeth Rousseau, he will be able entirely to govern the discourse and actions of those who are about a child? -- This coming Holiday, perhaps I will ask them, as well as Stringbean, what they remember (or they could respond hic et nunc, should they ever deign to peer here). But, though I hardly admire, if I can justify, the particular role I played in its creation – this memory is nevertheless one I cherish, as a memory of me and the children, -- its sole value, but for that reason, -- more valuable to me than all the money in the banks of Life and Monopoly combined.
Gun sales spike amid talk of new gun-control measures
by Liz Goodwin, Yahoo! News, The Lookout - 1 hour 24 minutes ago.
The talk of new gun control measures that has followed Friday's mass shooting in a Newtown, Conn., elementary school has gun owners rushing to the nearest store and picking up new weapons, according to gun store owners and state police background check information.
On Saturday, Virginia state police fielded 4,166 requests for background checks, a 42 percent increase from the same Saturday last year and the highest number of transactions received in a single day since the program was implemented in 1989. Sunday's 1,828 background checks in Virginia represented a 43 percent increase from a year ago. Colorado also set a one-day record for background checks on Saturday with 4,200, the highest number since the program began in 1999.
Paul Decker, the owner of Hunters' Heaven in Hayes, Va., said he saw a big spike in sales over the weekend, with many customers buying the AR type of rifle allegedly used in the Newtown shooting. Gun control advocates want AR and other semi-automatic rifles banned, returning to the Bill Clinton-era policy that was the law of the land from 1994 to 2004. Also flying off the shelves were high-capacity magazines and ammunition, over fears Congress could vote to limit them.
"The people that would normally buy a box [of ammo] are buying four or five boxes," Decker said.
Obama pressures Congress to shed ‘fiscal cliff’ ‘partisan war paint’
by Rachel Rose Hartman, Yahoo! News/The Ticket – 21 hours ago
President Barack Obama on Wednesday publicly pressured congressional Republicans to compromise before Christmas on a deal to avoid the "fiscal cliff," and used Friday's shooting in Newtown, Conn., to emphasize his point.
Obama was asked about progress on the fiscal cliff—the automatic spending cuts and tax increases set to go into effect Jan. 1 if a deal is not made—during a question and answer session at the White House. The Q&A followed the president's announcement that Vice President Joe Biden will head up an effort to respond to Friday's shooting with policy measures.
"If this past week has done anything, it should just give us perspective," Obama said. "Right now what the country needs is for us to compromise.
"If you peel off the partisan war paint, we should be able to get something done." He added that the deadline for action is fast approaching.
"I remain not only open to conversations, but eager to get something done," he said. "I’d like to get it done before Christmas."
Mexico’s ethnic Maya unmoved by 2012 “Armageddon” hysteria
by Alexandra Alper – Reuters – 2 hrs 36 mins ago
IZAMAL, Mexico (Reuters) - Thousands of mystics, New Age dreamers and fans of pre-Hispanic culture have been drawn to Mexico in hopes of witnessing great things when the day in an old Maya calendar dubbed "the end of the world" dawns on Friday.
But many of today's ethnic Maya cannot understand the fuss. Mostly Christian, they have looked on in wonder at the influx of foreign tourists to ancient cities in southern Mexico and Central America whose heyday passed hundreds of years ago.
For students of ancient Mesoamerican time-keeping, December 21, 2012 marks the end of a 5,125-year cycle in the Maya Long Calendar, an event one leading U.S. scholar said in the 1960s could be interpreted as a kind of Armageddon for the Maya.
Academics and astronomers say too much weight was given to the words and have sought to allay fears the end is nigh.
But over the past few decades, fed by popular culture, Friday became seen by some western followers of alternative religions as a day on which momentous change could occur.
Whoa: Physicists testing to see if universe is computer simulation
by Eric Pfeiffer – Yahoo! New/The Sideshow – Thu, Dec 13, 2012
Will you take the red pill or the blue pill?
Some physicists and university researchers say it's possible to test the theory that our entire universe exists inside a computer simulation, like in the 1999 film "The Matrix."
In 2003, University of Oxford philosophy professor Nick Bostrom published a paper, "The Simulation Argument," which argued that, "we are almost certainly living in a computer simulation." Now, a team at Cornell University says it has come up with a viable method for testing whether we're all just a series of numbers in some ancient civilization's computer game.
Researchers at the University of Washington agree with the testing method, saying it can be done. A similar proposal was put forth by German physicists in November.
So how, precisely, can we test whether we exist? Put simply, researchers are building their own simulated models, using a technique called lattice quantum chromodynamics. And while those models are currently able to produce models only slightly larger than the nucleus of an atom, University of Washington physics professor Martin Savage says the same principles used in creating those simulations can be applied on a larger scale.
"This is the first testable signature of such an idea," Savage said. "If you make the simulations big enough, something like our universe should emerge."
The testing method is far more complex. Consider the Cornell University explanation: "Using the historical development of lattice gauge theory technology as a guide, we assume that our universe is an early numerical simulation with unimproved Wilson fermion discretization and investigate potentially-observable consequences."
To translate, if energy signatures in our simulations match those in the universe at large, there's a good chance we, too, exist within a simulation.
Interestingly, one of Savage's students takes the hypothesis further: If we stumble upon the nature of our existence, would we then look for ways to communicate with the civilization who created us?
University of Washington student Zohreh Davoudi says whoever made our simulated universe might have made others, and maybe we should "simply" attempt to communicate with those. "The question is, 'Can you communicate with those other universes if they are running on the same platform?'" she asked.
The memory that I draw out above (it’s obvious I should have just let it speak for itself – I can’t believe I spent what must have been an entire month working on such a cock and bull parody – I could have -- I should have -- spent the time instead looking around in the stores for a new board game to play with the kids whenever they come around – or even better, I should have gone out and gotten myself an iPhone so I can play one of those word games that Stringbean is always playing with the kids – here it is Saturday, I have to work tonight, tomorrow – but there’s still a few shopping days left – will I go out? In that mess? I hardly think so – (Because I’m posting this comment beneath my entry for November 27, it could look like there’s plenty of time, but – even I get a little confused) -- I’ve looked around in our closets, and although I don’t find the game of Life, it’s amazing what board games I do find that have been sitting there for years untouched. Mousetrap. Barbie Queen of the Prom Game. Monopoly.com. Even Anti-Monopoly. I don’t even remember ever playing most of those games. If we wanted to, we could simply pull out Anti-Monopoly – that would be like a new thing. If I did go out, it would be just to get one of those baskets of sausages and cheeses. But how many malls and box stores would I have to go to find one of them? Forget it. Besides Stringbean always goes out and gets things, and this year because of the Boy’s work schedule and Jazz’s plans, we’re not getting together until after Christmas – plus Stringbean has made special plans for me and her on Christmas Day. -- What I really need to do is finish up with these back-comments on this blog before the end of the year, by Christmas Eve if possible.…
Work tonight, all day tomorrow – and late yesterday afternoon I was emailed a RUSH (all caps, of course) search on some pain-in-the-ass bank foreclosure – what do they expect me to do this Monday morning? -- And now Stringbean interrupts me – says she’s looking forward to receiving the books she ordered from Hamilton Books (I was suppose to pick out some for myself, but I guess I was too busy working on my parody), especially one in particular: some sort of CIA manual on picking locks. Something she says she always wanted to know how to do. Says now I can go out and buy her some lock-picking tools. Is she serious?
The memory that I draw out above (and then rudely interrupted with some loud news items I copy/pasted from the internet -- whch I’ve been doing all throughout my blog of course, to show occasionally the view from my computer window, but these items seem especially loud and irritating – like a television constantly on in the background – it occurs to me just now that these news articles are mostly from my publisher’s main competitor….
Plus I got to wash some underwear today, which I better do now….
The memory that I draw out above, as I’ve been wanting to say, puts me in mind of one of Dennis Dennehy’s songs. Let’s call Dennis, for the sake of this comment, Gordon, after the musician he most models himself upon, Gordon Lightfoot. Now it’s true that long ago, when Stringbean and I were still a young couple, and moving from one place to another, that I once threw out all her Gordon Lightfoot albums (as she reminds me every now and then), and I probably said something to her like “why do you listen to this shit?” – and that, moreover, Gordon – that is, our Gordon – has been told by Stringbean that I did this. But in my defense, all those records were scratched I’m pretty sure (I can’t believe she would have let me throw them out otherwise) and, furthermore, my assessment of Lightfoot was probably based solely on his hit record “If You Could Read My Mind,” which was at one time played to death on the radio Now our Gordon’s music, like Lightfoot’s, is more in the British Isles/North American folk tradition than the jazz and blues tradition, and the lyrics he writes, sentimental, though witty and clever, are neither modernist (“like the beat, beat, beat of the tom tom) nor postmodernist (“I read the news today, oh boy”) – nevertheless I like Gordon’s songs (you don’t have to like something in order to like it). And the song I’m put in mind of, my favorite of his, called “For Caitlin” – well, it’s a song that if I had any real sense I should have written something like it myself sometime in my life – and for this one song alone, Valley Magazine should sometime have put Gordon’s photo on the cover of one of its issues and done a full two-page article about him. I’m transcribing the lyrics from an audiocassette demo he made and gave a copy of to me back in the ‘90’s (the song also has some relevance to the – I suppose I should call it, novel – that will be making its appearance shortly in this blog. Also, I’d like to say, although I don’t know exactly what my point is: sometimes even Beckett’s characters find themselves saying something meaningful, and Monk often sticks very close to the melody, much closer than Miles frequently does, who however perhaps does not stray as far as Don Cherry, who exemplifies conspicuously that the melody is whatever you’re playing):
I just saw the sunlight dim,
Just saw the sunlight dim.
And I recall a mother’s words.
“My son,” she said to him.
“The world is not as we would wish,
Big fish eat all those little fish.”
I just saw the sunlight dim,
Just saw the sunlight dim.
I just heard the thunder roll,
Just heard the thunder roll.
And I recall a young man who
Believed in the light of a soul.
He thought love tamed this world,
That rainbow’s long faded [I can’t make out the lyrics here].
I just heard the thunder roll,
Just heard the thunder roll.
I just saw a girl child’s face,
A happy hopeful face.
The clouds give in now, the sun has won,
There is truth, there is beauty, to chase.
My dreams may be mostly behind me now.
Perhaps she’ll let me help her hunt hers down.
I just saw a girl child’s smile.
I’ll do my best to keep on awhile.
A few years ago, when Gordon and Judy (I’m calling Barb Judy for this comment) were over at the house for some sort of outdoor get together, and all our kids were here, and of course Natalie (Stingbean has changed her name to this since her last mention – as I have changed mine, although I don’t know what to), I told Gordon, as I’ve told him many times, how much I liked this song of his. He told me (most likely between stick throws) that he had written it when Caitlin was little, in anticipation of the day when she asked him the big question – not about sex, we both agreed, that question posed no difficulty (indeed, it’s a question kids never need pose to their parents) – but the question “what is it all about? – “what is life all about?” Gordon told me he looked forward to such a conversation with some trepidation, given the difficulty of the question, and that he wrote the song as some way of getting his thoughts together about it. Now Caitlin is nearly 30 years old – she lives even farther away than our kids do, being out in LA now for close to a decade, where she’s been trying to make it as an actor. “I’m still waiting to have that conversation,” is the last thing Gordon told me about the song.
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