9.10.2020 – ten hen remember

ten hen remember
24 karat goldie
thou shalt not covet

One weekend when I was a kid, my cousin Jim and his wife Ruth were visiting my family in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

How conversation turned to the 10 Commandments, I do not recall, but I DO recall what happened next.

My cousin Jim mentioned that he had come across a mnemonic device for remembering the 10 Commandments.

He got out this pamphlet with odd little drawings and catch phrases and walked us through it.

I grew up in a family of 11.

Most of my childhood memories involve a group of skinny blond haired kids with glasses running around.

This memory is no exception.

I can see us all gathered around my cousin at the kitchen counter, reciting the mnemonics in unison or one at if called and all of laughing and laughing.

It was every bit as silly as “The Memory Lesson” of John Cleese but it worked.

To this day, I can rattle off the phrases and even, with a little help, recreate the odd little drawings.

The mnemonic for the 10th Commandment came to mind today.

The phrase goes something like this:

10 Hen

Hen on an egg

The egg is labeled 24 Karat Goldie.

The hen is eyeing (with a dotted line) that 24 Karat golden egg.

10th Commandment.

This was about how in-depth the sketches were

Thou shalt not covet.

I don’t know about you but the Commandments always seem better in the King James English.

There were some other devices to the drawing to include the verse number, 17, from Chapter 20 of the Book of Exodus but I can’t remember that part.

But 10 hen, 24 Karat Goldie is chiseled into the bedrock of my brain.

The complete verse reads, “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour’s.”

To me, going through the 10 Commandments, Number 10 always seemed to be a bit of an add on to get to 10.

It just wasn’t up there with not killing, stealing or lying.

Then today, I read this passage in the story, “Come on kids, let’s get back to normal! (But listen: if gran dies, it’s your fault)” by Joel Golby.

Mr. Golby wrote, “What the Conservatives understand better than any party is that peculiarly English tendency to get quietly furious with anyone you perceive to be having an easier time than you.”

Mr. Golby was writing about the UK.

I have no problem swapping in ‘American’ tendency for ‘English’ tendency.

And when I made the swap I had to stop my day.

I had to stop my day as if I was hit with a brick.

It all was if the mists cleared and I saw it ALL clearly.

What was driving the fear and the pandemic concerns and the economic worries and the election reactions was the perception that somehow someone might have an easier time than me.

10 hen, 24 Karat Goldie swam up into my consciousness from the bedrock of my brain.

I look in a mirror?

What do I see?

Do I use the mirror to reflect myself?

Do I use the mirror to correct myself?

Just for fun here are the mnemonics as I remember them …

1 bun – budda on the bun – no other gods before me

2 shoe – hammer and chisel working on the show – make no graven image

3 Tree – Tree is filled with $ # @ ! % signs – Do not take the Lord’s name in vain

4 Door – Name on the door is S.A. BATH – Remember the Sabbath

5 Hive – Bee hive with mail box out front – on the mailbox is painted Mom & Pop – Honor thy parents

6 Sticks – pile of sticks like on a clock – sticks at Noon to Six – 2 to 8 and 4 to 10 – in the middle is a knife – Shalt not kill

7 Heaven – castle (as marriage) that is broken in half – do not commit adultery

8 Gate – thief with a mask looking at you through the gate – Shalt not steal

9 Pine – Christmas Tree with the block letters L I E wrapped up as presents – Shalt not Lie

10 Hen – Hen on a 24 Karat Gold egg – hen is eyeing that egg – Shalt not Covet

9.9.2020 – enchantment is cast

enchantment is cast

upon you by all those things

you don’t have need for

I finished up work on time last night and my commute home took as long as it took me to walk from the back room to the kitchen.

My wife was about to leave for the grocery store and I asked, ‘Can I come along?’

Working from home has it positives and I am not sure I am ready to sing the I miss the drive to downtown Atlanta blues, but aside from our walks I do not often leave home between Sunday and Saturday.

My wife looked at me like I was up to something.

I just wanted to get out.

“I just have a few things,” she said.

OK.

“You can’t ask for anything.”

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

OK.

And off we went.

A trip to the grocery store.

If you can separate it down to its parts, it is bizarre and amazing.

Eudora Welty wrote in her short story, “The Corner Store” or “The Little Store,” that “Running in out of the sun, you met what seemed total obscurity inside. There were almost tangible smells – licorice recently sucked in a child’s cheek, dill-pickle brine that had leaked through a paper sack in a fresh trail across the wooden floor, ammonia-loaded ice that had been hoisted from wet crocker sacks and slammed into the icebox with its sweet butter at the door, and perhaps the smell of still-untrapped mice.”

Kroger is a long way from the Corner Store of Ms. Welty’s Jackson, Mississippi.

Running in out of the sun, you are met with bright lights but still the tangible smells.

But the scope and breadth and width of all the available stuff is still there as well.

Ms. Welty wrote, “Its confusion may have been in the eye of its beholder.“

I also thought of Bill Bryson’s comments on a visit to the Liverpool Docks.

Mr. Bryson wrote, ” . . . gazing out on miles of motionless waterfront, it was impossible to believe that until quite recently – and for 200 proud and prosperous years before that – Liverpool’s 10 miles of docks and shipyards provided employment for 100,000 people directly or indirectly. Tobacco from Africa and Virginia, palm oil from the South Pacific, copper from Chile, jute from India, and almost any other commodity you could care to name passed through here on its way to begin made into something useful.” (Notes from a small island, London : Doubleday, 1995).

All the world was brought together for me here under one roof.

And my wife had already said, “You can’t ask for anything.”

So into Kroger we went.

Oreos from somewhere.

Giant apples.

Slabs of fish, and steak and ribs.

Coffees and teas from everywhere.

Fruity drinks and salty chips.

Frozen foods that covered any other type of eatable that wasn’t fresh.

Was there anything you could eat that wasn’t here?

Was they anything that I needed?

No, not really.

But as Ms. Welty wrote, “Enchantment is cast upon you by all those things you weren’t supposed to have need for.”

I was under an enchantment.

I wanted everything.

Kroger.

Where the world comes together just for me.

9.8.2020 – departing summer

departing summer
leafy shade prepared to fade
timely carolling

Adapted from September, 1819 William Wordsworth.

Departing summer hath assumed
An aspect tenderly illumed,
The gentlest look of spring;
That calls from yonder leafy shade
Unfaded, yet prepared to fade,
A timely carolling.

No faint and hesitating trill,
Such tribute as to winter chill
The lonely redbreast pays!
Clear, loud, and lively is the din,
From social warblers gathering in
Their harvest of sweet lays …

9.7.2020 – eternal whispers

eternal whispers
glooms, the birth, life, death, unseen
of flowers, thoughts, dreams

Adapted from the lines:

O THOU, whose mighty palace roof doth hang
From jagged trunks, and overshadoweth
Eternal whispers, glooms, the birth, life, death
Of unseen flowers in heavy peacefulness;

From the poem, Endymion, (Book I), by John Keats (1795-1821).

A famous poem in its time and beyond that time but today may be most identifiable by the poem’s first line, A thing of beauty is a joy for ever.

That is the line quoted by Willie Wonka or, Gene Wilder any way, when Mr. Wonka leads the troop of tourists up to the WonkaMobile.

I am also told that Julie Andrews, in the role of Mary Poppins, quotes the line after pulling a live potted plant out of her bag.

Endymion is the brain sick shepherd prince who ventures into the underworld in search of his love.

Today Endymion would not need to venture into the underworld to find the place where:

Eternal whispers, glooms, the birth, life, death
Of unseen flowers in heavy peacefulness;

Endymion would find that any where and every where he might travel in and over the world today.

In this time of the extended Month of March that has lasted from March to Labor Day due to the coronavirus, I feel the eternal whispers, glooms, the birth, life, death of not just unseen flowers but of any and almost all thoughts and dreams.

This is the era come back of Jimmy Carter’s Malaise Speech when Mr. Carter said, “all the legislation in the world can’t fix what’s wrong with America. What is lacking is confidence and a sense of community.”

Confidence?

Sense of Community?

Not just lacking but overwhelmed by the eternal whispers of glooms, the birth, life, death.

I am reminded if the old joke,”Why are New Yorkers so gloomy?”

The light at the end of the tunnel is New Jersey.

9.6.2020 – From Warren Harding

From Warren Harding
to now, evidence enough
to upset Darwin

Adapted from Henry Adams in his book, The Education of Henry Adams, when Mr. Adams, with his membership in THE Adams family of Massachusetts and his somewhat familial ownership of the concept of The United States if not in fact that his family DID create the country, said “The progress of Evolution from President Washington to President Grant was alone evidence enough to upset Darwin.”

What he would say today would have to be recorded between bouts of projectile vomiting but I have no doubt he would have something to say.