8.13.2024 – never known woman

never known woman
who could weep about her age
way men I know can

Well, the characteristic fear of the American writer is not so much that as it is the process of aging.

The writer looks in the mirror and examines his hair and teeth to see if they’re still with him.

“Oh my God,” he says, “I wonder how my writing is. I bet I can’t write today.”’

The only time I met Faulkner he told me he wanted to live long enough to do three more novels.

He was 53 then, and I think he has done them.

Then Hemingway says, you know, that he doesn’t expect to be alive after sixty.

But he doesn’t look forward not to being.

When I met Hemingway with John O’Hara in Costello’s Bar 5 or 6 years ago we sat around and talked about how old we were getting.

You see it’s constantly on the minds of American writers.

I’ve never known a woman who could weep about her age the way the men I know can.

From Interview: THE ART OF FICTION: JAMES THURBER.
Paris Review, 3 (Fall, 1955), 34-49. Illustrated

This snippet made laugh.

I could picture Thurber in his mid 50’s, sitting in a bar with Mr. Hemingway and Mr. O’Hara and that alone is a picture to make me smile.

And that they were worrying about how old they were getting and that Mr. Thurber thought it was funny to the point of saying “I’ve never known a woman who could weep about her age the way the men I know can,” is but itself funny enough to make me laugh out loud.

For sure Mr. Thurber, who was being interviewed for this interview by George Plimpton, was having a great time tossing off the names of Faulkner, Hemingway and O’Hara with the confidence that he COULD toss off these names.

(I am reminded of the a story of Hollywood Movie Director John Ford going on a duck hunt with Clark Gable and William Faulkner and the conversation got around to writing and Gable says to Faulkner, ‘Who are the best writers right now?” Faulkner replies, “Oh Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Steinbeck … and myself.” Gable says “Oh, Mr. Faulkner, do you write?” “Yes,” says Faulkner, “Mr. Gable … what do you do?” … The kicker is John Ford swore both were on the level.)

BUT I DIGRESS …

As a kind of post script to the James Thurber story, The Paris Review included this photo.

Notice the caption.

Notice it says CONSIDERABLY REDUCED.

By 1961, James Thurber was pretty much blind in both eyes.

One eye was damaged playing William Tell when he was a kid and the other eye went due to sympathetic eye syndrome.

When he died, EB White wrote in his New Yorker Magazine Obituary:

I am one of the lucky ones; I knew him before blindness hit him, before fame hit him, and I tend always to think of him as a young artist in a small office in a big city, with all the world still ahead. It was a fine thing to be young and at work in New York for a new magazine when Thurber was young and at work, and I will always be glad that this happened to me.

His mind was never at rest, and his pencil was connected to his mind by the best conductive tissue I have ever seen in action. The whole world knows what a funny man he was, but you had to sit next to him day after day to understand the extravagance of his clowning, the wildness and subtlety of his thinking, and the intensity of his interest in others and his sympathy for their dilemmas — dilemmas that he instantly enlarged, put in focus, and made immortal, just as he enlarged and made immortal the strange goings on in the Ohio home of his boyhood.

He was both a practitioner of humor and a defender of it. The day he died, I came on a letter from him, dictated to a secretary and signed in pencil with his sightless and enormous “Jim.” “Every time is a time for humor,” he wrote. “I write humor the way a surgeon operates, because it is a livelihood, because I have a great urge to do it, because many interesting challenges are set up, and because I have the hope it may do some good.” Once, I remember, he heard someone say that humor is a shield, not a sword, and it made him mad. He wasn’t going to have anyone beating his sword into a shield. That “surgeon,” incidentally, is pure Mitty. During his happiest years, Thurber did not write the way a surgeon operates, he wrote the way a child skips rope, the way a mouse waltzes.

Thurber looked in the mirror and asked I bet I can’t write today and then spit in the mirror and said I am going to write anyway.

And he did.

8.4.2024 – sailors expression

sailors expression
about weather: the weather
is a great bluffer

As long as there is one upright man, as long as there is one compassionate woman, the contagion may spread and the scene is not desolate. Hope is the thing that is left to us, in a bad time. I shall get up Sunday morning and wind the clock, as a contribution to order and steadfastness.

Sailors have an expression about the weather: they say, the weather is a great bluffer. I guess the same is true of our human society—things can look dark, then a break shows in the clouds, and all is changed, sometimes rather suddenly. It is quite obvious that the human race has made a queer mess of life on this planet. But as a people we probably harbor seeds of goodness that have lain for a long time, waiting to sprout when the conditions are right. Man’s curiosity, his relentlessness, his inventiveness, his ingenuity have led him into deep trouble. We can only hope that these same traits will enable him to claw his way out.

Hang on to your hat. Hang on to your hope. And wind the clock, for tomorrow is another day.

Letter to Mr. Nadeau, March 30, 1973. Letters of E. B. White, Revised Edition. Ed. Martha White. New York: HarperCollins, 2006.

For the first time this hurricane season, folks in the low country are been alerted to the possibility of water … lots of it.

We are are just miles from the Atlantic Ocean which is a lot of water to begin with.

We have roads that with signs that say, “Road Ends in Water.”

I puzzled over these signs for a bit, wondering why they didn’t say, “ROAD ENDS – 500 FT” until I figured it out that in an area with an 8 foot vertical tide, just WHERE the road ends is a matter of time and tide, but for sure, the road ends at the water.

Then a storm, though whether or not its a hurricane or a tropical storm, the weather people or the storm itself hasn’t made up its mind, is coming.

Storms bring storm surges or push more of the Atlantic Ocean up into the low country which is low as the name implies.

I do not worry a lot about storm surge, as I live in Bluffton, which as the name implies, is up on a bluff over the Maye River, it would take a storm surge of some 25 feet or more to get to me.

A storm surge of 10 feet on top of a high tide, would surely strand me here on the bluff as most of the local roads would be covered.

Then there is the coming rain.

Lots of it.

Then there is the malicious nature of this coming storm.

Though the folks who know don’t know what kind of storm it will when the storm is coming they do agree on two things.

One is that it is FULL of rain from the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

The other thing is that the storm will get here to the coast between Savannah and Charleston and … stop.

Not that the raining will stop but the storm will stop and for anywhere between the next 10 to 48 hours, rain of Old Testament Bible stories will fall on us from the heavens.

When you drive through the streets of old Charleston, intersections have depth gauges to show how deep the water can get.

Charleston is about 2 feet about sea level.

During high tide, you can hear water roaring through the storm drains just inches below the road beds.

Drop 6 inches of rain at high tide on Charleston and you can figure out why those depth gauges on intersections have a four foot scale.

On its website, the city of Savannah has posted a city map that show which intersections will be flooded.

Savannah is also on a bluff above the Savannah River but it also has a storm water sewage system that is about 100 years old.

Some schools are already closing for the day, Wednesday.

And all of this is speculation.

I have worked with enough weather people to know that nobody knows nothing when it comes to forecasting.

As Mr. White writes, the weather is a great bluffer.

But we all take warning.

And as Mr. White writes, I guess the same is true of our human society—things can look dark, then a break shows in the clouds, and all is changed, sometimes rather suddenly. It is quite obvious that the human race has made a queer mess of life on this planet.

I take heart both for the storm and the mess of life that the human race has made on this planet when I consider:

But as a people we probably harbor seeds of goodness that have lain for a long time, waiting to sprout when the conditions are right. Man’s curiosity, his relentlessness, his inventiveness, his ingenuity have led him into deep trouble. We can only hope that these same traits will enable him to claw his way out.

7.27.2024 – we collectively

we collectively
decided that every conscious
moment be filled

Adapted from this paragraph in the article, ‘Do you mind listening to that with headphones?’ How one little phrase revolutionised my commute by Hannah Ewens in the Guardian where Ms. Ewens writes:

Now it’s not just younger people polluting our public spaces with Joe Rogan interviews and biohacking how-tos – it’s everyone.

I don’t think people even realise they are doing this.

Somewhere along the line this became normal – almost certainly during the pandemic, when we collectively decided that every conscious moment had to be filled with visual and audio content, before we were told to return to society.

Let’s just say we’ve struggled.

I believe this because when I’ve asked people to turn their devices down, they make one of two faces: either they look as if they are rousing from a century’s slumber or appear shocked at themselves, as if they don’t know how they got to this moment.

I don’t think people even realise they are doing this.

Quiet.

Real quiet.

I am coming off a bout of the Covid.

My ears were so plugged, I couldn’t hear a thing but the fact that my ears were plugged didn’t come to mind until later.

I was up late late at night, reading, trying to come up with the energy to get up and go to bed and it came to.

It was quiet.

So quiet.

Deathly quiet.

A quiet I haven’t experienced in years.

If not electronic devices, I am near enough to traffic that the steady hum is the down beat to my life.

Surrounded by noise.

I talk about the time when you could go outside in the summertime and someone had the Detroit Tigers and Ernie Harwell playing loud enough to hear/

I started thinking about that.

Back then there were only so many options.

Now the options for audio are limitless.

And somewhere along the line this became normal – almost certainly during the pandemic, when we collectively decided that every conscious moment had to be filled with visual and audio content, before we were told to return to society.

I am reminded of Alice Tyler and her book, Accidental Tourist.

We join our hero, Macon, on a plane trip to New York.

Ms. Tyler writes:

On the flight to New York, he sat next to a foreign-looking man with a mustache. Clamped to the man’s ears was a head¬ set for one of those miniature tape recorders. Perfect; no danger of conversation. Macon leaned back in his seat contentedly.

He accepted nothing from the beverage cart, but the man beside him took off his headset to order a Bloody Mary. A tinny, intricate, Middle Eastern melody came whispering out of the pink sponge earplugs. Macon stared down at the little machine and wondered if he should buy one. Not for the music, heaven knows — there was far too much noise in the world already — but for insulation. He could plug himself into it and no one would disturb him. He could play a blank tape: thirty full minutes of silence. Turn the tape over and play thirty minutes more.

7.18.2024 – what new story heard

what new story heard
agreeable for telling
in conversation

Back in the day, Benjamin Franklin put together a club known as The Junto.

According to Wikipedia, The Junto, also known as the Leather Apron Club, was a club for mutual improvement established in 1727 by Benjamin Franklin in Philadelphia. The Leather Apron Club’s purpose was to debate questions of morals, politics, and natural philosophy, and to exchange knowledge of business affairs.

They Junto met on Friday nights and to get the debate started, Dr. Franklin put together a list of 24 starter questions.

Question number 2 asked, “What new story have you lately heard agreeable for telling in conversation?”

As this question asked about new stories, it should be no surprise that the Junto members realized they would need access to new books which led to the creation of the The Library Company of Philadelphia and libraries were established in America.

The Library Company of Philadelphia occupied the 2nd floor of what was called Carpenters Hall in Philadelphia.

In a room on the 1st floor of this building, the Continental Congress met and in 1776, signed the Declaration of Independence.

The Library Association is older than the United States.

Libraries and me have had a long association.

At Crestview Elementary School in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where I grew up, the library was where I had to spend ‘time-outs’ when my behavior in class made it desirable for the teacher for me to be someone where else.

In agreement with the Principal, I would spend 15 minutes or so by myself in the library.

Not a punishment and really, a bit of rewarding bad behavior, but it worked out for all those involved.

When I was 6 or so I got my first library card at the Creston Branch of the Grand Rapids Public Library.

But it was the summer of 1970, when I turned 10 that I got a new bike and the main branch of the Grand Rapids Public Library became available to me.

I would ride a route of back streets that required me to cross several busy streets and then navigate downtown Grand Rapids but I made it.

I would park my bike in the bike racks, didn’t need a lock back then and walk to the main entrance of the magnificent Grand Rapids Public Library Main Building.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but this building was pretty much brand new, having been opened in 1967.

Walking into the lobby in 1970, it still had that ‘new building’ smell.

The first thing that would hit was the air conditioning which, after my ride downtown, felt great.

It is hard to describe, but after getting downtown on my own, when I walked into that library I felt it was MY library.

Anyone else in the library was there at my sufferance.

Once in the library, there was a wall of double glass doors with the sign ADULT SECTION.

It would be a couple of years before I dared go through those doors if my Dad wasn’t with me.

When I could badger my Dad enough to take me downtown, he would go through those doors and then head upstairs to the Newspaper Room and read out of town newspapers while I looked at books.

When I had my books from the Youth Section, I felt confident enough to go into the Adult Section as I knew if someone challenged me, I could say I was getting my Dad.

BTW the Newspaper Room was in the original Main Building that had been built in 1904 and despite all their efforts, modern architects were not able to line up the floors of the new and old buildings.

To get to the old building, you took the stairs and then took a door off the landing to another inner kinda secret flight of stairs.

Just to know these stairs were there was pretty cool.

If you took the elevator, you would press the buttons with an R or 2R for the 2nd floor of the Ryerson Building, the original name of the main building and magically the elevator doors would open behind you.

As an aside, Mr. Ryerson of Chicago offered to build the library as a gift to City of Grand Rapids in memory of his pleasant memories of visiting family in Grand Rapids.

No one knows how much the building cost as Mr. Ryerson had all, and I mean ALL, the bills sent direct to him.

The day the Library opened, the Public Schools were closed for the day and all the kids and citizens of the city went to the Library where Mr. and Mrs. Ryerson received guests on the landing of the main marble staircase.

That’s my kind of rich benefactor.

It was always fun to get on the elevator, press 2R and then turn your back to the doors and watch the other patrons wonder what in the world you were doing.

But that was when I was there with my Dad.

It was years before I dared enter the Adult Section on my own and the first time I did, I waited to get nabbed and ordered out.

There was another sign over the doorway that said YOUTH SECTION with an arrow to the right.

That was my world.

I might walk in and start looking at the new titles.

Or I might walk back to the Civil War books to find something I hadn’t read.

I would greet the Librarian on staff who would often recognize and ask about my ride.

I walked through those aisles with seven league boots and took no prisoners and admitted no faults.

And I looked and looked at all those books and I wondered just what new stories they might contain that would be agreeable for telling in conversation.

And I did my best to find them all.

BTW – Was paging through old New Yorker Magazines when I came across this cartoon that appeared on December 12, 1932.

7.4.2024 – animating cause!

animating cause!
brave spirits are not subdued
with difficulties

One June 26, 1776, John Adams wrote to his wife, Abagail, saying: But these Reverses of Fortune dont discourage me. It was natural to expect them, and We ought to be prepared in our Minds for greater Changes, and more melancholly Scenes still. It is an animating Cause, and brave Spirits are not subdued with Difficulties.

Two weeks later, the Declaration of Independence was signed by Mr. Adams and the members of the Continental Congress.

The same fellers who had just recently been reminded by a message from King George III that while he, the King, was open and willing to receive back those wayward subjects of the North American Colonies, those fellers in Philadelphia who were causing all the problems, would be hung.

They voted for and signed the Declaration anyway.

To read it again …

… these Reverses of Fortune dont discourage me.

It was natural to expect them, and

We ought to be prepared in our Minds for greater Changes,

and more melancholly Scenes still.

It is an animating Cause, and brave Spirits are not subdued with Difficulties.

I will read this out loud today, the 4th of July.

I will remind myself not to be discouraged by the reverses in fortunes and I will prepare my mind for greater changes and more melancholly scenes still.

And I will remember that, after all, It is an animating Cause, and brave Spirits are not subdued with Difficulties.

I guess it is the least I can do for those Founding Fathers.