3.21.2022 – Are you sitting in

are you sitting in
the catbird seat? explain what
the gibberish means

The one and only reason this haiku got written is because it makes me laugh.

Wellllll, maybe not the haiku itself, but the source.

Hopefully someone recognizes that it comes from a short story, Sitting in the Catbird Seat by James Thurber.

Not place dropping, but I was at Thurber’s house this past summer in Columbus, Ohio.

Due to Covid, the museum wasn’t open but Leslie let me run around the outside of the house taking pictures and two little girls came by selling flowers they had just picked from the next door garden so we sat on the front porch, sitting in the catbird seat, and had a nice little chat.

The phrase, sitting in the Catbird Seat, is a quote from Red Barber, the radio announcer of the Brooklyn Dodgers.

In the short story, Thurber writes:

She was constantly shouting these silly questions at him. “Are you lifting the oxcart out of the ditch? Are you tearing up the pea patch? Are you hollering down the rain barrel? Are you scraping around the bottom of the pickle barrel? Are you sitting in the catbird seat?”

It was Joey Hart, one of Mr. Martin’s two assistants, who had explained what the gibberish meant. “She must be a Dodger fan,” he had said. “Red Barber announces the Dodger games over the radio and he uses those expressions–picked ’em up down South.” Joey had gone on to explain one or two. “Tearing up the pea patch” meant going on a rampage; “sitting in the catbird seat” meant sitting pretty, like a batter with three balls and no strikes on him.“

The short story was one my mind, and I know what you are thinking, these stories are always on my mind, but that’s not true.

It’s the short story, “One is a Wanderer” that is always on my mind, but that is for another time or an earlier time as I know I must have commented on it a couple of times in this blog.

But why tonight?

When bored and wanting something to read that won’t land me in a war – as an aside I think the last 10 or so books, fiction and non fiction, that I picked up landed me in a war or a refuge crisis or somehow, I am still not sure, in a morgue – I check out what my Canadian Friends have added to the Faded Page.

You will remember that those wonderful people in Canada are finding older books whose authors or copyright holders have allowed the Canadian Copyright’s to expire which puts these books in the public domain.

They are careful to say that if the copyright is enforce in your country, Do Not Download These Books.

So please be aware of that and please don’t throw me in that briar patch.

When I checked tonight, Faded Page had added a half dozen Thurber Books including Thurber Carnival, My Life and Welcome To It and the far-to-little-read The Years with Ross.

These are all there, ready to download for any device or read online.

You can read Sitting in the Catbird Seat here and I hope you do.

The books are here and you read or down epubs or mobi.

Did I tell you how much I love Canadians?

Like Mr. Martin, I will end with, “He went out and shut the door, and his step was light and quick in the hall. When he entered his department he had slowed down to his customary gait, and he walked quietly across the room to the W20 file, wearing a look of studious concentration.“

3.19.2022 -saudade, long lost

saudade, long lost
irretrievable but
the dream of it

” … there is a word in Portuguese called saudade that appeared to represent the farm and our lives, a homesickness or longing for something vital that had been irretrievably lost and only the dream of it could be recovered.”

From “The Road Home” by Jim Harrison.

The online dictionary defines saudade (saa·daydz) as a feeling of longing, melancholy, or nostalgia that is supposedly characteristic of the Portuguese or Brazilian temperament.

Wikipedia says, “Saudade is a deep emotional state of nostalgic or profound melancholic longing for something or someone that one cares for and/or loves. Moreover, it often carries a repressed knowledge that the object of longing might never be had again.”

Then Wikipedia adds this.

Saudade is a word in Portuguese and Galician that claims no direct translation in English.

However, a close translation in English would be “desiderium.”

Desiderium is defined as an ardent desire or longing, especially a feeling of loss or grief for something lost.

Desiderium.

Not a bad word.

Desiderium.

But it smacks of things other than the heart some how.

Desiderium.

No, I will take saudade.

I keep saudade in my head for those moments when there are no words.

Somewhere along the line of my life I came across the singing of Cesaria Evora.

Her song Sodade is a saudade put to music.

I am not sure what it is called when a feeling, an outlook, a word and a song all combine the same way.

Jenny Lawson writes in ‘Furiously Happy” that when there are no words, she has license to make one up.

For me then, when a feeling, an outlook, a word and a song all combine the same way I call in omniaonomatopoeia.

In Portuguese it comes out as saudade.

In English, there is no translation.

3.13.2022 – have each of us the

have each of us the
advantage of using the
books of all others

In the 1985 movie, Silverado, a western written, produced and directed by Lawrence Kasdan (just after he made The Big Chill, which I saw in special preview in Ann Arbor and which was my first glimpse of the Low Country – I just didn’t appreciate it at the time) there is a scene where Kevin Kline walks through the swinging doors into a saloon and stops, looks around and breathes deep with the satisfaction of someone who has arrived in their one perfect place.

Yesterday, after two years of Covid restrictions and 1 year of reduced operations for renovations, I went back to the Bluffton branch of the Beaufort County Library.

I walked through the double doors and into the lobby and I stopped and looked around and I breathed in deep with the satisfaction of someone who has arrived in their one perfect spot.

According to legend, and in this case by legend, I mean the classic Autobiography of Ben Franklin, which I was taught may have been the single most successful manufactured self-serving long-lasting piece of propaganda ever published but that is for another day (lets just say that Ben was in it for the long game with the possible goal of walking off with the state of Pennsylvania for himself), it was in 1731 that Dr. Franklin and his friends worked out how to share books.

Dr. Franklin writes, “, a proposition was made by me that, since our books were often referr’d to in our disquisitions upon the queries, it might be convenient to us to have them altogether where we met, that upon occasion they might be consulted; and by thus clubbing our books to a common library, we should, while we lik’d to keep them together, have each of us the advantage of using the books of all the other members, which would be nearly as beneficial as if each owned the whole. “

It didn’t work out as “yet some inconveniences occurring for want of due care of them” and this first effort was stopped but it led to the what we would call a subscription library and eventually that cornerstone of liberty and freedom, the public library.

Now closing in on 300 years after Ben’s Book Club, in an edge of electronic books and reading, the role of a public library has to be questioned as really necessary?

(Ever see the TV show, The Librarians? I don’t mean the American docu-drama, I mean the one from Australia?)

I will say the the tools have changed but the need, the job, the role of the public library is as important and necessary as at any time in history.

Big surprise there right?

What would anyone expect me to say?

I love the library.

I was happy that when we moved to the low country I saw that the county library system was investing in their buildings and that the local branch, the Bluffton Public Library would be getting almost a million dollar renovation.

And when I walked into the re-opened library building yesterday I just felt good.

Much like a walk on the beach, it was refreshing, good-for-the-soul just to be in there.

I thought of the Hemingway line of, “This is a clean and pleasant café. It is well lighted. The light is very good” and I thought of how in the Hemingway short story, the older waiter thinks, “Each night I am reluctant to close up because there may be some one who needs the café.”

The people I know and the people I worked with in the libraries were like that and were often reluctant to close up because there may be some one who needs the library.

I walked around and just enjoyed the books and the clean, well lit space.

I looked for new books, challenging myself to grab any fiction book at random off the 14 day loan shelf to searching out old favorites and to see how many Jim Harrison books were in the stacks (7!).

I went through the library sale books.

I sat in the new chairs.

I chatted with librarians and volunteers.

I checked my books out and left thinking that maybe, just maybe, the hordes would be held at bay for another 20 or 30 years.

In my life time anyway.

I thought about the other Ben Franklin library story.

When Benjamin Franklin passed away on April 17, 1790, he left Boston and Philadelphia $2,000 for libraries. He’d saved this money while he was Governor of Pennsylvania (1785 to 1788). The money was not to be distributed until 200 years after his death.

In 1990, the bequest was worth $6.5 million and Philadelphia’s portion of the trust was $2 million.

By all scientific examination of Ben’s kite flying in the thunderstorm stunt, Dr. Franklin should have been fried to a crisp.

Kind of glad he wasn’t.

*First lending library. Charles Mills murals*

2.19.2022 – tomorrow and

tomorrow and
yesterday have lighted fools
the way to dusty death

Adapted from Big Bill in Macbeth, Act V, Scene V:

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

When I was growing up there was a secret agent craze created by the success of the James Bond movies.

For the serious side, there was The Man from U.N.C.L.E.

It wasn’t completely clear if UNCLE was a man or a secret service but they fought againt THRUSH, otherwise known as Technological Hierarchy for the Removal of Undesirables and the Subjugation of Humanity.

James Bond fought against SPECTRE or Special Executive for Counter-intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion. Which was freaky if you were american and spelled it SPECTER.

Then there was GET SMART where agents of CONTROL fought KAOS which was the international organization of evil and KAOS wasn’t an acronym for anything.

It was the opening sequence of GET SMART that has been on my mind.

The show opened with Agent Maxwell Smart entering CONTROL Headquarters walking down a hallway as giant doors opened and slammed behind him.

It occurs to me that life is one long trip down that hallway and as our tomorrows turn into yesterdays these doors open and close behind you as you walk through life.

The other night while engaged in general conversation with some guys that I know, one of the fellers looked at me and shook his head.

We are all about the same age and have some common experiences.

Though the discussion in hand about car rental problems in Europe when staying for less than a month and whether the drive down the Adriatic Coast of Italy was better than the the drive on the Mediterranean side pretty much left me without much to say.

I did work driving from coast to coast into the discussion but I did not mention I was thinking of driving across from the coast of Lake Huron to the Coast of Lake Michigan.

So this one feller was looking at me and smiling and then says, “You just remind me so much … of my Dad.”

That was a new one for me.

And I heard another one of those doors slam behind me.

As George Washington once said, “Alas, my dancing days are over.”

To the last syllable of recorded time, life is but a walking shadow.

2.14.2022 – place where love begins

place where love begins
a touch of two hands that foils
all dictionaries

For Valentine’s Day, 2022 from Carl Sandbug.

Explanations of Love
Carl Sandburg

There is a place where love begins and a place
where love ends.

There is a touch of two hands that foils all dictionaries.

There is a look of eyes fierce as a big Bethlehem open hearth
furnace or a little green-fire acetylene torch.

There are single careless bywords portentous as a
big bend in the Mississippi River.

Hands, eyes, bywords–out of these love makes
battlegrounds and workshops.

There is a pair of shoes love wears and the coming
is a mystery.

There is a warning love sends and the cost of it
is never written till long afterward.

There are explanations of love in all languages
and not one found wiser than this:

There is a place where love begins and a place
where love ends—and love asks nothing.

And, BTW, this is the poem that Leslie agreed to have printed on the back our the program guides that were passed out at our wedding.