envision old age memories roll past endlessly so far not happened
Adapted from the book, Noah’s Compass (2009, Alfred A. Knopf) by Anne Tyler, and the passage:
He sat down in his rocker and stayed there, empty-headed, hands loose on his thighs. Long ago when he was young he used to envision old age this way: man in a rocker, idle. He had read somewhere that old people could sit in their chairs and watch their memories roll past like movies, endlessly entertaining; but so far that hadn’t happened to him. He was beginning to think it never would.
Part of the series of Haiku inspired by from Noah’s Compass (2009, Alfred A. Knopf) by Anne Tyler. Anne Tyler is an American novelist, short story writer, and literary critic. She has published twenty-three novels, including Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant (1982), The Accidental Tourist (1985), and Breathing Lessons (1988). I came across Noah’s Compass as an audio book when living in Atlanta I commuted 1 hour each way. As the book had to deal with memories and memory loss and it involved someone my age, I was taken with the book. I have enjoyed reading most of Ms. Tyler’s work. Accidental Tourist maybe better known for the movie which I also recommend.
things that can’t ever be replaced or re-created real personal loss
Based on a passage from My Life Through Food, (Gallery Books, New York, 2021).
The passage reads:
Losing a beloved family heirloom is a very real personal loss; they’re things that cannot ever be replaced or re-created.
But perhaps the most precious heirlooms are family recipes.
Like a physical heirloom, they remind us from whom and where we came and give others, in a bite, the story of another people from another place and another time.
Yet unlike a lost physical heirloom, recipes are a part of our history that can be re-created over and over again.
The only way they can be lost is if we choose to lose them.
doesn’t know if cause is hopeless, most fantastic victories ever
Listening to the 3rd Test at Leeds of India’s tour of England today, I was able to hear the BBC Test Match Special broadcast team when they took time during the lunch break to revisit the Ashes Series of 1981.
Cricket, if you read this blog, is something of a hobby with me.
At some point years ago I said I am going to figure that game out.
And I did or at least to the point of being able to follow the game.
Cricket, like many other sports, has a couple of ways that one team can, within the rules, insult the other team.
Somewhat along the lines of when an American Football team that is ahead, will go for two points after scoring a touchdown instead of one, just to rub it in.
The true Dark Lord, Woody Hayes of that school in Ohio once went for 2 against Michigan with a 50-14 lead.
When asked why, he said, “Because I couldn’t go for three.”
In cricket there are two innings like baseball.
But unlike baseball, there aren’t 3 outs but 10.
In other words, you have to get everyone out.
That is why in test cricket, the ultimate in cricket, a test match is played over 5 days in a series of 6 hour games with Lunch and Tea breaks after two hours play.
30 hours of cricket.
Again you have to get everyone out for the match to be over.
And it has to be over at the end of day five or the match goes into the books as No Result or a draw.
There is a difference between a NR and a draw but I can’t remember.
With that mind, you can understand that time can often come into play even when 30 hours for the match is scheduled.
With this in mind, the team in the lead has two calls they can make.
One, they can declare.
They are so far ahead in their half of the inning, for example they have scored 423 and only given up 4 wickets or outs, they can declare.
That is to say they feel they have enough runs and will stop batting.
That is say they declare that the other team is so bad they might as well bat, we got enough to beat you, nannie nannie boo boo.
This is often used with an eye on the clock and an eye on the weather to make sure the other team gets their innings in and the match is played out to the end.
The other thing a team can do to the other is ‘follow on.’
This happens when Team One bats first in the 1st inning and gets a big lead.
Team Two in their half of the 1st inning bats for a miserable total.
Team One can then call for Team Two to ‘follow on.’
That means, instead of Team One batting in the top of 2nd inning, Team Two has to get right back up to the wicket and start batting again.
Team One is saying you are so bad we don’t even have to bat again to beat you.
During the lunch break today, the BBC broadcast team talked about how until that series in 1981, only ONE team in the history of test match cricket, won after following on.
Then came 1981.
The Ashes is the Test Match played between Australia and England every 2 years, alternating host country for each match.
It is separate from all other leagues and schedules.
In a way it would be as if Michigan and Ohio State were not in same conference or even association or anything and regardless of any other schedule, played each other every other year in a grudge match.
In 1981, with the series being playing in England, Australia destroyed and demoralized England in the first match.
The 2nd match was a draw (time ran out).
Though it was a draw, Australia looked so big and mean that the England team and fans felt hopeless.
Except for the England Captain, Mike Brearley.
In cricket, the Captain will function much like a baseball manager and put together lineups and put in / pull out bowlers.
It was said of Mike Brearley that he didn’t know if a cause was hopeless.
The 3rd match, Australia batted for a big lead and then forced England to follow on in the 2nd Inning.
England batted again and got a small lead.
Geoff Boycott got a ‘stubborn’ 46 at bat for England but who has enough time to talk about Geoff Boycott.
Bob Willis
Then Mike Brearley put in a bowler named Bob Willis.
Mr. Willis then got 8 wickets or outs while giving up only 43 runs.
THIS DOES NOT HAPPEN IN CRICKET.
If this was American Football it would like throwing 3 Hail Mary passes after 3 successful onside kicks.
England became only the second team in Test Match history to win a match after being made to follow-on.
The BBC Commentators reminisced about how low tickets sales had been due to the power of the Aussie line up yet everywhere they went today, people told them they had been there.
England went on to win the test match 3-1 (with 2 draws) and the Ashes stayed in England for two years.
The key was that 2nd half of match three.
Mr. Willis’ 8 wickets took the wind out of the Australian sails.
It was, from the recorded match play-by-play that was played today, one of the most “fantastic victories ever known.”
Now here is the point.
Bob Willis was interviewed today as part of the broadcast.
He was asked, was he, now 40 years later, still recognized, still appreciated, still a hero?
And Mr. Willis responded:
“The other weekend my daughter was over with her family and we had a barbecue out back.
I had the wine glass in one hand and the cricket bat in the other and I played with my grand kids.
The next day my daughter called me to say that she had just got back from taking her kids to school.
One her sons got out of the car and turned back to his Mom and asked, ‘Was Grand Dad really really good when he played?’
His Daughter looked at her boy and said, ‘One of the best.’
The boy looked down, then looked at his Mom and said, ‘Well, he’s crap now.'”
had one job to do just the one job but did not get it right, come on!
Winston Churchill once said of his opponent, the right honorable Clement Attlee that, “He was a modest man.”
Then Mr. Churchill added, “He had much to be modest about.”
Mr. Churchill’s image today is that he smoked cigars, drank whisky and also decided early on, that Adolf Hitler was bad and that any and all steps to get rid of Mr. Hitler should be taken and taken sooner rather than later.
There are times when I think that that is just about right.
To be sure Mr. Churchill did much much more.
Just enter Tonypandy into the google for another side of the great man.
But lets hit those three things.
By most counts he managed to smoke, in his lifetime, over 300,000 cigars.
That comes out to about 8 a day.
One time, Franklin Roosevelt announced his plans to leave a meeting the next day early at 6AM.
Mr. Churchill announced he would say goodbye now as no sane person was up at that hour.
At 6AM as FDR was being hauled aboard his plane, a limo pulled up.
Mr. Churchill got out.
He was wearing his sleep vest pajamas (tops only say the books) a bathrobe and slippers.
Photographers came out in mass.
Mr. Churchill, smoking a cigar of course, gestured them away saying with a smile, “You simply cannot do this to me.”
Later that day he was asked what it was like to get up at 6AM and he replied it was wonderful as he had “time for another cigar.”
A word about his whisky drinking can be said by quoting Mr. Churchill’s quote that, “He had taken more out of Whisky than Whisky had taken out of him.”
“Everything in moderation” was what Mr. Churchill said.
Which led one admirer to comment, “I must say, if the way Winston drinks is ‘moderation’, then he drinks an awful lot in moderation.”
On Mr. Hitler, Mr. Churchill said simply, “If Hitler invaded hell I would make at least a favourable reference to the devil in the House of Commons.”
So why all this Churchill stuff.
For one its fun.
As a writer, he made sure he got all the best lines.
NANCY ASTOR: “Winston, if you were my husband, I would put poison in your coffee.”
WINSTON: “Nancy, if you were my wife, I would drink it.”
The other reason Mr. Churchill was on my mind is that the BBC recently produced a 6 hour documentary titled, Churchill.
What can you say?
Even Spielberg titled Lincoln, Lincoln. (and Jaws, Jaws)
This documentary promised to be in the best tradition of Ken Burns at his best, which if you read this blog, you will know I find barely above a passing grade.
Mr. Burns does quality work.
And he is smart enough to get quality people both in writing and narration to carry him along.
But in his directorial use and selection of source material, video and photographs he falls far short of the mark and in my opinion is quite the historical humbug.
I was trained in a tough school of historiography in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Historiography is the study and CRITICAL REVIEW of historical writing.
I would complain to my Professors that they were often too tough, their standards too high when they would blast a colleague on some minor error.
NO ERROR IS MINOR they would reply.
If you catch that ONE, how many did you NOT CATCH due to your lack of depth on the subject.
So I was taught.
So I hold Mr. Burns to that standard.
So when Mr. Burns uses photographs to illustrate events in the narrative THAT TOOK PLACE 10 YEARS before the photograph was taken, and knowingly crops or alters the photo so it fits into the narrative, well then.
I have to close that door.
But back to the new Churchill Documentary.
It has got some good reviews.
I told myself to give it chance.
Watch it through.
Then make up my mind on.
So was the plan.
It is on You Tube to make it easy to watch.
6 episodes at 1 hour per episode from the BBC.
I am sorry I have to announce I got through less than 30 seconds.
In the bit I saw, the narrative said, “Churchill was spending the weekend at the PM’s country estate, Chequers.
The video however showed Mr. Churchill’s country estate, Chartwell.
OH COME ON.
One job.
One job to do.
One job to do to tell the story of Winston Churchill and you can’t keep his house straight from the house of the British Prime Minister.
OH
GIVE
ME
A
BREAK.
I shut off YouTube and reached for my blog.
I happily typed out this paean to myself and my self admitted genius.
Then I went looking for pictures of the two house to show how dumb these folks were.
CHARTWELL – Churchill’s Home
AND
CHEQUERS – British Prime Minister’s Country Home (Like Camp David)
THEN I checked YouTube to be sure I was right.
Ahhhhhhhhhhh.
Oops?
I had one job to do.
One job.
TO watch and comment on the passing show and be correct in my assertions.
And I blew it.
So mark this down.
I was wrong.
I admit it.
I aplogogize.
I was wrong.
This isn’t like the time in the WZZM13 Newsroom when I stood on a desk a yelled, “I WAS WRONG.”
I really did that.
I stood up and yelled, “I APOLOGIZE. WRITE TODAY DOWN. I WAS WRONG … NOT ONE OF YOU IS AS SMART AS I THOUGHT YOU WERE.”
This one is all on me.
The show was correct.
They had the right house.
I will get back to you as soon as I make up my mind to watch the show.
