Broadway is currently running a scaled-down revival of Sondheim’s “A Little Night Music.” I saw the original production with Glynis Johns who could not sing and Hermione Gingold, who also could not sing. But they could act!
The current version uses an audience-packing trend of placing a big Hollywood star in the cast. It sells seats and nobody seems to care if the acting is good or not. But, since I have not seen the current version, I will not make a judgement.
One of the most interesting songs is called, “Remember.” It deals with former and present lovers trying to remember events in their relationship. Invariably, things are incorrectly recalled. There is a line in the song which caught my attention: “you acquiesced and the rest is a blank.” The song ends with “I think it was you.”
The Tea Partyers are currently running rampant with their conservative bantering. They dislike everything that is going on in America. They even managed to scare enough people to supply Massachusetts with a Republican senator. Yes, blue Massachusetts! They seem to be able to blame the current administration with everything wrong in the economy, the wars, the banking industry, and don’t forget those impending “death panels.” And many people are believing every word.
Thomas Frank, the eloquent author and historian, was a recent guest of Bill Moyers Journal on PBS. In the discussion, Mr. Frank argued, rather convincingly, that the resurgence of the Republican Party and their politics is due to the fact that “Americans have forgotten what their country looked like under conservative rule, ‘That's the disease of our time...that sort of instant forgetting.’ "
All of us have the tendency, like the quintet in the Sondheim musical, to romanticize the past. Even the most recent past. But let’s go back a bit. I recall a calendar that I was given during the Reagan years. Each day of the year had a quote from Mr. Reagan. Many were amazing in their naivete. “Facts are stupid things.” “I have left orders to be awakened at any time in case of national emergency, even if I’m in a cabinet meeting.” “You can tell a lot about a fellow's character by his way of eating jellybeans.“ "Trees cause more pollution than automobiles." "Approximately 80 percent of our air pollution stems from hydrocarbons released by vegetation, so let's not go overboard in setting and enforcing tough emission standards from man-made sources." "What we have found in this country, and maybe we're more aware of it now, is one problem that we've had, even in the best of times, and that is the people who are sleeping on the grates, the homeless who are homeless, you might say, by choice." He also felt that unemployment was a choice.
Reagan’s disconnect with the common man was legendary. Remember, this the administration that attempted to classify catsup as a vegetable in order to have a balanced lunch program in our public schools. Save those packets son, times are bad.
In his economic programs, Mr. Reagan promised to curb governmental spending but instead increased it by 68% over the Carter administration. His tax cuts actually cost the less-affluent more.
Yet, Mr. Reagan is a hallowed, populist president. And obviously an expert at stagecraft.
We move forward and remember the first decade of the new century - The Bush Years. The Tea Party group and most Republicans see it as a time of greatness. Look at the record: the handling of Katrina, the move into a war without a reason to do so, their record on the environment, world diplomacy, climate change, and yes, the economy. How quickly people forget. Bush 43 said in December of 2008, "I've abandoned free market principles to save the free market system." He also said, “I'm the master of low expectations.” "It isn't pollution that's harming the environment. It's the impurities in our air and water that are doing it." I must have missed that calendar.
So, the Tea Partyers will gather at the Opryland Hotel for a big convention shortly. It is sold out. Will they come up with a valid plan for the economy or merely rant about it? Do they wish to solve the healthcare crisis in our country or are they unconcerned because they are not among the 30 million uninsured? Don’t they worry that a well-oiled healthcare lobby has spent record money to attempt to defeat any proposal? Isn't a light going on somewhere between the ears?
The March Hare, speaking to Alice at another famous tea party said, “you could at least make polite conversation.” I have low expectations of this based upon the history of the movement.
So, in the midst of this hysterical backlash, will we repeat the past cycles where people acquiesced and through “instant forgetfulness, “the rest is a blank?”
What is that music I hear?
“Quick send in the clowns. Don’t bother, they’re here!”
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Anything A Squirrel Can Do To A Tree
When did “negativity” become a word? I can comprehend a person having a negative outlook, or exuding negativeness. But what exactly is negativity?
Or, for that matter, “conflicted.”
I have conflicts. Sometimes these conflicts are of such magnitude that I become a “frustrated old man.” The level of the frustration depends upon how overwhelmed I am with conflicts. I never think about being “conflicted.”
One can be addicted. (Think Diet Pepsi or EBay.) But addictivity - the state of being addicted?
Just because Betty Lou or Bobby use a word repeatedly doesn’t qualify it for inclusion into the language. Yet, that seems to be the trend. Our language suffers daily with the attempts to “streamline” our patterns of speech.
I constantly hear people misuse the word, “myself.” Isn’t the use of “myself” to be as a modifier of a pronoun, not a substitute for the pronoun? Have I misunderstood something? Myself offered the solution?
If I were pressed to answer questions on predicates, transitive verbs, or the future positive tense, I would be sorely hardput. But I try to keep the basics intact.
“Going into the stadium our seats were lost.” This was the example that Mrs. Murelle Dean gave as an example of a dangling participle. She would even stand in the chair allowing her left foot to move precariously through the open air in order to make her point. I am not certain that it had any impact on any of us since we always had our tickets firmly ensconced in our wallet before entering any stadium. But she labored on to help us understand our communication with others.
Remember diagramming sentences?
My high school English teachers - Mrs. Dean included - spent endless hours trying to get everyone to explore the language in what I felt was a useless exercise. All those strange lines trailing out from the words of the sentence. Instead, I wound up remembering “formulas” to understand the various parts of speech.
A noun is a person, place, or thing.
An adjective is a modifier of a noun – a person, place or thing.
An adverb is a modifier of a verb and sometimes an adjective.
A verb is a word that tells you what that person, place, or thing is doing.
And most importantly, a preposition is anything a squirrel can do to a tree!
WHAT?
A preposition is anything a squirrel can do to a tree.
Up, to, from, over, in, out, around, by, with……… all things squirrels do to the trees in my neighborhood. Sure they do a lot more, but let’s stick to language and not go there.
With this simple axiom, you will always know where to place the comma.
Do I sense parenthesitivity?
Or, for that matter, “conflicted.”
I have conflicts. Sometimes these conflicts are of such magnitude that I become a “frustrated old man.” The level of the frustration depends upon how overwhelmed I am with conflicts. I never think about being “conflicted.”
One can be addicted. (Think Diet Pepsi or EBay.) But addictivity - the state of being addicted?
Just because Betty Lou or Bobby use a word repeatedly doesn’t qualify it for inclusion into the language. Yet, that seems to be the trend. Our language suffers daily with the attempts to “streamline” our patterns of speech.
I constantly hear people misuse the word, “myself.” Isn’t the use of “myself” to be as a modifier of a pronoun, not a substitute for the pronoun? Have I misunderstood something? Myself offered the solution?
If I were pressed to answer questions on predicates, transitive verbs, or the future positive tense, I would be sorely hardput. But I try to keep the basics intact.
“Going into the stadium our seats were lost.” This was the example that Mrs. Murelle Dean gave as an example of a dangling participle. She would even stand in the chair allowing her left foot to move precariously through the open air in order to make her point. I am not certain that it had any impact on any of us since we always had our tickets firmly ensconced in our wallet before entering any stadium. But she labored on to help us understand our communication with others.
Remember diagramming sentences?
My high school English teachers - Mrs. Dean included - spent endless hours trying to get everyone to explore the language in what I felt was a useless exercise. All those strange lines trailing out from the words of the sentence. Instead, I wound up remembering “formulas” to understand the various parts of speech.
A noun is a person, place, or thing.
An adjective is a modifier of a noun – a person, place or thing.
An adverb is a modifier of a verb and sometimes an adjective.
A verb is a word that tells you what that person, place, or thing is doing.
And most importantly, a preposition is anything a squirrel can do to a tree!
WHAT?
A preposition is anything a squirrel can do to a tree.
Up, to, from, over, in, out, around, by, with……… all things squirrels do to the trees in my neighborhood. Sure they do a lot more, but let’s stick to language and not go there.
With this simple axiom, you will always know where to place the comma.
Do I sense parenthesitivity?
Monday, January 18, 2010
Did Daddy Eat Souvlaki?
Busy Corner, while a noun, was actually a “busy” corner. It was a shopping strip about midway between my childhood home and the big metropolis – think population 12,000 – downtown. It was the “outer edge” of my childhood frontier.
You may recall, my hometown in Alabama got its name from a Creek Indian word for “buzzards roost” and it did seem to qualify. As if the worry of ever circling vultures was not enough, Mrs. Teel, the fortune-teller down in Coosa County, had predicted that a giant chasm would open up in the middle of downtown, revealing an underground river. Since Mrs. Teel had the reputation for being right - she had told the Widow Hopkins that she would find a handsome man in her kitchen - my Aunt Inie would not venture downtown under any circumstances. Inie explained that she didn’t want to be caught on the wrong side of the gaping divide and be attacked by the buzzards. So she ventured no further than Busy Corner. (Mrs. Teel did not narrow the timing of this event, so some people are still waiting in anticipation. The hardware store even considered offering a line of marine-oriented supplies to the possible boating community.)
Like Inie, I ventured no further than Busy Corner. Not because of the impending terrain change or the buzzards, but because my parents forbade it.
They made it quite simple: I could walk to Busy Corner to get a haircut at Rowe’s barber shop, buy a balsa wood glider at the variety store, or buy a comic book at Moseley’s Drug Store. I could have possibly purchased an Ace Sweeper at the broom factory out back, but they were wholesale only. That was the limit of my solo activity. I could venture no further in that direction.
In the other quadrants of my geography, I could go to the turtle pond down by the back of the spinning mill, I could go to the Harris residence – the last house on our street, I could play along the “big ditch” which, unlike my hometown, seemed unaptly named since it was a small creek, and I could go over on Comer Hill on windy days to test a new kite purchased on a foray to “Busy Corner.”
Trips downtown, usually on a Friday afternoon or a Saturday, were always accompanied by my parents. These involved a visit to the Cash Store, which was a strange name for the business since it seemed to me that everyone had a charge account. There would be grocery shopping at the A&P and, hopefully, a cherry coke at Macmillan’s Fountain Drugs. At one point, when I was older, I would be dropped at the Martin Theater with a friend and allowed to watch a movie. If we were lucky, it would be a good “shootem up” which was what we called the Gene Autry, Lash LaRue films. Movies in those days were always accompanied by a pre-Disney cartoon of about fifteen minutes in length and an action-filled serial. The serial always had a “cliff-hanger” ending which brought you back the next week. These ventures sometimes featured Tarzan wrestling a killer crocodile, Nyoka the Jungle Girl facing menacing natives, or Flash Gordon in a futuristic space ship dodging a death ray. (By the time I encountered the serials, Buster Crabbe had emerged from the jungle and been supplanted by Johnny Weissmuller.) We would leave the darkened theater asking ourselves, “Is it really over for the Green Hornet?”
Later, when television entered our lives and displaced trips to the movies, Tarzan, Flash Gordon, and the Green Hornet transitioned and met foes in our living room on Saturday mornings. They were joined by Buster Brown and Tela, the great bull elephant. (Why I remember Tela more than Bomba, the Jungle boy, is fodder for another day.)
But that was my world.
Years removed, when I remembered it, I recalled a world lacking diversity.
Or so it seemed when I first encountered Chicago.
When I first arrived here, I was overwhelmed with the sounds and smells of the multi-cultural fabric which defined the city. I was constantly forced to compare it with the mainstream Protestant mold of my youth. I had grown up with Smiths, Sprayberrys, or Browns. Here there were Spejewskis, Maximovitches, and Przybylows; names so desperately in need of a vowel that you wanted to find Vanna. My own Scottish name was considered “on the fringe” in the land of honeysuckle and kudzu.
But there was the Dressler family from Germany who came to town so that Dr. Dressler could lead the music program at the Methodist Church. He even discovered an old Pleyel piano from Austria that had made its way into a Sunday School room at the Baptist church at Oldfield.
Then I recalled Little Paul.
Little Paul ran a greasy spoon café up on Busy Corner, the center of my world. It was across the street from the dime store and Mosely’s Drug Store. Sometimes, if my haircut went well at the barber shop, my Dad would treat me to a hamburger and fries prepared by the owner and chief cook, Paul Papadopoulous.
Decidedly Greek!
Now I find myself wondering if there was saganaki on the menu and a beloved icon over the sink in the back. Did Little Paul substitute virgin olive oil for the Wesson’s? In the midst of what I thought of as a bland and colorless world, did my father eat souvlaki?
Years later he discovered a basil leaf in the spaghetti prepared at a restaurant in Chicago and assumed that a leaf had blown in through an open window. So maybe there was no baklava in his life.
It turned out that the handsome man that the Widow Brown encountered in her kitchen was a Lithuanian plumber named Adomas Minkus. He was there to repair a leaky faucet.
Despite some very large cracks in the pavement on Fourth Street near the new tacqueria, there is no word on the underground river.
You may recall, my hometown in Alabama got its name from a Creek Indian word for “buzzards roost” and it did seem to qualify. As if the worry of ever circling vultures was not enough, Mrs. Teel, the fortune-teller down in Coosa County, had predicted that a giant chasm would open up in the middle of downtown, revealing an underground river. Since Mrs. Teel had the reputation for being right - she had told the Widow Hopkins that she would find a handsome man in her kitchen - my Aunt Inie would not venture downtown under any circumstances. Inie explained that she didn’t want to be caught on the wrong side of the gaping divide and be attacked by the buzzards. So she ventured no further than Busy Corner. (Mrs. Teel did not narrow the timing of this event, so some people are still waiting in anticipation. The hardware store even considered offering a line of marine-oriented supplies to the possible boating community.)
Like Inie, I ventured no further than Busy Corner. Not because of the impending terrain change or the buzzards, but because my parents forbade it.
They made it quite simple: I could walk to Busy Corner to get a haircut at Rowe’s barber shop, buy a balsa wood glider at the variety store, or buy a comic book at Moseley’s Drug Store. I could have possibly purchased an Ace Sweeper at the broom factory out back, but they were wholesale only. That was the limit of my solo activity. I could venture no further in that direction.
In the other quadrants of my geography, I could go to the turtle pond down by the back of the spinning mill, I could go to the Harris residence – the last house on our street, I could play along the “big ditch” which, unlike my hometown, seemed unaptly named since it was a small creek, and I could go over on Comer Hill on windy days to test a new kite purchased on a foray to “Busy Corner.”
Trips downtown, usually on a Friday afternoon or a Saturday, were always accompanied by my parents. These involved a visit to the Cash Store, which was a strange name for the business since it seemed to me that everyone had a charge account. There would be grocery shopping at the A&P and, hopefully, a cherry coke at Macmillan’s Fountain Drugs. At one point, when I was older, I would be dropped at the Martin Theater with a friend and allowed to watch a movie. If we were lucky, it would be a good “shootem up” which was what we called the Gene Autry, Lash LaRue films. Movies in those days were always accompanied by a pre-Disney cartoon of about fifteen minutes in length and an action-filled serial. The serial always had a “cliff-hanger” ending which brought you back the next week. These ventures sometimes featured Tarzan wrestling a killer crocodile, Nyoka the Jungle Girl facing menacing natives, or Flash Gordon in a futuristic space ship dodging a death ray. (By the time I encountered the serials, Buster Crabbe had emerged from the jungle and been supplanted by Johnny Weissmuller.) We would leave the darkened theater asking ourselves, “Is it really over for the Green Hornet?”
Later, when television entered our lives and displaced trips to the movies, Tarzan, Flash Gordon, and the Green Hornet transitioned and met foes in our living room on Saturday mornings. They were joined by Buster Brown and Tela, the great bull elephant. (Why I remember Tela more than Bomba, the Jungle boy, is fodder for another day.)
But that was my world.
Years removed, when I remembered it, I recalled a world lacking diversity.
Or so it seemed when I first encountered Chicago.
When I first arrived here, I was overwhelmed with the sounds and smells of the multi-cultural fabric which defined the city. I was constantly forced to compare it with the mainstream Protestant mold of my youth. I had grown up with Smiths, Sprayberrys, or Browns. Here there were Spejewskis, Maximovitches, and Przybylows; names so desperately in need of a vowel that you wanted to find Vanna. My own Scottish name was considered “on the fringe” in the land of honeysuckle and kudzu.
But there was the Dressler family from Germany who came to town so that Dr. Dressler could lead the music program at the Methodist Church. He even discovered an old Pleyel piano from Austria that had made its way into a Sunday School room at the Baptist church at Oldfield.
Then I recalled Little Paul.
Little Paul ran a greasy spoon café up on Busy Corner, the center of my world. It was across the street from the dime store and Mosely’s Drug Store. Sometimes, if my haircut went well at the barber shop, my Dad would treat me to a hamburger and fries prepared by the owner and chief cook, Paul Papadopoulous.
Decidedly Greek!
Now I find myself wondering if there was saganaki on the menu and a beloved icon over the sink in the back. Did Little Paul substitute virgin olive oil for the Wesson’s? In the midst of what I thought of as a bland and colorless world, did my father eat souvlaki?
Years later he discovered a basil leaf in the spaghetti prepared at a restaurant in Chicago and assumed that a leaf had blown in through an open window. So maybe there was no baklava in his life.
It turned out that the handsome man that the Widow Brown encountered in her kitchen was a Lithuanian plumber named Adomas Minkus. He was there to repair a leaky faucet.
Despite some very large cracks in the pavement on Fourth Street near the new tacqueria, there is no word on the underground river.
Saturday, January 16, 2010
2 Fast But Not 3 Fast
I don’t know if you have ever attempted to impart the English language to someone who is not a native speaker. If so, you soon realize how really difficult our language is. Words that sound alike but have vastly different meanings, words that sound the same but are spelled differently, and so on.
“Yesterday, I read a red sign.”
“Could you read me the story about the reed?”
“You’re responsible for your own money on the trip.”
"The Principal knew it was a new principle."
“The very plain plane landed on the plain.” (You get the drift!)
This doesn’t even account for regional differences which impact discourse.
In Alabama, the rectangular metal plate which is attached to the rear of your vehicle is called a "tag." In Illinois I was rebuffed and told it was a license plate. In the deep south, you have a “sack” of groceries, further north it becomes a “bag.” For the English, a biscuit is a cookie, but it is the bread staple of a meal in Mississippi. And if you fried the biscuits instead of baking them, they were “hoe cakes.” We called a halloween mask a “doughface.” A bottle of pop is a soft drink. Bagasse or blackstrap - the residue from sugar cane in most cultures – Southerners call pummy.
However, in our family, even pummy took on another dimension.
Angelina, or Inie as we fondly called her, was our itinerant relative. She had no real home of her own. She spent time throughout the year with first one and then another family household. She would generally remain in one place for around two months before packing up and heading for a different locale. In every place she frequented, she also left a colorful manner of speaking about everyday things. These eventually wound up into our family language.
For instance, when someone is confused and seemingly making no progress on a task or a decision, we say, “My God child, you are going around the pummy pile.” This colorful description grew out of a time when a Inie was riding in the countryside with Percy and Rosalee Mims. Percy had a brand new touring car and the three of them had headed out to visit Aunt Serepta down in Chilton County. Percy was never good on directions and soon became lost. As my father would say, “he is attempting to course his way.” (This means no stopping for directions – taking intuitive turns in the hope that one would lead the way. And you thought “course” was an academic exercise.)
In “coursing” his way, Percy returned several times to the intersection where Miller’s Cane Mill had been in business since the “big bellum.” After about the third return to the same spot, Inie spoke up. “My God child, here we go ‘round the pummy pile again,” as she spied the dried pile of sugar cane once more.
When someone was taking too much time to complete a task, Inie would say, “My God child, you may hurry.” Much better than “get the lead out,” don’t you think?
“More pedal to the metal?”
“Light a shuck?”
My grandson, when describing his concept of speed relative to his new toy motorcycle said, “it goes 2 fast but not 3.”
“Yesterday, I read a red sign.”
“Could you read me the story about the reed?”
“You’re responsible for your own money on the trip.”
"The Principal knew it was a new principle."
“The very plain plane landed on the plain.” (You get the drift!)
This doesn’t even account for regional differences which impact discourse.
In Alabama, the rectangular metal plate which is attached to the rear of your vehicle is called a "tag." In Illinois I was rebuffed and told it was a license plate. In the deep south, you have a “sack” of groceries, further north it becomes a “bag.” For the English, a biscuit is a cookie, but it is the bread staple of a meal in Mississippi. And if you fried the biscuits instead of baking them, they were “hoe cakes.” We called a halloween mask a “doughface.” A bottle of pop is a soft drink. Bagasse or blackstrap - the residue from sugar cane in most cultures – Southerners call pummy.
However, in our family, even pummy took on another dimension.
Angelina, or Inie as we fondly called her, was our itinerant relative. She had no real home of her own. She spent time throughout the year with first one and then another family household. She would generally remain in one place for around two months before packing up and heading for a different locale. In every place she frequented, she also left a colorful manner of speaking about everyday things. These eventually wound up into our family language.
For instance, when someone is confused and seemingly making no progress on a task or a decision, we say, “My God child, you are going around the pummy pile.” This colorful description grew out of a time when a Inie was riding in the countryside with Percy and Rosalee Mims. Percy had a brand new touring car and the three of them had headed out to visit Aunt Serepta down in Chilton County. Percy was never good on directions and soon became lost. As my father would say, “he is attempting to course his way.” (This means no stopping for directions – taking intuitive turns in the hope that one would lead the way. And you thought “course” was an academic exercise.)
In “coursing” his way, Percy returned several times to the intersection where Miller’s Cane Mill had been in business since the “big bellum.” After about the third return to the same spot, Inie spoke up. “My God child, here we go ‘round the pummy pile again,” as she spied the dried pile of sugar cane once more.
When someone was taking too much time to complete a task, Inie would say, “My God child, you may hurry.” Much better than “get the lead out,” don’t you think?
“More pedal to the metal?”
“Light a shuck?”
My grandson, when describing his concept of speed relative to his new toy motorcycle said, “it goes 2 fast but not 3.”
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Connecting The Dots
The President announced today that our various intelligence agencies had all the information to have thwarted the Christmas Day terrorist attempt before the fact, however, “they failed to connect those dots.”
I have a theory as to why.
We live in a world of titles. In a world of titles there are no grunters! There is nobody down in the trenches. Everyone has a title and is hell-bent on getting another one. It all began when we awarded a college degree in reading comic books! It is called Sequential Art. For goodness sake, it is a comic book; it is not high literature! Get off your duff and read a real book – one with few pictures!
It is a part of the culture that says each child should get an award, even Billy who missed more days than a tenured PE teacher. Remember that horrible line from MC Hammer, “you can’t touch this?” I cannot believe that I confessed that I had heard that dribble. So we reward Billy’s ineptness with a prize of some sort merely for breathing and in so doing tell his parents, or in many cases the grandparents since the parents dropped out of sight, let Billy miss school, it’s ok. We don’t want to traumatize him. It is ok to be unmotivated, unchallenged.
Remember Stuart Smalley? “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and dog-gone it, people like me.”
When I was teaching a college course in American Studies, I had this eager student who handled my essay exams with the barest of success. She just couldn’t master abstract thinking. But she was so eager. She stopped by often to try to find her way amid the concepts presented in class. I will admit I was never interested in the memorization of a list of art, architecture, philosophers, or music. She could have handled that well. Instead, I wanted my students to grasp what was behind the products of the creative mind. Sheila just couldn’t, but she was so eager. She was the first in her family to attend college. She had such energy. So I looked the other way and gave her a better mark than I should have. After all, my humanities course was not the glue that held her career together.
A couple of years later she stopped by my office. I don’t know why. She gave me an update which evoked horror. She was getting a degree in English and the humanities. Afterwards, I stopped by a colleague’s office to confess my sin and reveal the result. Halfway into my outpouring of my academic sin, he exclaimed, “I know her. She was a really eager student. Not great, but so eager. I had her in one of my classes.” Well, it seems several of us had succumbed to the eagerness and cooperatively created this academic monster. Mediocrity breeds content.
Washington has also created monsters. Monsters of entitlement. People rewarded with jobs because of political connections. Sometimes because of donations to campaigns. Had Desiree Rogers been doing grunt work instead of parading that dress that looked remarkably unfinished, perhaps there would have been no gatecrashers at the party. Somebody has to do quality control.
So, I wish to offer a way to connect the dots.
Create a series of jobs with no titles, and, of course, no business cards. With a business card comes networking and with networking, job performance goes down the tube. The person is always off schmoozing.
Remember: in this job your are a grunter. There are no windows in the office; no name on the door. You will give no interviews and appear in no photographs.
The job: spend each day pouring over the data. Look at all the clues. Read all the reports; all the emails. Make lots of post-it notes. Make a flow chart. Use colored pens if necessary.
“Connect the dots.” Then get on the phone and let everybody know! After that, call your mother, she has been worried that you have not been getting enough sleep.
For every planned attack you stop, you will be given a bonus on the order of one doled out by AIG. Then you may retire early and give another grunter a chance. No strobe lights. No smiles toward the camera.
Then, and only then, we can arrive at the airport with all our clothes on.
I have a theory as to why.
We live in a world of titles. In a world of titles there are no grunters! There is nobody down in the trenches. Everyone has a title and is hell-bent on getting another one. It all began when we awarded a college degree in reading comic books! It is called Sequential Art. For goodness sake, it is a comic book; it is not high literature! Get off your duff and read a real book – one with few pictures!
It is a part of the culture that says each child should get an award, even Billy who missed more days than a tenured PE teacher. Remember that horrible line from MC Hammer, “you can’t touch this?” I cannot believe that I confessed that I had heard that dribble. So we reward Billy’s ineptness with a prize of some sort merely for breathing and in so doing tell his parents, or in many cases the grandparents since the parents dropped out of sight, let Billy miss school, it’s ok. We don’t want to traumatize him. It is ok to be unmotivated, unchallenged.
Remember Stuart Smalley? “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and dog-gone it, people like me.”
When I was teaching a college course in American Studies, I had this eager student who handled my essay exams with the barest of success. She just couldn’t master abstract thinking. But she was so eager. She stopped by often to try to find her way amid the concepts presented in class. I will admit I was never interested in the memorization of a list of art, architecture, philosophers, or music. She could have handled that well. Instead, I wanted my students to grasp what was behind the products of the creative mind. Sheila just couldn’t, but she was so eager. She was the first in her family to attend college. She had such energy. So I looked the other way and gave her a better mark than I should have. After all, my humanities course was not the glue that held her career together.
A couple of years later she stopped by my office. I don’t know why. She gave me an update which evoked horror. She was getting a degree in English and the humanities. Afterwards, I stopped by a colleague’s office to confess my sin and reveal the result. Halfway into my outpouring of my academic sin, he exclaimed, “I know her. She was a really eager student. Not great, but so eager. I had her in one of my classes.” Well, it seems several of us had succumbed to the eagerness and cooperatively created this academic monster. Mediocrity breeds content.
Washington has also created monsters. Monsters of entitlement. People rewarded with jobs because of political connections. Sometimes because of donations to campaigns. Had Desiree Rogers been doing grunt work instead of parading that dress that looked remarkably unfinished, perhaps there would have been no gatecrashers at the party. Somebody has to do quality control.
So, I wish to offer a way to connect the dots.
Create a series of jobs with no titles, and, of course, no business cards. With a business card comes networking and with networking, job performance goes down the tube. The person is always off schmoozing.
Remember: in this job your are a grunter. There are no windows in the office; no name on the door. You will give no interviews and appear in no photographs.
The job: spend each day pouring over the data. Look at all the clues. Read all the reports; all the emails. Make lots of post-it notes. Make a flow chart. Use colored pens if necessary.
“Connect the dots.” Then get on the phone and let everybody know! After that, call your mother, she has been worried that you have not been getting enough sleep.
For every planned attack you stop, you will be given a bonus on the order of one doled out by AIG. Then you may retire early and give another grunter a chance. No strobe lights. No smiles toward the camera.
Then, and only then, we can arrive at the airport with all our clothes on.
Monday, January 4, 2010
Pictures At An Exhibition
Today’s TV is full of commercials for the “Starving Artist Sale” at various hotels around the Chicago area. You can purchase “quality original art’ for no more than $59.95. Wow, I bet that
Steve Wynn is really chafing at the 33 million he spent on that Rembrandt.
As I ponder the works that hang on the wall of my home, I don’t ever recall seeking an “over the sofa painting” in my entire life. Yet, I can get one for under $60 or some smaller masterpiece for as little as $7. Nor have I ever selected a work of art based upon a color scheme. To put the record straight, I am color-blind to most hues so that would be a vast waste anyway. I flunked all the bubble tests in the Psych 101 texts.
So what do people use as a measure for what they hang on the walls of their lives?
My sister loves “the painter of light,” Thomas Kinkade. Personally, my preference for one who captures light in the most profound way would be Johannes Vermeer, but my sister and I have rarely ever agreed upon anything. I have cautioned her that an edition of 5,000 is not anything more than a poster. She disagrees.
My son and his wife enjoy fine photographs. They have some great shots from the 30s taken of New York’s Central Park structures. My daughter and her husband seem to prefer larger works – often multi-canvases grouped to form a larger whole – that make a statement.
My walls are peppered with artworks generally associated with events in my life. The paintings bring me memories as well as visual pleasure. Sometimes they provoke me.
But first, I asked myself the question: “What is the most important painting that you have ever seen.” Not important because others say it is, but important in the way that it caused a reaction. There were two that came to mind. One edged the other to second place.
As I grew up in the Deep South, my best friends were books. The only time my father got angry was when he caught me reading at 4 a.m. when he got up to go to the bathroom. Of the things that I read, the encyclopedia ranked very high. We had World Book and later Britannica. Both were published in Chicago and thus used Chicago resources for their illustrations. The first time I walked into The Art Institute was like visiting an old friend. I knew everything I saw from the encyclopedia.
I walked upstairs and into what was then called “the Morton Wing,” from the salt folks. I relished the modern stuff. But, as I traveled back, there it was: “Sunday on La Grand Jatte.” I was not prepared for the size. It was huge. It was overwhelming. Despite Mandy Patinkin doing his tiring attempts at sotto voce, Seurat had done a wonderful thing.
However, years later when I attended the Picasso retrospective at MOMA in New York. Not only was I overwhelmed but I was knocked down emotionally by “Guernica.” This has to be the most important painting that I have ever seen. It slaps you in the face with its rawness. It now hangs in Spain, so if you haven’t, do it.
So what do I live with? What do my walls say to me?
There is the group of oils and watercolors that come from my visits to Romania. I always try to return from each trip with an original piece purchased from a small gallery in Oradea. There is a wonderful pen and ink drawing of the bridges across the Danube in Budapest, a town I love. A small watercolor of the Ponte Vechio in Florence that I was able to watch the artist complete. There is a small icon from a visit to Neuman’s Vierzehnheiligen. Speaking of walls with visual delights!
There is the very large watercolor by John Bunker; reminiscent of Gustav Klimt in its style. John was our neighbor in Florida. He was also a great painter. There is the Ed Paschke which looms over the bed in my room. I purchased it because I thought my daughter really liked his work. She doesn’t. I do.
Tucked away in a corner is a small print by Mark Howard. There is another at the house in Alabama. Howard was a master at printmaking. I say “was” since he turned away from art and decided to go to business school. “Starving artist?”
One of my favorites is by an Alabama painter, Charles Hand. It is called “Study In Red.” Is is a large abstract and was my first purchase many years ago. It hangs alongside a lithograph of Brahms playing the piano discovered about the same time as the Hand. I was wandering around backstage when I was singing Melchior in a tour of “Amahl and the Night Visitors.” There was the piece, lying torn on a table in the wings. I asked the stage manager about it. He said, “take it if you like.” I had it repaired and framed and it has stayed with me since.
There is a mysterious watercolor. Actually, a three-dimensional watercolor. It is eleven images each neatly rolled up into scrolls and meticulously held in place with a paper ties. What images they hold are only hinted at. To unroll them and discover their beauty would, of course, destroy the work. I wonder if I will one day yield and crash the glass and liberate the secrets.
One large sbstract painting recalls a line from Edwin Arlington Robinson’s “Calverlys.” The words, “than are the moons of Ilion” are written across the bottom of the canvas. Another smaller canvas, done almost like a geometric sampler, has a line from Lanford Wilson’s 5th of July: “After they had explored all the suns in the universe, and all the planets of all the suns, they realized that there was no other life in the universe, and that they were alone. And they were very happy, because then they knew it was up to them to become all the things they had imagined they would find.”
Despite what Christie’s or Sotheby’s would have you believe. Art is not about commerce. Years ago I wandered into the studio of a lady up on Lookout Mountain in Tennessee. She was a folk painter, totally untrained. Someone had given her a box of paints and she began to let the art unfold. On the handmade table in her one-room space was a wooden bowl of pinecones – collected carefully on walks among the trees. There was as much “good art” in that grouping of pine cones as will ever be auctioned at the finest of houses.
I don’t know what people expect to find at the “Starving Artist Sale” at the Hilton in Oakbrook, or Northbrook, or Lisle. My advice would be to move the sofa off the wall and alleviate that need and then discover a Student Art Sale at the local college.
It will be a good beginning, and if you allow it, your walls can tell you great stories while offering visual delights.
Steve Wynn is really chafing at the 33 million he spent on that Rembrandt.
As I ponder the works that hang on the wall of my home, I don’t ever recall seeking an “over the sofa painting” in my entire life. Yet, I can get one for under $60 or some smaller masterpiece for as little as $7. Nor have I ever selected a work of art based upon a color scheme. To put the record straight, I am color-blind to most hues so that would be a vast waste anyway. I flunked all the bubble tests in the Psych 101 texts.
So what do people use as a measure for what they hang on the walls of their lives?
My sister loves “the painter of light,” Thomas Kinkade. Personally, my preference for one who captures light in the most profound way would be Johannes Vermeer, but my sister and I have rarely ever agreed upon anything. I have cautioned her that an edition of 5,000 is not anything more than a poster. She disagrees.
My son and his wife enjoy fine photographs. They have some great shots from the 30s taken of New York’s Central Park structures. My daughter and her husband seem to prefer larger works – often multi-canvases grouped to form a larger whole – that make a statement.
My walls are peppered with artworks generally associated with events in my life. The paintings bring me memories as well as visual pleasure. Sometimes they provoke me.
But first, I asked myself the question: “What is the most important painting that you have ever seen.” Not important because others say it is, but important in the way that it caused a reaction. There were two that came to mind. One edged the other to second place.
As I grew up in the Deep South, my best friends were books. The only time my father got angry was when he caught me reading at 4 a.m. when he got up to go to the bathroom. Of the things that I read, the encyclopedia ranked very high. We had World Book and later Britannica. Both were published in Chicago and thus used Chicago resources for their illustrations. The first time I walked into The Art Institute was like visiting an old friend. I knew everything I saw from the encyclopedia.
I walked upstairs and into what was then called “the Morton Wing,” from the salt folks. I relished the modern stuff. But, as I traveled back, there it was: “Sunday on La Grand Jatte.” I was not prepared for the size. It was huge. It was overwhelming. Despite Mandy Patinkin doing his tiring attempts at sotto voce, Seurat had done a wonderful thing.
However, years later when I attended the Picasso retrospective at MOMA in New York. Not only was I overwhelmed but I was knocked down emotionally by “Guernica.” This has to be the most important painting that I have ever seen. It slaps you in the face with its rawness. It now hangs in Spain, so if you haven’t, do it.
So what do I live with? What do my walls say to me?
There is the group of oils and watercolors that come from my visits to Romania. I always try to return from each trip with an original piece purchased from a small gallery in Oradea. There is a wonderful pen and ink drawing of the bridges across the Danube in Budapest, a town I love. A small watercolor of the Ponte Vechio in Florence that I was able to watch the artist complete. There is a small icon from a visit to Neuman’s Vierzehnheiligen. Speaking of walls with visual delights!
There is the very large watercolor by John Bunker; reminiscent of Gustav Klimt in its style. John was our neighbor in Florida. He was also a great painter. There is the Ed Paschke which looms over the bed in my room. I purchased it because I thought my daughter really liked his work. She doesn’t. I do.
Tucked away in a corner is a small print by Mark Howard. There is another at the house in Alabama. Howard was a master at printmaking. I say “was” since he turned away from art and decided to go to business school. “Starving artist?”
One of my favorites is by an Alabama painter, Charles Hand. It is called “Study In Red.” Is is a large abstract and was my first purchase many years ago. It hangs alongside a lithograph of Brahms playing the piano discovered about the same time as the Hand. I was wandering around backstage when I was singing Melchior in a tour of “Amahl and the Night Visitors.” There was the piece, lying torn on a table in the wings. I asked the stage manager about it. He said, “take it if you like.” I had it repaired and framed and it has stayed with me since.
There is a mysterious watercolor. Actually, a three-dimensional watercolor. It is eleven images each neatly rolled up into scrolls and meticulously held in place with a paper ties. What images they hold are only hinted at. To unroll them and discover their beauty would, of course, destroy the work. I wonder if I will one day yield and crash the glass and liberate the secrets.
One large sbstract painting recalls a line from Edwin Arlington Robinson’s “Calverlys.” The words, “than are the moons of Ilion” are written across the bottom of the canvas. Another smaller canvas, done almost like a geometric sampler, has a line from Lanford Wilson’s 5th of July: “After they had explored all the suns in the universe, and all the planets of all the suns, they realized that there was no other life in the universe, and that they were alone. And they were very happy, because then they knew it was up to them to become all the things they had imagined they would find.”
Despite what Christie’s or Sotheby’s would have you believe. Art is not about commerce. Years ago I wandered into the studio of a lady up on Lookout Mountain in Tennessee. She was a folk painter, totally untrained. Someone had given her a box of paints and she began to let the art unfold. On the handmade table in her one-room space was a wooden bowl of pinecones – collected carefully on walks among the trees. There was as much “good art” in that grouping of pine cones as will ever be auctioned at the finest of houses.
I don’t know what people expect to find at the “Starving Artist Sale” at the Hilton in Oakbrook, or Northbrook, or Lisle. My advice would be to move the sofa off the wall and alleviate that need and then discover a Student Art Sale at the local college.
It will be a good beginning, and if you allow it, your walls can tell you great stories while offering visual delights.
Saturday, January 2, 2010
"You Can't Get There From Here"
When I asked the old-timer walking along the roadway for directions, he replied, “ you can’t get there from here.” Then he added, “you can, but it will take a long, long time.” Then he walked away.
Early this morning, with the sounds of a major city outside my window, I found myself looking through a small photo album that my sister gave me many years ago. She assembled it from memories found in a drawer in my parent’s home. It is devoted to my birth in Mississippi and my growing up in the small town in Central Alabama. The first photo is a stolen kiss between the two people who would become my parents. In the last of the photos, I am still in my mid-teens.
As I glanced at the pictures, I had vivid memories for many of them. A trip to some new place with my family was often the reason behind the snapshot. But others, when I was a toddler, I depended upon recalled stories from my parents for their meaning.
There is an emergency vehicle screaming down the street about two blocks away. The city is waking up and growling the sounds that cities make. There are noises from people walking their dogs usually trapped in highrises.
How did I get here from there – the places in the photographs?
The first time I saw Chicago was from the window seat of a Delta Airlines jet. It was a cold clear night in November of 1963. I had flown alone to visit Northwestern on my quest to discover where I would do graduate study following the completion of my undergraduate degree the coming spring. Northwestern had “courted” my ego in the form of a visit from the Dean earlier that year and I was repaying the favor.
On the table for consideration at that point were UCLA, the Hochschule für Musik in Berlin, Boston University, and after George Howerton’s visit, Northwestern. Did I mention that I had the ego that “ate the world?”
The trip to Chicago was a bribe from a deacon of the church where I worked as a choral director during my undergraduate years. In the summers, I free-lanced as an architect/designer to earn additional money for college. It was the deacon’s company that hired me, during the summers, to re-design their corporate offices in several southern states. In one such locale, I shared the company suite with the deacon/CEO and inadvertently discovered his penchant for the comfort of Jack Daniel's and local “ladies of the evening.” (One "lady" made a wrong turn. Jack was in evidence everywhere.)
Weeks later I was summoned to his office – one which I had artfully designed - and handed a first-class ticket to Chicago with an open date. His words, “I know you are interested in a great school up there in the big city. I hope you will see fit to forget my indiscretions.” He probably did not use those exact words, but I will portray him far more literate than he actually was in the interest of good taste.
So, on that cold November night as the plane descended, I looked out at on a vast sea of lights which illuminated streets totally unknown to me. I remember saying to myself, “when you are in Birmingham, you can only see about two blocks at a time. It is the same here. Just take it two blocks at a time.” Two blocks became 200, and you can do the math. While I don’t regret the choice of Northwestern over the others, Berlin would have been an interesting challenge.
It is now 7 degrees on a January morning in Chicago, many years removed. What the deacon didn’t realize was that everyone was aware he was a philanderer – even his wife - so my information would have been “no great shakes.”
However, I needed a way to get here from there.
Early this morning, with the sounds of a major city outside my window, I found myself looking through a small photo album that my sister gave me many years ago. She assembled it from memories found in a drawer in my parent’s home. It is devoted to my birth in Mississippi and my growing up in the small town in Central Alabama. The first photo is a stolen kiss between the two people who would become my parents. In the last of the photos, I am still in my mid-teens.
As I glanced at the pictures, I had vivid memories for many of them. A trip to some new place with my family was often the reason behind the snapshot. But others, when I was a toddler, I depended upon recalled stories from my parents for their meaning.
There is an emergency vehicle screaming down the street about two blocks away. The city is waking up and growling the sounds that cities make. There are noises from people walking their dogs usually trapped in highrises.
How did I get here from there – the places in the photographs?
The first time I saw Chicago was from the window seat of a Delta Airlines jet. It was a cold clear night in November of 1963. I had flown alone to visit Northwestern on my quest to discover where I would do graduate study following the completion of my undergraduate degree the coming spring. Northwestern had “courted” my ego in the form of a visit from the Dean earlier that year and I was repaying the favor.
On the table for consideration at that point were UCLA, the Hochschule für Musik in Berlin, Boston University, and after George Howerton’s visit, Northwestern. Did I mention that I had the ego that “ate the world?”
The trip to Chicago was a bribe from a deacon of the church where I worked as a choral director during my undergraduate years. In the summers, I free-lanced as an architect/designer to earn additional money for college. It was the deacon’s company that hired me, during the summers, to re-design their corporate offices in several southern states. In one such locale, I shared the company suite with the deacon/CEO and inadvertently discovered his penchant for the comfort of Jack Daniel's and local “ladies of the evening.” (One "lady" made a wrong turn. Jack was in evidence everywhere.)
Weeks later I was summoned to his office – one which I had artfully designed - and handed a first-class ticket to Chicago with an open date. His words, “I know you are interested in a great school up there in the big city. I hope you will see fit to forget my indiscretions.” He probably did not use those exact words, but I will portray him far more literate than he actually was in the interest of good taste.
So, on that cold November night as the plane descended, I looked out at on a vast sea of lights which illuminated streets totally unknown to me. I remember saying to myself, “when you are in Birmingham, you can only see about two blocks at a time. It is the same here. Just take it two blocks at a time.” Two blocks became 200, and you can do the math. While I don’t regret the choice of Northwestern over the others, Berlin would have been an interesting challenge.
It is now 7 degrees on a January morning in Chicago, many years removed. What the deacon didn’t realize was that everyone was aware he was a philanderer – even his wife - so my information would have been “no great shakes.”
However, I needed a way to get here from there.
Friday, January 1, 2010
Going Naked Into The World
It is the afternoon of the first day of a new decade. I am supposed to be in Alabama preparing to head back to Chicago on a 5:20 United flight. Instead, I am sidelined in Chicago with a new pacemaker.
I missed the great Brunswick Stew at the Downtown Grill and, of course, puttering around in the golf cart with my granddaughter Gracie. However, at 3:40 on January 1, I am happy that I am snug in my condo and not facing airport security in the post-Christmas Day fiasco.
“Sir, look at the ID card, it is a pacemaker!!! I am not a threat!”
David Brooks, the NYTimes columnist, had a brilliant essay today about the failure of our technology and of our vast governmental systems to keep us safe in a world full of people out to do harm. In the post-9/11 world, even the “hyped” governmental agencies have proven to be an empty shell when it comes to actually functioning. I must admit that I always felt The Department of Homeland Security sounded like a name contrived from a Dick Tracy comic strip. Think Tom Ridge in a yellow fedora and trench coat.
My son figures that we will soon all arrive at the airport in a skimpy hospital gown and get dressed after going through security. Having been so attired earlier in this week for the surgery, I can attest that it can get drafty. We are all going to get to know each other far more than I had ever wished. Too much information!!!
This put me to thinking about the past.
My mother’s maiden aunt, Birdie, who lived next door to us, was a very religious woman. She steadfastly refused to cut her hair because it wasn’t Biblical. She washed the long tresses each Saturday and when dry, placed them into a bun. It was a weekly ritual in which she would sit on her back lawn in a large white Adirondack chair and let it dry in the sun. This was before the days of the hand-held hair dryer and to go to a commercial establishment would risk some of the “crowning glory” being caught off-guard by Maylene's unwieldy scissors. So she sat in the sun, read her Sunday School lesson, and sang great hymns of the faith.
This time also coincided with an era where the giving of a baby chick at Easter – usually dyed a nice blue or pink - was not at all empathetic with the needs of the fowl in question. Think pre-PETA. So each Easter I received one. It usually didn’t make it but a few weeks. However, one such baby chick survived and became a large white rooster, which we named Charlie. Charlie had keen ear and a mean streak.
Now Birdie was lame from birth – her left side was malformed such to cause a severe limp and limited use of that hand. Her agitated walk seemed to attract the attention of Charlie when the two – the rooster and the Aunt – encountered each other. Charlie would peck at her heels as she tried to get away from this unwanted attention.
Each Saturday, before heading out with wet hair to her favorite chair in the sun, she would phone my mom and request that I place Charlie in the pen. While my mother would dutifully tell me to do so, I often failed. Eventually, on the failed days, Charlie would hear the strains of “Will There Be Any Stars In My Crown” and wander through the opening of the hedgerow that separated our lawns.
He would immediately startle Miss Birdie. Her combs would fly in one direction and King James in another as she tried to make a dash to the safety of her back screen porch. Rarely was she the winner. If I tell you that I enjoyed the spectacle, then it would alter our relationship irreparably.
One particularly hot summer day, she was expecting the Preacher to drop by her home around one in the afternoon to pick up a check to purchase new collection plates for the church. Birdie was generous to a fault and this particular clergyman seemed to see her as a source to be tapped often. She told the housekeeper that she was expecting the preacher, but wanted to freshen up before he came. She was wilted from the heat.
She retired to her bathroom for a long cooling soak.
Repairs were being made to the rear porch on her home and the workman had not yet reinstalled the doorway to the screened porch.
Enjoying the cool waters of her tub, she began to sing one of her favorites, “The Unclouded Day.” About the time she wafted into the chorus, “Oh the land of cloudless day……,” Charlie wandered into her yard and found his way up upon the porch through the opening where the door should have been. He followed the sounds and soon was eye to eye with Birdie in her bath. Upon seeing the rabid rooster, Birdie jumped, totally naked, from her cool waters to beat a hasty retreat. Charlie was on her heels.
Meanwhile, the preacher had arrived a bit earlier than expected in order the mention that the church piano was in bad need of tuning and had been shown to a seat in the living room.
It was reported later that each time she passed the Preacher on any of the several circles through her house trying to elude the white demon, she never failed to say, “How do you do, Reverend?” It was a testament to her good upbringing and impeccable manners, even when nude before a man of God.
So now it seems, like Birdie, we will dash through the airport with as little on as possible so as to not cause a problem with a TSA guy named Charlie.
But keep your cool. As my mother would say, “Without good manners, you might as well go naked into the world.”
Happy New Year.
I missed the great Brunswick Stew at the Downtown Grill and, of course, puttering around in the golf cart with my granddaughter Gracie. However, at 3:40 on January 1, I am happy that I am snug in my condo and not facing airport security in the post-Christmas Day fiasco.
“Sir, look at the ID card, it is a pacemaker!!! I am not a threat!”
David Brooks, the NYTimes columnist, had a brilliant essay today about the failure of our technology and of our vast governmental systems to keep us safe in a world full of people out to do harm. In the post-9/11 world, even the “hyped” governmental agencies have proven to be an empty shell when it comes to actually functioning. I must admit that I always felt The Department of Homeland Security sounded like a name contrived from a Dick Tracy comic strip. Think Tom Ridge in a yellow fedora and trench coat.
My son figures that we will soon all arrive at the airport in a skimpy hospital gown and get dressed after going through security. Having been so attired earlier in this week for the surgery, I can attest that it can get drafty. We are all going to get to know each other far more than I had ever wished. Too much information!!!
This put me to thinking about the past.
My mother’s maiden aunt, Birdie, who lived next door to us, was a very religious woman. She steadfastly refused to cut her hair because it wasn’t Biblical. She washed the long tresses each Saturday and when dry, placed them into a bun. It was a weekly ritual in which she would sit on her back lawn in a large white Adirondack chair and let it dry in the sun. This was before the days of the hand-held hair dryer and to go to a commercial establishment would risk some of the “crowning glory” being caught off-guard by Maylene's unwieldy scissors. So she sat in the sun, read her Sunday School lesson, and sang great hymns of the faith.
This time also coincided with an era where the giving of a baby chick at Easter – usually dyed a nice blue or pink - was not at all empathetic with the needs of the fowl in question. Think pre-PETA. So each Easter I received one. It usually didn’t make it but a few weeks. However, one such baby chick survived and became a large white rooster, which we named Charlie. Charlie had keen ear and a mean streak.
Now Birdie was lame from birth – her left side was malformed such to cause a severe limp and limited use of that hand. Her agitated walk seemed to attract the attention of Charlie when the two – the rooster and the Aunt – encountered each other. Charlie would peck at her heels as she tried to get away from this unwanted attention.
Each Saturday, before heading out with wet hair to her favorite chair in the sun, she would phone my mom and request that I place Charlie in the pen. While my mother would dutifully tell me to do so, I often failed. Eventually, on the failed days, Charlie would hear the strains of “Will There Be Any Stars In My Crown” and wander through the opening of the hedgerow that separated our lawns.
He would immediately startle Miss Birdie. Her combs would fly in one direction and King James in another as she tried to make a dash to the safety of her back screen porch. Rarely was she the winner. If I tell you that I enjoyed the spectacle, then it would alter our relationship irreparably.
One particularly hot summer day, she was expecting the Preacher to drop by her home around one in the afternoon to pick up a check to purchase new collection plates for the church. Birdie was generous to a fault and this particular clergyman seemed to see her as a source to be tapped often. She told the housekeeper that she was expecting the preacher, but wanted to freshen up before he came. She was wilted from the heat.
She retired to her bathroom for a long cooling soak.
Repairs were being made to the rear porch on her home and the workman had not yet reinstalled the doorway to the screened porch.
Enjoying the cool waters of her tub, she began to sing one of her favorites, “The Unclouded Day.” About the time she wafted into the chorus, “Oh the land of cloudless day……,” Charlie wandered into her yard and found his way up upon the porch through the opening where the door should have been. He followed the sounds and soon was eye to eye with Birdie in her bath. Upon seeing the rabid rooster, Birdie jumped, totally naked, from her cool waters to beat a hasty retreat. Charlie was on her heels.
Meanwhile, the preacher had arrived a bit earlier than expected in order the mention that the church piano was in bad need of tuning and had been shown to a seat in the living room.
It was reported later that each time she passed the Preacher on any of the several circles through her house trying to elude the white demon, she never failed to say, “How do you do, Reverend?” It was a testament to her good upbringing and impeccable manners, even when nude before a man of God.
So now it seems, like Birdie, we will dash through the airport with as little on as possible so as to not cause a problem with a TSA guy named Charlie.
But keep your cool. As my mother would say, “Without good manners, you might as well go naked into the world.”
Happy New Year.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
