Good ol' college days

College life, for most of us, is a unique experience.  It has only a vague resemblance to our K-12 school days.  It bears virtually no resemblance to post-college life.  

College is stressful.  We may be unhappy.  We may grieve the loss of our childhood.  We may feel panicked about our future.  But, regardless of how we felt at the time, we look back on it afterwards with nostalgia -- nostalgia sometimes bordering on the pathological.

At least, that's how two guys, a couple of years out of college, look back on it in a novel I've been reading.¹  They'd been roommates for a year and good friends, but had been out of touch since graduation.  Seeing each other again, they can't stop talking about their college days.  They actually visit their alma mater together, and bribe a student for permission to enter their old dorm and inspect their old dorm room, now occupied by two girls.  The students they encounter, the present occupants of the dormitory,  seem to them to be living in a prelapsarian paradise, a paradise they won't appreciate until driven out into the "real world."

How did they feel about life after leaving college?  "It's the void, ....The post-college void."

There was rarely anything glorious about college, but it was me.  And it filled every single second with ready-made life.  At the tips of my fingers, on the other side of my door, all around me, whenever I wanted it.  In college I could breathe deep and say, This is where I belong.  Even when it was bad.  And even when it was confusing, it made sense.         

What hurt most was that I rushed through it, took it for granted.  I was anxious to graduate, eager to mark the goodbye and move on to something else, to escape and to start over again.  But I'd never felt quite right afterward.

No, I was not stuck in my glory days.  I was homesick.

These two young men were obviously and unhealthily fixated on the past, as the novel continually makes clear.  But I understood them.  And I envied their having met up again, each of them eager to reminisce about their college days.

I hasten to assure my readers that I'm not pathologically "homesick" for my life as an undergraduate.  But the feelings these guys experienced resonate with me.  

I come from a family of folks who love to reminisce.  When we get together, we can sit around for hours talking about the minutiae of our childhoods.  But when it comes to college life, I no longer know anyone to talk with, no one similar to the two young nostalgia-buffs in the novel.

The only college friends with whom I'm still in contact are a couple of twin brothers, both close college friends of mine, and one of whom lived on the same floor of the dorm that I did.  So -- talk over olden times with them, you suggest?  Unfortunately, I've rarely met two people less interested in recalling the past.  In fact, I'm not sure they even remember our college days.  I should have been warned while still in college -- I once talked to my dormmate about junior high, and asked a question about what he thought of his teachers during those years.  He looked at me blankly, and told me he had no idea who his junior high teachers had been.  He seemed to find it odd that I myself still remembered the names of anyone who had taught me in the distant past, some seven or eight years earlier.

What an unfortunate accident that my closest friend from college and I turned out to lie on completely opposite tails of the nostalgia bell curve.

I remembered too how we gave each other haircuts here. And that this was where we had our Secret Santa party that Christmas. Gia threw up in the corner and the weird kid Brian used to lean in that doorway when everyone else filled up the couches.
This was where we were roommates.

Ah yes, good times.  My own memories were, perhaps, more quiet and less typically undergrad.  Or maybe not, when I think back.  I like to recall political and philosophical arguments we had, crowded into someone's room at 1 a.m., or gathered in the common room.  But I also remember that it wasn't until several years after graduation that I could tolerate again the smell and taste of gin.

I suppose it's just as well that I know of no one who can -- or wants to -- either confirm or rebut my memories, or who insists on adding unwanted details.  I'm free to shape my past just as I choose.  But, even though some of the memories that came to light might be embarrassing, I do miss knowing at least one person who shares my memories of those years between 18 and 22.  

I guess I should have caved in earlier and actually attended a class reunion!    

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¹Ben Monopoli, The Cranberry Hush: A Novel  (2011)

Turkey solitaire

Thanksgiving.  It's not really a holiday for solitary observance.  It started off, after all, with European immigrants getting together with local "Indians," attempting a little inter-ethnic group camaraderie.  

No one, pilgrim or Indian, at least in the history books, went off into the forest and ate alone.

But 2020 is different in many ways, even for those of us who proudly tout our introversion.  Because it's not always been this way.  

Last year I traveled to Challis, Idaho, to celebrate with my sister and her family.  In 2018, I joined old friends in San Diego.   In 2017, I celebrated with family in Chiang Mai, Thailand.    In 2016, we actually skipped Thanksgiving on Thanksgiving, because of scheduling problems, but celebrated it a week later in Sonoma.  The last Thursday of November, rather than the fourth -- the same date that Abraham Lincoln first proclaimed it. 

And yes, sometimes I actually have hosted the celebration.  Although I guess I'd have to go back to 2004, when family and friends descended on Seattle from Northern and Southern California and from British Columbia.

This year, however, Covid-19 makes hermits of us all, at least those of us for whom a "household" consists of ourselves alone.  Together with maybe a couple of sleek, black cats.

So what does one do when celebrating Thanksgiving alone?  He doesn't buy a sixteen-pound turkey, with all the fixings.  Nor, in the midst of a pandemic lockdown, does he dine alone in a nice restaurant.  Or even in a not-so-nice restaurant.

No, he -- if by he we mean me -- does the rock bottom minimum.  He buys a frozen "Roast Turkey Breast and Stuffing Dinner" (21 grams of protein, 280 calories), and, at the appropriate time, spends about seven minutes cooking (microwaving) it.  Maybe a glass of wine to take the edge off the bizarreness of the experience.   

But before his banquet, he takes part in a multi-party Zoom session with some friends in disparate parts of the country.  He exchanges emailed greetings with family members, all of whom have managed to embed themselves within households consisting of more than a single occupant.

He then curls up with a book and two cats and reads.

And he looks forward to louder, merrier, more populated -- and much more extroverted -- Thanksgivings in the future.  

But -- as a lifelong introvert -- he finds this entire experience considerably less depressing than he hopes -- as a writer -- to have succeeded in making you feel.  

Happy Thanksgiving!  (Or whatever.) 

Saxon hiking and brooding, 1999

Saxon sandstone
(stock photo)

Aw, why not.  Excerpts from my travel journal from Central Europe, September 1999.

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Thursday, September 9 -- 10:50 a.m. [en route to Wehlen, outside Dresden]

Looks like a beautiful day and should be pretty hiking in what "Let's Go" says is called Sächsen Schweiz -- Saxon Switzerland.

Wandered all around Dresden yesterday after getting a room in the Neustadt, or New City.  Ironic in that I had congratulated myself for not following the herd and getting off at Dresden Neustadt station, but staying on the train to the Hbf.  The woman in the hotel office told me that the cheapest room in the old city area ("Altstadt") was DM 130, but that I could get a room in the Neustadt for DM 65 -- which I did, mastering the Dresden tram system in the process.

***

Thursday, September 9 -- 2:00 p.m. [Rathen, Germany]  

I'm sitting on a café terrace in Rathen, overlooking the Elbe.  Having failed to get my waiter's attention, permitting me to pay for my ice cream delight and coffee, I'll take advantage of the time to do a little writing.

Got off the S-Bahn in Wehlen, and moved onto a tiny ferry which crossed the Elbe -- it seemed to drift across -- to Wehlen Stadt, a small village.  Took a path up into the Bastei -- the sandstone cliffs along the river.  Beautiful Black Forest type forests -- heavy canopy of deciduous trees with just a touch of autumn in their leaves -- and with some evergreens mixed in.  Hansel and Gretel scenery --thick trees but virtually no undergrowth.  Steep path for quite awhile, then level along the plateau.  Finally, a steep descent on stairs cut in the sandstone and a few metal stairways through weird sandstone chasms.  Very dramatic and attractive.  Ended up here in Rathen, a larger tourist village, also connected by ferry to the S-Bahn across the Elbe.

Having fattened myself up and ingested some caffeine, I plan now to continue up-river to Hohnstein, and then either come back here or on to the next S-Bahn stop, depending on how much time it takes.

View from here is magnificent -- river traffic, chateau-like buildings across the river, and steep sandstone cliffs on this side off to my right.  If I don't get my check soon, I could doze off here at my table until dinner!

Thursday, September 9 -- 3:15 p.m. [en route to Hohnstein, Germany]

Once past the beginning of the trail, this path was deserted.  Me, all alone -- walking through a fairyland of rocks and deciduous trees.  A long valley, a wide trail, and a babbling stream to keep me company.  I've climbed up onto a boulder overlooking the stream to relax and write this entry.

I feel like a good Aryan of Saxony, drinking in the beauty of the Fatherland.

And having lugubrious Saxon thoughts.  Twenty years ago, sitting on High Divide looking out over the Olympics, I told Jim Bethel we probably would never sit in that same location again, admiring the dazzling beauty.  Now, I think this is probably the first and last time I'll ever be anywhere at all in Saxony.

A few more years and I may be saying the same thing about the whole of Germany, although Europe is so accessible that there may always be the chance of yet another visit, barring knowledge of some fatal disease.  I probably always will be able to anticipate another visit to Italy, for example, where I can sit in a café, sipping wine, cursing the changes in the country since I first saw the "real" Italy of 1961, and wondering why the hell the sun isn't as warm as it used to be.

Oh well -- Hohnstein lies ahead for now.  Onward and upward.  

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My next entry is from Dresden, at 7 p.m., so I apparently made it safely back!

A Feather on the Breath of God

Once again, I decide to write a short blurb for a book on Goodreads, rather than on my blog.  The novel is by the same author -- Sigrid Nunez -- as The Friend, which I discussed in my last post.  But my "blurb" kept growing longer, and became long enough for a blog entry.  Feather was Nunez's first novel.  I'm not sure I like it well enough to make it "bloggable," but I haven't written about anything else for several days, so here it is!

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A Feather on the Breath of God is generally described as the most autobiographical of Sigrid Nunez's novels. Is it even a novel, rather than a memoir? A question I asked a week ago, after reading The Friend, another of her novels.

Certainly, when an author who is the child of a Chinese-Panamanian father and a German mother, both immigrants, writes in the voice of a narrator who has identical parentage, it's natural to assume that what we are reading is essentially a memoir. Perhaps a fictionalized memoir. As far as my enjoyment was concerned, it really made little difference.

The book is divided into four chapters, describing her father, her mother, her period as a ballet student, and her later life as the lover of a Russian immigrant taxi driver. Some readers have complained that the first two chapters, at least, are merely descriptive and don't advance the "plot." I don't care. They give a fascinating picture of the lives and quirks of her two parents, and of their dysfunctional marriage; they are necessary background to understand her later life. (Regardless of whether "her" means only the narrator or Nunez herself.)

I needed to read and absorb those first two chapters -- the silent, hard-working Chinese-speaking father and the emotional, homesick, German mother, together with the bleakness of her childhood life in "the projects" of New York -- to appreciate the narrator's devotion to dance.

Everything about the world of ballet responds to the young girl looking to escape real life. ... I love it all -- the rules, the rituals, the intolerance of any slackness or leniency. Authoritarianism was, of course, in keeping with my upbringing, but now all the rules had a purpose. Ballet meant finally being taken seriously, meant being allowed to take yourself seriously.

The final chapter, in which the now-woman, living promiscuously while teaching English to immigrants, flows naturally, although hardly predictably or by necessity, out of the earlier chapters. Vadim, her English student, and then her Russian lover, is the male authoritarian she had been looking for, the opposite of her silent, withdrawn father.  

Vadim is tall, handsome, passionate, and cocky. He's complicated and simple, simultaneously. Back home in Odessa, he had been a druggie, a brawler, a gang member. He's a tender lover, but gives off an aura of potential violence, held tightly in reserve -- violence never shown overtly to the narrator. He misses the closeness of Russian friendship, and the ability of the Russian language to express depths of feeling better than does English. He cheats his taxi passengers, but is kind to the elderly and disabled, allowing them to ride for free.

Her friends hated and feared him, and begged her to ditch him. But she contemplates:

A cheat. A litterbug. A drowner of kittens. I don't want to condemn him. I want to understand everything, imagining that the more I understand, the less he will be guilty. That old fallacy.

The narrator is passionately in love with Vadim; Vadim loves and respects her, but he is not surprised or dismayed when she finally dumps him. "Lots of fish in the sea."

A doctor, presumably a therapist, asks her at the book's end:

"Why did you go with this man? What did you want?" The doctor sitting across from me now is a woman. A stout, shapeless, housemother-type, with a homely manner of speaking and an even homelier face. I look at that face and think: How can she possibly understand? This woman has never been ravished.

The question that puzzled even Freud: "What do women want?"

The Friend

An unnamed writer and English professor writes her feelings to an older, lifelong friend and prominent author, also unnamed.  She grieves because the friend is dead.  A suicide.  Although years ago, they had spent a single night together, by tacit agreement their ensuing friendship had been platonic, a meeting of minds.

But the narrator is nevertheless devastated.

Her mentor had left her something to remember him by.  A 180-pound Harlequin Great Dane, a dog the distinguished author had found in a park, unattended but well-trained.  He had named him "Apollo," and adopted him.  The narrator reluctantly accepts responsibility for the dog, despite the tiny size of her 500-square-foot Manhattan apartment.

The Friend, by Sigrid Nunez (2018), is largely autobiographical, although, Nunez says, that wasn't her original intention.¹  It's a novel, but it doesn't read as a conventional novel, a story with plot and characterization.  It reads more like a memoir, a collection of thoughts, a stream of consciousness.  Many of her thoughts are a brief paragraph in length, before she moves on to another subject.  The novel contains the narrator's expressions of grief at her friend's death, and descriptions of how she handles her grief; lengthy quotations from other writers on subjects pertaining to mortality and suicide and writing; an entire chapter on her work with abused women who used writing for therapy; the story of her reluctant falling in love with the silent and undemonstrative Apollo; and her reflections on the purpose of writing, who should be (and not be) a writer, what is wrong with kids today who insist on becoming writers, and hints on how to write.

The narrator quotes another writer (one she dislikes), who refers to one of his own works: "It's a novel because I say it is."  Nunez would presumably agree.  The Friend doesn't read like a conventional novel, but it's hard to find another category for it.  Call it a novel.

Just as I'm trying to decide whether The Friend is a fictional memoir or an autobiographical novel, I hit the second to the last chapter, where the narrator is talking to her older friend and mentor -- now very much alive, although recovering from an unsuccessful suicide attempt.  She confesses that she is writing a novel based on his suicide attempt, and on their long friendship.  And on her relationship with his dog.  She explains the many liberties she's taken with the facts, in order to prevent readers from discerning her friend's identity.  For example, in real life, the Great Dane Apollo is a dachshund named "Jip."

"In real life"?  But, of course, this supposedly self-revelatory chapter is also part of the novel.  Like a scene in a Bergman movie showing a camera and staff filming the scene.

The Friend is filled with wonderful lines worth quoting -- some by other authors, many by Ms. Nunez herself.  For example, the poet Rilke's advice to a young writer:

Beware irony, ignore criticism, look to what is simple, study the small and humble things of the world, do what is difficult precisely because it is difficult, do not search for answers but rather love the questions, do not run away from sadness or depression for these might be the very conditions necessary to your work.  Seek solitude; above all seek solitude.

Advice that Ms. Nunez herself apparently lives by.  Especially the seeking of solitude.  The narrator describes her present-day students' hatred of writing as a profession -- hatred of the profession by the very students studying writing.   They claim that polished skill, discipline, even correct punctuation and spelling, are all exclusive elitist objectives:

To become a professional writer in our society you have to be privileged to begin with, and the feeling is that privileged people shouldn't be writing anymore -- not unless they can find a way not to write about themselves because that only furthers the agenda of white supremacy and the patriarchy.  You scoff, but you can't deny that writing is an elitist, egotistic activity.  

Throughout the novel, we watch the growing love affair between the narrator and the dog Apollo, two "persons" who are both grieving for the same man.  She finally discovers the best way to calm Apollo and make him content -- to read aloud to him  This exercise apparently brings back Apollo's happy memories of life with his beloved scholar-adopter.

The book is short, it can be read aloud in about two hours.  But soon Apollo has dropped off, like a child at whose bedside a mother has been reading and waiting for precisely this moment to tiptoe away.  I'm not tiptoeing anywhere.  Pinned beneath his weight, my feet have gone numb.  I wiggle them and he wakes.  Without getting up he seeks my hand, still holding the little book, and he licks it.

Both Nunez and her narrator admit to being cat people.  The narrator hadn't been eager to adopt the dog  -- the huge dog -- that her friend had left to her.  But, although she was almost evicted from her apartment, where pets were forbidden, she never dreamed of getting rid of Apollo.  Eventually, she admits, she sometimes found herself taking the taxi home from work, rather than the subway, just to see Apollo faster.

Almost all love stories between a child and a dog, or even an adult and a dog, end in sadness.  An impending sadness foreshadowed by the narrator throughout this book.  Apollo was already getting up there in years when the narrator took him in.  The fact that dogs are mortal, and that his eventual death was inevitable, is mentioned on numerous occasions.

But when it happens, it twists your guts.

Many on-line commentators love the book as a dog story, but dislike being distracted by Nunez's philosophical ramblings and professional interests.  The Friend definitely is a dog story, but the dog story is part of -- an illustration of, maybe -- Nunez's concern with broader issues of life and death, and of her interest in writing as a way in which writers manage the difficulties and fears one encounters in life.  The book won the 2018 National Book Award for Fiction.

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¹Alexandra Alter, New York Times (December 13, 2018)

Travel in the time of Covid.

But the U.S. is "going into a very dark winter," he [President-elect Biden] said.  "Things are going to get much tougher before they get easier."

--New York Times

Mr. Biden's words stare out at me from my newspaper page.  They paint a picture in my mind of images from an on-line game of medieval warfare -- ice and snow, starving mothers and crying babies, the clank of swords against armor, cries of barbarian hordes at the castle gate.

Actually, Mr. Biden's "very dark winter" referred to prospects for the economy during the coming months, but, even so, a bad economy means parents out of work, unable to pay for basic food and shelter.

Bad prospects for the winter are superimposed on very good news this past week from pharmaceutical companies that are developing Covid-19 vaccines -- initially-evaluated efficacy rates of over 90 percent by Pfizer and over 94 percent by Moderna.  But testing on those vaccines has not been completed, and approval by the FDA has not yet been granted.  Even if, as many hope, one or both vaccines will be approved next month, the vaccine's voyage from the pharmaceutical company to the arm of the average citizen will be complicated and time-consuming.  Some of us may be vaccinated by spring, but for many others, vaccination may not be available until some time in the summer.

With our nation facing a crisis in its economy, and with citizens showing increasing impatience and refusal to observe simple precautions like wearing masks and maintaining social distances, it seems selfish and self-centered for me to be worried about whether I can travel to Italy.  But my plans for Italy continue to hang over my head as an issue that I can't simply ignore.

I still have a large deposit paid, holding a reservation for a large villa in Levanto on Italy's Ligurian coast.  We had thirty guests signed up for a two-week birthday party last May, a party that had to be canceled at nearly the last minute.  Rather than argue about whether I should lose my deposit, our get-together was rescheduled for May 2021.  Meanwhile, some of our expected guests no longer can make it, but we've gained a few new ones as well.  

That was the status the last I heard.  By now, I suspect that many more of our party have quietly given up entirely on the trip.

We have until mid-January to cancel, and receive a refund of most of our deposit.  I've promised the group that a final decision would be made by then as to whether we would continue to press forward with the trip.  My decision will be complicated by the fact that Italy, and the rest of the EU, currently bans American tourists because of our lousy job of handling the virus.  And not only is the pandemic not easing off in the U.S., it is growing considerably worse.  Moreover, although for most of the year, Europe itself seemed to be handling the pandemic far better than were we, the EU is now itself suffering from a major increase in its rate of infection.

I question whether we'll be allowed to enter Italy by May, even if we all have vaccinations, although it's hard to predict the Italian government's decisions -- given its dependence on tourism -- during the next few months.  I also question whether, once we got there, the experience would be all that enjoyable.  Playing on the beach and hiking through the hills while the plague rages about us might be more stressful than the experience would be worth.

So.  I read the reports each day giving the percentages of newly diagnosed cases.  I try to foresee the future.  I rejoice in the prospect of effective vaccines.  But I question how much the situation will have improved six months from now.

Time will tell, as the saying goes.

Toad becomes a loser

My mind drifts back to childhood, and I realize that what I learned as a child often influences how I see the world as an adult.  

For example, sometimes in public life we see a Man at the peak of his powers suddenly cast down.  Not only does he lose his incredible privileges, but the Law steps in, seeking punishment for the vile acts the Man has committed -- committed not only while at the peak  of his powers, but also while scrambling upward toward said peak.

And I think of Mr. Toad.. Toad isn't the hero of Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows, but he is certainly one of the more colorful characters. The sort of guy who couldn't keep quiet, especially not when the topic of conversation touched upon his own many perfections.  The sort of character who, when complimented on his house, would -- as the author writes -- exclaim:

"Finest house on the whole river," cried Toad boisterously.  "Or anywhere else, for that matter," he could not help adding.  

Or:

"Ho, ho!  I am The Toad, the handsome, the popular, the successful Toad!"  He got so puffed up with conceit that he made up a song as he walked in praise of himself, and sang it at the top of his voice, though there was no one to hear it but him.

The world has held great Heroes,
As history-books have showed;
But never a name to go down to fame
Compared with that of Toad!

The army all saluted
As they marched along the road.
Was it the King?  Or Kitchener?
No.  It was Mr. Toad. 

 But, as I began reminding you, just like our hypothetical Man, even a toad of Mr. Toad's stature could get caught with his hand (paw?) in the cookie jar.  Could meet his Fate.  And the Cruelty of the Law.

"Prisoner!  Pull yourself together and try and stand up straight.  It's going to be twenty years for you this time." ... 

Then the brutal minions of the law fell upon the hapless Toad; loaded him with chains, and dragged him from the Court House, shrieking, praying, protesting; across the market-place, where the playful populace, always as severe upon detected crime as they are sympathetic and helpful when one is merely "wanted," assailed him with jeers, carrots, and popular catch-words; past hooting school children, their innocent faces lit up with the pleasure they ever derive from the sight of a gentleman in difficulties; across the hollow-sounding drawbridge, below the spiky portcullis, under the frowning archway of the grim old castle, whose ancient towers soared high overhead; ... [etc., etc.].  There at last they paused,, where an ancient gaoler sat fingering a bunch of mighty keys.

"Oddsbodikins!" said the sergeant of police, taking off his helmet and wiping his forehead.  "Rouse thee, old loon, and take over from us this vile Toad, a criminal of deepest guile and matchless artfulness and resource.  Watch and ward him with all thy skill; and mark thee well, greybeard, should aught untoward befall, thy old head shall answer for his -- and murrain on both of them!"

I admit it: As a boy I squirmed with pleasure as Toad faced his doom.  And yet Toad, for all his self-regard -- what we would today politely call narcissism -- and his incessant bragging ...  Well, he was, in fact, a lovable guy, a generous animal, a toad who loved his friends and hoped for their love in exchange.  He was kind, and his friends were both sympathetic and exasperated.  He just had no instinct for humility.

If we, as kids, squirmed with pleasure at watching the come-uppance of such a genial egomaniac as Mr. Toad, imagine our barely concealed pleasure as adults at seeing the same Fate befall a Man who had all of Toad's character weaknesses, but not one of his virtues.  Not one.

Almost hard to comprehend that such a Man could exist.

But I speak only about fiction, of course.  About hypotheticals..  Surely such a Man could not exist, let alone attain a state of High Power, in our real world today.

Grading papers

I've just now walked away from my dining room table, covered with papers, where I've been working.  Where I've been encouraging my cats not to congregate.  Where I've strongly encouraged them not to chew on the papers.

I somehow allowed myself to volunteer to grade two briefs submitted by law students for a moot court competition.  Each brief is just under fifty pages in length, and they are accompanied by forty pages of trial court records and a 29-page Bench Memorandum -- a document prepared by the competition organizers that supposedly helps me to understand what the case is all about, and the legal theories arising out of it.

Each of the two student briefs, from two different students, is a "Brief of Petitioner," -- both thus arguing the same side of the case -- which makes my job easier.  The mooted case is before the U.S. Supreme Court.  I can't say much more about it, but it deals with various liabilities arising out of the manufacture of a drug designed to combat a worldwide pandemic.  Very timely.

My task certainly isn't as difficult as was that of the students who wrote the briefs, but it isn't particularly simple.  I've spent about five hours yesterday and today just mastering the facts and legal arguments, and have read the first half of one of the briefs.   I have a week to finish, and it's clearly going to take quite a few more hours to do justice to both students in arriving at my grades.  The grades on the briefs will be combined with the scoring of their oral presentations in deciding winners and losers in the competition.

I'm informed by email this evening that I will receive two CLE (Continuing Legal Education) credits for each brief.  Attorneys are required to obtain 45 CLE credits every three years to maintain their license.  Even when they are retired.

So, four credits total for my labors.  Generous.

Tomorrow, unrelatedly, I watch a streamed three hour lecture on a mildly interesting legal topic.  My mind may wander at times, but I do try to stay focused.  I will receive three CLE credits for my time sitting in an easy chair.

No one said that life was fair.

Classy television

How do you tell an American worker from a French worker?  If the American sees a fancy car drive by, he thinks: "Someday I'll be able to afford a car like that."  The Frenchman says:  "Someday I'll make that guy get out and walk like everyone else."

I remember reading that joke as a teenager in Reader's Digest.  I'd never met anyone from France, but I was aware of our stereotype of the French working class as being rabidly populist and anti-elitist, and, enjoying the contrast with our supposed American egalitarianism, I laughed approvingly.

The Trumpist movement -- temporarily thwarted by last week's election -- makes me wonder if that difference between Americans and the French still exists.  A major component of Trump's populist appeal has been scorn and even hatred for the so-called coastal elitists, folks living on the East and West Coasts, folks who allegedly look down their noses at the "real people" of the South and Mid-West -- living in what we call "flyover country."

Why do I dwell on the subject of "elitism"?  A couple of days ago, YouTube enticed me into watching a recording of a 1953 appearance by Eleanor Roosevelt on the CBS panel game show "What's My Line?".  

Click here to see the program.  (Mrs. Roosevelt's portion of the show begins at the 14'25" point of the program.)  

After watching Mrs. Roosevelt's amusing appearance, the witty remarks of the moderator, John Charles Daly, and the funny repartee between Daly and the members of the panel -- Dorothy Kilgallen, Steve Allen, Arlene Francis, and Bennett Cerf -- I realized that at times I was laughing out loud, something I rarely do watching today's TV comedians.  I also was impressed at the sophisticated demeanor of all the parties, their enjoyment hearing each other's remarks, and the fact that everyone seemed to be having a good time.  

Not an hysterical time, you understand.   Not a "Fun-Filled Laff Riot."  Just a relaxed and enjoyable time, such as a group of friends might have while visiting together.

I come back to the word "sophisticated."  A word that today conjures up the dread word "elitist."  Were these television personalities behaving well simply out of awe for their distinguished guest?  I went back and watched the entire half-hour show, including commercials for Remington shavers.  No, they seemed equally likeable and impressive while attempting to guess the occupation of a maker of chewing tobacco.  They treated this gentleman as courteously and deferentially as they did the former First Lady.

And that was the way that I recall "What's My Line?" -- a show I watched weekly during my teens.  Granted, it was probably the most elegant and intellectual of the many game shows of that time, but it was watched religiously by the general public, including the mill workers and their families in my home town.  Folks back then may not have spoken with the panel's mid-Atlantic accent, or shared their sophisticated vocabularies, or been capable of their genteel behavior.  But, if working class people sensed any class difference, I suspect that they admired how it was displayed in the erudition and clever humor of the show's participants.  

I, myself, although a couple of socio-economic levels below Mr. Daly and his panel, was just a teenager and don't recall feeling a class difference -- in my eyes, all adults lived on an unapproachable higher plane.  If adult members of the working class did sense the difference, they probably merely wished wistfully that they could wear dinner wear as unselfconsciously as those guys on TV, and it probably increased their zeal for their kids to grow up with the same manners.  I doubt very much that many viewers were contemptuous of Bennet Cerf (co-founder of Random Books) or Steve Allen (comedian with a show of his own), or wanted to force them off TV and into their lumber or aluminum mills.

Sadly, the last living participant on the program, Arlene Francis, died nineteen years ago.  Nineteen fifty-three was a different time in America, and a far less angry time.  Less angry perhaps, because parents did have justifiable hopes that their kids would rise socially and economically, a hope that has become less and less rational as our nation's class lines have ossified, have become more rigid.

I don't watch much television nowadays -- aside from football games and, of course, election returns.  I think I might if contemporary shows were produced with the same high quality and sophistication of content as was "What's My Line?"

Providence Plantations

While all eyes were on the presidential election, something tragic and startling was happening in New England.  The smallest state in the union, which has also had the longest name, severed itself from its renowned history, and now is simply -- the smallest state in the union.

The voters of the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations decided to call themselves simply "Rhode Island."

Roger Williams founded the original 1636 settlement of Providence on the mainland, and received a "colonial patent" from King Charles I in 1843 under the name of "Providence Plantations."  (NOTE:  I am a direct descendent of Roger Williams¹ (my grandmother's maiden name was Williams), and hence feel competent to lodge this protest.)  Wikipedia notes that "plantation" was a common term at the time for a new colony, especially one based on agriculture.  The term was derived from the fact that crops were "planted."  If you visit the moors in Scotland and northern England, you see frequent references to local "plantations" -- which are what we in America would call "tree farms."  No slaves, of any race, are known to man these British plantations.

Richard Lee, a retired special-education director from Jamestown, and other opponents of the measure had argued the word “plantation” had no association with slavery when Roger Williams settled Providence in 1636. Then, the word referred only to a tract of land, or a farm. They argued “Providence Plantations” was history worth preserving.

Tom Mooney, The Providence Journal 

Nevertheless, the word "plantation" arouses images in many Americans' minds of southern plantations, magnolias, cotton fields, etc., tended by Black slaves, with Uncle Remus and mint juleps thrown in for good measure.  (Although Rhode Island, as an ocean port, was involved in the slave trade, possession of slaves itself was prohibited in 1652.)  I see no claim that the Providence Plantations used slave labor.  But the word itself has apparently become poison.

Whatever.

Other settlements developed in the area, including Portsmouth on today's Aquidneck Island.  The island at an early time became known as "Rhode Island," apparently because of its shape, which roughly resembles that of the Greek island of Rhodes.  Another settlement on Aquidneck was Newport.  The settlements united in 1647 as the "Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations."  

The boundaries of the colony were disputed with the adjacent colonies of Connecticut and Massachusetts over the years until they reached their present limits.  The present state of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations has a land area of 1,045 square miles, of which Aquidneck Island (the original "Rhode Island") makes up only 37.8 square miles.

To call the state "Rhode Island," therefore, is to allow the tail to wag the dog.  Furthermore, the state is not an island.  I submit that excising the "Providence Plantations" from the name -- leaving only "Rhode Island" -- is like calling the State of Washington the "State of Orcas Island."

If the word "plantation" is too offensive to contemplate, I have another suggestion that is both logically sound, historically accurate, and honors a proponent of religious liberty when religious liberty wasn't a popular cause.

"State of Williams."  

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¹At least, so my mother told me.   I don't have a geneology report to offer as evidence!

Scary week

 

Odd, isn't it, that Presidential Election Day always comes within a week of Halloween?  A coincidence, I suppose.  But a telling one.

Halloween this year was very quiet in my Montlake neighborhood.  Over the past few years, my two-block stretch of street has acquired quite a collection of young children, and they were organized into a Halloween costume parade just before dark.  They were elaborately costumed as they processed down the street, witnessed by adoring parents along the curb, and by others like me, peering out our windows.  

Our neighborhood leaders had suggested, in place of the traditional trick or treat, that those wishing to supply treats should leave little packets of treats out beside the sidewalks.  It was kept low key, so as to avoid predator kids from other neighborhoods descending on our goodies.  My own way of celebrating Halloween is to dim the lights and either escape to somewhere else, far away, or -- this year -- to hide out in a back room where I keep this (my computer) and my TV.  So it seemed hypocritical at this late juncture to leave treats out in front.

They don't call me the Old Grouch for nothing.  It's a testament to the genial quality of my neighbors that although I provide no treats, I still haven't been tricked.

Although there were few parties around town this year, there were many skeletons.  (See my October 17 post.)  In the past two weeks, the skeletal displays have become increasingly original and macabre.  Just the way we like them.  The caged "quarantined skeleton" above was discovered  during my Saturday walk over Capitol Hill.

And, of course, talk of scary and macabre leads directly to tomorrow's election.  I discussed my PTSD, my Skut Farkus Syndrome, a week ago.  Since then, the polls have stayed more or less the same, with an occasional outlier fright, like the Selzer poll from Iowa.   Most states still  trending blue.  But Trump and his allies keep chuckling, "Just you wait."  Trump's convinced that those hordes of voters, too embarrassed to admit that they support an infantile idiot for president, will show  up in the voting booth and mark their ballots for Trump.  

Or maybe the Republicans will just show more discipline in getting their known voters to the polls.

Or maybe Biden will seemingly "win," but the Grand Old Party will get a court order throwing out tons of votes that didn't meet technical specifications.  What?  Allow Houston voters to drop off their ballots at drive-through drop boxes?  An outrage.  Throw out all 127,000 votes already cast that way.  (Predominantly Democratic votes in Houston.)  Yeah, that particular one won't fly, but a lot of other voter suppression techniques may. 

Trump and his buddies have turned an already tense election, voting during a pandemic, into a three-ring circus, hoping to eventually win by lawsuit what they can't win tomorrow through voter sentiment.  Scary.  Bunch of dancing skeletons, they are.

We'll live through it.  When all the thunder and lightning dies away, I still think that Joe Biden will be elected.  But we shouldn't have to suffer so much stress to get there.

Election is tomorrow.  If you haven't yet voted, better hustle down to your local polling place in the morning, before the lines get even longer.