Call Her ‘What If’

Whether or not the very title, Call Me Ishmaelle, makes obvious the book’s premise, let’s start by saying that author Xiaolu Guo’s re-imagination of Moby-Dick is based on historical record.

No telling how many young women successfully disguised themselves as young men for the sake of adventure and got themselves hired, mostly as cabin-boys, on merchant and whaling ships that crossed oceans in the 19th Century. Guo mentions four whose stories and memoirs have appeared in print.

Her acknowledgments also include Skip Finley’s Whaling Captains of Color: America’s First Meritocracy (2020). May not have been true in the early 19th Century when Herman Melville’s novel is set or even in 1851 when Moby-Dick was published, but Guo’s adaptation begins in 1860 by which time freed African-Americans rose through the ranks to become captains of ships.

Suffice to say that, while the critics label Ishmaelle “gender-flipped” or “a feminist re-telling,” they are not wrong. But the book is so much more, that they reduce it even as they think they praise it.

Moreover, Guo tells a very different story. While the characters are parallel, most of them play quite different roles. Unlike Ishmael who keeps his head down on the Pequod, Ishmaelle becomes very much a part of the plot. With the exception of a few musings at the end of chapters and at the end of the book, her narration stays focused on the Nimrod‘s pursuit of Moby-Dick, a far cry from Ishmael’s frenzied philosophical and historical tangents while telling us of the Pequod‘s voyage.

Captain Seneca is as close to Othello as to Ahab, with an added grievance or two that propel him. And his surprise addition to the crew, Muzi, a Taoist “monk” who advises him with the I Ching, is 180 degrees removed from Ahab’s Satanic Fedallah.

Advising Ishmaelle is Mr. Entwhistle, or “Woody” as he is inevitably known, who likes to remind her that, as he first puts it, “Everything is a task. Living is a task. There is only one thing that is not a task.” What follows is among the more revealing passages regarding her inner turmoil, the glaring difference between Guo’s narrator and Melville’s, and by implication between men and women:

‘And what is that, Woody?’

‘Death. Death is not a task.’

Well, I thought he was right. Death is not a task. But that was like saying that a carpenter is a carpenter, a fish is a fish, a boat is a boat. There was no need to interpret these things. But to be a whaler was different. A whaler had a mission to conquer, to kill. Life for a whaler was not about one task after another task. Life for them was a huge heroic mission involving killing or being killed. I was never sure if I was a real whaler. I did not have this desire to conquer or to kill. I did not have this unstoppable urge to chase. But I did have the desire to know about the world, and to discover. So I was neither a carpenter nor a whaler. I was not sure what I was. For the last several months, I had been a man called Ishmael, now I was a woman called Ishmaelle. Though to myself I was both.

While there’s no Father Mapple and no “Woe to him who seeks to please rather than to appall” sermon, the Nimrod’s crew includes a surgeon, Mr. Hawthorne, who takes Ishmaelle under wing. By the end, we’ll learn that Hawthorne discerned the disguise early on. He soon becomes a father figure to the girl-boy when he learns of her knowledge of the medicinal properties of herbs. Guo is offering an inside joke with the name: Not only was Moby-Dick dedicated to Nathaniel Hawthorne, Melville’s friend, but herbal medicine played a leading role in The Scarlet Letter.

Captain Seneca also took note of Ishmaelle’s way with herbs. Because of it, he spared her any punishment when she was found out. Might add that he put her attacker in irons for three days, but that’s a slap on the wrist considering just what the attack entailed. When the third mate was lost overboard, he amazed the crew–and I dare say this reader–by promoting her to the position that includes leading one of the three boats that leave the ship for the chase.

Like so many secrets in Guo’s intrigue-rich tale, Seneca’s reason will be made as clear as it is logical. When Ishmaelle denies his claim that she has some secret power over “the white devil,” Seneca explodes:

You cannot lie to me and dissemble! You witch, you have been brought to me, brought onto this cursed bark. You are the path to the whale. You have beguiled that whale, you will ensure I prevail!

A black captain vs. a white whale. A woman in the role of a man. Eastern religion guiding a Christian boat. The backdrop of an imminent Civil War before the story sets sail. A cameo appearance of witchcraft as it dives toward conclusion.

Taken in full, Call Me Ishmaelle isn’t a “gender-flipping” of Moby-Dick, nor is it a backstory such as Sena Jeter Naslund’s page-turning Ahab’s Wife (1999), or the tale told from another point of view such as James (2024), Percival Everett’s uncompromising re-telling of Huckleberry Finn.

The only category into which Guo’s novel might fit, if it exists, is the category of “What if?” It’s a category, a question, a premise in which the imagination has no limit.

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https://www.kcl.ac.uk/events/book-talk-call-me-ishmaelle-xiaolu-guo

Death of a Verb

Put aside all the political and social damage that he continues to wreak (which is, of course, impossible), and he is still guilty of destroying one of the most useful, forceful, unambiguous verbs in the English language.

Trump has trumped “trump.”

If we could imagine a deck of cards representing the 52 most glaring debasements of the English language over the past, say, twenty years, “trump” would be the highest trump in whatever game you choose.

Maybe I’m fortunate that the only card game I continue to play is cribbage, a game that has no trump, although getting skunked is reminiscent.

Other cards might come close. Those who answer cellphones in classrooms, in meetings, in theaters, and many other public places have turned “emergency” into the biggest one-word joke in the history of any language.

In Newburyport, another ace would be “accountability,” rendered absolutely meaningless in last year’s election as he who most often proclaimed it openly and successfully avoided it.

Ever taking tricks is one dating back at least to the early-80s when I first heard it o’er and o’er again in the halls of academe. That’s when we went from The Dawning of the Age of Aquarius to The Yawning of the Age of Appropriate.

Before long, “appropriate” clouded the language of business and politics as well, like an invasive species that kills off useful plants while having no use of its own other than to presume agreement. It’s the adult version of the adolescent “cool,” making conformity with our peers seem like discerning individuality.

Once upon an attention span, we readily described subjects as necessary, relevant, ethical, practical, effective, durable, flexible, reliable, useful, pleasing, timely, sufficient, and on and on. Now, we lazily rely on this all-purpose “appropriate.” Test it for yourself: Whenever you hear the word “appropriate,” stop the speaker and ask what it means. Chances are the speaker will need just a moment to give you a clear, precise, honest word.

Be prepared, however, for the question to draw a blank, suggesting that speakers are either inflating the language or do not know what they are talking about. I’m not saying that there is anything necessarily nefarious here, just that “appropriate” is dead from overuse, and has been for 40 years.

As American economist Thomas Sowell told us, “If it means everything, it means nothing.”

Just last year, we heard the debasement of a word that has always seemed harmless, at least as far as this Truman baby can recall. In fact, the man with the most undeserved name claimed to have invented it: “grocery.” Can’t recall the Truman years, but I can tell you that, in the Eisenhower years, supermarkets were still on the horizon of what we called “grocery stores.”

He also boasted that he would “make America affordable again” in his 2024 campaign, although he now calls “affordability” a made-up word, a Democratic hoax. But that’s nothing compared to his 2016 campaign when his stump speeches included pro-longed ridicule of the word “emoluments.” He also called that a hoax, having heard it repeatedly invoked during his two impeachments.

Apparently he never saw it in print. That includes the US Constitution where “emoluments” appears several times because the founders were determined to prevent future presidents from accepting riches that might influence them. The emphasis they put on emoluments is so great that, to say you read the Constitution and then not recognize it, is akin to claiming you’ve been to Yellowstone but can’t recall any geyser.

Those passages drew loud laughter from the MAGA crowds, as Trump trumped the founders with a series of weird and exaggerated pronunciations made with twisting facial expressions–“eeee-MULL-ew-mints,” “eh-mole-U-mince.” All those folks who for years dared that we liberals “Read the Constitution!” themselves do not recognize it.

It’s as if the novel 1984 has been taken and employed as a blueprint rather than as a cautionary tale. George Orwell’s “Newspeak” serves as a precursor for today’s debased English, not just in the limited vocabulary of “Doubleplusgoodspeak,” but in naming and renaming of anything in sight. “Victory Cigarettes” and “Victory Chocolate” may very well be the models for “Big Beautiful Bill” and “Gulf of America.” The brand name, “Trump,” now being stamped on public buildings follows the lead of the ubiquitous posters of Big Brother in Orwell’s “Oceania.”

Orwell’s most quoted line sums it up: “(I)f thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.” We need heed the line that follows:

A bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation even among people who should and do know better.

And so it is that Americans left and right, educated or not, have allowed our language to be debased. How bad is it? Walmart now claims to be “investing in American jobs” on signs that it places directly above self-checkout counters manufactured in China, and few notice. The fewer who object are dismissed as malcontents.

Could say that we were trumped before Trump hit the scene. But that does not mean that the game is lost. We still have the language and the ability to use it with honesty, precision, and clarity. In effect, we still have cards. And we have turns to bid.

Those turns are called elections where the highest bid calls trump. Might call it “the art of the deal” if only that phrase were not already debased.

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https://sva.design/projects/11458/1984-principles-of-newspeak/

https://www.fox5ny.com/news/trump-selling-99-virtual-trading-cards

Forever in Our Ears

Finally rejoined the No Kings rallies after eight weekends in a Renaissance faire, two in witch-trial re-enactments, and one to celebrate my grandson’s 11th birthday.

Put another way, after two months in 1510, two weeks in 1692, and two days recalling 2014, I’m back in 1968 trying to prevent Project 2025 from destroying any more than it already has.

If that’s not enough, I always spend the first weekend after New Year’s taking a turn in the Midnight Watch of a marathon reading of Moby-Dick, which puts me in 1851.

Some people are all over the map, but I’m all over the millennium, and my estimates are admittedly liberal. I’m a throwback to the Pied Piper of Hamelin (1284), but most of the tunes I play at the renfaire, Celtic and Baroque, were first heard in the early 1700s. As if to balance that, all my banter about Chaucer (1343-1400) and Gutenberg (1393?-1468) make the renfaire’s 1510 a reasonable compromise. The same music pre-dates Salem’s trials, but it was still played, and I found it easy to add colonial hits such as “Gathering Peascods” and “Virgin Pullets” to my rotation. As long as I refrain from playing “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” and the theme from The Godfather, the artistic director is pleased.

Yesterday, I went armed with a small, high-pitched pipe hoping for a drum-circle in Newburyport. Instead, an amplifier or two belted out classic rock. Given the low temps and the vigorous wind-chill, I was quite content to keep my hands in my pockets though I quietly wished I had trekked to Ipswich where my chances would have been better.

Just before the much larger, nationally held, and heavily attended No Kings rally on Oct. 18, a woman in Newburyport sent me an email saying I had been spotted playing with a drum circle this past summer. She wanted me to know that Newburyport would have one at No Kings, and would I join them?

Wrote back to thank her, but also to say I’d be at Renaissance festival that day, literally playing for a king.

Had that in mind when I turned north instead of south on US 1A after leaving Plum Island. These weekly rallies may not receive much media attention, but the No Kings rallies on Oct. 18 were all over the news with estimates of over seven million protesters nation wide–over 2,000 in a city as small as Newburyport, and approaching 300 in the small town of Ipswich. Each week? I’d say Ipswich drew between 100 and 150 in the dozen weeks I attended, and I’m told that Newburyport averages 200.

Windchill kept this weekend’s numbers down. At least 50 of the 75 or so protesters in Newburyport this weekend could have been with me in DC in 1968, more likely for Mayday in 1971. Same was true of all the “stand-outs” I attended before Labor Day, including one in Peterborough, N.H. In Ipswich, not only have I joined Salem State classmates, but also one of our profs who greeted us by yelling, “I can’t believe we’re doing this same shit!”

L2R: Retired Salem State English Prof. Pat Gozemba and two of her students who shall go unnamed to avoid the attention of their respective parole officers. Photo taken in Ipswich, July or August by either Karen Kahn or Marilyn Humphries.

No classmates or profs this weekend, but one fellow who knew I was looking for a drum circle greeted me by asking: “Are you going to play?”

Though touched by his mere interest, I called as much attention to the windchill as to the lack of drums to decline. Apparently one of the organizers, he offered me a bullhorn. I laughed, “That’s just for voice-“

“Do you sing?”

That deserved a laugh, but it conjured up a memory: “About 20 years ago, I learned three songs just for the sake of a break from piping. Tried them first in Salem so I wouldn’t embarrass myself here on the home court. It did not go well. So, no, I do not sing.”

“What were the songs?”

“Two by Stan Rogers.” He nodded, which I took to mean he recognized the late-Canadian folk-singer’s name. I launched into ‘White Collar Holler’:

And it’s ho, boys, can you code it, program it right
Nothing ever happens in the life of mine
I’m calling up the data on the Xerox line“

He smiled as if to say not bad, but I told him I couldn’t sustain more than a verse. I then named the other two: “Roger’s ‘The Idiot’ and Stephen Foster’s ‘Hard Times’:

His reaction took me by surprise: “Weren’t Stephen Foster’s songs racist?”

Maybe renfaire and witch-trial credentials make it easy for me to place myself in the shoes of 1854 when, as I answered: “Foster was staying in Cincinnati, in lodgings overlooking the Ohio River where he could see the random small craft of the Underground Railroad unload people escaping the South. That’s why he wrote this song. I guess I recall Uncle Tom stereotypes and words like ‘darkie’ in other songs, including ‘Old Kentucky Home,’ but for me, ‘Hard Times’ eclipses all of that. And anyway, I’m not going to pass that kind of judgment on an artist from a time so far removed from me–in a Zeitgeist I myself never had to endure.”

My new friend appeared satisfied, so I offered an upbeat sequel:

“About 20 years ago I visited a friend in Louisville who took me to Bardstown where the ‘Old Kentucky Home’ is now a tourist attraction. As soon as I saw the loudspeakers on poles around the parking lot, I quipped before we got out of the car, ‘You can bet they won’t be playing ‘Hard Times’. As soon as we stepped out, we heard:

Let us pause in life’s pleasures and count its many tears
While we all sup sorrow with the poor
There’s a song that will linger forever in our ears
Oh hard times come again no more”

We soon turned our attention to the rally at hand, perhaps to prevent me from torturing anyone’s sense of hearing any more than I already had. Driving home, I realized that I had made the same assumption of the Foster museum that my friend had made of Foster.

Might seem like a cute little story except for its parallel that has been a ubiquitous landmine in the American culture war that has raged for time out of mind. Many now appalled by the banning of books treating racial, gender, and environmental issues today are the same folks who called for the banishment of Huckleberry Finn at least once a decade before this decade of our malcontent.

As with Foster, objections all aim at Mark Twain’s use of words, mostly in dialogue, common to the 19th Century and stereotypes held today only by the willfully ignorant and hopelessly shut-in. No matter that the whole point of the book is delivered when young Huck is tormented by his “Christian” belief that he must turn Jim in. No matter that a 14-year-old white boy tells us he’d rather “go to hell” than surrender Jim back into enslavement–that he chose the freedom of a Black Man over the grace of a White God.

Heavy stuff for 1884. And heavy stuff now, which may be the real reason it’s condemned by both left and right.

And maybe why I keep looking for answers in the past.

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https://genius.com/Stan-rogers-white-collar-holler-lyrics

https://genius.com/Stan-rogers-the-idiot-lyrics

https://genius.com/Stephen-foster-hard-times-lyrics

From a video (below) taken in Ipswich, Aug 23. by Marilyn Humphries.

American Friction

Rummaging through past writings looking for something I never found, I found this instead: A draft of a commentary on James, Percival Everett’s 2024 re-telling of Huckleberry Finn in the voice of Jim, the runaway who joins Huck on the raft to escape enslavement.

Yes, I said “commentary.” For a review, please see the website in the photo caption below. Also, if you do not recognize the name Everett, it may help to know he’s the author of the 2001 novel Erasure that was adapted for the Oscar-nominated film American Fiction in 2023.

Not that it matters now, but I laughed when I saw the mid-July date on the draft. That’s when my Lenovo went kaput, and I went a full week without a laptop while I was also unwilling to sit for any length of time in a library. Meanwhile, other matters claimed my attention, and I just forgot it was there.

Be that as it may, for those of you who spend many winter nights with books, as well as those maybe looking for holiday gift suggestions, I now hasten it onto screen:

Checked James out of the library after recommendations from a couple who both thought it preposterous–“literary revisionism”–and two other friends, unknown to each other, who found it incisive and enlightening. Though busy the rest of the day, I thought I’d give the book a look before falling asleep. The need for sleep did not reclaim me until 30 pages later.

Next morning, as always, I made a pot of coffee and returned to bed before breakfast. Before the need for breakfast claimed me, I was on page 95. My watch said high noon. After an omelet and with another pot of coffee, I set up outside under a shade tree and read the book right to the end, page 304. I don’t recall ever getting out of the chair.

To say I found it fascinating would be a gross understatement. No doubt, the amount of dialogue and first-person narrative gave it quick pace. And no doubt my just having finished Willa Cather’s Sapphira & the Slave Girl–a 1940 novel that would be condemned by both right and left if a high school teacher put it on a syllabus today—prepared me for the duality of enslaved life.

From a literary viewpoint, this book atones for the ridiculous ending Twain slap-stuck onto an otherwise brilliant novel. Even those who call Huckleberry Finn America’s greatest novel condemn the final chapters. But more than anything I admired the relevance to today, especially the white insistence on stereotypes. After the King & Dauphin boast of how easy it is to con people out of their money, James tells us:

After being cruel, the most notable white trait was gullibility.

And the scenes. Con-artists were common enough on the Mississippi that Melville wrote a novel about them called The Confidence Man years before Twain started writing short stories for magazines. Steamboat explosions were rather common when they were overloaded. Rapes were matter-of-fact. How much of those three 19th Century American realities is ever mentioned in the history and literature taught in schools or presented anywhere today?

For all that, James is as hilarious as it is horrifying. A great read, and a valuable addition to American letters, you can bet it will be banned from many public schools and libraries by many cruel state legislatures that thrive on public gullibility.

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James also reminded me of a review of an art exhibit I wrote four years ago:

Go Tell It on the Canvas

https://newhumanist.org.uk/articles/6335/book-review-james-by-percival-everett

Ear Candy for All Ages

If we look at the bright side of life here in Soviet America, we might find encouragement in the resurgence of literary parables and satires of authoritarian rule.

Launched like a rocket in 2017 when Mar-an-Ego’s first spokesliar, Jelly-Ban Wrongway, called Ego’s version of inaugural events “alternative facts” despite all photographic evidence to the contrary.

Days later there were reports from coast to coast of George Orwell’s 1984 flying off bookstore shelves. Within a week, a new edition of the 72-year-old novel was printed.

Soon after, Republicans ramped up their attack on Roe v. Wade in anticipation of an Ego appointment to the Supreme Court. Feminists responded by drawing comparisons to The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood’s 1958 dystopian novel, igniting another stampede into America’s bookstores.

From the beginning, Ego drew many comparisons to Captain Ahab who sank his ship in pursuit of the whale that tore off his leg, all for the sake of revenge. And that was four years before Ego coined the name “Revenge Tour” for his campaign.

Eventually, classic titles gaining re-circulation in conversation, in the news, in classrooms and libraries were enough to fill the syllabus of a graduate seminar: Brave New World, Animal Farm, Fahrenheit 451, The Road, The Hunger Games, stories from Vonnegut’s Welcome to the Monkey House, and more.

Another that I surely would have promoted is James Thurber’s The Wonderful O (1957) which might qualify as a cross between Orwell and J.R.R. Tolkien, though the closest comparisons may be The Emperor’s New Clothes and The Wizard of Oz.

A children’s story with no end of loopy language and word play, Wonderful O bites with political satire sure to amuse any parent or grandparent reading aloud. Never heard of it until I unwrapped a birthday gift two weeks ago.

While the premise is simple, the result is as textured and colorful as a Disney animation. And the pace of the narrative gives it a magical ride. As a likely nod to 1984, Thurber begins the tale with a familiar, yet often ominous sound:

Somewhere a ponderous tower clock slowly dropped a dozen strokes into the gloom. Storm clouds rode low along the horizon, and no moon showed.

The rhythmic and rhyming O sounds hint at the book’s premise: An attempt by power hungry leaders to stunt thought and dialogue among the people by debasing language. In 1984, this was called “Newspeak,” achieved by dumbing down vocabulary. Thurber takes the next step with characters, Littlejack and Black, who attempt to ban one letter from all speech and writing:

And so, language and the spoken word diminished as people were forced to speak without the use of O in any word. No longer could the people say Heigh-Ho, Yoohoo, Yo-ho-ho, or even plain Hello…

“We can’t tell shot from shoot, or hot from hoot,” the blacksmith said, in secret meeting with his fellows.

“We can’t tell rot from root, or owed from wed,” the banker said.

From scene to scene, we see and hear the result of this purge applied to various endeavors: gardening, music, farming, science, games, law, and more. Thurber sustains the rhyme and rhythm with a mesmerizing pace right to the end, as when Andreus and Andrea (the good guys) thwart Littlejack and Black by invoking heroes and heroines of legend and lore who begin…

… streaming out of song and story, each phantom flaunting like a flag his own special glory: Lancelot and Ivanhoe, Athos, Porthos, Cyrano, Roland, Rob Roy, Romeo; Donalbane of Burnham Wood, Robinson Crusoe and Robin Hood; the moody Doones of ‘Lorna Doone,’ Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone; out of near and ancient tomes, Banquo’s ghost and Sherlock Holmes; Lochinvar, Lothario, Horatius, and Horatio; and there were other figures too, darker, coming from the blue, Shakespeare’s Shylock, Billy Bones, Quasimodo, Conrad’s Jones, Ichabod and Captain Hook–names enough to fill a book.

Add an ending as all-to-real as surprising, and it’s as easy to see as to hear why Harper’s called it the “loveliest and liveliest of parables.” As Ransom Riggs, author of the endearing Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, offers in her introduction to a 2017 re-issue, it’s…

… a commentary on world affairs a half century ago, but which feels absolutely (and sadly) relevant today. While balancing all that… it accomplishes feat after feat of linguistic acrobatics–not quite poetry, not quite prose, O is ear candy.

Yes, re-issued in 2017, same year that 1984 was the “Newspeak” of the nation. And given me the very week that Mar-an-Ego’s Littlejacks and Blacks banned 294 words from federal government websites.

Life in Soviet America is so full of coincidence!

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Far from Home Schooling

A long time fan of the actress Julianne Moore, I’m stunned to learn that her children’s book, Freckleface Strawberry, has been banned from schools run by the US Department of Defense for the children of enlisted men and women in America’s armed services.

Of course, I soon remembered that our new Commander in Chief is America’s first dictator, a reckless buffoon whose supporters are so gullible, so paranoid, so intolerant of those who don’t resemble them in appearance, thought, and action, that the idea of a mixed-colored face and day-glow hair must seem a dire threat.

Or it may have been another edict from the dictator himself, afraid that the color strawberry might upstage orange. Or one of his lackeys reacted to the name of the actress and thought that Boogie Nights, Far from Heaven, and The Big Lebowski were about to be screened for third-graders.

Maybe the lackey heard that her current role is in Spanish Director Pedro Almodovar’s The Room Next Door. The Screening Room is already showing the trailer and, though I don’t know for sure, it does appear that Moore’s character is involved in, as the promos put it, “a strangely sweet situation” with the character played by Tilda Swinton. Can’t risk that, whatever that is.

To be honest, it did surprise me to learn that Moore had written a children’s book. But I myself play happy little jigs and maudlin versions of “Greensleeves” at a Renaissance faire when not calling for the heads of Newburyport’s mayor and city council president in the local paper, so it’s not that much of a stretch.

Ironically, as the daughter of a Vietnam veteran, Moore graduated from the American High School in Frankfurt, Germany, run by DoD. Now, she’s left wondering why “kids like me… will not have access to a book written by someone whose life experience is so similar to their own.”

Let’s pick our way through the book’s synopsis to see if we can find clues why it has been banned by a government bound by a Constitutional right of all citizens to free speech:

If you have freckles, you can try these things:

Ah, right away we have an inducement for children to act without first consulting their parents!

1) Make them go away. Unless scrubbing doesn’t work.

And now she’s giving what amounts to medical advice! She’s not a doctor, nor has she played one in any film I’ve seen. And I’m a projectionist, mind you! Let’s get RFK Jr. to worm his way in here and make an official medical ruling!

2) Cover them up. Unless your mom yells at you for using a marker.

See! I told you! She’s anti-parent, anti-family! And if she wants kids to cover up freckles, what’s next, their genitals? This book is looking more and more like a gateway drug to transgender procedures!

3) Disappear.

And now she’s telling them to run away from home. Who the hell does she think she is? The Pied Piper? She blasphemes my ancestor! I’d never tell kids to disappear. Well, not all of them, but you know…

Um, where’d you go?

Oh, there you are.

Oh, now she wants to play dumb! Best leave that act to our new dictator. Ever notice how often he begins an answer to a thorny question with “I haven’t seen it” or “I don’t know her” or “Some people say” or some such dodge that allows him to make a point or float an idea without taking any responsibility for its veracity? He has mastered playing dumb. Moore can only act the part.

There’s one other thing you can do:

4) LIVE WITH THEM!

And now she’s yelling ALL CAPS at American children! Child abuse!

Because after all, the things that make you different also make you YOU.

And there it is! This is America where we only say that we value difference. In truth, it’s just another word for “diversity,” which leads to “equity” and “inclusion.” All the things that drove up the price of eggs, flooded North Carolina, burned Los Angeles, and are now making airplanes fall out of the sky!

No more of that! This is the “land of the free and the home of the brave”–free of strawberry, whatever she means by that, and home of blood red, pure white, and true blue!

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https://variety.com/2025/film/news/julianne-moore-donald-trump-bans-book-freckleface-strawberry-1236310153/

Lollipops & Rainbows

A day before The Townie posted my essay on weeding, the removal of old books from local libraries, the local daily ran a front-page story on the “success” of the Newburyport Public Library’s new volunteer program.

“New” because the volunteer program was suspended in the summer of 2023 by Mayor Sean Reardon. “New” because the new gig was crafted by the newly appointed Head Librarian Kevin Bourque. Also “new” because none of volunteers at the time are with the new crop. Considering that all of them were retirees, you could say that they, too, were weeded.

Nor could any of them rejoin the renewal. That would be awkward in light of the petition to the City Council that they and a few supporters, including me, signed calling for an investigation into the manner of their dismissal. The petition was successful, although the delay in choosing an investigator allowed a City Hall official who played a key role time to find a municipal position and new home in Western Massachusetts.

Coincidence? Maybe. But is it also coincidence that the local paper heralds nothing but success just as the investigation is drawing to a close in February? Here’s a sentence that appears midway in the 850-word report:

After collecting feedback from staff as well as former volunteers, Bourque crafted a new program and policy that was approved last May by the board of directors as well as library staff.

The phrase “from staff as well as volunteers” is no doubt true because he did listen to anyone who walked through his open door at times he set, including me. And a few of the dismissed vols told me that they have spoken to him. However, in the context of this all-lollipops report, those six words create a rainbow impression that they approve of all that has happened, and that all is forgiven and forgotten.

Another item in the report appears as a glaring contradiction to anyone who has followed the NPL saga, but would go unnoticed by casual readers. A reason for dismissal was that vols were doing staff work, a breach of the union contract.

That was then. Now, Bourque openly reveals that the new vols are doing nothing but reshelving books in the stacks. How is that task not among the various items in a librarian’s job description? Call it a clear case of “Which is it?”

But that’s a rhetorical question. Starting with Reardon’s suspension, this has been a shell game to disguise the removal of people well-acquainted with local history who actually knew how to research and could help patrons find things.

Reasons given for the dismissal begin with “bullying” and “harassment,” but no one who knows any of the elderly, professional, and highly competent dismissed vols believes that for a moment. Which may be why no incident or quote was ever specified despite numerous requests for them over these past 18 months.

My own speculation is that many young people expect a raise of inflection and or a giggle at the end of every spoken sentence, as well as smiley face or heart or huggy emojis after written ones. Normal talk, people my post-menopausal age often find, sounds angry to them. A matter-of-fact question is not heard but felt as assault and battery.

To nail down a breach of the union contract, charges against the dismissed vols included money. We were told in the daily paper that they took money from patrons. In the most extreme case of a public institution “airing dirty laundry” that I’ve ever seen, the NPL website posted it prominently for five weeks. The intended impression was to make the dismissed vols appear to be exploiting their role. The truth is that some patrons gave them coins for the photocopier because the vols were familiar with machines those patrons had never used.

So much for the veracity of NPL staff. Added to all of that, Bourque’s recent, unwitting admission regarding shelving seems like old news.

What’s new is the claim, or at least the impression, that the dismissed vols had a say in Bourque’s redesigned volunteer program. It should not take John Kerry to come here and tell us of the consequence of not answering false claims. And some of us still wonder if Kamala Harris missed the Swiftboat by never answering the repeated charge that she advocated sex-change operations for penitentiary inmates.

Don’t mean to tax your patience with yet another critique of a public library, but false information and insinuations that go unanswered stick. For that I reason, I write this not out of choice, but of obligation.

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Photo from *The Townie*, an on-line “public square for the passionate voices of Greater Newburyport.” Here’s a link to another *Townie* essay critical of NPL–this one about the “cultural homogenization and the sidelining of local knowledge” since Reardon’s banishment of the Archival Center’s volunteers.
https://www.townienbpt.com/education/2024/11/12/the-newburyport-public-library-can-do-more-to-promote-our-communitys-diverse-past

Once Upon My Attention Span

Call it a variety show, the offering of a booming, hyper-active child of The Ed Sullivan Show and The Smothers Brothers.

With a title like Once Upon an Attention Span, there’s bound to be nostalgia reaching back into the color, such as it was, of the Father Knows Best years followed by the content, such as it still is, of the Civil Rights and Anti-War movements.

Made sure to include one piece each from both Salem State and South Dakota State. Penned–actually type-writed–in 1974 and 1982, I consider them my valedictorian addresses. I wasn’t chosen to deliver one at either school, but if I had been…

For nostalgia mixed with whimsy, there’s “Dulcet Desserts” with a few accounts of my Forrest Gump-like knack for chance encounters–as well as vignettes from the Renaissance festival, the Screening Room, the Moby-Dick Marathon Reading, and spur-of-the-moment (made possible by social media) small-town demonstrations in Newburyport and Ipswich.

Also, “From the Orchard,” a few memories of my life as an apple-picker in the mid-80s when I picked a few harvests, followed by “Repasts from the Road,” one of the lengthiest entrees on the book’s menu about several cross-country trips with my daughter in her pre-teen years, ending with the toast at her wedding and her own trip into motherhood–with the comic relief of my own transition into grandfatherhood.

Perhaps the only longer entree, “Living in the Pasta” asks for a closer look at various highlights of American history, and “New World Crunch” adds analysis of the Electoral College, Ranked Choice Voting, and Russian trolling. Other entrees, such as “Coffee on the Rocks,” review films and books that remain relevant for the foreseeable future.

Never thought that memories of the Trump years might be a selling point for a book, but if you or someone you know needs reminders, Once Upon an Attention Span includes them. Given that this election will be neither decided nor secured until the day of certification in January, this might even be a reason to to consider my new book as a Christmas gift.

Kidding aside, it is a full menu of selected columns and blogs, so there may be sections that appeal to some readers at different times of day, or appeal to some more than others. There’s certainly no need for chronological order.

But if you’d like to order, PM me or send an email to the edress in the corner of the bottom photo of the book’s back cover. I’m happy to take orders with prices that cover all shipping and tax:

Once Upon an Attention Span — $20.00

Order it with either of my previous books–Pay the Piper! or Keep Newburyport Weird–and I’ll send both for $32. Order all three, and they will be yours for $40.

In Newburyport, Once Upon an Attention Span is available at the Screening Room and at Jabberwocky Bookshop. For anyone anywhere, it is available at:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CTRD2FKD?

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And the Times, They are a’Weird

When Coach Tim Walz added “weird” to the Democratic vocabulary, he nailed the weird Bonespur and his equally weird Project 2025 frontman running-mate to their own ridicule.

‘Bout time our side started hitting back. The Michelle Obama rule, “When they go low, we go high,” was all very nice, but our political reality is anything but nice. In keeping with the Minnesota governor’s quick wit, the DNC is issuing lawn signs to reflect the change:

When they go wird, we go Walz!

Why the DNC chose to misspell it may or may not be weird, but I can’t think of a presidential campaign in which a single word landed with so much force. And I took notes on Kennedy vs. Nixon. Or a single VP selection who entered the race with such an immediate impact–and one without a national profile no less. Spiro Agnew, an unknown Maryland governor in 1968, just added to the malice already set by Nixon’s “Southern Strategy.”

A quick wit and a life-long commitment to public service–including soldier and educator both in the classroom and on the athletic field, hence the name, Coach–will do that for you.

And I must thank Walz for what he has done for me. Since his acceptance speech in Philadelphia, I’ve had a modest run on my 2018 book, Keep Newburyport Weird, more copies in the past three days than in the last three years. Why, it is outselling Once Upon an Attention Span, the book I published earlier this year.

In a way, that might be embarrasing, but hey, I’m still working on Beach Bum Elegy.

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Rather than a description which could never do it justice, here’s a video of his 18-minute speech:

Quotations of Convict Trump

Back in the Sixties, there was a small faction of the anti-war movement that swore by a pocket-sized book with a solid, stop-sign-red cover stamped only with the undecorated yet still imposing small-font title:

Quotations of Chairman Mao.

They were on the fringe, to put it mildly, as most of us were of the opinion The Beatles expressed in “Revolution”:

But if you’re carrying pictures of Chairman Mao,
You ain’t gonna make it with anyone anyhow

A college friend told me just two years ago that she still hasn’t forgiven John Lennon for writing that lyric, and, to be fair, some of Mao’s quotes were relevant to our cause to stop the American War on Vietnam. After all, who can argue with this:

In times of difficulty we must not lose sight of our achievements, must see the bright future and must pluck up our courage.

However, as you can guess, most were deal-breakers, such as:

All political power comes from the barrel of a gun.

A communist icon world renown, China’s dictator ruled with a cult of personality, much like we have seen develop here in the USA since 2015. His face appeared on posters everywhere, and he demanded and received complete loyalty from The Party, which, in turn, insisted on total obedience from the people who were supposed to believe all that Mao said, no matter how outrageous or ridiculous.

Sound familiar? Don’t let the differences fool you: Chaos has eroded America’s collective ability to think as thoroughly as conformity zapped China’s. The Chinese Communist insistence that individuals give themselves up for the whole is ying to the yang of Republican dogma that America has no right more sacred than that of individuals not to give a shit about other people.

And what other American politician has ever had his name fly on flags flown from homes, boats, pickup trucks? Or his face superimposed on American flags flown by people who foam at the mouth at the thought of an athlete kneeling in silence during the National Anthem?

Yes, they are opposing extremes, but both are extremes and, therefore, far removed from the balance sought by Franklin, Jefferson, Hamilton and their coalition, the ideals expressed by students in Tiananmen Square, or the chance for safe and decent homes by the tired, poor, and hungry arriving at the Rio Grande.

Only difference that matters, only thing missing from the Republican attempt to clamp down on the American population as completely as the Communist vice-grip on China is a book akin to Quotations of Chairman Mao.

Therefore, I propose a slim, pocket-sized volume titled, Quotations of Convict Trump.

In keeping with his Golden Calf persona and Tower(s) of Babel empire, the cover would be not red, but gold. Since his followers and he himself now compare him to Jesus Christ, bookstores could place it in their “Religion” sections between his signed Bibles (right-side up) and (I’m not making this up) CHRISTRUMP: Persecution of a Man.* For an opening page:

I do very well with the evangelicals. I love the evangelicals. And I have more people saying they pray for me ― I can’t even believe it. They are so committed, and they are so believing. They say, ‘Sir, you’re going to be OK. I pray for you every night.’ I mean, everybody, almost ― I can’t say everybody, but almost everybody that sees me, they say it.

Marketing? Novelist Stephen King has already offered the most fitting blurb:

This is like listening to your senile uncle at the dinner table after he has that third drink.

Might even market it as “The Gospel According to Don.” The MAGA crowd will regard it on par with the Bible and the US Constitution. As with those two books, they won’t attempt to read it, but they’ll wave it in the air and insist that it justifies all of their paranoia, prejudice, and fear.

Liberals will buy it for laughs. How many of us are prone to buying “joke” presents for friends and relatives on holidays, birthdays, and reunions? What better joke for a fellow liberal could there be? And an ideal book to read aloud, delirium by delirium, to keep your liberal guests howling with laughter:

I don’t think science knows… When trees fall down after a short period of time, about 18 months, they become very dry. They become really like a matchstick … you know, there’s no more water pouring through and they become very, very — they just explode. They can explode.

Imagine the sales when governors of Florida and Texas and other deep red states call for its use as a science text in public high schools:

This is a tough hurricane. One of the wettest we’ve ever seen from the standpoint of water.

Or for economics texts that refute any and all “woke” environmentalism:

I never understood wind. You know, I know windmills very much. I’ve studied it [sic] better than anybody I know. It’s [sic] very expensive. They’re made in China and Germany mostly, very few made here, almost none. But they’re manufactured — tremendous, if you’re into this, tremendous fumes, gases are spewing into the atmosphere. You know we have a world, right? So the world is tiny compared to the universe. So [a] tremendous, tremendous amount of fumes and everything — you talk about the “carbon footprint” — fumes are spewing into the air, right? Spewing. Whether it’s in China, Germany, it’s going into the air. It’s our air, their air, everything, right?

Right!

And as anyone who has been at all awake these past nine years knows, his speeches and his texts could easily fill numerous pocket-sized books.** Any ten of us could pick a selection the length of Mao’s little red book without repeating a single gaslit line.

Except for one line from a rally in Nevada on June 9. This would be just right for the last page of any and every edition of Quotations from Convict Trump:

I don’t care about you. I just want your vote. I don’t care.

Maybe he confused his wife’s jacket for the teleprompter:

https://www.glamour.com/story/heres-the-latest-explanation-for-melania-trumps-infamous-i-really-dont-care-do-u-jacket

You know we have a world, right?

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*https://www.amazon.com/CHRISTRUMP-Persecution-Christopher-John-MOLLUSO/dp/B0D3WNKRTB

**One book or more might be devoted to full passages of incoherent dementia from his speeches and interviews. Any such book should have a different title, such as Riffs of Convict Trump or Unhinged & Unleashed. Or it might have a title that cautions the “woke” crowd against making any assumptions about the many people who believe, applaud, and cheer when they hear any of this. An instructive title such as, Don’t Forget to Respect Their Intelligence.

Here’s the one about Jaws and the Energizer Bunny just a week ago:

So I said, ‘Let me ask you a question, and [the guy who makes boats in South Carolina] said, ‘Nobody ever asked this question,’ and it must be because of MIT, my relationship to MIT —very smart. He goes, I say, ‘What would happen if the boat sank from its weight? And you’re in the boat and you have this tremendously powerful battery and the battery is now underwater and there’s a shark that’s approximately 10 yards over there?’

By the way, a lot of shark attacks lately, ‘Do you notice that, a lot of sharks?’ he asked. I watched some guys justifying it today. ‘Well, they weren’t really that angry. They bit off the young lady’s leg because of the fact that they were, they were not hungry, but they misunderstood what who she was.’ These people are crazy. He said there’s no problem with sharks. ‘They just didn’t really understand a young woman swimming now.’ It really got decimated and other people do a lot of shark attacks.

So I said, so there’s a shark 10 yards away from the boat, 10 yards or here, do I get electrocuted if the boat is sinking? Water goes over the battery, the boat is sinking. Do I stay on top of the boat and get electrocuted, or do I jump over by the shark and not get electrocuted? Because I will tell you, he didn’t know the answer. He said, ‘You know, nobody’s ever asked me that question.” I said, ‘I think it’s a good question.’ I think there’s a lot of electric current coming through that water. But you know what I’d do if there was a shark or you get electrocuted, I’ll take electrocution every single time. I’m not getting near the shark. So we’re going to end that.

And my favorite from a few years ago at a rally in Montana where he claimed that his rallies drew larger crowds than Elton John concerts:

I have broken more Elton John records, he seems to have a lot of records. And I, by the way, I don’t have a musical instrument. I don’t have a guitar or an organ. No organ. Elton has an organ. And lots of other people helping. No we’ve broken a lot of records. We’ve broken virtually every record.

Because you know, look, I only need this space. They need much more room. For basketball, for hockey and all of the sports, they need a lot of room. We don’t need it. We have people in that space. So we break all of these records.

Really we do it without like, the musical instruments. This is the only musical: the mouth. And hopefully the brain attached to the mouth. Right? The brain, more important than the mouth, is the brain. The brain is much more important.

Right!