A Muse I Hope I Amused

Hoping for something both local and personal to mark the 40^th anniversary of the Daily News’ “As I See It” column, my wish was granted in the shadow of William Lloyd Garrison’s statue across from City Hall last month.

And I regret it.

News of the passing of Sarah Bodge was as hard to register as her age, 87, was hard to believe, even by those who knew her. And they are many.

For years, and right into early June just three weeks before passing, Sarah served at various local assisted living facilities. Years ago, she helped establish the Salisbury Senior Center’s food pantry.

On this side of the Merrimack, Sarah established BodySense, a most popular beauty shop downtown, in 1973, and ran it until the mid-80s. According to current owner Lisa Gianakakis, Sara remained helpful through the years, “a lovely, most considerate woman.”

Meanwhile, Sara volunteered her service on many of the Port’s civic boards.

In her prime, she was an acrobatic dancer who graced the stages of venues such as NYC’s Apollo, and ever since contributed her artistic vision to arts organizations that perform here in the Port.

I knew her as a long-time, frequent patron of the Screening Room, and without her ever knowing it, I turned her into something else.

Though “As I See It” is now 40—with the venerable Stuart Deane and I the only remaining members of the original cast—I never posted on social media until about ten years ago.

That coincides with the rise of the Tea Party that quickly combined the ugly undercurrents of white nationalism in the Republican Party which soon propelled a crude but charismatic huckster to power in 2016.

And which to this day presents a clear and present danger to this country—most immediately to Black and Jewish people each and every day.

Out of self-assigned necessity, I, a white guy, began writing about race.

At the time, I knew few Black folk. After living seven years in the Dakotas, I’m more familiar with Native Americans than with African-Americans.

And so it was that Sarah Bodge became my muse.

Writers do this all the time. Writing teachers coach students to think of someone whose opinion they value and who knows more than you about the subject. Not someone close who thinks alike, but at some distance they sometimes talk to.

A simple thumbs up would let me know I put enough emphasis in the right places. Her comments filled in what I missed but could file away for next time.

Hoped I’d see her at the reading of Frederick Douglass’ “What to a Slave is the Fourth of July?” speech, but she passed four days before.

Unlike my commentaries on events in far-flung places, I’d be writing about an event we both attended. The test was welcome, but like all tests, it makes one nervous.

Would she agree with me that the single line capturing what Douglass faced in 1852 is what we face today:

Where everything is plain, there is nothing to be argued.

Maybe that’s why I never heard Sarah argue, or express any impatience, much less anger. Even now I can’t picture her without a smile on her face.

Her quiet responses were enough to let me know where she stood—that if I wasn’t on the right track, I was at least headed in the right general direction.

Perhaps I should let it go at that. Better that she be remembered as her many friends knew her, and as her daughter describes her: “my adorable, kooky, formidable mama.”

Still, I can’t help but be rueful thinking that the person for whom I write is no more.

Then again, a muse is inspiration. Sarah’s reached me long before she hit “like” or added a comment. It came long before I hit “send”—in this case before I left the shadow of Garrison’s statue.

Writers do this all the time. It’s as we see it.

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Sarah Bodge. Photo by Tracie Ballard, Charlotte, No. Carolina, May 2016
https://www.gofundme.com/f/donate-to-support-sarah-bodges-favorite-cause

Democracy by Default

Across the Merrimack from Newburyport in the northeast corner of Massachusetts is one more town before you cross into New Hampshire. Known mostly as a beach resort with a honky-tonk playland on the North Atlantic, Salisbury’s year-round population is barely 5,000.

Size, however, does not matter to the MAGA crowd whose organizers in the recent years have strategically run for local elected offices and sought appointed positions on commissions and boards.

Salisbury must have seemed ripe for MAGA inroads thanks to one bizarre auto body shop on a main drag that features large political signs targeting such Democrats as “Joe and the Ho.” To be fair, many Salisbury residents have complained about owner Rob Roy’s signs only to run headlong into the First Amendment, which the MAGA crowd interprets as the right to be crude and stupid.

Salisbury’s town officials were neither when they appointed Samson Racioppi to the town’s Housing Authority in 2018. But they were careless, if only because no one else applied for the post. Prior to 2018, Racioppi had a well-documented history of promoting anti-gay and anti-Semitic groups.

Since then, he has hired buses to bring people to the January 6 insurrection, oranized protests in support of Wisconsin gun-boy Kyle Rittenhouse, and organized the anti-gay parade in Boston in 2019. More recently, he ran for a seat as a state rep, but Massachusetts Republicans are not so Trump Uber Alles as they are most elsewhere in America, and so Racioppi was defeated in the primary, receiving just 112 votes of 2000 cast.

Another verdict will be cast on Racioppi tonight when Salisbury’s selectmen decide whether to renew his membership on the Housing Board. Difference is that this time they know of his affiliation with several right-wing hate groups.

Anybody paying any attention knows, as it has been reported on the front page of the Boston Globe as well as detailed by the New England chapter of a group called Confronting White Supremacy. He also made Newsweek, while hatemonger Roy had to settle for the Boston affiliate of CBS. Word is circulating that the Globe intends to cover tomorrow’s Board of selectmen meeting, but I have not been able to verify that. I do know that a Newburyport Daily News reporter and at least one of the paper’s guest columnists will be there.

No doubt Racioppi will be there on his best behavior. My friends in Salisbury tell me that the recent law school graduate knows how to carry himself and play the role of Mr. Polite & All-Smiles. And he’ll be sure to show up without close friends such as Diana Ploss whose campaign for governor he helped last year. Ploss, for those who never noticed her fringe existence, is a known anti-Semite who featured a ” Minister of Hate” in her live Facebook feeds. Charmingly, she indicated July dates as ” Jew-lie.”

As he told one reporter, “We’re looking at it as if it’s a war, right?” When asked if he would participate in another January 6, he enthused,” Of course I would do it again.”

By sundown tonight, Salisbury town officials will decide whether this man will continue to hold a civic position. Says my friend, “This is not about politics. This is about right and wrong. This is about decency. This is about gay people and Jewish people feeling comfortable in their own community and knowing their elected officials have their backs.”

This evening I hope to see and eventually report that the Salisbury Board of Selectmen repudiate people who associate with anti-Semites, engage in the intimidation of minorities, and, oh by the way, aid and abet attempts to prevent the peaceful transfer of power. Looking ahead–because the MAGA crowd will persist in this in all corners of this state as much as every other–the Board might also consider a resolution to investigate applicants for official boards before making appointments.

If you want to see democracy at work–or possibly destroyed–the meeting is open to the public, Salisbury Town Hall, this evening (July 17) @ 7:00.

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Samson Racioppi

As for Rob Roy: https://www.cbsnews.com/boston/news/salisbury-auto-shop-owner-defends-controversial-signs/

Looks like a nice place to spend a Monday evening.
https://www.legendsofamerica.com/salisbury-massachusetts/

Samson Racioppi with his “Straight Pride” flag:

https://www.masslive.com/?chr=1627222035675

Of Paradise & Parking Lots

Once or twice a month, two women, one who barely qualifies for a senior discount and another with but a year or two to go, arrive at the Screening Room for a Wednesday matinee.

Since that’s my day as a projectionist, we’ve been on a first name basis since about a year ago when they first made a habit of spending a day in Newburyport and taking in a movie. They have always remembered my name after I made it easy for them by pointing out that I’m in the trunk of every car.

That would include the car that takes them the 30 or so miles back and forth to where they live. I’m not going to name the town, nor am I going to use their real names in what I’m about to report. Not because they asked to remain anonymous, but because it wasn’t until the show was over and the lights were out that my own light went on.

This past Wednesday was very slow. When Nikki and Liz arrived some 20 minutes early, I was in a chatty mood, telling of the Nao Trinidad, the replica of Magellan’s ship that had been docked in Newburyport during the week of the 4th. They saw it with their husbands, and Nikki mentioned a conversation about history that included an aside, “I’m a librarian.”

Couldn’t help but file that away until the subject of Magellan had sailed out the door of the Screening Room lobby and was safely onto State Street. I gave the pause a three-count and looked at Nikki:

“You’re a librarian?”

“Yes! In X——, and Liz is on the board of the X—– Public Library.”

Looking back and forth at both: “I’m about a decade older than you. My introduction to the Lawrence Public Library would have been about when you were born. I’m sure I was assigned certain books to find, but overall, those grade-school visits were more like discovery than anything else, like Magellan sailing round the Horn into an ocean full of islands unknown and unimagined.”

They smiled, no doubt thinking they were in for a pleasant, nostalgic trip into their own profession. I paused, keeping eye-contact, one to the other: “May I ask what might be a contentious question?”

They glanced at each other and both said yes.

“Does the word ‘weeding’ mean anything to you?”

Both women registered mild surprise that a non-librarian would know what is now a librarian’s term of art, though I’d say “artlessness” would be more honest. Nikki’s explanation was consistent with what I’ve heard from librarians, what few I know, from here to the west coast, citing a computer program that lets librarians know just how often a book is checked out. She looked over at Liz who nodded agreement, and I could see that both were reading skepticism on my face.

I hoped to soften my response with a brief laugh: “That suggests that some algorithm decides what books remain and what get tossed out.”

They seemed to speak at once: “Well, no, we do look at it.” Liz went on, “We also have to consider the condition of the book, and whether it’s in or out of print.”

Sounds to me like an urgent reason to keep older volumes, but I couldn’t tell if being out of print was considered a strike against them. I told the two that such was the case in Newburyport where, among other literary and historical treasures, a two-volume collection of John Greenleaf Whittier’s letters and journals published by his family in 1894 is no more.

Nikki seemed to commiserate: “But I bet there’s plenty of Danielle Steele!”

“That’s my point. Something already well-known, safe, expected. Don’t let Magellan round that Horn!”

Liz noted that the concern was for shelf-space, and Nikki nodded, adding that X—— has a very small library. I don’t doubt that’s true in X—–, but in N-port there is no lack of empty shelves. A day after this conversation, I happened to be in the Ipswich Public Library where entire rows were empty.

Nikki turned the tables on me: “What do you think weeding is?”

I kept making eye-contact with both of them: “I think the word is a euphemism for ‘dumbing down’.”

The two women looked stunned.

“And I mean that literally! You’re paving a paradise of literature and history, and putting up a parking lot of pop-culture. Is there no difference between a library and a bookstore? And what’s the difference between weeding and what the governor of Florida has ordered for public schools?”

Liz: “That’s a total ban. We might weed books, but you can still find and read them”

Me: “No! That’s just what DeSantis says, anyone in Florida can still find and buy and read those books. That rationale is identical whether the reference is to bookstores, to interlibrary consortiums, or to websites. So much for libraries as places of discovery!”

Nikki: “But we aren’t stigmatizing books the way these right wing groups are.”

Me: “No, not at all, but you are erasing them. So the result is the same. We’re erasing history at the same time we accuse others of suppressing it. And we wonder why they laugh at us? Only real difference is that right-wingers claim credit for and boast of what they erase. Algorithms allow us to wash our hands. Who’s in denial now?”

Again, they seemed to speak as one, as well as glancing at a clock on the wall approaching showtime: “Well, yes, we do need to keep an eye on that!”

“And I thank you!”

They slid into the theater as another customer approached to buy a ticket. What I have recorded above is but an extract of a longer conversation far more in agreement than debate, and the quotes are approximate. I was glad that I mentioned my involvement in the annual marathon readings of Moby-Dick in New Bedford and my recent, public feud with the N-port Public Library without getting lost in the (forgive me) weeds of controversy. That ensures that, if they want to know more, it’s all there, a matter of public record. (As well as covered in recent blogs.)

My one regret is that my stop in Ipswich was a day after rather than a day before this conversation. The IPL at the time had just four volumes of Herman Melville at the end of a shelf of over a dozen by pop-fiction writer Brad Meltzer. Recalling Nikki’s crack, I wandered into the aisle marked by the letter S. Danielle Steele had 82.

At that moment, I hoped I had made it clear to them that my argument isn’t about any contest, or any score, or lessening anything for the sake of anything else. Beyond the aisles with S and T was just one that offered everything from U to Z.

Past that were two rows of of stacks, I think five shelves each, top to bottom, perhaps twenty feet long, completely empty.

Don’t know about X—–, but like Newburyport, that’s quite a parking lot.

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Lobby of the Philips Exeter Academy Library, architect Louis Kahn. Photo: Michael Boer https://www.flickr.com/photos/onewe/albums/72157629278698261/with/6859625645/

American Zeitgeist

As we sing and celebrate “the land of the free and the home of the brave” this long weekend, I’ll be recovering from criticism of my recent writings about the public library in the local paper.

What I’m about to say is not about the Newburyport library, but if you want to be filled in on that, simply scroll back to my last blog, “No City for Volunteers.”

This is more about time than place, and I suppose it could happen any place, as I fear it might be America’s current Zeitgeist, a German word which means, “spirit of the times.” To paraphrase Sinclair Lewis, It Can Happen Anywhere.

Here, two critics struck a common note that took me by surprise: According to one, I have no tolerance for anything written after 1847. The other says he knows I’m “upset about Moby-Dick, but need to let it go.”

Clearly the first writer does not subscribe to this blog. A quick count shows that I’ve not just read, but reviewed 24 books in the past 24 months–all but four of them picked up in the “New Releases” display in the lobby of NPL.

Before that, by June of 2021, I had already written several that gave me the idea to offer them to NPL to start a feature on the website with “reviews of books, especially new or recent releases, written by patrons.” On June 6th, 2021, came the assistant director’s reply:

Thank you for your suggestion and if we decide to highlight reviews from community members, we will advertise this option. I took a quick tour of your site and you’ve done a great job with the reviews! I wish you the best of luck with your work. Happy reading!

Never heard back, nor did I see an advertisement. Can’t help but laugh at the thought that, were I a techie, I’d have volunteered to handle it myself. If you don’t get that joke, the very headline of “No City for Volunteers” gives it away. As already promised, what you’re reading now ain’t going there.

My reviews? All favorable, since I won’t write about a book or film unless I’m encouraging others to read or see it. Let me hasten to add that every film I’ve reviewed was made after 1847.

The second writer used the title, Moby-Dick, as shorthand for several Herman Melville novels I’ve mentioned in columns not just regarding the library, but regarding immigration, racism, white nationalism, cult of personality, monomania, the environment, the colonization of Pacific Islands and the damage done by missionaries there—all of them relevant to 2023.

There’s also the separation of church and state. In White-Jacket (1850), the novel that preceded Moby-Dick, Melville describes the captain of a Navy’s man-of-war…

… who frequently conversed with [the chaplain] in a close and confidential manner. Nor, upon reflection, was this to be marvelled at, seeing how efficacious, in all despotic governments, it is for the throne and altar to go hand-in-hand.

Melville’s fourth novel, Redburn (1849), was the basis of a very well-received column last November linking scenes and reports from the Rio Grande in our nightly news to Melville’s observations on the docks in Liverpool where thousands of Irish and German immigrants boarded ships bound for America. A link to the blog version, “A Thanksgiving Toast,” appears below.

Via the newspaper’s editor, I sent critic two a note asking if he’ll crack that joke when people are told “let it go” regarding books and lessons of the 1930s and ‘40s.

We already have Holocaust deniers, and just this past week, we witnessed what a corporate-controlled Supreme Court can do in a land that has lost sight of the New Deal.

Once upon an attention span, those in power were the ones who “weeded” what we read. Now we do it ourselves–all while condemning the governors of Florida, Missouri, South Dakota, Tennessee and elsewhere for doing the same thing to books we happen to favor.

Reminds me that critic one said I was stuck in time and invoked Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are A’Changing” in an attempt to bring me into the present. Oh, times are a’changing alright. Problem is, they’re changing back.

Fly all the flags and fire all the pyrotechnics you want, sing all the patriotic claims you can, the American Zeitgeist right now is to leave America behind.

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“48 Stars above the Registry Room” Ellis Island, February 2018. Photo by Michael Boer: https://www.flickr.com/photos/onewe/39855767865/

A Thanksgiving Toast

Woodlawn Cemetery, the Bronx, February 2018. Photo by Michael Boer

No City for Volunteers

Went into City Hall unannounced Tuesday to ask if the mayor knew of a most unusual and stunning post on the website of the public library, and was greeted as if I was Satan himself.

Oh, the secretary was polite, and she promptly arranged an afternoon meeting with the mayor’s chief of staff. On my return two hours later, I looked up from a long drink at the lobby’s water fountain as a man walked past on his way out the door.

“Quite a letter you had today!” he snapped over his shoulder as he left the building without looking back at me. I recognized the voice. It was Mayor Sean Reardon.

Within moments, Chief of Staff Andrew Levine appeared, led me to his office, and as he closed the door behind us let me know:

“I don’t want to talk to you, but I’ll hear what you have to say.”

He appeared to be hearing my objections to the post on the library’s site, but he preferred to talk about my commentary in the Daily News which he condemned as “cruel” and “destructive” (link below).

After about twenty minutes of what my generation would call “give and take,” but what his generation might consider “verbal abuse,” I somehow left thinking not so much about the library controversy, but about the nature of volunteerism in Newburyport.

Last week, readers of the Daily News were treated to not one, but two front page stories of actions taken against volunteers.

The first is the subject of the scene described above. Now posted on NPL’s website, prominently at the top of the drop-down menu when you click “About Us,” it is styled as a grievance against eight retired senior citizens who have for years assisted local historians as well as random residents looking to track down ancestors or property deeds.

The second is a lawsuit against the city’s Zoning Board of Appeals, five volunteers whose task is to balance the interests of neighbors with those of any one or other neighbors whose plans to build or pave will impact the neighborhood. The whole idea of civic boards of independent resident volunteers is to save the city’s taxpayers the expense of litigation and ensure that all decisions are made on a local level.

Hell with that! Filed in Massachusetts’ Land Court, the second case has a perverse twist: The plaintiff, Twomey Funeral Home, is represented by a former mayor of the city. Nothing illegal about that, nor is it any more surprising than former members of Congress returning as lobbyists. But here we have a former “public servant” suing volunteers from among the public she once served.

Her business card might harken back to her campaign slogan of some thirty years ago: From “Lisa Listens” to “Lisa Litigates.”

If this happened anywhere in America before, say, 1985, that would be the headline.

For the sake of a blog about volunteerism in Newburyport, I’ll leave the details of that case to others. Instead, it’s worth connecting it to the better known and far more controversial dispute that sent me behind enemy lines yesterday.

Most of the 14 staffers’ 950-word union grievance cites “verbal abuse” and “bullying.” But it was the added charge made by the 14 staffers that the vols “accept money on behalf of a city department” that proved most telling in my meeting with the mayor’s assistant yesterday.

When I pointed out that this, according to the vols’ rebuttal, published in the Daily News the next day, “simply refers to taking a quarter for a Xerox copy,” Levine nodded.

“So that’s all it was?”

“Yes.”

I waited for more. Not getting it, I stated the obvious, that the charge, without specifics, insinuates sums of money much larger, that the role of “volunteer” is being used by opportunists who have turned a non-profit public place into their personal pork-barrel.

Levine shrugged.

“So, even though you know it’s just pocket change, you see nothing wrong with their posting the insinuation on a city-sponsored website?”

He said that the vols were able to make their side known, as they did in the Daily News, and denied that the unspecified charge in any way insinuates anything more serious.

I pressed, “You see nothing wrong with that?”

He shrugged, “It’s money.”

The revelation was too stunning for me to pun on the phrase “ethical bankruptcy.”

I entered City Hall Tuesday thinking that the library staff had posted its screed without approval from the mayor. When I left the building, I passed the statue of William Lloyd Garrison. Occurred to me that many city and state governments in his time regarded Garrison as Satan himself. Humbles me to think I’ve stumbled into the role, as I’m way too naive for it.

Given what I learned, however, I’m very well prepared to take any role, listening or litigating, in an Oscar Wilde send-up titled, No Good Deed Goes Unpunished.

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https://www.newburyportnews.com/news/local_news/letter-infantile-complaints-against-library-volunteers/article_b71cdebc-14e1-11ee-a40b-c3ab8c474bc1.html

From the collection of the Blochaus Gallery in Newburyport: https://www.theblochaus.com/ https://www.artworkarchive.com/

What’s in Your Library?

Call this an update.

With few exceptions, newspaper columnists avoid writing follow-ups or sequels to what we put in print.

We’re a century and a half removed from the days of Dickens and Twain when writers could serialize their work. As Boston University professor Natalie McKnight, author of Idiots, Madmen and Other Prisoners in Dickens, reports:

[Dickens] characters would become part of their lives, and readers couldn’t wait to get the next installment. There’s the famous (and true) story of people standing on the docks in New York City waiting for ships coming in with the next installment of The Old Curiosity Shop, desperate to find out whether Little Nell would live.

Most renditions of that story tell us that the shipment of magazines was not on board, and a riot ensued. Ah, the days when the public craved the written word!

Today, we write stand-alone commentaries with ever decreasing word-counts to accommodate a rapidly disappearing attention span. So let me simply state that last summer I wrote one headlined, “Weeding our reading,” regarding a recent policy of public libraries across the USA that took hold at the Newburyport Public Library.

Makes no difference now whether or not “weeding” is related to the head librarian’s recently announced resignation. What does matter is that a replacement be more committed to reading than to weeding.

Put another way, in a bookstore, you might expect a pop-culture novelist such as Brad Meltzer to have ample shelf space while literary giants from the 19th and early 20th centuries have but one or two volumes of their best-known titles. That’s commerce.

Nothing wrong with libraries providing everything Meltzer ever wrote, but shouldn’t there be a commitment to writers who have stood the test of time and helped shape American history and culture?

The NPL’s answer to this question–de facto or otherwise–is an emphatic no. And it has been “no” for at least a year when I started noticing that directly under the eight or nine novels of Brad Meltzer would be just one or two by Herman Melville.

Fiction is arranged alphabetically, so this is easy to find and see for yourself. A week ago this day, you likely saw two. Of course, that assumes that they put the partial anthology I returned the day before—a gift of the late and beloved former mayor, Edward G. Molin—on the shelf rather than weeding it. The other is an unweedable but highly readable copy of Moby-Dick.

No Billy Budd, no Confidence Man, no Redburn, no Piazza Tales that include “Bartleby the Scrivener,” “Benito Cereno,” and “The Enchanted Isles.”

Other valued, spirited literary chroniclers of American history and geography fare not much better at NPL. Of course, if I based my case on, say, Willa Cather or John Steinbeck, a narrow mind might interrupt me to ask: What do Cather’s O Pioneers! on the Plains or Steinbeck’s In Dubious Battle in California have to do with an historic Massachusetts seaport?

With Melville, the question answers itself.

Imagine going to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown and finding a few slight mentions of Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, Satchel Paige and Roberto Clemente, while images of popular players in this year’s line-ups dominate the hallowed halls of America’s pastime. What chance would Louis Sockalexis or Josh Gibson have of being known at all?

That’s NPL.

Fortunately for Newburyport, all of those titles are available at Jabberwocky Bookshop which, while commercial, has dedicated itself to literature of all tastes, ages, and fields.

Wish I could recommended Illume, a new bookstore in Market Square, but its “highly curated” minimalist vibe is 180 degrees from Jabberwocky’s relaxed keep-browsing ambience.

Single copies of books face you from the shelves, each with a handwritten one-line recommendation, mostly pithy and memorable, such as Winston Churchill calling Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels “the one book I’d want to take with me to Purgatory.”

But then you see All Quiet on the Western Front named “one of the greatest books ever written,” and you might stagger out onto the sidewalk wondering which is worse: A bookstore offering recommendations by Donald Trump or a library curated by Bottom Line, Inc.

Yes, let’s give the library credit for its many educational and other civic programs, for its esteemed archival center, and for featuring books lately banned in schools elsewhere in the country.

Still, the brakes must be slammed on weeding done for the sake of a bottom line as much as for cultural conformity.

After all, isn’t a strict adherence to a bottom line itself cultural conformity?

One of Moby-Dick’s most descriptive chapters concludes that “Nantucket is no Illinois.” Today, the NPL must show that Newburyport is no more Walmart than it is Tallahassee.

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Don’t know how architectural groups rate “best” and “worst” when they decide their top and bottom lists and give out awards, but the section that connects the modern addition on the left to the Federalist Tracy House on the right deserves at least an honorable mention. Inside, the transition is seamless, and the entire building feels as one.
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/newburyport-public-library-52-squares-of-north-country-unfading-black-roofing-slate–391250286359115418/

Buying into Blindness

When someone in town asks if I “still write” for the local newspaper, I take one of those deep breaths of exasperation before saying “Yes.”

Like many folks, I am still running into acquaintances I last saw before March, 2020, when the restrictions were put in place. And so the question is fairly frequent. If people asked if I still live on Plum Island, show films at the Screening Room, perform at King Richard’s Faire, or refuse to get a cellphone, I’d answer with a smile, possibly a joke if one came to mind.

But I no longer hear this as a question. Rather, I hear them telling me that they don’t read the local paper. Tempting to ask why they then care if I still write, but it goes with the territory that, read or not, I’m still fair game for anyone who wants to say what they think.

Or am I? Raising that question is an encounter in the supermarket this week when a woman responded to my exasperated “yes” by telling me that she “stopped following the news.”

As I drew another breath of exasperation, she continued with complaints about inflation and who knows what after I tuned her out. When she seemed to pause, I started to say, “Well, good to see you again,” but then came a line that lit my fuse:

I never bought into that COVID stuff.

Most people would describe what happened next by saying that I “snapped.” I don’t deny it, but to be more precise, I took the line to mean that she thought the virus a hoax. For that, my fuse is short:

Are you saying you don’t believe it happened???!!!

No, no, no! I believe it!

Okay, then I don’t know what you mean by “buy into” it.

I don’t believe we should have shut down everything and not let anyone go anywhere.

Were you aware of the nightly death tolls? Did you see the footage of overcrowded hospitals? The 18-wheelers outside hospitals being used as refrigerated morgues?

Yes, but look what it did to the economy!

Luckily, we were in a corner of the store where no one else happened to be at that moment. This next quote omits at least two expletives:

Who do you think you are??? Did you hear the interviews with nurses coming to pieces describing what it was like to hold the hands of people–young, middle-age, elderly, terrified–as they die with no relative or friend with them? And then having to walk down a corridor and into another room to tell the family? Who are you? What are you?

In her attempt to stop me, I heard the word “inflation.” I glanced into her basket:

What??? The price of your cottage cheese is worth more than four-thousand dead in O-hi-o? Maybe you can lower the price of your fettuccini by putting the keep-it-running-no-matter-the-cost crowd back in the White House.

Her silence allowed me to catch myself, and I paused for another deep breath. I lowered my voice, and I’m sure my blood pressure:

Oh, by the way, are you aware that we right now have the lowest unemployment rate that we seen since the 1960s? Record setting job growth? Record business investments across the country? Oh, wait, you don’t “follow” the news, so how could you know any of that? How could you know anything?

Abruptly, I walked away, pushing my cart. Amazingly, she called out a friendly sounding, “We’ll see ya!” Taking another breath of exasperation, I thought, “I hope not!” Honestly, I didn’t mean to say it aloud.

Later that day, under the calming influence of a Riverwalk IPA and a Plum Island sunset, I considered what might happen should we cross paths again. Newburyport is a small town, so it seems inevitable.

I’ll be sure to offer a cheery “hello” and address her by name. If she wants to talk about places she’s been, things she’s done, films she’s seen, I’ll be glad to listen, answer questions, and trade notes.

If she ignores me, that’s as much her right as it is to ignore news–and as it is my right not to listen to those who ignore news express opinions about what is in the news. No more fair game for foul calls.

And no more breaths of exasperation. If you wear blinders, I’ve no time for what you think you see.

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https://fineartamerica.com/featured/the-blind-leading-the-blind-pieter-brueghel-the-younger.html

A Not-To-Do List

Tempting to claim that the past four weeks since my last post were an extended, restful vacation, and that would not be entirely untrue.

Nice weather has had me sitting outdoors overlooking the Plum Island Sound and laughing at the mainland when I wasn’t looking down into Herman Melville’s Mardi, by far his longest novel, an apparent attempt to channel Defoe, Dante, Swift, and Shakespeare all at once.

In the evenings I was usually captivated by the Jekyll & Hyde routine of both the Boston Red Sox and Boston Celtics, and there were a couple of weekend day trips. Also, I have had two columns in the local paper this month, though both were adaptations of previous blogs. Newburyport readers rather liked my former pot-head take on keeping pot shops away from downtown, and they are still nervously laughing at yesterday’s account of cracking jokes while a dermatologist cut a cyst from my throat.

A third sent in today was originally a detailed letter to Newburyport’s mayor about “weeding” at the public library which has made literature such as Mardi hard to find. It was prompted by the surprise resignation of the young head librarian just a year after her appointment. His reply, in its entirety: “Thanks for the email. I look forward to working through the Head Librarian search process.” Seeing no mention of the problem, I realized that I must make it public. So I haven’t been entirely unproductive or merely derivative, much less divorced from civic life.

All of which hardly explains a month-long lull, which brings me to the second minor surgery, this one on my back and infected, unlike the harmless cyst removed as a precaution and played for laughs in the operating room. Seriously, the good doctor asked me to stop, but I just couldn’t shut up. The blog is headlined “A Fan of Anesthesia,” but the better title might be “Doctor Resisted Suicide.”

Maybe it was an all-knowing God or maybe it was Karma or maybe it was just desserts, whatever those are, that I should be stricken with a second medical problem so soon–not so perilously placed, but far more annoying and with a week’s worth of antibiotics that I blame for my lethargy.

Then again, those pills may be the reason that I didn’t seem to be reading Mardi so much as hallucinating it. Might help you to know that the title is not the French word for Tuesday, but the Polynesian word for World. No marijuana or even Narragansett Lager required:

Robinson Crusoe is set on an island. So am I.

Shakespeare’s Tempest casts spells at the mainland. So do I.

Gulliver’s Travels describes weird people. Ever been to Plum Island?

Dante’s Inferno burns as Hell. Yes, I was still watching nightly news.

For all I know, whatever it was that a bug, most likely a tic, shot into my back was what made me think I was Prospero depending on Friday to keep the Yahoos away while my mind raced in circles. Call me Ishmael. Before I could get to the operating table, I kept hot towels on it, and when it seemed ready, I reached it with two fingers.

If you really want a description of what happened next, you’ll have to send a private message. Next day, the doctor said my shoulder appeared clean, but he took swabs for tests that all proved negative. I’m now healing without need of any bandage.

Expressing the most concern was my hiking friend up in Maine who wondered if a tic got me on our last stroll in the Wells Estuary. Seems doubtful that it would take me ten days to feel it, but she was insistent that I start taking precautions. I thanked her for the repellants she soon sent and will put them to use when hiking in woods and weeds and wetlands.

As for her advice to tuck my pants into my socks, I was so mortified by the image that saying “no” just didn’t seem to be enough. I started thinking of comparisons that would answer her metaphorically, as in I would do this before I do that.

Before long, I had a list:

Eat sushi

Own a cellphone

Vote Republican

Vote for a 3rd party without Ranked Choice Voting in place

Get a tattoo

Pierce my ear

Pierce my nose

Pierce anything

Order a glass of milk in a restaurant

Buy light beer

Drink carrot juice

Put sugar in coffee

Order decaf

Order tea

Open bottles with my teeth

Watch Fox News

Watch a “reality” TV show

Watch a sitcom

Use a plural pronoun for one otherwise identifiable person

State my preferred pronouns without my preferred adjectives: witty, handsome, charming

Use the word “grab” in place of “get”

Use “these ones” in place of “these”

Use “You guys” in place of “You” (plural)

Participate in karaoke

Line dance

Attend an opera by Wagner

Watch a film heavy in special effects

Read Ayn Rand

Listen to anyone who cites Ayn Rand

Allow anyone to use the word “appropriate” without asking what it means

Listen to opinions of anyone who says “I no longer follow (or read or watch) the news.”

Travel to India

Spend a getaway weekend in Amarillo, Texas

Move to Florida

Skydive

Make any dish with tofu as an ingredient

Buy cauliflower

Respond to any suggestion that includes the word “hurry”

Wear a watch

Wear stilettos

Wear any high heels

Take up fishing

Wear lederhosen

Wear a dunce cap

On second thought, I’m not sure about the dunce cap. It’s pretty much the same thing as pants tucked into socks, except that it’s at the other end.

That applies not only to the classical, conical dunce cap, but to the modern red baseball caps–or, “feed caps” as they are known on the Great Plains–with four words lately taken to heart by the most gullible among us.

In either case, it wouldn’t matter which happened first. But in no case would I go into hiding for another four weeks to dodge the choice.

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https://www.elsa-support.co.uk/the-not-to-do-list/

Nature’s ‘Jolly Round Board’

When someone gives you a book titled Beer Hiking New England, you wonder if she’s trying to aid your effort to lose weight or sabotage it.

Then you start thumbing through 340 colorful pages of maps, photos, charts, and graphs of elevation for 50 trails in six states, combined with descriptions of 50 brew pubs within four miles of each trailhead, and you say “thank you” and start planning.

Since my friend, a member of the Appalachian Mountain Club, shares my contradictory interests in weight loss and craft ale, I went looking for entries between here and Portland where she lives, and found the Wells Estuary Reserve that separates the tourist hotspots of Ogunquit and Kennebunkport.

Looking toward the ocean. There is a barrier beach much like Plum Island on the other side of that stand of trees.
Photo: Carla Valentine

And so we met on an overcast Sunday at the Maine Diner, less than a mile from the trailhead, for coffee that would fuel us over 3.9 miles of trail, much of it on boardwalks over wetlands. Might call it the Hellcat Trail on Plum Island set in a pine forest in lieu of tall marsh grass. Instead of an observation tower, the boardwalks lead to a few decks with benches overlooking broad meadows, and placards to tell you what’s in sight. Benches are scattered along the entire trail, as are placards to identify trees and other flora and fauna, including the swamps that one calls “Nature’s Cafeteria.”

Among Nature’s Cafeteria’s treats is Skunk Cabbage. Photo: Carla Valentine

One of the loop’s tangents takes you to Wells Beach, which I’m tempted to call “Plum Island with rocks,” except that my companion reminded me that it’s probably the least rocky point on Maine’s coast. I sat corrected on one of several benches that allowed us to turn what Beer Hiking estimates as a two-hour walk into more like three.

We also paused to consider a porcupine halfway up a pine tree. We’d have missed it if not for a woman, perhaps college age, peering through field glasses. Hard to find, but she gave good directions, and after we both had a look, she declared, “Well, I can take that off my bucket list!”

I almost fainted: “Bucket? Did you just use the word bucket?”

She smiled: “Yes!”

Aghast: “That’s for old people like me, not for you!”

My companion couldn’t fathom my objection: “She got it done!”

Double-teamed, I turned in both directions: “The reference is to the expression, ‘kick the bucket,’ doing it before you die!”

They just smiled, and we continued on as the young woman remained in place, admiring the tree-climbing critter, perhaps hoping to fit every quill into her bucket, which better be very, very large considering the head start she’s taking. A few steps away, I wondered if my grandson might cross second grade off his “bucket list” in a couple of months, and I turned back to her: “Thank you!”

Her smile and wave were so warm, they may have been on my modest bucket list without my knowing it.

Our strangest encounter came at the start of the first of the five trails that form the loop–the “Muskie Trail,” named for Edmund Muskie, Maine’s US Senator (1959-1980) best remembered as Hubert Humphrey’s VP running mate in 1968 and the prime target and victim of the Nixon campaign’s dirty tricks in 1972. Before I could reminisce out loud about my exchange of correspondence with the always helpful senator during my brief stint as a reporter for the St. John Valley Times on Maine’s northern border, we were looking at a man coming toward us garbed as a jouster, repleat with helmet, armor, and a coat of arms.

My companion laughed: “Must be a friend of yours from King Richard’s!”

A time-warp into my previous life warped again into the 16th Century: “Probably.”

He told us he was lost, and asked if we had seen a battle taking place. Astonished, we said no; he said thanks and kept going, thankfully in the opposite direction.

Laudholm Farm buildings at the trailhead. Worth noting that the Swedish suffix, “holm,” means “meadow,” and “laud” means “praise,” giving us English words such as “applaud” and “lauditory.” Photo by Carla Valentine.

We two changed directions near the end of the 3.9 loop, taking our growing appetites on a shortcut back to the trailhead for a 3.6 hike (according to an app on her phone). That’s still my longest walk of the year, nearly a half mile more than I do in the gym, though having company makes it seem shorter–despite being leisurely and taking longer. A time warp or a distance warp? Flip a coin.

Figuring that we had earned it, we flipped coins for mouth-watering smash burgers at the Batson River Brewery and Distillery a few miles south on the road that connects US 1 to Wells Beach. Though I’m always on the lookout for IPAs, I couldn’t resist ordering a Barber Chair Bitter just so I could say the name aloud. It did not disappoint.

No offense to Nature’s Cafeteria, but it apparently lacks a liquor license, and so we took our thirst down the road to Batson Brewery. That must be photographer Carla V’s Barber Chair Bitter, as mine was two-thirds gone by the time the burgers arrived.

Laughing at the idea that the combination of brew pubs with nature trails most likely turns the goal of weight loss into the compromise of “breaking even,” I recalled Herman Melville’s hedonistic declaration in Mardi:

No sensible man can harbor a doubt, but that there is a great deal of satisfaction in dining. More: there is a savor of life and immortality in substantial fare. Like balloons, we are nothing till filled.

And well knowing this, nature has provided this jolly round board, our globe, which in an endless sequence of courses and crops, spreads a perpetual feast.

His next line, alas, is sobering:

Though, as with most public banquets, there is no small crowding, and many go away famished from plenty.

No doubt that’s why we chose the offseason to hike Maine’s coast. While dining, we brainstormed other relatively nearby and inland entries in Carey Kish’s book: The Great Bay Estuary and the Stoneface Brewing Co. in Newington, NH? The Northwood Meadows and the Northwoods Brewing Co. in Northwood NH?

While writing this, I wonder if two more entries in Beer Hiking New England–Plum Island’s Hellcat Trail and Walden Pond–require revisits followed by fare at the Newburyport Brewing Co. and True West Brewery respectively.

Otherwise, we will be nothing until refilled.

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https://www.newscentermaine.com/article/news/local/207/guidebook-beer-breweries-trails-hiking-new-england/97-abe921c3-b41a-4140-9134-f4264748ac8a

This book continues a series that includes: Beer Hiking Pacific Northwest, Beer Hiking Colorado, and Randos Biere au Quebec, with Beer Hiking New York and Beer Hiking the Canadian Rockies soon to come. The author/editor of the New England volume, Carey Kish, is the editor of the Appalachian Mountain Club’s Maine Mountain Guide.

As I mentioned to my companion over our Barber Chair Bitters, the series reminds me of both the Green Book published annually from the 1930s into the 1960s and the Guide Books published as part of FDR’s New Deal in the 1930s–if only because I reviewed books about both published in recent years:

Recovering the Green Book

Forking off in All Directions

Jack the Ripper’s Riff

Working the counter at the Screening Room can be an athletic event in the last minutes before a show’s scheduled start.

Many patrons arrive just ahead of starting time, some deliberately a few minutes late to avoid the coming attractions. Thank this art cinema’s founders as well as the new owners that there are no ads for car dealerships, fast food joints, or anything else to prolong the delay, although that might take a bit of pressure off one person ripping tickets while also slinging popcorn into bags, pouring butter into it, grabbing candy out of the glass-enclosed case and soft drinks out of the fridge, all while totalling prices and making change.

If that’s not enough of a juggling act, we also have a popcorn popper decidedly designed for a left-handed concessionaire, which I am not. And so it is with a lobby full of eyes on me that I shakily raise cups of oil proportioned with kernels to the rotating cooker while my right hand hangs idly by, contemplating an anti-discrimination lawsuit.

More than once, I’ve given folks in the lobby a play-by-play as I slowly fill the cooker. They laugh, and after banging the cups downward to get every kernel into it, I can’t resist: “Few people know this, but Shakespeare titled his play Measure for Measure as a tribute to concessionaires in the lobby of the Globe Theater.” When laughter turns into oohs and aahs, I wonder if they believe it.

Time for ridiculous jokes that pass for literary history is also provided by the tedious process of credit cards. I swear, if I could go back in time and erase three people from the history of the world, someone would need to remind me of dictators and warmongers before I got my hands on the inventors of the credit card, the cell phone, and the car alarm.

Then again, I might also be re-directed by catching sight of the idiot who first declared, “There’s no such thing as a stupid question,” or the equally imbecilic, “The customer is always right.”

Another handicap is the reputation that I apparently have for being able to tell how old people are just by looking at them. I suppose I should be flattered and should fake having such a power by assuming that this one is a senior while that one is not. Instead, I have a vivid memory of two occasions about 20 years ago when ticket takers charged a senior rate for women who were not. Never again! I don’t care if Methuselah walks in there wearing a name tag; if he doesn’t say “senior” or something recognizably synonymous, I’m charging full price.

Many seniors wait until the transaction is made before saying it. Most all of them get a laugh out of it, as it implies they look younger. Nor is it difficult for me to hand over the two dollar difference. So far, so good. Customers are happy, laughing, and they got the discount.

On my side of the counter, it’s like being behind a driver who waits until making the turn before putting on the directional. A ticket is already ripped, but I need to replace it and/or make a notation. Simple, right? Try doing it in those last ten minutes when you have a line of customers facing you, the ones in front holding out their credit cards, someone in the middle asking when the movie gets out, another in back asking about parking on State Street, yet another off to your side asking for napkins, and one more from the back of the hall asking where the restrooms are.

May not qualify as an athletic event, but it sure feels like one. And there is that four-step hop up into the projection booth to start the show on time while patrons are still coming through the door.

For all that, I don’t waste time complaining, and I maintain a smile, or at least a straight face. Except for the woman who, after paying admission and with the coming attractions already on, picked up a $1.25 chocolate, handed me a credit card, waited for the transaction to go through, then asked for a San Pellegrino, and handed the card back to me.

She may have detected a murderous undertone when I asked if she wanted a receipt, but she made no complaint. With few exceptions I’ve started the films on time, and I can’t recall anyone going without popcorn, though at times the butter can’t melt fast enough. Screening Room patrons have been patient when I’ve needed it, supportive overall, and on one count–and I do mean count–they give me way too much credit.

With tickets and concessions all at one counter, we add them all together. With the numbers all small–$12 or $10 for tix, $5 or less for concessions–this is little more than counting. With combinations always the same–$5 for popcorn and $2 for sodas make for a lot of $7s–it’s easy to be rapid which, in those last ten minutes, is necessary.

No matter. To hear patrons remark on my mathematical skills, you’d think I was moonlighting from a dayjob as an accountant for the International Monetary Fund or as an engineer calculating interplanetary missions for NASA. Seems like nothing to me, but the truth is that I did enter Salem State as a math major 55 years ago after taking straight As in math all through elementary and high school, including algebra, geometry, trigonometry, physics, and an intro to calculus.

But 1968 had a way of changing people. By the start of second semester, I was an English major writing for the student paper. Strange to think that I wrote just one film review in four years for The Log. Stranger to think that it was Woody Allen’s Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex.

Just as well. Who needs advanced calculus to be a nimble Jack the Ripper or a quick Jack in the Booth at a theater near you?

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