More than Whaling in Mind

Running 40 minutes behind schedule, the 30th Annual Moby-Dick Marathon dives past midnight into Sunday’s wee hours. So sorry if I’m keeping you up waiting for me to breach on the livestream.

Here at the New Bedford Whaling Museum, no one appears at all bothered by it. The twenty readers following me, all the way to 3:30, are all smiles when they take to the podium and when they leave. While up there, expressions change to capture Ishmael’s excitement, Ahab’s rage, Queequeg’s resolve, Starbuck’s meditation, Stubb’s flippancy, Flask’s complacence, Pipp’s innocence.

Yes, that’s all in the present tense, as I now have a seat outside the auditorium in a room just off the lobby where coffee is here for the taking. Only chowder cups remain from which to drink it, but caffeine is caffeine. There’s a large screen with the livestream a few feet from where I sit, and the sound, frankly, is louder and more clear than in the auditorium.

Only because I glanced at the screen do I realize that viewers may have noticed an odd bit of drama when I took my seat. Indeed, when I checked messages before starting this report, I learned that a friend had patiently waited those 40 minutes before writing: “I’m here. Where are you?” And then:

There you are… what? That guy just took your book and kept it? You are such a gentleman.

Don’t know about the “gentleman” part, but I need to describe the Marathon’s format to explain what happened:

On the auditorium stage are two podiums and one chair. The dual podiums work like a relay race to keep transitions up to speed. Each has a microphone, and so the reader on deck, so to speak, is ready to start as soon as the one reading is finished. Two monitors are seated in the front row facing us, and one will say “Thank You” at the end of a paragraph nearest our allotted time. The reader who is finished leaves the stage, and the reader waiting in the seat goes to the vacant podium. Since we wear numbers on lanyards around our necks, it is very easy to see when we should leave the audience and take that vacated chair.

So it was that when 128 finished, 129 started, and 130 went from chair to podium. At that moment, I, 131, took the chair. And then it happened. Stepping back toward me, in a whisper, 130 seemed in distress and said something. I thought he had lost his place and wanted me to point it out. Already following along, I held my book up and pointed to the paragraph that 129 was then reading.

130 took the book! I was surprised, but he soon brought it back, saying he was still lost. I’m quite familiar with those ten or so chapters (that’s why I always choose the “midnight watch”), so I was able to point to it. Again, he took it to the podium, and got ready to read from it.

This time I was stunned. How could he not have his own? And they have a stack right there from which anyone can borrow. One of the monitors, perceiving what happened, and knowing that I had to be following along as 130 read, gave me one of those books, open to the page.

As if to add insult to injury, 130 got “The Dart,” the chapter I hope to get every year. For one, it’s an op-ed column written 70 years before newspapers began carrying such things, and 120 years before the term was coined. Other chapters in Moby-Dick fit the description, but, just as the best op-eds end with “kickers,” this one ends with a metaphor showing that Melville had a lot more than whaling in mind.

And then my bad luck turned to gold. They cut the book thief before the last paragraph, which I know by heart, so I was able to look up into the audience and camera, and deliver it as the kicker it is:

To insure the greatest efficiency of the dart, the harpooneers of this world must start to their feet out of idleness, and not from out of toil.

Gave it two beats to sink in before buoyantly announcing “Chapter 63, The Crotch” and putting on my glasses. Grateful that no one snickered at the name of the fixture that holds harpoons in place on the boats that give chase, I then read the chapter’s delightfully calm, organic opening line:

Out of the trunk, the branches grow; out of them, the twigs. So, in productive subjects, grow the chapters.

The audience laughed, and for the first time, despite having read Moby-Dick five times, I heard Melville’s anticipation of critics who would complain that he attempted too much. As he writes in a later chapter, “I try all things; I achieve what I can.”

Not sure if it was that realization, or kicking of “The Dart” with point and purpose, or both that took my mind off the book thief and animated me like a child on a boogie board riding the waves of a playful surf through Ishmael’s provocative prose.

Yes, I’m sorry if I kept you waiting, but not at all for what you got while you waited. Nor would I apologize for any of the 25 hours these marathons average, with or without an extra 40 minutes this year.

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No screenshots awaiting me this year, as those prone to send them sent them in previous years. This may be from two years ago, before the event was moved into the auditorium. I won’t know if my opening recitation had the desired effect until I see the video, which the museum usually posts about two weeks after the event. Judging from the message from Woonsocket, the affair of the book makes an impression. I’ll post it in a blog as soon as I can:

Home

From Calendar to Clock

Ever notice how the calendar and clock correspond?

Midnight-2 am: More dark than light, January’s weeks are the wee hours of the year, a time to sleep, or at least stay under blankets and comforters, comforted against the year’s lows.

2-4 am: Come February, and good luck avoiding people sincerely surprised that the days are getting longer and wanting to tell you about it. But feel good about the night shift seeing the days start sooner. Still so cold, however, that even the groundhog appears for but a peep.

4-6 am: Enter March and a lion may roar for a few days here and there, but on our calendar o’clock a rooster welcomes spring, the dawn of every year.

6-8 am: We keep hearing that April showers bring May flowers, but it’s really the mud that does it. April’s warmth, much like the oncoming warmth of a rising sun, melts winter’s frost. The original poem, “April mud makes May bud,” didn’t quite make it with the critics. Hence, showers and flowers.

8-10 am: May is akin to mid-morning following coffee breaks. Researchers call this the most stressful time of the workday, an odd match for what we call the most romantic month. From heart attacks to hearts broken? Maybe, but those same researchers call it the most productive time of day. And we all know what romance can produce.

Lesson: Fish off the company dock if you must, but watch what you interface.

10-noon: Dinnertime corresponds to June, the start of many annual vacations. Schools go out on recess. A time for photo-ops. Even Newburyport City Hall smiles as often as possible, always outdoors with the Chamber of Commerce. Every sentence they head-nod includes—as June only need imply—the phrase “moving forward.”

Noon-2 pm: July is the now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t month. Tourists observe Yankee Homecoming in town while locals take refuge here on Plum Island. So, too, in early afternoons do office workers kick back to the pleasantries of answering mail and making phone calls. Restaurants decelerate into low gears after so much high-speed action to refuel the rest of us. We remember the second syllable in “hello.”

2-4 pm: “Dog days of August”? What else can we say about late afternoon? Go through the motions of work, but can’t wait to go home. Helen Highwater, a most reliable Newburyport denizen, tells me of a plan to spruce up the month with “Annie Oakley Day,” an attempt to reconcile feminists and gun-enthusiasts, which, successful or not, could bring a whole new meaning to “Happy Hour.”

4-6 pm: September is the month when neighbors tend to reconvene, especially their children and teenagers in schools, much like the hours when we arrive home and sit down to evening meals. We humor the kids in the fiction that they would rather stay on vacation, just as we kid ourselves with the phrase “Indian Summer.”

6-8 pm: October is an annual sunset, as colorful as a western horizon over a salt marsh, rich in all shades of red, orange, yellow, purple. Apple pickers hit the rungs and fill the bins. At home it’s time for sweets. Downtown restaurants can stuff—in another sense of the word—their thimble-sized desserts. Give us McIntosh, or… Check, please!

8-10 pm: In Moby Dick, Ishmael refers to “a dark, drizzly November in my soul” to explain that he cannot remain in civilized society. He must go to sea—or at least to the Thirsty Whale. English tradition calls it “the blood month,” the time to store food for winter. In either case, striking out or hunkering down, November corresponds to the end of one day’s activity and preparation for the next.

Some go to bed, others to bars. Children say prayers at points on the clock that would find Thanksgiving on a calendar.

10-midnight: December, then, is a long day’s destination. Candles and fireplaces offer natural light for natural reflection, and we exchange gifts that sum up a year past and anticipate a year about to be.

Finally, on the 31st, we stay up till midnight, sincerely surprised by another chance at renewal—the only day in 365 when we realize that calendar and clock are one.

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Taken by my next door neighbor, this photo faces northwest. If you could extend the horizon about a generous inch on each side, you would see where the sun sets on the Winter and Summer solstices. Dead center would be where it sets on the Vernal and Autumnal equinoxes. For the fellow in the hat, the clock moves overhead, the calendar straight ahead. Photo by Kim O’Rourke.

If Only a Scene in a Film

A Rhode Island friend reports that Showcase Cinemas Seekonk is no more.

Her photos show it already torn down, piles of rubble behind a ten-foot-high chain-link fence. She pays tribute:

A depressing scene….that’s all that is left. If only it were just a scene in a film…but this time it’s real. My heart sunk. Goodbye forever Showcase Seekonk! I have many memories of a multitude of incredible films I once viewed up on your big screens.

Any mention of rubble inevitably invites comparisons to the photographs we see of war-torn places. While no one would ever put the decline of an industry on the same plane as the destruction of war, there is a destruction that goes beyond buildings and entertainment. There is something happening here that is exactly clear if we see it in the context of how we live, what we value, what we honestly want.

It is the battle of private vs. public interest.

True, cinemas are privately owned, but they do provide a public life. People gather and sometimes talk with each other about what they have come to see. Far more often, they will talk on the way out about what they have just seen.

As a projectionist at The Screening Room, a small arts cinema in Newburyport, Mass., I have often seen patrons outside our door after a film agree to stop in The Port Tavern next door to share thoughts and reactions. I’ll never forget the woman who, following Spike Lee’s BlackKlansman, blurted out, “I’m going to The Grog to defrag!” Several patrons still stepping out the door volunteered to join her. That may be an extreme example, but just the look on other viewers’ faces and the tones of their overheard voices gives us a sense of public participation.

Always nice to have family or friends at home with you to share reactions. But you have them with you many, perhaps most other times. Compared to the public life of a cinema, this is a self-imposed privatization. Not a privatization of a business, of a building, of a choice of entertainment, but of ourselves.

As for all of the privately-owned cinemas that I am calling vital to our public life, I can tell you that all of us view other cinemas far more as allies than as competitors. Far from the cut-throat world of streaming services, the better any of us do, the better we all do.

Any cinemas’ success means that more people are going out, that more of us have a public life away from privatized confinement. The closing of Seekonk, like that of many cinemas large and small across the country in recent years, is a trend. As a trend, it is subject to change. And it stands to reason, that an increasingly isolated public will eventually grow hungry for a public life.

Any cinema’s closing is bad news, but here’s hoping that Seekonk’s patrons keep going to cinemas nearby, keeping them strong until the trend changes.

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All for a Bird on My Roof

Sunday after Christmas: When I awake, I sense commotion out my window and across the street.

Two cars are parked, the second with two people opening doors and getting out as a third car stops behind them. With a camera the size of a bazooka, the third driver also steps out.

Counting the driver of the first car, I soon have four photographers aiming weapons of mass illustration at me. Because I live atop a slight hill, they aim upward.

Keeping away from the window, I rub my uncaffeinated eyes, and quickly throw a shirt on. It’s doubtful they can see this far through the window, especially with a glaring morning sun facing them. And if they did, it would be from just the neck up.

Without coffee, and necessarily concerned more about urination than illustration at that moment, I leave them to their own devices. In the bathroom, I resolve to stop being so specific in my Daily News columns about where I live, and my expansive view over the marsh next to this wildlife sanctuary that serves as a bi-annual pit-stop for migrating birds.

While walking in the sanctuary, I’ve seen how cars converge on a spot to photograph a red-tail hawk, a peregrine falcon, a snowy owl, an occasional bald eagle, a rare king eider. Happens on the one and only road across the marsh connecting us to the mainland, a causeway absurdly called a “turnpike.”

While walking the road in the sanctuary, I’ve chatted with them, learned something of their MO, and have been treated to their cameras’ views that can make a blue heron a half mile away look like it’s on the other side of a card table ready to take you on in a game of cribbage.

Birders–call them “bird watchers” at your own peril!–have an app on their phones which they can use to alert others of a sighting. Since most all of them frequent Plum Island with license plates from all over New England any given day, a quick gathering of three or more cars with perhaps five or seven birders is common.

Fans of Moby-Dick might be reminded of the “gam.” When two whaling ships sighted each other on the high seas, they would pause the hunt and join side-to-side to exchange information. The captain of one ship would board the other while the first mate of the other would board the first. Never occurred to me to ask birders if they have a specific word for their impromptu gatherings. And might it be possible that that word is “gam”?

Happens along the causeway. I have no idea how anyone in a passing car one day could have noticed the falcon at least fifty feet away, slightly down from the higher road, and in the tall marsh grass. But that’s why birders tend to travel at least two to a vehicle. By the time I was on my way home, five cars were in the breakdown lane, and the birders lined one side like a baseball team from home to first following introductions.

This morning, in the bathroom long enough to heat water for a full French press of a Tanzanian dark-roast, I throw on my gym shorts just in case my own personal paparazzi is still trying to capture my sorry posterior for posterity. A few sips is all it takes to see that their cameras are aimed not at my window, but up to my roof, and to the roof next door.

Do I throw on more clothes and a pair of shoes to get out and look up? Nah! It’s 16 degrees, and whatever it is or they are, I’ve seen them before and will see them again.

Better to settle here on my posterior and record the story for posterity even if it does reveal that I’m so vain, I positively thought that gam was about me.

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You can tell where the road is by the bottoms of the telephone poles. This pic was taken by a friend, or a friend of a friend, on a summertime sunset cruise. Sorry I cannot recall who that was.

A Long Scarf ’round My Neck

Christmas Day: Before driving south some 70 miles to join family for dinner and an exchange of presents, I stopped at a convenience store to pick up a gift for a friend who has spent the entire month and will likely spend another in a rehabilitation center.

No, no addiction, but Parkinson’s Disease at a stage where he can do little more than read between meals that are served on his bed-tray or in the dining room at the end of the hall where a wheelchair with someone to push it will take him.

And read he does, always asking for the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, a dual habit he has sustained for as long as I’ve known him going back to the Reagan years.

WSJ does not run on holidays, so I settled for the NYT only to be startled by the large over-the front-page-fold photo. Did the Gray Lady really put a painting of the three wise men on its cover? There was no headline above to give it away. My glasses, hurriedly applied, showed that I was looking at three donkeys, not camels, and the caption described people fleeing the war in Sudan, seeking refuge in Chad.

Still, the choice of image for December 25 could not be mere coincidence. Or am I just haunted by an uncanny thread in what might seem like a seasonal scarf around my own neck? Began three weeks ago when I prepared a Christmas column for the Daily News, a feel-good story about a package delivered to the wrong address due to a wrong turn called by Siri. As a spoof of the carol, I used “App of Wonder, App of Night” as the headline.

Barely two weeks ago I joined a No Kings rally of about one hundred brave-the-cold souls on a small town green where they usually have a drum circle. Just two drummers showed up, but that was enough. Improvising to their beat, I played all the standard Christmas carols I knew except for one I just could not find, and not for lack of trying: “We Three Kings.” That kind of irony is a blog that writes itself, though the headline was its best joke: “The We Three No Kings Band.”

While I was writing that blog, a friend of Middle Eastern descent posted an editorial cartoon:

The image arrested me as emphatically as that wall halts the kings. If we were to be honest about Christmas in America, 2025, it would be available as a greeting card, and I’d have sent it. Instead, it prompted a column headlined “Merry Exclusivity!” which has yet to hit print–likely next week, after which it will become a blog, available to all.

As always, I was last-minute getting cards to send out. For at least forty years, I always picked out large cards with images of the Archangel Gabriel and his trumpet or, if unavailable, of any wind-musicians or wind-instruments. The reason for large cards is to stuff them with a newspaper column or blog or two or three I’ve written over the past 12 months I think the recipient will like.

By the time I arrived at Jabberwocky Bookshop, no Gabriels, no flutes, no piccolos, no group of carolers, no drummer boy, no brass, no chamber orchestras, no angels with harps were on the card racks to be had. But I spotted a card with the three kings which was perfect for the enclosure I had in mind, the “No Kings” blog. You’ve heard the saying, “Sometimes the jokes just write themselves”? In this case, it was the card itself.

All that came to mind in the convenience store in the brief time it took to buy that newspaper. When I handed it to my friend in the rehab center, I said nothing of it, though I awaited his reaction. At first glance, he gave a start, but right away focused on the caption. His look told me that he noticed what I had noticed.

You’ve heard the saying, “A picture is worth a thousand words”? In this case, it was worth a thousand to appear accommodating us with what we celebrate this day, and then a second thousand to remind us of what we actually have this day.

A Christmas card-turned-reality check. If you happen to have a copy of the Christmas Day NYT, hold onto it. You’ve heard the expression, “hiding in plain sight”? Unannounced messages in large publications tend to become collector’s items–especially when placed over the fold of a front page.

On screen, this is much brighter and clearer than in print. Try to imagine a darker look at a distance of three or four feet to approximate what I thought I saw.
The first ever screenshot I have done knowingly. According to the icons on my screen, I did one of Sinclair Lewis and Dorothy Thompson. That icon has been there for at least three years. I recall finding the photo and posting it, but I have no recollection at all of noticing the word “screenshot” while I did. Is it possible to do without knowing it?

And on the day before Christmas when I saw no newspaper:

Christmas eve, I awake at 11:00, finish breakfast at 1:00, and put off all last minute errands until Friday or even Monday. Snowflakes the size of silver dollars starting to pile here on the island. Always piles more on the mainland, so why cross the bridge? Why test Stick-It’s tires on my steep driveway on my return? There’s bound to be a gas station open between here and Boston tomorrow when I trek to the South Shore for a couple days. Nine IPAs are enough in my fridge till Saturday. And who needs cash when you have a credit card? Or those rosemary-sea salt rolls from the Italian bakery when you’re making pancakes, that great excuse to have maple syrup, for breakfast and will be having holiday feasts away from home?

I say “Merry Christmas” when I know someone shares my general background, and “Happy Holidays” when I do not, but in both cases what I really mean is “Feed Me!”

Bon Appetit to all! And to all, a good bite!

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The We Three No Kings Band

The We Three No Kings Band

Newburyport is now having weekly No Kings rallies, and yesterday I-don’t-know-how-many people braved a windchill down near 20 to march from the usual spot on the city’s main drag (US Rt. 1-A) about a 1/4 mile to Market Square downtown.

I don’t know because I went to Ipswich to sit in with the drum circle. For a full hour, the We Three No Kings Band played behind a little over 100 people who lined the main drag, also 1-A about a dozen miles away.

Cold weather discourages musicians, and so our “circle” was barely a curve. Usually we have at least seven drummers compared to yesterday’s two. Of course, we would all like more drums, but I’d drive that 12 miles for just one as gladly as I would for ten. A percussionist is a wind-player’s best friend.

In Ipswich yesterday, those two fellows were as glad to see me as I them. I’d jammed with them for most Saturdays from the beginning of the weekly event back in early March right to Labor Day. During that time there was just one other piper on one day, and he arrived in my car. Come fall, the Renaissance faire claimed me for two months that required a third month of recuperation. Stayed in Newburyport for a few weeks, but I missed the music, and so yesterday, south I went.

The drummers have a variety of rhythms and moods, tempos and texture, that keep me exploring combinations of notes, mixtures of sharps and flats in the two-and-a-half high-pitched octaves I have. All I have to do is embellish and fill, but I like the challenge of finding my own structure layered atop theirs, and at times it’s as if my pipe is taking the drums’ suggestions for coherent melodies. On a few of them, I was able to layer recognizable songs, and I had the season in mind as I played “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen,” “Hark the Herald Angels Sing,” “Joy to the World'” and “Deck the Halls.” I also managed a piece each by Bach and Handel, but I was mostly in jazz mode.*

Oddly, I could not find “We Three Kings.” Not for lack of trying, as I thought it might get a laugh from anyone paying attention. A musical sight-gag. But songs become like the boxes and cans you store into kitchen cabinets when they go unplayed. Some are pushed so far back that you’ll only reach them with a step stool. Fine if you are just preparing a meal, but in Ipswich the drummers kept serving it. Had to knock over “Moscow Nights” to grab “Deck the Halls” as it was.

For a few minutes I compromised with the cold and became a third drummer by tapping my sopranino recorder against my water bottle. At times we were joined by one or two other fellows who stood nearby keeping the beat with percussive objects that seemed hidden in their gloves and scarves. Occasionally women would wander over to dance awhile, probably to keep warm, or just dance past us while making the rounds with friends lining the street.

There’s a metaphor in there somewhere: Men banging things and women dancing. But developing it might violate some rule of political correctness, so I’ll keep piping. And anyway, there were at least two women drumming in Ipswich through the summer, and men also walk past us with a mincing attempt at dancing, and so I try to keep a straight face and play on.

If the weather had any effect on the drummers, they neither mentioned nor showed it. I, on the other hand, almost mastered the art of ripping a fingerless glove off my left hand with that other hand so quickly that I could get a handle on Handel after what seemed like a natural, improvisational break. Like a sleight of hand. On the other hand, the left hand had more room than the other hand, so the other glove stayed on the left hand, unlike the other hand. On yet another hand, there were a couple of of five minute breaks with both hands in my pockets without ever taking the glove off that other hand. But I did keep it handy on the ground at hand. We pipers gotta hand it to those flashing hands! Did I mention that it’s the repetitive nature of percussion that welcomes improvisation as a natural ally?

Yesterday was Ipswich’s 43rd consecutive Saturday rally. The honking and thumbs-up approval seemed non-stop, certainly beyond what I recall in the summer. Both drummers say they’ll be there for the 44th and hoped I’d be back. “You fellows are my launching pad,” I reassured them.

Where else would a piper go?

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*For an example of this, listen to the long, psychedelic nine-minute version of The Chambers Brothers’ “Time Has Come Today,” and in the middle of the heavily percussive instrumental section, you’ll hear the lead guitarist pick out “Little Drummer Boy.”

Don’t know their last names, so I’ll leave my own out, L2R: Jack, John, Ravi. Photo by John Shaw, posted by Democrats, Republicans and Independents for Democracy of Ipswich.

Onze Tweedetalige President

Took a few days to stop laughing at Karoline Leavitt’s snarling, brainless claim that no one could be a citizen of the United States while also being a citizen of another country.

Maybe her boss has decreed that “dual citizenship,” like “affordability,” is a hoax invented by Democrats. Bet you didn’t know that Melania was really born and raised in Woonsocket.

As if on cue, Santa Rosa sends a video of a Pennsylvania historian who lets us know that America has had a president who spoke English as a second language. That’s a hard sell in a time when speaking anything other than English can get you picked up by ICE, processed through Alligator Alcatraz, and shipped off to a country you haven’t seen since your baby teeth fell out.

If they are banning books telling us that Andrew Jackson was anything but a friend to the native tribes, there’s no way they’ll let on that one of his disciples and his successor spoke Dutch with his family and close friends– and with a distinct Dutch accent spoke English only when he had to.

Took me by surprise, but as soon as I saw the tease, I knew who it was without having to start the video. Our eighth president, Martin Van Buren, was our first president from New York, and before it was New York, it was New Amsterdam. How Ronald Reagan, who grew up in Illinois, got the nickname “Dutch” is anyone’s guess.

Yes, Van Buren was born 150 years after the flags changed, but languages, customs and cuisines always remain. That’s especially true well away from the city in an idyllic valley up the Hudson where the villages and streams have Dutch names, and the restaurants have Dutch entrees, and the people of Poughkeepsie are grateful for it to this day–or at least until 2000 when my daughter graduated from Vassar.

Chris, who identifies himself by only his first name on his podcast, Ignored Facts, tells us that Van Buren (pronounced, fan-BUH-renn) didn’t begin to learn English until he started attending school at age seven. But he was a prodigy, so he learned fast, becoming one of the great orators of his time. That was a skill that Jackson lacked, and with it, Van Buren enabled Jackson–the presidency’s first “outsider”–to maneuver government personnel and agencies foreign to the vaulted military man.

Van Buren served as president from 1837 to 1841. The economy tanked in ’37 and was still in the tank for the ’40 election when the Whigs nominated a war hero, William Henry Harrison, who whooped him. Eight years later, Van Buren would run for president as the Free Soil candidate with Charles Adams, son and grandson of the two Johns, as his running mate. Quite an about face for a disciple of Old Hickory who had nothing but open contempt for John Quincy. They landed 10% of the vote.

Van Buren’s tricks, as they were called by critics and supporters alike, earned him the nickname “Little Magician,” and one can only wonder how much a heavy Dutch accent would have added to his mystique. Those of us old enough might compare it to Henry Kissinger’s German accent in the Nixon White House, and even we leftists have to admit that old Henry seemed something of a magician, for better or worse, with his “shuttle diplomacy.”

In the Ignored Facts video, Van Buren’s story serves merely as an intro for a strong case for America to retain its diversity of languages–from Dutch and German here and there, to Spanish and numerous native languages everywhere. As Chris emphasizes, the languages were there before the US borders reached them. He has my admiration. That’s an even harder sell in a land where some people foam at the mouth with threats of “English or else!”

Chris could have complicated the case with the theory–or the hunch–of a few historians and the historical novelist, Gore Vidal, that Van Buren was the illegitimate son of Aaron Burr. His parents had an inn along the Hudson where Burr stayed several times. No smoking gun, as Burr saved that for Hamilton, but Van Buren’s dad was a hopeless alcoholic, his mother very attractive, and Burr a womanizer. The dates match, as did their obsidian eyes.

Linking Van Buren to Burr could offset any MAGA objection to his bilingualism. All that’s needed is a barrage of publicity about an attempt of a man holding a national office–vice-president–to overthrow the federal government. Actually, Burr gathered troops to take New Orleans as a base from which to separate the West from the fledgling country in 1807. But MAGA wouldn’t know the difference, nor would they make a distinction between Burr’s trial for treason and Trump’s impeachment.

Or, Chris might have added that Van Buren was the first president born in the United States. All the Virginians and Massachusetts boys who preceded him were born as British citizens.

Why, I’d bet my winter supply of Rip Van Stroopwafels to hear Karoline Leavitt make nonsense out of that.

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https://www.history.com/articles/martin-van-buren

A ‘Tight’ of Passage

Every few months when I take my copy of Emblem from my mailbox, I immediately turn to the class notes and find my way to “Class of 1968.”

As usual, it is blank in this new issue of Central Catholic High School’s alumni magazine except for the name of one of my classmates back in those turbulent days and his edress for the rest of us to send him any news we would like to report. Apparently, we don’t have any.

Class of 1967, however, appears quite active, and it ended with an entry that caught my eye:

Teacher Joseph Madigan of Andover, Maine, continues to enlighten us and his local newspaper with his monthly poetry lyrics.

While immediately calculating that he must be in his late-80s, I pounced on my Rand McNally to find a town I’d never heard of despite having lived in three of the four corners of that raggedly rhomboidal-shaped state. Sure enough, Andover is in the fourth corner, way up near the borders of New Hampshire and Quebec.

Joe Madigan was the first person to tell me I could write. He was my English teacher in senior year when those of us who did well took two English classes, the other called “college prep,” or something like that.

That other class was taught by the legendary Warren Hayes whom we all had in junior year and were the better for it. Hayes was strict but dynamic, a combination that made us want to surpass the standards he set. Leaving literature to Madigan, Hayes’ college prep class was much more nuts and bolts, but even that Hayes taught with what one student eulogy in 2021 called “pep, rhythm, and vitality.”

Most memorable was “Vocaball,” a game played one day each week for which the class was separated into five teams of seven to define words, with synonyms, antonyms, etymology, roots, prefixes, suffixes, all in response to rapid-fire questions. By putting us in teams, he made us not want to let each other down. No doubt many CCHS grads who watched Dead Poets Society 35 years ago wondered how Robin Williams knew of Warren Hayes.

While Hayes was the wily veteran, Madigan joined Central while I was there. A few years later he would teach at the Essex County Training School for truants with behavioral problems. My father, a social worker there known for his rapport with the kids, noticed the trait in Madigan and befriended him. For that reason, my father took him into a rough neighborhood in Lynn when a kid ran away from the school and returned home. The two arrived at a house, and Madigan went to the rear while my father went to the front door. Don’t recall how many Lynn police arrived at that moment, but my father told me that two went to the back. Very soon, they returned with Madigan between them, securing both his arms. My father, according to his account, was so stunned that he couldn’t get the words out until Madigan begged him to speak.

Not long after that, Madigan taught at the Greater Lawrence Technical School where my CCHS ’68 classmate Dave Bodenrader had a career as a guidance counselor. When I learned that the two became friends, I couldn’t help but re-imagine my father’s story. If the Lawrence police had been called to the school to stop an altercation and arrested Dave by mistake, I don’t think Joe would have stopped them. I think he’d have smiled and enjoyed the show.

Central Catholic was likely Madigan’s first teaching gig. He ranged from lively to relaxed in front of a class, as if it was second-nature to him. He had a passion for American literature–for Poe and Melville, Hemingway and Steinbeck, and many writers among and between them. That passion was contagious, catching the curiosity of teenage boys far more inclined toward girls, cars, sports, and the shiniest new object of all at the time, rock-and-roll.

Not much older than my Class of ’68, Madigan had an instinct for making inroads with his hormonal audience. Most memorable was one of his descriptions of Romantic poetry. Though far from R-rated, his calling it “making love” years before we knew what the euphemism meant had us reading more by John Keats than the assignment called for. His mischievous smile while saying it was the suggestive sound of John Lennon’s “you know what I mean” in “When I Saw Her Standing There.” A nice echo came two decades later in Dead Poets Society when the teacher played by Williams–named John Keating–tells his all-male class that the purpose of poetry is “to woo women.”

My class at Central numbered 222, a number easy for me to recall only because I graduated 22nd. Call it deuces wild, and I was wild with classes that didn’t appeal to me. A few I loved, but English was never one of them. My interest was in Math, Geometry, Physics, Geography, and History. Anything with numbers, and I guess the endless dates allowed History to qualify.

We had perhaps ten out of 222 who excelled at everything. I was in the second tier of about 20 who excelled at a few. By the time we were halfway through sophomore year, there were never any surprises at who took the top awards in each subject. At least I don’t recall any until about six weeks into senior year when Joe Madigan held a lottery to match each of us, about 25 in that class, with 25 American novels, assigning a book report to each.

My luck was to draw the longest book in the lot, Thomas Wolfe’s Look Homeward Angel. I made an effort with it, but couldn’t make sense of Wolfe’s stream of conscious narration or his mountainous Carolina setting. And so, by page 50 of about 500, I got myself a copy of Cliff Notes. To be fair to myself, I did not do any plagiarizing, but I did rely on the CN analysis before returning to the book and finding passages that applied to it. That was for the sake of a few quotes from the novel that made some point with which I agreed. Maybe I’m just rationalizing, but I didn’t dodge the assignment. I just made it easier.*

I turned in my 500-word report expecting to gain my usual B- or C+ for an essay. I figured Madigan would recognize that I skimmed it but would realize that some honest effort was made on a book as long as Of Mice and Men, For Whom the Bells Toll, Red Badge of Courage, and Billy Budd combined–meaning that I was to have done as much as four classmates combined. As we say today, I expected to catch a break.

Back in class after a long weekend, not only did I catch a break, I hit the jackpot. Madigan plopped the papers on his desk, snatched the top one off and held it in the air. He stepped toward us with a wild smile and said something like, Listen to this! This is how it’s done! and then, in a line I still hear, clenching a fist I still see, “This is tight!”

Despite that excitement, my mind drifted. No doubt it was on the next Red Sox World Series game against the St. Louis Cardinals when I realized that I was hearing my own words. Seems now that I had to be elated at the time, but I recall that I froze. There were at least six kids in that class who had been the best at this for three years, and I was not one of them. Was this encroachment? Would I pay a price in the schoolyard? On the other hand, I was, like many others in that class, wondering what I might do about the military draft and bothered by American casualties in Vietnam that had started hitting close to home. That day in that class was the first indication I had that there was something I could do, and do well.

Central Catholic did assign all of us, even as incoming freshmen, a reading list of seven or so books to read by Labor Day. In the summer of 1967, our senior list included James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time (1963) and Alan Paton’s Cry, the Beloved Country (1948) set in apartheid South Africa. So you could say that my pump was primed for putting opinions in writing. Baldwin’s treatment of race was a model for my treatment of the draft, and later of the anti-war movement. But I still entered Salem State College as a math major looking forward to a lucrative career as an accountant.

That didn’t last long. By the start of second semester, I was an English major, and I had joined the staff of the student newspaper, The Log, an unlikely combination of upperclassers who couldn’t hide their amusement at my jacket and tie. Those didn’t last long either.

If Baldwin’s Fire pushed me in the direction my life took, it was Madigan’s “tight” that sent me down that road with confidence.

Twelve years later, I became a English teacher myself and spent the next 22 years channeling Madigan and Hayes, as well as Pat Gozemba–whom I still see at No Kings rallies–and the late Jay McHale at Salem State who both impressed upon me the need for critical thought, and Chuck Woodard at South Dakota State who steered me toward ironic vision. Every now and then, a student would tell me or write in an evaluation that my class recalled Dead Poets Society.

All that and I haven’t even mentioned what Joe Madigan in a poem calls “sweet music as I soon began to drift.”

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A note for those of you who live outside New England: “lewis-TUN” is Lewiston, about 50 miles southeast of Andover, and the closest city of any size.

Poem to accompany Dixfield Fuel Business Profile

Mar. 6, 2017

By Joe Madigan,
Andover, Maine

The heat had gone out
The water tank too
I called for some help
From a skeleton crew.

In snow-covered lanes
He made the long drive
Within a half hour
His van had arrived.
His fevered approach
Quickness and glee
Helped to alleviate
Worry in me.
With tool bag and light
He worked with a hum
Later he smiled and
Raised up his thumb.
I waved at his van
As he started to leave
With the heat coming on
And a propane reprieve.

On the left, Warren Hayes (1937?-2021) who retired in 2001 after 41 years of teaching. On the right, Chris Sullivan, recently retired President of CCHS and son of Mike Sullivan, one of my history teachers and manager of the school’s baseball team who did not select me for his roster.

Photos from the Central Catholic High School Class of 1968 Yearbook, courtesy of Dave Bodenrader, fellow CCHS Class of ’68.

From June, 2020, three months into the COVID shutdown:

Look Homeward, Devil

2S2BW

Day after day it is non-stop. Like a fire-hose aimed at a crowd, it horrifies most of us even seeing it on a screen, but it entertains, satisfies, and emboldens others

Last night, in the middle of a speech billed as “about the economy,” we were treated to a reprise of contempt for “shit-hole countries.” Today, one of his lapdog secretaries rationalized the deportation of veterans with no criminal records who were brought to America.

Those veterans, of course, have brown and black skin. And those countries are African, Central and South American. If that’s not enough to give the game away, an exception is made for South Africa whose white emigrants are as welcome here as those from Scandinavia, as he reminded us last night.

If the racism were any more obvious, it would blast all of us like a fire-hose, no screen needed. And some among us would revel in it like ten-year-olds at a big-city fire-hydrant on a hot summer day.

Many still ask how it is possible for anyone to support Trump after so many violations of laws, of ethics, of professional conduct, of basic human decency.

Some will specify a single infraction in memes on social media. Nine years later, the mockery of a handicapped reporter in 2016 still appears more often than any–with the convicted felon’s boastful “grab” of women a close second.

“How that was not the end of Trump right there?” Friends ask with frustration that is palpable on my screen. While the target of these memes may appear to be Trump, they point more toward his supporters, questioning their motives.

I shake my head. If the answer was any more obvious, it would delete the question as soon as my friends post it.

Anyone offended by his mockery of that reporter or boasts of his sexcapades would never have voted for Trump in the first place. So he lost nothing. To the contrary, there were many people in 2016 who had never voted in any election, convinced that it was all evil, elitist, too uppity. Their idea of freedom is, at best, to be left alone, and at length not to give a shit about other people. To them, Trump’s ridicule is liberating, allowing them to laugh at and feel superior to a journalist, a profession that they hate because it pushes them to do something they hate. It pushes them to think.

As for the “grab ’em by” quote, well, that’s a relatively mild sample of low-life vocabulary.

This connection succeeds every time he calls someone “stupid,” or “retarded,” or “vermin.” No matter how closely his recent portrayal–“garbage“–of Somalian immigrants matches those made of Jews by fascists in Europe in the 1930s; no matter how absurd and false a charge such as the one he made against Haitians in Ohio–“They’re eating their pets!“–not only does he not lose votes, he gains them every time.

While many friends choose to believe that Trump supporters are innocent of his blatant racism, his contempt for law, his indifference to public need, I say that’s precisely why they support him. While some friends post head-scratching memes, I’m reminded of Salman Rushdie’s 1990 children’s novel, Haroun and the Sea of Stories. In it, the narrator, bombarded by questions from a 14-year-old, deflects some by saying, “2C2E.” Too complicated to explain.

Time to face one unalterable fact: There is nothing complicated about this. We are wasting our time with a cult that should be filed under “2S2BW.” Too stupid to bother with.

Sounds oh, so liberal, so tolerant, so democratic to say “we must respect their intelligence” and “engage them in dialogue”–until you face the reality of what they know, what they vote for, and what they want. And they sure as Antietam do not want dialogue.

Problem with liberals is that, despite the unabated fire-hose of ridicule and hate blasted back at us, we still insist on playing by unwritten rules of civility. As a result, we look weak, something that is not an attribute that most voters ever look for.

Better to accept what you cannot change. There are plenty of others out there who remain uncommitted for whatever reason. Among them, it only stands to reason that we will find things we can change.

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https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-34940861

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