THOUGHTS WHILE DAILY  LIVING

I sit, VERY CAREFULLY, in my wheelchair 24/7, with a busy mind; my body, not so much. I mostly think about adapting, which I believe is the key to living longer and well, even though details change as I keep thinking about them.  And I think about Charlie, who makes it all possible.  I have a good time.  

Charlie is a godsend.  And, no, he is not available for adoption.

Adapting is making do with what you have.

I have 50 years and counting of adapting to become an able, if increasingly immobile, lefty.  I  won’t ever be entirely the same as I was, but then none of us ever is.  If, and with Charlie’s help, I figure out how to change my ways to still be able do the things I think are important, I will have adapted and be called resilient.  But adapting comes before, and leads to, resilience.

I have finally found an ally in Dr. Bruce Leff, a gerontologist, who says:
“Resilience is a popular term among doctors, who urge their patients to stay tough through discomfort or unpleasantness until things return to normal. Now [that he’s getting older] he’s come to see adaptation — adjusting and accepting what life throws your way — as equally important[as resilience].”

O HAPPY DAY! A like mind! This is a little exciting. Charlie says I shouldn’t break my arm patting myself on my back. “Tsk,” I say.

The struggles of adapting can be a plus.

Maybe equally exciting in our daily struggles is finding mathematician Eugenia Chen, who uses metrics to conclude:

“Math teaches us…[to carefully define] the metrics we use to measure how far people have come, [the support they had or the obstructions they faced], and thus how far they have the potential to go.”

Clearly, the struggles of successfully adapting make us potentially prime prospects for whatever comes next, including, but not limited to, our place in line at the golden gates.

‘Adapters’ are a coming attraction.

The widely-worked NYTimes crossword puzzle sought the answer “autodidact” (self-taught learner), to the clue “a library regular, perhaps”.  And, perhaps, we adapters and advantaged lot of life-long library users have also become  autodidacts, who, with more options, are better able to adapt to today’s world of lies, deep fakes, and disinformation. [I got the crossword answer.  Whew!]  Clearly, ‘adapters’ may soon be an answer.  Maybe the clue will be, “Make best use of the library to make changing situations better.”

PRIDE is adapting’s foe and should goeth before the fall, she said biblically and knowingly.

For 40+ years I walked increasingly awkwardly with a cane.  Friends were taking bets on how many steps I would take before I fell.  (I can distinctly hear Charlie saying this; he says I made it up.) I may have been a hazard, but I was going to walk, by God, or fall trying, which I often did. “Out, out, damn pride,” I finally decided.  Looking like the old lady I was becoming at 78, I agreed to get a  power wheel chair to be able to go rogue, take on the world, and drive Charlie nuts.  I’m having a very good time.

Tactics for managing pride vary.  As I became mostly bald, I thought about job possibilities and wrote a short (50-word max) poem.

BALDLY BLESSED                                                                                     

The top of my head is round and bald, like tonsured monks of old.
Theirs were perfect, mine is not, with  wiggles and bumps, I’m told.
I’ll learn from the monks, who with the nuns, will one day coed-mix,
And I’ll be ever ready, as their new-day ABBETRIX. 

Then I took a short nap and considered my options.

Comb-back flies in wind?  Charlie ordered the headband.  I found the flower.

PRIDE may be Adapters’ foe ; but PITH is their friend.

As I get older, I choose more carefully how I spend my lessening time and agility. My attention span isn’t shorter; I am just fussier about what to do with my time-eating awkwardnesses and my always growing list of things I want to do.  Naps, wonky fingers, and a computer that exists to create glitches are the latest time eaters.  What to do?

 Embrace pith, the essence of things, the “There, there,” (of Gertrude Stein fame)

I stumbled onto the importance of pith while zooming with Kathy.  We are a sample of two, both reading shorter works, about 125 pages for novels and memoirs, less for essays. 

SOME PITHY EXAMPLES

I finished and loved Fredrick Sjoberg’s The Art of Flight, the first essay (130 p.) in a book of 3 essays.. It’s my current favorite search book, this one about the author’s efforts to find out about Swedish artist, Gunnar Widfross, who worked out west, especially in Yellowstone. I first read entomologist Sjoberg’s memoir, The Fly Trap, and had a good time learning about hoverflies.  Yes, hoverflies.  Who knew?  I am a Sjoberg fan.

On Kathy’s mention, I read Glaciers by Alexis Smith (112 p.), but still am not sure what it’s about.  She works in a basement, albeit in the public library, so that’s a plus right there.  I was interested in how she chose the details she did to tell her story. It reminded me of Maira Kalman’s recent book, Still Life with Remorse, a picture book for adults, in which she used brief family stories to bring  her still-life paintings to real-life.  She found the “there there”.  Her family is not my family, but I love the idea of the book. I have been a Maira Kalman fan since I read her earlier book, Principles of Uncertainty, a memoir-ish, filled with her pertinent observations and wonderful illustrations (or vice versa).

I’m currently reading and loving Patrick Bringley’s book, All the Beauty in the World, about his years as a guard at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC.  I love to appreciate the Met’s collections and inner workings with him, and like a lot that each chapter is a read-alone vignette, able to be picked up, then put down at will.  A good read for early-retiree career-changers, too.

MORE PITHY EXAMPLES

Pith and poetry meet in  Billy Collins’ collection, Magical Tables, a whole book of short poems.  He is one of my  favs.  “Why?” you ask.  Have a read.

HEADSTONES

If the dates show
the husband died
shortly after the wife –
first Gladys then Harry,
Betty followed by Tom –
the cause is often
gradual starvation
and not a broken heart.

And here is a gift of hope for all who love someone in college majoring in philosophy:

TEENAGER

Even a branch on an
evergreen
may take an unexpected
turn
Up, down, or sideways
and grow substantial
in some weird direction.

Think aphorisms (e.g. Vectors: Aphorisms and Ten Second Essays by John Richardson, which is good example of aphorisms, but not available on Kindle, and I think my Uncle John’s spontaneous aphorisms are better.),

essays (e.g. historian and 4th-generation Mainer Heather Cox Richardson’s daily “Letters from an American” in which she puts current goings-on in perspective.  NYTimes notes that she is ‘astonishingly popular’, or Zeynep Tufekel’s occasional essays, about which  NYTimes notes, “Never miss what [she] has to say.”  With her background in technology and sociology and her intelligent curiosity, I read about information spread in what she writes.),

or haiku, maybe most of all, haiku, the pith extractor, the great summarizer (e.g. Thinking about ‘adapting’ leads to many ideas and long posts.).

Pithy Puzzle:  Maybe this is a good place to remind you all that about 15 years ago, I added and noted that there was a mystery in each blog post with a picture.  No one ever responded.  Now a clue:  Think pith and 17, and don’t get caught up in niceties of form.  Do you see what I did — and still do?

Conversations are adapters’ social lifeline, a necessary ‘super-aging’ trait.

I haven’t forgotten the importance of conversations to super-agers, which we all are, but conversations are hard to capture.  I found three poems that are conversations, but then I just had a lot to type.  So I’m trying to recite them. My problem is that I put myself to sleep on about word three.  I tried again, stayed awake, and blinked less, but still a ho-hummer. I need an audience.  I looked knowingly at Charlie.  He looks away and says I need to imagine an audience.  I suggest he mute the football game and, as I read, go “mm-mm” on occasion.  He didn’t say no.  The Seahawks or Vikings play on Sunday.  I’m ready.  Coming Soon:  Conversations / Poems by John Kenney, Wislawa Szymborska, and anyone else I find. 

And (finally!) to conclude, DAY BRIGHTENERS:

“Cryptographic science could not solve Kryptos – but library science could,” argued “nerdy” journalist and puzzle-solver, Jarett Kobeck, about ”Kryptos”, the sculpture with a puzzle, outside CIA Headquarters in VA.               

Let’s hear it for librarians! 

And for friends!

Winter may be drear, but never our thoughts of you.  HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

UPDATE:

As of November 6th, I had this post already started.
It’s mourning in America.
A pestilence  is upon us.
What on Earth could be worse?
Then I did a crumple-fall and broke the femur in my left leg, my only weight-bearing leg.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

Four weeks later after a trip to the ER, surgery, rehab, infection, back to the hospital, and, with Charlie’s magic, I was, finally, home.  

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Now, with Women’s History Month celebrated, I beat another infection, and, except for having ‘sore butt syndrome’ {indelicate, maybe, but accurate}, which is just a wheelchair hazard, I am back to full-talking mode.  Charlie sighs.

GOOD NEWS is that  My femur is making new bone, and I am turtle-ing my way to standing again.

                  Lots of nails for maximum pity, and new, white-ish bone to heal.  Wiped out. NAPS ALERT!

UPDATE:

You may recall that Charlie declared I should write my own obituary because I complained so much about the recent obituaries of friends. The challenge, as I see it, is to find my “there, there.”  This is not an easy task. 

My obituary efforts are turning into my “last leaf” (Remember O. Henry’s short story?),  and so far, they’re working, but still wanting.  I want to be more than death certificate data or an algorithmic-driven resume.  I want there to be  “there there” in my obituary. (Remember Gertrude Stein’s describing Oakland CA as “having no there there”?  Only one of my ‘asked’ friends knew what I was talking about.)  This is hard to capture.  Fortunately, Wislawa Szymborska has sort of addressed the “there there” problem in her poem, “Writing  a Resume.”

Writing a Résumé by Wislawa Szymborska 

What needs to be done?
Fill out the application and enclose the résumé.
Regardless of the length of life,
a résumé is best kept short.
Concise, well-chosen facts are de rigueur.
Landscapes are replaced by addresses,
shaky memories give way to unshakable dates.
Of all your loves, mention only the marriage;
of all your children, only those who were born.
Who knows you matters more than whom you know.
Trips only if taken abroad.
Memberships in what but without why.
Honors, but not how they were earned.
Write as if you’d never talked to yourself and always kept yourself at arm’s length.
Pass over in silence your dogs, cats, birds, dusty keepsakes, friends, and dreams.
Price, not worth, and title, not what’s inside.
His shoe size, not where he’s off to,
that one you pass off as yourself.
In addition, a photograph with one ear showing.
What matters is its shape, not what it hears.
What is there to hear, anyway?  The clatter of paper shredders.

GOOD NEWS! If writing my own obituary is my ‘last leaf’, as I suspect it is, so far so good.  Updates will be part of coming posts, I hope, I hope.

—————————————————————————————————

THOUGHTS:                                                                                                                                  I may be a super-ager.

In several studies, super-agers were people who were at least 80 years old, [CHECK!] had the memory ability of a person 20 to 30 years younger, [FRIENDS SAY I DO!] and, “you could see, were energetic, motivated [AMBITIOUS, maybe?], on the ball, elderly individuals.” [YOU BET!] Though they shared few lifestyle choices, “one consistency among the group was that they tended to have strong social relationships.”  These are tricky to define.   I am not a ‘joiner’, except for Gary’s Poetry Club, which is a wild and wooly bunch of appreciators, but I love good conversation, and, clearly, good conversation is a kind of social relationship.  

The question is: what is “good conversation”?    

 Start with at least two people who enjoy talking to each other, are widely read, have options, opinions, a sense of humor, good nature, and a tolerable perspective, and who can argue ably and amiably.   Some common interests help, as do library visits.  

A good conversationalist, then, is an autodidact {super self-learner}, probable library user, and adapter (wise choice maker), all of which lead to super-aging.  “Picky, picky,” you say?  Not in my world.  Good conversation is the thread running through the many varied and memorable activities of my life.  Maybe I could sum up my life experiences with the adjustable line, “She was part of and loved good conversations with friends, who put up with her, everywhere she landed.”

It’s hard to capture the spontaneity of a good conversation, but I have found three poems which in their several ways try to do that. Ron Padgett’s “Taboo”, John Kenney’s “An Attempt at a summation of a five-year-old’s monologue”,  and “Channeling my sister, Charyl Coghlan Pollard, while reading the poem, “Possibilties” by Wislawa Szymborska”, the poem I “put together” for my sister’s memorial service. They are too much to type, so I’m working on a way to recite them.

COMING ATTRACTIONS:

Spring brings Ann’s blossoms, a joy to behold and ZEN- think ‘one with my hat’.

Kids who get to go to the library by themselves and choose any books they want are an advantaged lot. I am one of them. I’m working on why this is so, but learning how to make wise, or at least reasoned, choices is part of it.

A difference between a generalist and a scatterbrain is how you recall, sort, and connect unsupervised early-life library choices with later life or reading experiences.  Hint: Nikki Giovanni’s poem, ”In Praise of my Teacher,” matters.

………………………………………………………………………………..

That’s it.  More coming sooner, rather than later.  Hard to do anything but think, when your wheelchair-bound feet are in the air to  put sore butt’s pressure on the back.  Nothing like talking to yourself (thinking?) when your son is only half-Irish.

THOUGHTS

I have a thought.  ”Oh no,’ says Charlie

THINKING IS DOING

 I was reading Ron Padgett’s poem, Think and Do, which begins,

‘I always have to be doing something, accomplishing something, fixing something, going somewhere, feeling purposeful, useful, competent—even coughing, as I just did, gives me the satisfaction of having “just cleared something up.‘

And I thought, ‘I like this guy.  I have to think and do, too.  Hard to manage in a wheelchair 24/7.’  I kept on reading.

‘The phone bill arrives and minutes later I’ve written the check. The world starts to go to war and I shout, “Hey, wait a second, let’s think about this!” and they lay down their arms and ruminate. Now they are frozen in postures of thought, like Rodin’s statue, the one outside Philosophy Hall at Columbia. His accomplishments are muscular. How could a guy with such big muscles be thinking so much? It gives you the idea that he’s worked all his life to get those muscles, and now he has no use for them. It makes him pensive, sober, even depressed sometimes, and because his range of motion is nil, he cannot leap down from the pedestal and attend classes in Philosophy Hall. I am so lucky to be elastic! I am so happy to be able to think of the word elastic, and have it snap me back to underwear, which reminds me: I have to do the laundry soon.’

His mind is elastic and he thinks about what needs doing and if, when, and how to do it.  I can think and do all of that, too, and, then, I can call Charlie to put in take out, and fold the laundry.  You can’t do anything without thinking, so if you can do, you can think.  And with Charlie’s muscles and good-nature, I thought, thinking and doing become one.  So I beaver away in my wheelchair, having ideas, carrying out some,  and checking  others with Charlie, who pretends not to hear me, as he heads to the couch for a little nap.

Maybe I should recall and cite the Jesuit Ethics teacher’s pronouncement that ‘the thought is as bad as the deed’, and the response, as one, from my 5 roomies, ‘Well, let’s do it then.’ Or maybe not. [And maybe the best part of college is the lifelong friends.  Hi, Nonnie and Dort.  Clearly, we old oldies are the toughest birds of the batch.]

MULTI-THINKING

There is multitasking, sure, and though It has a mixed reputation, it is still useful when you want to justify doing two things at once.  Well, with all the thoughts of a busy bee in a wheelchair, how about multi-thinking?   For example, as I was listening to golf on tv, an interview on NPR radio, and trying to match colors of jigsaw puzzle pieces, wondering if weeping edema matters, the latte machine is fixed, Charlie will fix the phone and remember the mail when he comes, etc., etc., etc.  I had a thought.  Surely, we are multi-thinkers, as well as multi-taskers, ready with a messy desk and a convergence of ideas that come from ever-meshing thoughts to confront the thorns  in one’s rose garden.

Multi-thinker? Or messy desk of person with red glasses and fork?

OBITUARY — LATEST THOUGHTS

You may recall that Charlie decided I should write my own obituary.  I had to decide what of my life was more than a death certificate’s data and less than a memoir.  It should be a memorable me, and not cost too much to have printed in the newspaper. As I struggle to satisfy fusspot, Charlie, and not bore myself to death [possibly literally!], I tried simulating a conversation with a favorite poet, Wislawa Szymborska. In her poem, Possibilities, she listed a number of her preferences, and I responded to each.  She didn’t know Charlie, but, had she, she would have listed him first, too.

OBIT thoughts — good content, costly to publish, if even possible.

Charlie nixed this idea, as it would eat up his inheritance, if he could even find a newspaper willing to lay it out [so to speak!].  He did recall that the ‘Conversation’ memorial card we made for my sister was a big hit, and he promised to make a card for me.

My latest OBIT thought was to develop a shelf of books that ‘summed’ to me.  I got the idea from the results of such a study / survey, published in a book with a title,  by two women whose names I don’t recall.  I do recall liking the book, and from that was born the thought that making such a list and could be fun to do and be an obituary of sorts.

SELF-PORTRAIT FROM A SHELF OF BOOKS, which, like the self portrayed, is ever-changing

The Scotch, by John Galbraith

The Snoring Bird [My Family’s Journey Through A Century of Biology], by Bernd Heinrich

Lab Girl, by Hope Jahren

Swimming Studies, by Leanne Shapton

The Fly Trap, by Fredrik Sjoberg  [hoverflies],  

    [now reading, The Art of Flight, by Fredrik Sjoberg, about Gunnar Widfoss]

The Power Broker [Robert Moses and the Fall of New York], by Robert Caro

Frankie’s Place; A Love Story, by Jim Sterba    

Fishing with John, by Edith Iglaur 

Caught in  the Web of Words [James Murray and the OED], by K.M.Elizabeth Murray

The Book Nobody Read, by Owen Gingerich  [Copernicus]

The Double Helix, by James Watson

Places In Between, by Rory Stewart

From the Holy Mountain, by William Dalrymmple

Principles of Uncertainty, by Maira Kalman 

       [now reading, Still Life with Remorse, by Maira Kalman]

Travels with Herodotus, by  Ryszard Kapuscinski

So Many Books, So Little Time [A Year of Passionate Reading], by Sara Nelson

Suggestions for the obit–ish list are ever welcome.  I’m already reading and liking a lot, All the Beauty in the World; The Met and Me, by Patrick Bringley   

DIVA-DOM

When I became [ahem] an award-winning poet, I declared myself a Diva for a Month.  Charlie agreed to ten minutes and offered to get me a latte.  Then when I turned 85 and became, by an NIH classification, ‘old old’, I declared myself a Diva for Life.  For some unfathomable! reason, woeful Charlie called his lifelong, nearby friend. Ben probably tsk – tsked, then said, ‘Your mom was a Diva at 45.’  ‘Harsh,’ I thought, until I looked anew at my earliest known picture and [gasp] saw a DIVA!

This is for you, Ben.  You are one of my FFLs [favs for life].

A Diva is born, ready to take on the world and have a good time.

A Diva ages, still fighting for right and having such a good time.

That’s all for now.  I’m already busy doing a lot of thinking, and Charlie is headed for the couch

Only UPDATES this time. I have met a return of covid with a short hospital stay, pneumonia, and low oxygen head on, and I am now home and only need oxygen at night.  And Charlie, always Charlie  The amount and pace of my story-telling is almost back to normal, but no one has mentioned how pleased they are. I am not deterred.

UPDATE #1  The Missing Link

This may be the last time I figure out a way to bring up my award-winning poem, The Missing Link, but I wouldn’t count on it.

You may recall that one of the things I won was an online mention of my poem. This did happen, but the location of the online mention was fairly obscure.  No one has mentioned seeing it, so click on THE MISSING LINK for your private viewing.  

Another winning-poem-perk was to replace the ads on city bus innards, but none of the crowd-sourcing riders, which include the 4 bus riders I know, have commented on The Missing Link, so who knows if my poem had few, if any viewers?   To enhance the viewership, and because they agreed with the sentiment of the poem, my Landmark colleagues posted a poster sized copy  of the poem  in the front window of the Landmark to enhance the number of viewings.  Viewings  matter because I remember reading in an old UN document that 50 viewings equaled a publication.  So a grad school bud and I quickly made 50 copies of our latest poems, handed them out to passers by, and, SHAZAM!  We were published poets.  But does looking at the poster in the sidewalk window count as a viewing if it is covered by reflections or if I volunteered to read it and nobody came? 

Are we reading the poem, checking the street life, or looking at ourselves?

 Then I and the 134 other King County Public Poetry Contest winners were invited to join the open mic crowd of one of the sponsoring 4Cultures Poetry Group’s regular events, but I don’t do crowds well in my wheelchair.  So Charlie and I went down to the Ship Canal Locks and made a video, which I sent to the poetry project folks to use instead. Here it is and, SPOILER ALERT, the outtakes win: 

The Locks people asked for a copy, and they have a nifty gift shop, but a staffer told me they put her Locks poem in the closet, so I’m not counting on a  mushrooming viewership.

Finally, I have a gift at the Poetry Group’s headquarters waiting to be picked up, which Charlie will do, sometime.  I don’t nag on this because Seattle’s traffic makes it a 2 hour ask and it will not change The Missing Link’s status as the most-unknown award- winning poem ever.  However, the unknown gift is intriguing. Maybe it will be a Billy Collins Bobblehead to celebrate ‘Musical Tables’, his recent book of small poems, each of which ‘is a thought or observation compressed to its emotional essence.’ Love, love. I’ll keep you posted.

UPDATE #2  Pier Park  Teaser

You may recall that 5 years ago, I helped to FREE THE PIER from its chains, and we pedestrians have loved the lapping water and squawking seagulls ever since.  The large Water Project, of which the Pier was a part, was, and still is, to be finished in 2024 with the tables and chairs of a small park and a pedestrian friendly street entry. Well, it’s already late summer’ and where is it?  Hark!  I hear another project calling.  

UPDATE #3  Reading

The NPR interviewer asked the interviewee, ‘How many books do you read in a year?’  Who knows?  WHO CARES?  I’m currently reading David Ignatius’ latest, Quantum Orbit and learning a lot about the US, China, Russia, and space. I’m on p.29 and  loving it already.  David Ignatius is one of my favs.  Another fav is Timothy Egan, whose most recent book is Fever in the Heartland, [about] The Ku Klux Klan’s Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them.  It is really good, but very scary, only infers the current horror among us, and makes me cheer more and louder for Harris/ Walz.  I read this when the cleaners come and a latte calls.  I like Sara Nisha Adams’ The Reading List better than I thought I would, but it is about people choosing books, making connections, and why public libraries matter, so who could resist? I’ll go back to it after I finish Quantum Orbit. I started Rex Pickett’s The Archivist because two promising potential librarians are interested in archives, but the beginning chapters were about the protagonist’s non-archival thoughts, and I wanted more about building, curating, and searching archives.  I will return, though, because adapting a collection to meet different purposes interests me.  Downsizing has  been, and continually is, an exercise in adapting.   Oh, wait. I found Patrick Bringley’s memoir, All the Beauty in the World, about his ten years working as a guard at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.  It looks VERY interesting.  Maybe just a quick pek…. 

UPDATE #4 COMING ATTRACTIONS, Thoughts      

Let’s hear a cheer for the innards of books.  They are such a useful way to learn that you don’t know it all.   

When I heard that Netanyahu and  HAMAS leaders  had been issued arrest warrants by the International Criminal Court, I knew it’s name and a [very] little about the ICC, because I had read Scott Turow’s book, Testimony.   I knew that the United States was not a member of the ICC, that it took the ICC a very long time to get results, but that finally, someone was doing something about the atrocities going on in Gaza.  I trust Scott Turow.  His earlier book, Presumed Innocent,  which is about trial evidence, was sent to me by two lawyer friends about 48 hours after I lost my malpractice case against the physician who crippled me.  They thought  I might find it useful, which I did.  Even a bit after the verdict, it was interesting, informative, and comforting, as the innards of good books are.

Similarly, when I wanted to know more about the Middle East, I read   [Washington Post foreign policy writer] David Ignatius’ book, ‘Agents of Innocence’’ and learned a lot about Beirut and its factions that contribute to and complicate its life, as factions do.  [An aside; Two other books that helped me understand a bit about the Middle East were Rory Stewart’s ‘Places in Between’. and William Dalrymple’s ‘From the Holy Mountain’.]  Now I want to know more about the politics of space.  So I was very excited to  read that David Ignatius’ new book, ‘Phantom Orbit’ is about Russia, China, US, and space technology.  I used my 1-click Kindle ordering, which Charlie threatens to dismantle, and voila! Phantom Orbit is ready to read.    

Which I promise to do, as soon as I finish Alisa Luna Valdez’ second novel, Blood Mountain, featuring Jodi Luna, poetry professor turned State game warden in New Mexico,  If this one is as good as Hollow Beasts, Alisa Valdez’ first in the series, then I may have found a worthy successor to Tony Hillerman, with a dollop of C.J. Box  Gotta love those innards.

Hard to be ‘midst innards of WOW! Rhodies, and stay out of the dirt, too.

  Celebrate the oldies, young and/or wise.  They know things.

AN ODE TO OLD
I am old, old, old, 
but I do not do as told, told, told. 
I am bold, bold, bold, bold,
Going for the gold, gold, gold,
while having a very good time. 

This month I will be 85.  By one government standard, that is ‘old old’.   65 is ‘young old’, 75 is ‘middle old’, and 85 is ‘old old’.  However you say it, 85 is very old, but also a clear indicator that we ‘old oldies’ have beat the odds of dying at 79 [women] and 74 [men], and are, therefore, according to Garrison Keillor, ‘above average’. 

But what do you call ‘older than old old’? I asked Howard, a breakfast buddy, who is 95 and way above average, what the 4th stage of old should be called, and he said, ‘Dead!’  I figured he was annoyed that they stopped serving hot 7-grain cereal on Mondays, which is perfectly understandable, so I ignored him, and suggested   ‘wise old’, for a ‘wise oldie’ he surely is.

I like Howard a lot.  During Gary’s Poetry Club which was about my least favorite topic, Lyrics,  Howard, in his native New Yorker-ese, recited Jim Byrnes’  lyrics to the song, ‘Old Dog, New Tricks’.  It was great!  I heard an oldie’s anthem in the making.  [An aside;  Friends and technology willing, someday you’ll be able to see or hear Jim Byrnes’ lyrics.]

Also exciting, Howard, at 13 years old, went to the original Speyre School where his ‘classes’ were seminars, plus using public libraries, which imo, is the perfect prep for a lifelong autodidact, which, thinking about it, Leonard is and what I tried to help my 40 years of my older students t continue being..  The world would be so much better if we all knew how better to handle misinformation, disinformation, rumor, and now, A.I.  [An aside;  ‘imo’ is text-speak for ‘in my opinion’.  Sometimes I am so-o-o with it.  Charlie is choking at the thought.] 

Gotta love oldies, Leonard, autodidacts libraries, well-sourced information, and Charlie.  Always Charlie.

 Celebrate the library’s pluses, especially its newly patched wall.

UPDATES… 

POETRY CONTEST PRIZES…As one among 100-plus winners of the4Cultures King County Public Poetry Project, I and my poem, The Missing Link, have been [1] mentioned online as promised, but which has gone virtually unseen because almost none of my fellow oldies know how how to be online; [2] probably displayed in a bus or train car, though I’m not sure, because I don’t ride the bus or know anyone, including Charlie, who does, although I know that one of his friends bikes to work.  However, Amy, my manager, and all-purpose fixer, has a bus-riding friend, who saw something about poetry displayed on whatever bus she took.  Amy is riding buses and doing whatever she does on Linked In, trying to find a sighting; and [3] promised a gift, which I will love. I may be the only award-winning, published [50 viewings ] poet whose best seller was 2 batches of the Memorial Card I sent to my sister’s wake, titled Channeling my sister, Charyl Coghlan Pollard, while reading the poem, “Possibilities” by Wislawa Szymborska.

FINDING LIBRARIANS…  So far, so…promising.  I think I’ve almost nabbed 2 actual and 4 potential career changers, though 1 actual chose massage therapy instead, 1 actual  is giving it thought, and 4 potentials don’t know what they’re missing, because Charlie won’t let me near his friends; 5 potential undergrads, 1 is solid, 1 is veering toward Law School, 3 others have enthused parents; no retirees, yet, though Howard thinks it sounds like fun! Howard would make a great librarian.  I know this because he was the only Poetry Clubber to agree with me that Hala Aylan’s poem, Siri My Mother, could be used as a Lyrics choice because the questions within sound like the music of a Library’s Reference Room.                                                                                             

Gotta love Amy, mostly Amy, potential librarians, and the innards of ongoing adventures.

Celebrate that Frankie the Feetsplinters has well-tended toenails.

That’s it.  Remember our warriors on this, Memorial  Day.  Then let the summer’s fun begin.  I’ll keep you posted.

GREAT NEWS!

If you are among the many — and they are legions — thinking about becoming a librarian,   but you are still unsure, then, from this librarian to you,  have fun with these food-for-thought, self-aware questions and books  to help you realize all that you are missing.  Become an Information Warrior in the battle to save our democracy.  Well, that and be sure to VOTE! 

Shelves and Kindles hold books; librarians choose and suggest.  Life is good.  [Right, Ace?]

Do you love murder mysteries?  Liking them is okay, but loving them is better.  Do you think about search strategies and the nature and quality of information?  Examples; A Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey.  Classic.  The Li Du Trilogy by Elsa Hart.  Imperial Librarian in 18thC., southwestern China.  Joe Pickett series by C.J. Box.  Wyoming Game Warden, Joe,  and Town Librarian and wife, Marybeth team up to search.

Do you wonder what ‘helps’ library users use, e.g. collections, connections, reference works, librarians, to find and get what they need?  Do you think autodidacts should be library users? Do you think we should all be autodidacts?  Examples;  ‘Elmore’s Legs’ by Alec Wilkerson is a profile of Gregg Sutter, the researcher for Elmore Leonard, the mystery writer, emphasis on ‘writer.’  The Unruly Pleasures of the Mid-Manhattan Library by Ada Calhoun is an article / valentine to the many nearby libraries and librarians that she uses and loves.  Believing is Seeing by Errol Morris, [esp. Chapter on Crimean War photos] reports his investigations into the hidden truths behind a series of documentary photographs,… [then]  into the nature of truth in photography.  The Road to Ubar by Nicholas Clapp is a great search in and out of libraries to find the lost city of Ubar in Southern Arabia.  Clear Pond, The Reconstruction of  Life by Roger Mitchell is ‘an archeological investigation’ into the life and times of one Israel Johnson, an early 19th-century millwright and settler of the Adirondacks.’  Maybe only a librarian could love this.   

Do you wonder what goes on in a library?  Examples;  The Paris Library by Janet Skeslien Charles is based on the true story of the heroic librarians at the American Library in Paris during World War II.  What You Are Looking For Is In The Library  by Michiko Ayoama  A ‘humongous, enigmatic Librarian’ gives each of five users a reading list with one ‘outlandish’ book. [Goodreads.]  The title was too good to ignore.  Even though the librarian sounds more like a ‘philosophical counselor’’ [new to me and interesting], they both try to ‘find the right book at the right time’, so I included it.   

Do you wonder what people choose to read and why? Do you surreptitiously check titles being read by others at lunch or on the bus or on shelves of disarray? Examples;  So Many Books, So Little Time by Sara Nelson.  So many reasons, too.  ‘By the Book’ is a NYT weekly interview with an author.  Useful, fun-to-read, hard-to-find info, e.g. ‘What books are on your nightstand?’ and ‘What are you going to read next?’ Carlos Lozada’s NYT column, ‘I Read These Books So That You Don’t Have To’ is a great primer on ways of reading and a bibliography of what and why he reads what he does. If only information junkies think good newspapers  are must reads, then consider librarians fellow devourers, who re ready for the day’s questions. The Reading List by Sara Nisha Adams is in my ‘to read’ pile and looks promising.

Schaumburg Township District Library — early days, good times, aging well.  [Painting by Norma Simone.  Photo by Charlie.]

 Do you wonder where information comes from and/or where it may be going? Information spreads or may be dormant, but it is never dead.  Think spreading threads of thought that develop from creative searches of mass media, conventional publishing, scientific research, government documents, self publishing, social media, Internet storage, mergers, multiple formats, library connections, A.I., etc., and librarian search tools to help sort through it all.   Examples;  The Thread: A Mathematical Yarn by Philip J. Davis does not mention librarians, but should, as he notes that `not the truth, but the search for the truth; the process, the method, that is what matters’’…  The Book Nobody Read: Chasing ‘The Revolutions of Nicolaus Copernicus” by Owen Gingrich records finding some 600 Renaissance-era copies of “De Revolutionibus” all over the world, especially in eastern European libraries, noting how thoroughly the work was read in its time, and how word of its theories spread and evolved.  Rolling Stone’s article, ‘Pizzagate, Anatomy of a Scandal’, is an early example of social media threads.   

 Do you read the bibliography, [community of contributors] and maybe the notes [often spicy asides], with a peek at the index [sometimes wickedly written entries], before you read the book?  Citing sources matters, especially with plagiarism increasingly in the news, misinformation everywhere and A.I. muddying even more these already murky waters.  The Center for an Informed Public, University of Washington, CIP, researches the way false, unverified and misleading information plays out in a variety of arenas. Its analyses of elections and the pandemic, in particular, have unleashed conservative furor. It is just plain exciting and a godsend for librarians in the midst of change and a time of trouble.

Examples of citing sources;  A Pilgrimage to Eternity; from Canterbury to Rome in Search of a Faith by Timothy Egan.    a classic bibliography from ‘a meticulous researcher and a skilled storyteller [WaPo].  It reminds me of the liberal arts days that I loved. His newest book, A Fever In the Heartland by Timothy Egan is good, maybe even important to read, and has a many-paged, equally fine, if different section on sources.    Letters to an American by Heather Cox Richardson is a daily current events rundown [on Substack] with meticulously cited tech-savvy sources in the text and in endnotes,  which is a  major trust-builder.  Where’d You Go, Bernadette? By Maria Semple follows a teenager’s search for information to help find her mother.  The sources she finds and chooses to use propel the plot.  I don’t think you have to be a librarian to notice this, but it might help, and I loved the book.  Some Glad Morning, Poems By Babara Crooker includes a page of ‘NOTES’, which I read as a page of ‘INFLUENCES’, a kind of recognition that we all stand on the shoulders of others.  Two examples of her entries;  “I Can’t Write a Poem About McDonald’s” is after a poem by Ron Wallace, and  “Useful” is after a poem by Naomi Shihab Nye. 

Enough! you cry, if you’re still with me.  Rest assured, there’s more to come.  Groan.

VERY EXCITING NEWS! 

I won the King County Public Poetry contest.  

I am ridiculously pleased.  Here is my poem of 50 words or fewer, as required.

THE MISSING LINK  

Shilshole, oh Shilshole, you’re my bike trail of choice.
I’m a rolling oldie, who lives nearby, hoping you’ll hear my voice.
I want to roll bumpless by the canal, with boats and the seagulls’ squawks, 
And not divert to Leary, on my stroll to the Chittenham Locks. 

I won an online mention, 

which limits my fame to those few of my Landmark colleagues with a smartphone and/or laptop, and those even fewer who know how to use them.  

Better yet, I won having my poem on a bus or light rail car, 

which is especially fine because my City Councilperson is dissing the Shilshole Avenue route to fill in  the ‘missing link’ [the last 1.4 miles of the 27 mile Burke Gilman [bike on rail] Trail] which we, who love the outdoors and want to live healthy and longer, prefer.  He is pushing, instead, dangerous, busy, unappealing  Leary Avenue, an appalling  diversion, which runs right in front of my Landmark.  A bus with my poem favoring the Shilshole Avenue route that passes by my City Councilperson’s Ballard office  could be the sandwich-board from Hell.      

Charlie hinted I might be eligible for Diva-dom.  I happily agreed to a month of being spoiled.  He  said, ‘Ten minutes’, and asked if I wanted a cup of coffee.  I said,’Yes’, and relished my short-lived  Diva-ness.  And Charlie.  But I always relish Charlie. 

Duck with hat and Poet look at Ships’ Canal and think  of Shilshole trail.

Then what should appear in my morning’s read, but a perfect poem for all, or at least many, purposes.   It is amendable.  [See italics.]   It infers that librarians and libraries matter, that well-thought people are more likely to do good, to be hopeful, to see possibilities with prospects, and to VOTE. Did I mention well-informed people are more likely to VOTE? 

LIBRARIANS’  CALL TO ARMS

“O Karma, Dharma, pudding and pie,” by Philip Appleman, 
from Selected Poems (University of Arkansas) with italicized amendments by Colleen Coghlan

O Karma, Dharma, pudding and pie,
gimme a break before I die:
grant me wisdom, will, & wit,
purity, probity, pluck, & grit.
Trustworthy, loyal, helpful, kind,
gimme great abs & a steel-trap mind,
and forgive, Ye Gods, some humble advice—
these little blessings would suffice
to beget an earthly paradise:
make the bad people good—
and the good people nice;
and before our world goes over the brink,
teach the believers how to think.

Go to the library and search the shelves
Where helpful librarians look like elves. 
Develop ideas, then enter the fray,
VOTE for DEMOCRACY and save the day!

With my contest winner poem [she said un-humbly] of 50 words or fewer, and only 27 words in the amended poem, not counting the ‘TITLE’ words.  I may have found my metier.  All I need now is a keyboard with diacritical markings that my short-fingered, non-dominant hand can manage.  

Coming next, some questions for those of you – and I know you are legion – who are thinking of becoming a librarian and still uncertain.  Stay tuned.

I know I promised to suggest more book titles with a sense of coastal Maine, and I will, but who could pass up a teaser headline like this one:                      

 Hip-Hop Was a Revolution in Music, Made by Librarians.  
And the full title was only slightly less exciting:
Hip-Hop Is the Music of Vinyl Librarians.

This is a great article. It asks  you to think again about who is a librarian? and what does a librarian do?, which are always good things to think about. And, equally exciting, author  Dan Charnas constructs the ladder of giants’ shoulders that hip hop artists have based their later work on, much as Robert Merton did in his book, On the Shoulders of Giants,  wherein he parsed Isaac Newton’s famous statement:

“If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants”.

No doubt about it, LIBRARIANS RULE!    [Yes, Larry, they do.]

Other news too good to ignore: We have a wonderful new neighbor, Frankie Feetsplinter troll, by Thomas Dambo,  Danish environmental artist, who only uses already-used wood.  Charlie and I went to the Nordic Museum for a meet and greet.  

Frankie and I have no neck, gap-toothed grins, and big tums. Fraternal twins?

 …………………………………………………………..
Now, as promised, are some favorite books that capture the sense of of place that I found as a summer person on the Coast of Maine.

Frankie’s Place; A Love Story,  by Jim Sterba.  Maybe my favorite sense of place [SOP] read, this book is so much more than charming, though it is that. Its review in the Grove Atlantic says it best. 

The Way Life Should Life Should Be, by Christina Smith Kline.  The novel is about young incomers to Maine, looking for something special, working hard, deciding if Maine Is the place they want to be and, if it is, then figuring out how to become part of the continuing reinvigoration of Coastal Maine.

The author knows Maine, and that matters.  She spent summers  on the Coast as a child, loved it from afar, then when her professor-father retired, she found a clunker of a house on the Maine coast  and, as she continues the story,  ‘It was a complete wreck but on this gorgeous piece of land, so [my parents] bought it. My dad had been a carpenter in his youth, and he fixed it up over the years….  ell, then my other three sisters all bought houses in Southwest Harbor. One of them lives there full time; she’s the town librarian. She married a carpenter, and has four kids aged zero to seven. She does the whole Maine fantasy! And now I am the last one to the party, having recently bought a place there too.  We’re all no more than five minutes away from each other.’

Spoonhandle by Ruth Moore.  A classic tale of Maine coast, which, the author argued, is a story  that could be set anywhere, like Fauklner’s stories, some critics said.  But, luckily, it was set on the coast of Maine, and so, incorporated an islander’s ways.  And Spoonhandle was made into a film titled ‘Deep Water’, which was fun to watch. I’ve just ordered her Cold as a Dog and Other Stories: Poems and Ballads from the Coast of Maine for Poetry Club possibilities.  I usually find a poem I like, then figure out how to make it fit whatever assignment Gary sets.  Even better, Foksinger Gordon Bok. a Maine treasure,  recorded an album based on Ruth Moore’s ballads.  One of his deep bass notes into his sea shanties, and I’m sitting on my porch, overlooking the harbor again.  [Aside   My  neighbors and I are part of the ‘Waltzing with Bears’ chorus that Gordon Bok, et.al. recorded during a Minneapolis concert,  which is very exciting, but his ‘Turning Toward the Morning’ is more Maine.  Both are on You Tube.]  

 One Man’s Meat by E.B. White.  A classic  example of someone who lived two places, which is true of several other authors on my list, which suggests that by living two places, they may bring a KEENER awareness of their sense of Maine.

Time for a break, and Frankie the troll calls.

 Charlie wants in. Half-brother?  I recall fondly the tryst with the tree.

The Snoring Bird: My Family’s Journey Through a A Century of Biology by  Bernd Heinrich.  I love this book.  While a kid, Bernd Heinrich fled Germany as the Russians were invading and after about 5  years of living in the forests, he,  with his family, settled on a farm in the Maine woods   From there, he became a runner, a naturalist, a retired UVT professor, and a writer, who lives in the Maine woods. His book, A Naturalist At Large; The Best Essays of Bernd Heinrich, which the NYT Review er describes as “Passionate observations [that] superbly mix memoir and science,” is near the top of my ‘to read next’ pile.  Rachel Carson’s Sea Trilogy is important, but more for its addressing coastal conservation than  for her sense of Maine. 

Paintings of Maine, edited by Arnold Skolnick.  Painters abound on the coast of Maine, and though the memories or understandings the pictures evoke and the stories they provoke vary with each appreciator, together they are the Maine I know, even though I had a John Marin print on my office wall 4 years before I had ever stepped foot in Maine, I like him still and love Maine more these 50 years later. During my Roseledge Books’ days, a good daughter extolled the virtues of this book’s ability to make her mother, who has dementia, smile and talk with her about the good times and sense of Maine she was recalling.  A trip to the Farnsworth Art Museum is always good, too, but sometimes not as flexible. 

Old Books and Rare Friends  by Madeline Stern and Leona Rostenberg.  I’m sure that towards the end of this book about two grand old women, their place in Maine is mentioned.  But even if I’m wrong, which is rare, these two women are SO worth a read and would clearly fit in the Maine I love. 

What I have learned so far is you not only have to have been or to be there, though that’s  a necessary beginning [Thanks, Jim.], but you have to understand and appreciate that there’s a story with variations behind everything that happens, then figure out how to fit into and/or add to those stories.  It helps if you’re subtle or Irish
…………………………………………………………….

King County Public Poetry Contest, entry option #2

Coghlan Castle: family lore, national landmark, but sense of NoDak?

TRUTH
My family built a fieldstone castle, on North Dakota’s plains.
My dad read books and herded sheep from the turret ‘midst the grains.
‘There were no sheep,’ the farmer said, ‘and the windows were too high,’
So my dad was a reader, who embellished a bit.  He’s an Irish guy.  

And, in case you missed it, here is my King County Public Poetry Contest entry option #1, which just might be my version of Gloria Gaynor’s, ‘I Will Survive’.

Bald spot is a nuisance in search of  flowers, until it’ a tonsure.

BALDLY BLESSED 
The top of my head is round and bald, like tonsured monks of old.
Theirs were perfect, mine is not, with wiggles and bumps, I’m told.
I’ll learn from the monks, who with the nuns, will one day coed-mix,
And I’ll be ever ready, as their new day ABBETRIX. 

……………………………………………………………    

That’s all there is, folks — for now and probably for a couple of weeks. I love your comments and am finally figuring out the difference between a reply and a comment. Forgive the grammar.  I can’t reach across my keyboard, and the shift key is only on one side, which means colons, parentheses, question marks and quotation marks are trouble. Okay, we users of colons and parentheses may be rare, but users of question marks and quotation marks are still plenty, and if they are not, ever more information-related misunderstandings will prevail, just another reason to know and be happy  that LIBRARIANS RULE!   

Last blog post, I got all quibbley about Paul Theroux’s NYT list of books for a traveler to read before visiting Boston, even though I have mostly been a pass-through Boston traveler on my way to Maine.  So to answer last post’s wondering, yes, maybe books can furnish a place, but capturing the sense of that place requires something more. But what is that more?               

For ideas of books to list that have a sense of Maine’s magic, I looked at the NYT list of books for a first time visitor to Maine, developed by Lily King, who is new to me, and sent by Roseledge Books veteran, Margaretta, who is not.  [Thanks, M.]

• “Night of the Living Rez,” Morgan Talty
• “When We Were the Kennedys,” Monica Wood
• “Olive Kitteridge,” Elizabeth Strout
• “One Man’s Meat” and “Charlotte’s Web,” E.B. White
• “Call Me American,” Abdi Nor Iftin
• “Landslide,” Susan Conley
• “Empire Falls,” Richard Russo
• “More Than You Know,” Beth Gutcheon
• “Salem’s Lot,” “Bag of Bones” and “On Writing,” Stephen King
• “The Beans of Egypt, Maine,” Carolyn Chute
• “The Maine Woods,” Henry David Thoreau
• “Temple Stream” and “Writing Life Stories,” Bill Roorbach
• “The Sea Trilogy,” Rachel Carson
• “Finding Freedom” and “The Lost Kitchen: Recipes and a Good Life Found in Freedom, Maine: A Cookbook,” Erin French
• “Evening,” Susan Minot
• “One Morning in Maine” and “Blueberries for Sal,” Robert McCloskey
• “Miss Rumphius,” Barbara Cooney
• “Welcome Home or Someplace Like It,” Charlotte Agell
• “How to Write an Autobiographical Novel,” Alexander Chee
• “Curious Attractions” and “And Then Something Happened,” Debra Spark.

Like Margaretta, I’ve read or heard of some, but not others.  I learned that my heart is with coastal Maine, that I am getting old and opinionated, and that this list lacks the sense of place that comes from the ‘then’ that gives meaning to the ‘now.’ So, I decided to try making a list.

The red myrtle tree is a lovely late bloomer.  Well, aren’t we all?  Sigh.

I and Roseledge Books spent 35 years on the coast of Maine, so I know something about books and Maine and readers in Maine, but not which book will give them what they need to know to be part of Maine’s magic. It’s a tricky match.   I used to suggest that visitors to Maine should read Robert Mcloskey,s ‘One Morning in Maine’, and, if you thought nothing happened, Maine may not be for you.  Maine’s magic is elusive.

So, what is the ‘more’ that a sense of that place requires.                  .  

 Sometimes a picture says it better than a whole book. And if copying the picture is out of bounds, maybe the headline will do. For example, this NYT article about a Maine gathering is perfect.

One Morning in Maine,

225 People Went to the Library

Robert McCloskey’s daughter, Sarah, now a grown-up Sal, read her father’s book,, ‘Blueberries for Sal’. New and old friends crowded into the Library of a Coastal village to see the author’s very accurate drawings for his books and  be part of the event.  It was pure ME, but maybe you had to be there, or look at the NYT article and remember. 

I wasn’t there for the McCloskey gathering, but I was in the crowded meeting room of the East Wind Inn on a hot July afternoon when an author came to talk about the papers of Dorothea Lange and Sarah Orne Jewett, but after about ten minutes of heroic effort trying to discuss DL, she ended up mediating a huge and wonderful disagreement about where SOJ had landed and lived when she came to Tenants Harbor, and if she described those piers and paths in her classic book, ‘Country of the Pointed Firs.’ Everyone there had a dog-eared edition of COPF open and ready for citing Some had historical or town maps. And Roseledge Books had its best sales ever –to that day Pure ME, pure then and now, pure fun. I wish I had a picture. Fortunately, my mind’s eye gets better [well, more interesting] with Irish age.

I have a special place in my heart for Sarah Orne Jewett’s Country of the Pointed Firs, not because it’s a riveting tale, classics rarely are, but because the book led me to Tenants Harbor and Roseledge summers, and, thereby, illustrates, again, how the past always matters. then leads to now, and sometimes wrong  ends up right. 

[My SOJ story… I knew from a stone on Monhegan that Orne was a variant of the family name Horn behind HORN HILL. So when my weakening right side said no more to the rocky trails I loved, I flailed about for an alternative, until a MN Health Department colleague from Maine left his latest issue of DownEast Magazine on my desk. I paged through the mostly pictures and ads and spotted a 4 line ad ‘EAST WIND INN, Country of the Pointed Firs, Tenants Harbor, Maine, Phone: (207) 372-6366.’ Totally misconstruing the situation, I figured there might be a tie between HORN of Monhegan and ORNE in a Tenants Harbor ad.  So if I loved Monhegan, as I did and do,  then….  I immediately wrote for reservations and was on my way to summers in Roseledge.]

And, saving the best for last….

 Heather Cox Richardson is a 4th generation Mainer, and historian who, in her daily ‘Letters from an American’, sums up how the ‘then’ informs the ‘now’ of current events.  I read her missives faithfully, but especially like the Sunday pictures with her captions and what they say about a sense of place.  Here is a great example.  

‘When I was a child, I loved a painting my mother had of a scene also captured in a framed photograph she owned, faded by then into grays. The painting was not great art, but it was made up of the blues and browns and greens I have always loved, and the water and mountains spoke to me. Mother always told me the picture was painted by a friend of her father’s— he died when I was a baby— and it was an image of one of their favorite fishing spots, although she had no idea where it was. Mother gave that painting to me, and I have always had it up in one place or another, so Buddy knows it, too. 

A few weekends ago when we stood at this spot at the end of Jordan Pond, we said almost at the same time: “It’s that painting.”  

[Photo by Buddy Poland]

Very cool to stand in the same spot my grandfather’s friend painted in what can’t have been later than the 1930s, and see the same thing he saw. The past is really not that far away. But what really struck me seeing this view was the inverse of that observation. For my grandfather’s nameless and long-gone fishing buddy, who certainly never knew that the painting he made for his friend would continue to speak to someone a hundred years later, the future wasn’t that far away either.’          

To be continued, mostly because I had fun and want to keep on thinking about a sense of place, [and my liking best those murder mysteries that have it], how ‘then’ in ‘now’ does or can fit outside of Maine, and which books work as examples.

Oh, and I’m working on poems of 50 words or fewer, only one of which can be entered in King County’s public poetry contest.  Here is one of my potential entries, pertinent because of my picture with myrtle above.  

BALDLY BLESSED  
The top of my head is round and bald, like tonsured monks of old. 
Theirs were perfect, mine is not, with  wiggles and bumps, I’m told. 
I’ll learn from the monks, who with the nuns, will one day coed-mix, 
And I’ll be ever ready, as their new day ABBETRIX.

Millie’s review, ‘What?’

Question of the day: Books may furnish a room, but can they capture a sense of a place?

I am 4 years new to Seattle and still don’t know what makes it what it is, except for Charlie and the weather, which make it my current favorite place to be. When I was here on sabbatical, 30 years ago, Charlie sent me “get ready books”: Timothy Egan’s “The Good Rain” and a book of Seattle sketches, both of which were perfect and surely a tribute to Charlie’s upbringing. Once here, I found Edith Iglauer’s “Fishing With John” and Eduardo Galeano’s “Memory of Fire Trilogy”, both of which I loved and found in Seattle’s great Elliott Bay bookstore. I have since added David Guterson’s “Snow Falling on Cedars” and Earl Emerson’s mysteries, which are set in or near Seattle and, in Earl Emerson’s books, usually include public library action. Recently, my early breakfast colleague, who has lived here for 60 years, and I both read Maria Semple’s “Where’d You Go, Bernadette”, which was mostly set in Seattle. She hated it, and I loved it, although the Seattle tie didn’t matter to me, and maybe not to her either, which illustrates how much I still don’t have a sense of the essential Seattle.  Suggestions welcome.            

CIVIC DUTY ACTION SHOT of broken brick for my Survey of Ballard’s Bumpy Walkways.

So how to prepare strangers to visit a strange land, as I was and am in Seattle? The NYT asks a knowing author to recommend a list of books to “read your way through [named city]” as a kind of prep walk. For example, Paul Theroux “read his way through Boston”. He said of the list he developed that “[W]hat] interests me [i]s not a particular book but a literary intelligence, a Yankee sensibility enshrined in many local books.”  Okay.  I looked for Boston’s links to my summers in Maine, so I found his list wanting, but a good place to start.. 

                     Here is Paul Theroux’s list.

“The Last Hurrah,” Edwin O’Connor
“Two Years Before the Mast,” Richard Henry Dana Jr.
“Snow-Bound,” John Greenleaf Whittier
“Thanksgiving Day,” Lydia Maria Child
“Lydia Maria Child: A Radical American Life,” Lydia Moland
“Paul Revere’s Ride,” Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
“Johnny Tremain,” Esther Forbes
“The Cardinal,” Henry Morton Robinson
“By Any Means Necessary,” Malcolm X
“The Friends of Eddie Coyle,” George V. Higgins
“Sacred” and “Mystic River,” Dennis Lehane
“Walden” and “Cape Cod,” Henry David Thoreau
“Concord Hymn,” Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Moby-Dick,” Herman Melville
“Mayflower,” Nathaniel Philbrick
“Memory of Cape Cod,” Edna St. Vincent Millay
“Tough Guys Don’t Dance,” Norman Mailer
“Vanity of Duluoz,” Jack Kerouac


The list is a bit too English Lit syllabus for me, but I had read some, knew about others, and showed the list to some of my reader friends who have either lived in Boston or have had some connection to it. No one had read all – or even most – of the books, and everyone had some suggestions to add that would make the list more personally pertinent. And isn’t that the problem! Everybody reads a book differently and everyone experiences an experience differently. Here are their additions.

William Martin’s book “Back Bay”, and I would add his book, “Cape Cod” , because I often stopped over on my way to Maine to visit a college roommate who lived near Hyannis.
Robert B Parker’s Spenser mystery novels, and one added his Jesse Stone TV shows.
Elyssa East’s “Dogtown”, because its setting, Gloucester, is very close to Boston, and because I love Marsden Hartley, which is why I chose to read the book, and whose paintings are clearly in and/or of Maine. Then, surprisingly, the book became a true-crime murder mystery with Peter Hodgkins being convicted of murder. Well! Surely, in the grand tradition of New England which connects everybody to everybody else – if you just go back a ways, Scott Hodgkins, a Mainer and long-suffering friend, will want to know he has another cousin and a murderer in the family, if, as I am assuming, they share the same Hodgkins forebears who settled somewhere Glouster-ish in the 1600’s.
Henry Beston’s “The Outermost House” is on Cape Cod, though Henry Beston lived and farmed n Maine.
Abigail Adams’ Letters, and David McCullough’s biography of John Adams brought history emphasis forward, as wass appropriate if you spent most of K-12 school years in upstate NY.
Nicholas Kilmer’s Fred Taylor mysteries
Cleveland Amory’s “The Proper Bostonians”. Thanks to the Wahpeton Public Library collection from which, my mother’s note made clear that I, at 7 years old, could check out anything I wanted, which I did. I still choose eclectically and, thus, feel well-equipped to take on the world. Thanks, mom.
Robert McCloskey’s “Make Way for Ducklings”.                                                               For more suggestions, click on the NYT article noted above and check the “Comments”.  

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And then, recently, two acquaintances, one from Ireland and the other a West Texan, who had never been east of the Mississippi asked, “I’m going to Maine. I’ve never been there. What books should I read?” “ARGH! Maine is the place of my heart. Where do I start?”

CIVIC DUTY ACTION SHOT of thumbing-down mooring wretched excess.

I’m working on it, but slowly. I’m currently binge reading murder mysteries based on places and people I want to know about, as narrated by someone who probably knows. I just finished Paul Doiron’s Dead Man’s Wake, Mike Bowditch’s latest adventure, set, as always, somewhere in Maine. The series will be on my “Maine List”. I’m about to start Steve Hamilton’s “A Cold Day in Paradise”, set in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula [Thanks, Carole], Alisa Valdes’ “Hollow Beasts”, set in New Mexico, and the first in a new series that sounds promising, Marcie Rendon’s “Murder on the Red River”, set n my home country, as Wahpeton is at the “Head of the Red” [Thanks, Sara], and, yes, I have been remiss, but will catch up soon, with William Kent Kreger’s “Fox Creek”.  I can’t not mention my favorite, C.J. Box, and his detective, Game Warden Joe Pickett, whose next Wyoming adventure, “Three Inch Teeth”, is due in February, 2024.  I have preordered it for my Kindle, and Charlie has, AGAIN, threatened to dismantle my 1-Click ordering capability, which is very easy to do, and which I am very good at.

Just a little fun: At Poetry Club, Gary’s assigned task was to choose 3 poems from a favorite poet. I added reasons that each poem mattered, too. I chose Wislawa Szymborska, and her poem “Vietnam” which influenced the poem I am working on, currently titled “Ode to Charlie’s List of Least Favorite Words” and included below,

Ode to Charlie’s List of Least Favorite Words

“I have an idea,” I say, and Charlie says, “Oh, no.”
“I could help you with that.” “I don’t think so.”
“I have a thought.” “Always a worry.” .
“Guess what?” “No.”

“Charlie?” “What now?”
“I’m stuck in the elevator, or
The wheelchair’s joystick is stuck under the table, or
A little coffee spilled on the keyboard, or
The computer is broken, and the screen is totally blank.
I need help.” “How do you do it?”

“I could tow your golf bag AND be the drinks cart.” “Too few blacktop paths.”
“I could set up in the bed of a utility truck.” “No.”
“I might need an umbrella.” “You are a difficult person.”

“Do you want a latte?” “Do you?”
“Yes.” “Okay..” [ He wants a latte, too.]
“Isn’t it lucky I want a latte at just the right time?” [Sipping] “Mm-m-m.”

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That’s it, but for a goodbye haiku.  More coming. Much to report, with bad fingers and sticky keyboard vowels. Blame it on the Poetry Club.