TRIP OVER, WHEN'S THE NEXT ONE?
Somehow made it back to Oak Park, battling the elements (wind & rain) on and off the interstate, which we abandoned for good, medium-back roads. But time ran out as bedtime approached, and though booked for a HoJo in Richfield OH, we rolled into a Super 8 in Grove City PA, home of a highly regarded college.
Let us not, however, praise the college but the Super 8, which at $50 or so the night offered big room with amenities including big bathroom and excellent shower. Coffee and bagels in the morning did us fine, and we were off for Chicago, now hitting I-80 without a qualm.
Our sang-froid was slightly misplaced, however. We got a horrendous flat near Middleburg OH and found the lugs impossible to move. The lady of the house called 911, and we soon had one of M'burg's finest tire-changers at our side. He did it for State Farm-reimbursable $55, and we were off to the nearest tire shop, which sold us a new tire for $65 or so -- installed, of course, with help of one of those whiz-bang pneumatic lug-twisters whose sound I love even when it's not my lug being twisted.
Then very good chicken sandwich and chocolate shake at next-door Wendy's (sorry, no shakes at W's: frosties; but it's a clear case of the rose smelling sweet no matter what you call it), and off we were. To plug another chain joint, a 4 p.m. or so coffee at the pleasantly disorganized Hardee's quite a bit down the road, tasted very good and goosed overall consciousness to a nice pitch.
Next thing we knew, or would care to recall, it was Calumet Skyway and Dan Ryan Expy time, about 6:15, rush hour receded, and ditto for Eisenhower, and thence to Oak Park, where commuters were apparently arriving from all over and near-clogging the traffic arteries.
Next morning, Tuesday, Bread Kitchen was up bright and early with me. I sat out front with back to rising sun and read, yes, the NY Times! Can this be the start of a habit?
Maryland, my Maryland is not too long but just right. Reading Byron's "Don Juan" (rhymes with pew-one not go on) helps the minutes fly by. What is there about this morally upstanding person that makes him swing with Byron in his delicious a-b-a-b rhymes with delicious twists at the end and their mocking tones, and B. being or having been a man of quite questionable habits though of heroic bent that led him to die trying to free Greece from the muslim Turks? (In that respect he anticipated our preoccupation with cruel muslims, not be confused with the good ones.)
From Md. to Virginia, of course, the weather being most salubrious and the living easy in the 10th-floor penthouse apt of a near and dear one. Asked ironically whether one's blood pressure truly falls while on vacation (by a young mother of three perfect boys), we joined in the laughter. And with relatives too! What a plug for family life!
The Va. part included the cemetery with its rows of white crosses but also the older monuments to an officer of the Italian navy (yes) who died in 1922 as I recall and several of the French army, also WW1 vets. What I must be looking up but not yet is when Arlington became official as our military cemetery. That's to come.
Back to Pennsylvania, which in its SE corner is quite traversible. Last night to a small-animal auction at the Green Dragon market near Ephreta, where amish men and boys in straw hats, some of them black fedoras, others in usual straw, and a wide assortment of other citizens watched the chickens, doves, furry critters, etc. went to the highest bidder. We sat in the bleachers and were careful not to scratch nose during bidding, lest we end up holding some hamsters at a price low but not low enough to justify the purchase.
Mennonites and Brethren and even some apparent Yuppies there, women wearing lace beanies tied under chin, not bonneted like out and out Amish. Not Yuppies, who had their own uniforms but did not flaunt their circumstance. Some of these Mennonites, Brethren, etc. apparently use the birth control method recommended by our family doc for many years, the late, great Gregory White MD, namely breast feeding. Yes, I know you call people using that method parents, but so what? Much sobriety and serenity and indeed relaxation seen among all such folks I have seen on this trip.
This Green Dragon market is Fridays only. There are at least three others in the general neighborhood, including Roots Market, near Manheim, to which vendors repair on their given days. We had root bear floats and (one of us) a hot dog at the round-stool winding counter where we might also have gotten a variety of hash house food. And all over the place, families with kids, stopping at dozens of various counters for food, flea market items, antiques, clothing, you name it. It closed down about nine-thirty, with families who run booths sitting in back of theirs sampling the ice cream or pina colada drink, for instance. Friday night out in the great American boonies.
HOWDYING UP AT COMMUNION II . . . Today in Maryland, a state not too long for driving through, looking over comment by faithful reader D. about having to communicate with one's friend the communion-giver while trying to do the same with one's Creator, who while closely related are not the same thing:
"Oy -- distracting as Hell. Ditto "Body of Christ, D------." [being addressed by name] Whaa? Am I supposed to respond, "Nice to see you, Gwendolyn"?
Yes, D., and ask about the kid in college too.
FROM DEEP IN PENNSYLVANIA . . . Driving through Pennsylvania, I suggested to the lady of our house that the state is too long and should be cut in half, north to south. Takes too long to get through it. Am writing my congress person.
CHURCH GONE TO . . . The RC pastor-preacher came across quite lugubrious, even as he urged compassion. “If this is not a compassionate church, what is it?” he said, pausing for effect. One felt it would not be wise to argue the point with him, or any other points he might make from the pulpit.
But after mass he lifted a small child in the air in a gesture of Everyman’s father, a good shepherd indeed, while parents watched admiringly and yet another child waited eagerly to be lofted. But do parents or priest want to encourage such trust by child in priest these days? A bit more distance is in order?
SAYING HI WHILE RECEIVING COMMUNION . . . New rules from Rome call for new emphasis on head-bowing while receiving communion. But what about exchanging holy words and phrases – “Body of Christ,” “Amen,” etc. – and of course friendly glances with the one giving it? Just at a moment of peak communion with the Almighty. Distracting, or not?
Blithe Spirit 7/7/03
MAD DOGS AND ENGLISHMEN . . . Cub manager Dusty Baker discussed the superiority of black and Latin ball players in hot weather. Chi Trib sportswriter Rick Morrisey -- "In the Wake of the News," 7/6/03 [http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/printedition/chi-0307060378jul06,1,3291753.story?coll=chi-printsports-hed] -- recalls what happened to two white sports figures a few years back who also expounded on black-white differences. Their careers were ruined, but Baker's is not likely to suffer, except (conceivably) from the swoon in which his Cubs find themselves these days.
Baker's comments are also in the (NW Suburban) Daily Herald [http://www.dailyherald.com/sports/sports_story.asp?intID=3780877].
And in the Peoria Journal-Star [http://www.pjstar.com/sports/theobald/g164638a.html], where the writer cites Copley News Service Chicago sports columnist Mike Nadel: Cardinals manager Tony La Russa "would have been fired before the ninth inning for saying the same thing as Baker."
And in the Indianapolis Star [http://www.indystar.com/print/articles/1/055899-6531-036.html] where Baker is quoted without comment: Playing in hot weather is "easier for most Latin guys and it's easier for most minority people because most of us come from heat. You don't find too many brothers [blacks] in New Hampshire and Maine. Right?
"We [blacks] were brought over here [as slaves] for the heat. Isn't that history?" Baker said.
"[Our] skin color is more conducive to heat than it is to the lighter-skinned people. I don't see brothers running around burnt," he said. "That's a fact. I'm not making this up. I'm not seeing some brothers walking around with some white stuff [sun blocker] on their ears and noses."
Also in the Calgary Sun [http://www.canoe.ca/CalgarySports/cs.cs-07-06-0126.html] also also without comment, and probably lots of other places.
And with comment in the Dallas Morning News, where (black) columnist Kevin B. Blackistone pointed out not only the double-standard problem (blacks get a pass, whites lose jobs) but the danger in telling blacks they are less vulnerable to sunstroke when they are demonstrably more vulnerable. [http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/sports/6246955.htm]
Baker was relaxed when he talked this way, chuckling. But a white guy would not get away with such, no matter how relaxed.
HEARD AT YOUR LOCAL CHURCH . . . Meanwhile, back in the sacred precincts, the mass readings 7/6 featured two of the Judaeo-Christianity's all-stars, Ezekiel and our old standby Paul. Ezekiel, best known for his stunning vision of bones coming to life, gets the word from On High that he is to be a prophet no matter how unpromising a career it is. Paul, just last week presented as the convert par excellence, blinded on the road to Damascus, tells the trouble he has been in lately and what God told him to do about it.
You don't find any more dramatic characters in Holy Writ. Ezekiel (I want to call him Zeke) got invaded by "Spirit," who set him on his feet and told him he was off to the rebellious Israelites, "hard of face and obstinate of heart," to bring them around. Ezekiel's gulp was heard for miles. Do it, said Spirit: "Whether they heed or resist . . . they shall know that a prophet has been among them." In other words, do it and don't get too results-oriented about it. Trust me.
Paul says he "was given a thorn in the flesh." Two archbishops come to mind, Sanchez in Santa Fe and Weakland in Milwaukee, who surely or apparently succumbed to their fleshly thorns -- batting from different sides of the plate, for what it's worth. Paul says he begged to be excused from his thorn -- three times. Nothing doing, he was told: "My grace is enough . . . for in weakness power reaches perfection." Great, he might have said sarcastically but didn't. Instead he made a silk purse out of this sow's ear and broadcast the results of his colloquies, bragging about being weak and claiming to be strong when he is powerless.
Then in Mark 6, Jesus as preacher has his own bad experience. Trying to make his points with the hometown folks, he lays an egg. Remembering him back when he was a runny-nosed kid, they are not impressed. Wandering minstrel or not, they turn him off. In his "native place," he is without honor. Their not taking him seriously gets to him. "Distress" clouds his soul.
HARD TIMES IN ATHENS . . . Paul's worst experience audience-wise was in Athens, where he tried to get through to the local non-yokels on their own terms. But this foray into philosophy, adapting the unknown-god idea and speaking of him "in whom we live and move and have our being" -- which he got from a 6th-century poet -- did not work. They listened at the Areopagus, where the elite met to argue, a sort of Bughouse Square venue, and found him interesting, as they would find the itinerant Epicurean or Stoic interesting the next day.
But when he talked up resurrection from the dead, a staple of his message, they found him not only interesting but uproariously funny. It didn't mean they wanted him out of there. They invited him back, in fact. He was fun, but that's not what he had in mind. So when he walked off the Areopagus that day, he shook its dust from his feet and declared an end to philosophizing with sophisticates. No more, he told Corinthian Christians later. From now on it would be announcement of message, period. You bought it or you didn't.
FRICTION . . . In Acts (of Apostles, or as I read it, The Adventures of Paul), he is knocked down and blinded, as above. No mention of a horse, by the way, as we often hear. Later he and Luke (author of Acts) have a "violent argument" when Paul refuses to take Mark with him on a trip, because Mark had wimped out earlier. That's when Paul and Luke split up. Paul took Silas, Luke took Mark, which shows how evangelists tend to stick together.
UNKIND CUT . . . William Hazlitt addressed the French Question in his 1825 essay "Merry England," about the English penchant for the comic and irregular. Hazlitt called the French "the cockneys of Europe," said they had "no idea how anyone can exist out of Paris [the ones who live in Paris anyhow], or [and here's a true jibe] be alive without incessant grimace and jabber."
SHORT CUT . . . Samuel Johnson called someone "a most unclubbable man" who had sought a dues reduction because he was not eating regularly at his club. He got the reduction, but other members thought less of him: "We all scorned him [but] admitted his plea," said Johnson, "for no man is angry at another for being inferior to himself." He was his own worst enemy. For the most part, they felt sorry for him. The item is in Boswell but also in novelist Frances Burney's diary account of dining at Mrs. Thrale's with Johnson and others.
"Unclubbable" is used quite recently for Princess Diana's divorce lawyer, meaning non-establishment (he got her $25 million), and less recently for loners characterized by Sherlock Holmes in "The Greek Interpreter" -- members of the Diogenes Club, "the most unsociable and unclubbable men in town."
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED . . . Talking Pictures: New Poems by Richard Howard, Turtle Point Press. Marvelous stuff. Highly literature. Allusions are literary, historical, contemporary. He's smart, funny, restrained, systematic. Forms matter. Village Voice tells us he has a "bristling dispatch" in the summer Bookforum letters section in which he "confirms he is gay, but not, as Alain Robbe-Grillet called him in a previous issue, the kind of homosexual who finds 'nothing more disgusting than women.'" That's not the half of it for Howard, who is immensely credentialed and won a Pulitzer some time back. For this reader he's a real find.
A real rediscovery is Byron (George Gordon, Lord B.), especially in his satires. He uses the couplet in ways that make one laugh and ask him back to one's reading attention. In that respect I give him the attention the Areopagites gave Paul, except Byron likes it, if he's in a position to do so, or would have liked it if he and I had been contemporaries. On the other hand, he got so tough on his fellow poets in "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers" that he lived to regret it. He felt bad about it, that is. Which is a lesson for us all: Watch what you say in addition to how you say it.
SAME COUNTRY AND WORLD, DIFFERENT IDEAS OF WHAT'S NEW
Yesterday's lead stories, Chicago Tribune and Washington Times contrasted, demonstrating what editors consider most important. A mostly daily feature.
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Wash T.
6/30/03
* Scores of Saddam backers arrested
* U.S. Grapples with Refugee Challenge in Iraq
* [Gen.] Myers says 'annihilation' of Iraqi army wasn't goal
* [D.C.] Medical examiner seeks pay raise
* [Supreme Court] Ruling on [affirmative action] likely to spur fight
* The Hollywood queen, Katharine Hepburn, dies
* [Bill] Gates 'hates' spam, but acts belie criticism [by him]
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Chi Trib
6/30/03
* 'It felt like an avalanche,' Most `were just starting their lives,' Shocked firefighters found layers and layers of victims, Porch inspections increased, city says -- all about local back porch catastrophe.
* Democrats targeting Latino vote out West
* [Palestinian] Militants agree to suspend attacks
* Katharine Hepburn: 1907--2003
* U.S. strikes back at Iraqi insurgents
* Senators urge U.S. to get help on Iraq
