I was sitting idly, listening to someone comment on the latest whatever on television and watching my index finger as I moved it up and down. I don’t generally focus on such things, but in this case I did and noticed that in the moving, I could feel as well as see the motion of the tendon against the inside of my skin. It was a strange experience. Of course, I had to see if the same was true for the other fingers. Yes. There it was again. Like a child discovering something for the first time, I found it fascinating.

Truly, I hadn’t noticed much about my hands while using them purposefully. Naturally, if I am occupied with practicing or cooking or sewing or whatever, why would I? But sitting alone and paying attention to pretty much nothing, it was my hands that caught my eye.

Really, I think they are not all that remarkable save for the fact that I appreciate having them and value what they can do. I love the moment when, on the piano keyboard things are going well, there is this floating sensation. I don’t think about where my fingers are going. They just go. It’s muscle memory. The result of this muscle memory is wonderful music in my ears and the awareness of my hands on the keyboard. The same is true when I am behind my bassoon and are having a good day of practice or an extraordinary performance. It’s the music, not the muscle that moves me forward. My middle school students freaked out when I made a habit of watching them and typing whatever on the computer. My fingers know where to go. I do not need to watch my fingers when I can keep track of my students.

Nevertheless, I have been thinking about hands lately. Consider the hands of a newborn. They open and close as the infant throws his hands out when startled. Best of all, though, they clasp a parent’s finger when it is offered. Yes, that’s a reflex, but one that I thinks binds parent and child. There aren’t many things more beautiful than a baby’s hand. Soft, pudgy, with infinitesimally small fingernails. Watching that hand develop through the years is amazing. Soon enough the child tries to navigate Cheerios into his mouth. When there is success? Elation! Wow! Then, of course, everything goes into his mouth. Caveat parens.

Hands grow as we grow. They develop fine motor skills of wonderous dexterity. When I look at pictures of my younger self, my hands are smooth and capable. They are still capable, but now the backs of my hands are ropy with prominent veins and brown spots. They are the hands of an old lady. They are strong enough to open a pickle jar and dexterous enough to liberate a sliver, but they no longer have the smooth, rosy beauty of my youth. I can’t say that I would hide my hands these days. They are what they are. In truth, they go with my face.

On the other hand, my hands read like a roadmap. There are a few scars and a callous is built up on the middle finger where the pen rests against it as I write. It is interesting to watch them work sometimes in a sort of detachment—they are hands that are attached to my wrists, but they are simply interesting to watch. They accomplish tasks I don’t consciously think about. Knit, purl, chain stitch, chop celery. They do it all. Interesting to watch, but sometimes it’s a dangerous practice not to pay close attention. I learned not to chop onions when angry at the Hubs. Learned the hard way and it took some time for the tip of my chopped off pinky finger to heal. Now when I am chopping away, getting supper ready, I make sure I have accounted for all my fingers on top of the kitchen knife. I do appreciate having ten functioning fingers.

I have come to notice the hands of others. The actors on Grey’s Anatomy have beautiful hands. Yes, I know, they are surgeons and should have beautiful hands. Ellen Pompeo has lovely long fingers that are so well kept. None of them have long artificial nails. Their nails are clipped short like those of concert pianists. Stiletto nails simply will not do in surgical gloves. If they are wearing polish, it must be clear. In the hospital scenes, I never see polish. And no, I don’t wear polish most of the time. For some reason, polish makes my fingers feel icky. Heavy. I know I wore some light pink pearl on my wedding day and once or twice my son decided to polish my toenails, but to tell the truth, these days, nail polish is for the backs of bracelets that turn my wrists green. What can I say?

With the advent of fluent texting I have come to wonder whether it is easier to teach bassoon students to use the thumb keys. The bassoon is the one instrument that has multiple keys that depend on the thumbs to extend the range both high and low. A bassoonist not only uses the tip of the thumb but the side and the first joint as well. I once woke from a nightmare wherein I had lost my right thumb. Bam! Career over. At first, it is awkward for a beginner to use these keys easily. It takes practice. Now, given how often and how frequently students text, they might catch on more quickly. Inquiring minds want to know. The bow hand of a cellist is a thing of beauty. Sensual. Watching Yo-Yo Ma play a concerto is transcendental in more ways than one.

I leave you, dear reader, not with my words, but with those of Hawkeye Pierce, who, in an episode of M*A*S*H, riffed on the beauty of the hand when trying to stay awake, waiting to be rescued after sustaining a head injury in a jeep accident. His words may have been a subliminal inspiration for my own. He says:

“Look at your hand. It’s one of the most incredible instruments in the universe.
Of all the bones in the body, one fourth are in the hand.
Forget the hand. Look at your thumb; that wondrous mechanism that separates us from the other animals.
The world-famous opposable thumb, that amazing device, that has transported more students to college than the Boston post road. Ideal for sucking, especially as a baby, and lauded in song and story as the perfect instrument for pulling out a plum.

Or, in the case of the Caesars, for holding it down for the gladiator to die, or holding it up, which means “See you later at the orgy.” My friends, for getting up and down the pike, in your pie, in your eye, I give you the thumb.

Have you any idea, Farmer Brown, of the incredible complexity of this piece of human apparatus?
Of course not. Never having spent any time at Sol and Sol’s swilling borscht and jamming Latin into your brain while trying to imagine if Lefty the waitress is wearing a garter belt, you have no idea of the balletic interplay of parts that make up the human thumb.

The flexor ossis metacarpi pollicis flexes the metacarpal bone, that is, draws it inward over the palm, thus producing the movement of opposition. And the Boy Scout salute. Because of this magical engineering, we could do this. And this. And this.
But our greatest triumph comes not from flexing the metacarpal bone and making a fist,
which always seems to be thirsting to be clenched…No, no, no, no, no.
Our greatest moment is when we open our hand:

Cradling a glass of wine, cupping a loved one’s chin. And the best… the most expert of all…
keeping all the objects of our life in the air at the same time. [begins to juggle] My friends, for your amusement and bemusement, I give you the human person. Thumb and fingers flexing madly, straining to keep aloft the leaden realities of life: ignorance, death and madness. Thus we create for ourselves the illusion that we have power,that we are in control, that we are… loved”

“Hawkeye” aired on Jan 13, 1976; 

For many years I have maintained that I need to have only one small bookshelf. After two cross country moves, it was clear that although I love my books as old friends, it is both expensive and tiresome to lug them across 500 miles of highway to the new dwelling. For many years I have managed to stick to that resolution. I bought only those books that were “shelfworthy,” that is, worth the investment in cash and space. The resolution made me develop a system for my reading.

First, if I was in need of titles, I would wander the aisles of the nearest bookstore and write down titles that looked interesting. Second, I would check to see if the title was in the library collection. If not, and I thought this was a compelling volume, I would request the title for purchase. If so, I would put it on reserve, read it, then decide whether it was shelfworthy. If my online list of titles grew beyond what I could comfortably read from reserve, I relegated those titles and authors to my online “preferred search list.” As the little three-shelf bookstand filled up, I would cull other titles to make space. The culled books either went to a little free library, the local coffee shop that has a book trade shelf, or Half Price Books. The best of the culled books went to friends. It was a system. It worked.

However, I have noticed that since the lockdown my habits have changed. The process is still the same–bookstore to library to shelf. Still, I find myself pausing at the local discard cart at the library. The cart operates on the honor system: take a book, drop a dollar in the slot. Take the book home. Books for a dollar are hard to resist. I have added enough titles to the shelf that now the shelf overflows. Books are on the floor, stacked in the order that I want to read them. They are sideways on top of the other books on the shelf. They are tucked under the end table. It is noticeable, but not overwhelming.

Yet.

Nevertheless, I think I have to re-evaluate the situation. The titles I have brought home are certainly worthy. Think John Chernow’s Grant and Jon Meacham’s American Lion among them. I have picked up others to share with friends because friends. I think that in the collection I have picked up from the book cart over the past eighteen months does not nearly total the cost of a single brand new volume, but still. I need to get a grip. In the end, I may simply have to admit that I am a compulsive reader and need to invest in another another book shelf. Then I need to get a grip.

I am happy to have so many sources for titles. I found Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future on a page in The Atlantic. Unlike many of the climate-apocalyptic sort of novels I have read in the past few years, The Ministry for the Future gives me a tad bit of hope. At 500+ pages, it qualifies as a tome, but with its focus on science and real facts, as well as real possibilities, it reads well. I came to care about its characters, most notably Mary Murphey who the head of the Ministry for the Future. The Ministry is a UN ministry designated to plan for future generations, adopting the philosophy of thinking of today’s actions and their consequences for seven generations from the present. Would that there was more of that today, particularly in developed countries.

It was a long read, and now I find myself with a book hangover.

In many ways, it is a haunting read. Bottom line: while the Ministry fights its way through the bankers and through labyrinthine government actions (or nonactions), it is the people and the people who are scientists who actually work on the problems. This, I like. The narrative bogged down for me when Ms. Murphey has to deal with the International Monetary fund and the leading bankers from around the world. While I have an understanding of how they finally manipulated the currencies to reflect the issue of too much CO² , I also found these conversations to be slow. You should know, dear reader, that I find most conversations about currency slow. What I want is a little more action.

Action there is. The novel opens with an incredible heat wave in India that kills 20 million. Amazingly, there is one survivor. From there we have the founding of the Ministry and our understanding of its purpose. I don’t want to give too much away in terms of plot, ergo I shall finish with my favorite characters. I love the Children of Kali who force things to happen in any variety of ways. The glaciologists get a particular shout-out for the ways that they work to alleviate the issue of the fast-melting glaciers.

For the sheer possibility and the long term hope the novel offers, this one was well worth the hangover. If only. If only the world got on its metaphorical horse and got moving to correct the problems we have caused. Will I read another of Robinson’s novels? Yes, but other books are coming in as well. Yes, I will read more. . . just not at the moment. It seems that Robinson has quite the body of work from which to choose.

A talent for following the ways of yesterday is not sufficient to improve the world of today.

King Wu-Ling 307 BCE

You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.

Buckminster Fuller sometime in the 20th century

It made me smile, a discovery of these two thoughts. Indeed, the book of Proverbs was correct: there is nothing new under the sun. I tried to find the context for the Fuller quote without success. I guess not everything is “discoverable” on the internet. Nevertheless, another thought came to mind in light of the fact that school resumes on Monday. The education of yesterday is insufficient for the conditions of tomorrow. I don’t know if that’s my thought or if somehow another quote has bubbled to the surface in the swamp of my grey matter.

The political ads on television have been unrelenting. There is a disturbingly ubiquitous ad for the local Republican party’s Senate candidate that includes the phrase parents have no say in their children’s’ education. I find that an interesting statement. Historically, parents have trusted educators to use what materials they found fit to include in order to build a foundation for the functioning of their child as a positive, knowledgeable citizen of this country. In general, that meant English teachers taught what was called The Western Canon: old, dead, white male authors. It’s what these parents read and what was good for them is what is good for their children. That is not to say that these readings weren’t worthy. They certainly were and because they are so much a part of the discourse of the greater world when it comes to allusions, each generation gets the message. Even now, when a sports announcer uses the words “Please, Miss, may I have some more?” anyone who has read Dickens or seen Oliver, the musical, understands what the commentator means.

Like Fortuna’s wheel, the world moves on. There is so much more out there and, particularly in urban schools, the demographics have changed. The Western Canon is not sufficient and the school year is so packed with other things (like testing and test prep, not to mention the issues urban students face) that sometimes it feels like a mad dash from August to May. Moreover, there is a greater urgency in the Humanities to include more. Include more inclusive history. Include a broader range of literature. Move beyond the old, dead, white males and bring in the females and the writers of color. Pablo Neruda, Toni Morrison, Chinua Achebe. Bring some of the readings into the 20th and 21st century. Amanda Gorman, Abi Dare’, Angeline Boulley. There is so much! It’s like being at a buffet–where do we start?

Does that mean that we dump the Western Canon? Do we drop Shakespeare, not just because he is difficult but because he is an old dead white guy? No. I think we keep him because he is difficult and because, after the Bible, he is the most quoted author in everyday life. I have a button that says “Warning: Quotes Shakespeare in Everyday Conversation.” In order to get the message (or the joke), we need to know the allusion. What about Dickens or Golding? When we hear a reference in the news that “they were all Lord of the Flies,” shouldn’t we know what that’s about? “Kill the pig” should be more than a discussion of slaughterhouse practices.

In the end, the parents who insist that they have a say in the education of their children are often those who want to limit the experience of the breadth of literature and history. Yes, adults should consider the age appropriateness of a reading, but to assume that an eighth or ninth grader shouldn’t come across the word “masturbate” in a reading is to assume that they haven’t already come across it in the locker room. I am reminded of the scene in the film “Field of Dreams” where, at a school board meeting, a woman seeks to take the work of Terrance Mann from the shelves. It’s a great scene, now played out in any variety of iterations at meetings across the country. Terrance Mann is accused of “endorsing promiscuity, godlessness, the mongrelization of the races, and disrespect to high-ranking officers of the United States Army.” Annie, in defense of Mann’s work replies “at least he’s not a book-burner, you Nazi cow” before going on to expound upon Mann’s writing. Current meetings are not significantly unlike this exchange.

In the world of public education beyond the Humanities, we find a great deal of emphasis on science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). What goes round comes round. This feels so much like 1957, when the USSR launched Sputnik, the first satellite to orbit the Earth. I was ten. Suddenly it was more than a simple oops moment. We students were plunged into catch-up mode. The US was sadly behind in the space race. For me, the world was a big place–big enough for both science and reading. Loved that reading. Loved reading about science. Loved reading about pretty much anything.

In the same manner, we are pushing STEM now. But without the Humanities, without history, literature, drama, that which we create through our talents in STEM may likely be colder and less graceful. Without heart. Useful, yes, but lacking soul. Mr. Keating in “Dead Poet’s Society tells his students that “We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.” What does it matter that we wire the world If we have not learned that which helps us manage to have a caring, enriched inner life that relates well with others?

When we talk about haves and have-nots, will we consider that this designation goes beyond the mere economic class and gets into who has or has not an enriched experience? We see this difference in education. The difference between a student from an enriched background and one from an impoverished background is clear and it is great. By the time a student gets to high school, one from a disadvantaged economic background is at a huge disadvantage. It is difficult, almost impossible to close that gap by high school.

In my despair, I digress. Let me dismount my soapbox.

Yes, there is nothing new under the sun. If we are to survive as a species, we have to do better. We have to be creative enough to undo all the harm we have done to the Earth and to each other. Is that possible? I don’t know. My generation had set some things in motion, but we didn’t carry it far enough. We didn’t start the fire, but we didn’t put it out, either. Has it gotten too big? Will we end, not with a bang, but a whimper? I hope not. I want to live long enough to have made some difference, how ever small, and to see a bit of progress in my time. I am hoping for a chance to see something new under the sun.

Since my latest reserves have yet to come in at the library, I have been catching up on old copies of The Atlantic. I favor this magazine because its writing style is more straight forward, unpretentious. It doesn’t try to sound aloof. One particular article caught my attention: I GAVE MYSELF THREE MONTHS TO CHANGE MY PERSONALITY By Olga Khazan.* She was assigned the tasks of both researching as well as actively using the research to change her personality, most particularly in becoming more outgoing. It was an interesting adventure, well thought out and well written–something I have come to expect from The Atlantic. One part of her process caught my attention, however.

It was that of keeping a gratitude journal. I have heard about this practice of writing down each day those things for which one is grateful, but I have never engaged in it. I suspect I have avoided it for the same reason I have avoided journaling since high school. It becomes predictable and repetitive. I know I have mentioned this before in terms of teenage angst: Oh woe is me. No boyfriend. No prom date. I will never marry. Sigh. After that experience, it was all too much. In my last blog entry, I mentioned not wanting to fall into a writer’s rut, to spend my writing time mostly ranting about the state of the world. Oh Boo Hoo. Where are we going and why am in this handbasket?? When Ms. Khazan undertakes the task of writing in a gratitude journal, I tried not to roll my eyes.

As predicted, she found herself becoming repetitive. She was grateful for Tiktok, for food delivery, for the internet. (I am paraphrasing here.) These were the things for which I might be grateful if I were a person half my age, something which Ms. Khazan appears to be in her staff picture. But it did get me thinking about whether those things surrounding us that are important change with time. I would never, at her age, been grateful of Tiktok given that there was no such thing 35 or so years ago. Perhaps age gives perspective. Perhaps she will write a follow-up in another 30 years.

Plainly my approach is different. Lately we have had an electronics meltdown. The cell phones need updating and are not usable until the Hubs gets ambitious enough to go to the ATT store and get the job done. The land line has gone out in the last rain. For whatever reason, this happens on the occasion of rain from the northeast. We have been waiting a little over a week for the repairer to get to us. Luckily the phone in the upstairs unit is still functional. We are not completely out of touch with the greater world. To finish the trifecta, the picture tube on our ancient television went out and all we have is a bright line across the screen. It’s like peeking through the slats of a closed blind that changes in color in conjunction with whatever is going on in the broadcast. Nevertheless, we still have audio, so yes, there is no hurry. It’s like listening to the radio with a light show. In order to get the new television I have researched, we have to communicate with Spectrum because our hookup is on the order of 25 years old. It is a thick coaxial cable that screws into an old VCR that hooks into the same sort of connector on the television. Clearly there is no television on the market today that has the same connections. This will be another repair call and another fee, I am certain.

Nevertheless, I am happy that this particular television is, I think, the last of the ancient technology in the house. The Hubs thinks he may have another in storage, but he is disinclined to go searching. He has a habit of buying multiples of the same thing when they are on sale. We have four mattress/box spring setups and only two sleepers. There was a sale on wonderful mattresses so of course, we needed more than what we would ever use. When one mattress gives out, we have a backup. He has two (two!) new computers. He hasn’t hooked up either one but they were on sale. He is still using his 20+ year old Gateway with a dial-up connection. Go figure.

However, I maintain that while this can all be trying, it is not all that important to me. I have learned somehow to have a high tolerance level for whatever this lifestyle is. It’s certainly not the lifestyle of the rich and famous. I listen to the ball game on the radio. Our radio broadcasters are wonderful at painting the picture of the game with words. For this I am grateful. I have discovered that documentaries are better on a television sans picture than movies. There is always CNN to listen to as well as the personalities of local news that come through the audio. Finally, I can always turn off the noise and simply be. When I started adulting, I was without a television for a few years and wouldn’t have had one save for the fact that a student brought over his family’s old 14″ portable black and white television. I can cope.

Ergo, the gratitude I have for things involves things simpler: a roof over my head. Running water. A comfortable bed and a soft pillow. Bifocals. (I’d be lost without them.) Dependable electricity. The last movement of Beethoven’s sixth symphony. On a deeper level, there is the moment when I wake up in the morning and am deeply glad to still be here, conscious, and still moving. I am grateful for libraries. Having lived for several years in a town without one, and now having time to make a daily library run, I find libraries to be one of the essentials. A library that is within walking distance is a wonderful thing. If Hamlet debates “to be or not to be” I choose simply to be–as is let it be. I choose to look around me and to be amazed at all of the things with which I am surrounded, both in the natural world and the urban environment around me. I am grateful for the skills in my hands and my mind that enables me to do what I can to help others. At some point in the future, I want to volunteer more. I intend to do what is essential to my own health that will enable me to do that.

The best? I am grateful that the child I gave birth to so many years ago has become an interesting (and interested) human being who has a wicked sense of humor and adventure. He is a positive force in the word and I love him deeply. How he managed to become this quietly great person in this crazy world is a tribute to his own perseverance and determination. I am incredibly grateful that he walks this earth together with his partner.

In the end, I am hopeful that while Ms. Khazan has completed her assignment to change her personality, that this is a beginning, not an ending. Life is long and full of both challenges and opportunities. May she find herself able to cope with both.

*https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/03/how-to-change-your-personality-happiness/621306/

“When you think about quitting, consider why you got started in the first place.”

There used to be a whiteboard in the gym on which was written some sort of motivational sentence. Used to be. Once I mentioned to a staff member that I thought the practice of using a motivational slogan was important to me, it disappeared. I am not sure that this is a case of post hoc, propter hoc (if that, then because of that). I should point out that the gym underwent some updating in the meantime, but on the other hand, though the whiteboard is still in the same place it now lists various staff meetings. Nevertheless, the quote above as well as “You don’t have to be perfect, just be better than you were yesterday,” were two of the slogans I have taken to heart. Given that time in the gym has its ups and downs (no pun intended here), I keep those two in mind.

Still, I had considered abandoning the blog. It has been a dry few weeks; the entries have been fewer and farther apart. I found myself busier with other things and short on time to write my thoughts. It takes at least an hour to do an entry and in there end, even after taking time to double check and edit, I would come back the next day to discover typos and less than wonderful word choice still crept into existence. I hate this feeling of aridity. Of course, there is the whole chicken and egg issue. Writing begets writing and writing begets visitors If I am not writing more consistently, then there are fewer visits from you, dear reader. What to do? Should I stay or should I go?

That’s a rhetorical question.

Consider why you started in the first place. I started this blog to account for my first year out of the classroom. So far, so good. Then, like Topsy, it grew into something more. I used it to tell family stories for an audience of one: my son. The fact that others seemed to like them was a plus. Then came the lockdown and the lack of access to a working computer. There was a huge gap, but then when it was possible to rejoin the outside world, I returned to write some more. When I was at a loss, I went into the book log. There is always something in the book log. Now, even after culling some entries that consisted of poems by favorite poets, I am still 700+ entries into the blog and have just crossed a threshold of 1,000 visits. That seems like an accomplishment.

So why continue?

I thought seriously about this. Maybe I have run out of things to say. Or maybe I don’t want to fall into a rut and repeat myself or limit myself to ranting about current events. Years ago, I took a long vacation from writing poetry because I felt I was falling into the same style. Too many poems sounded too much alike. Time to take a break and do something else. Now I still write poetry, but I am far more careful about how I do it. Sometimes I challenge my self with a particular form simply for the challenge. It clears my head–like trying to write a fugue or a two part invention. The form is the challenge.

In the end, I decided that while I started this blog for a specific purpose whose year has passed three years ago, I might still have something more to say. Ergo, I resolve to hang in there despite the writing desert I have had to cross in the meantime. I think every writer hits the dry land. It just took me some time to get over. I don’t have to be profound. I just have to be me. And so the beat goes on.

More to come. Stay tuned.

It has been over a year since I last made a lines edition entry. Of course, many pages have gone by since then and while great lines are sometimes hard to find, when they show up, they pop up and shout “here I am” to this reader. A great excerpt can take my breath away. It makes me think “WOW.” There it is. Sometimes a passage is too long to put into my little book log and so it gets into my latest composition notebook. Today’s musing includes some of those keepsakes I have come to treasure.

” The law should apply to king and to peasant both, it should be written simply and in the language of the common people, lest the people grow weary of the burden.”

paraphrase of Hammurabi in Paulette Jiles’ News of the World.

“We are showered every day with gifts, but they are not meant for us to keep. Their life is in their movement, the inhale and exhale of our shared breath. Our work and our joy is to pass along the gift and to trust that what we put into the universe will always come back.”

Robin Wall Kimmerer Braiding Sweetgrass p.104

“Among our Potawatomi people, women are Keepers of Water. We carry the sacred water to ceremonies and act on its behalf. Women have a natural bond with water because we are both life bearers. We carry our babies in internal ponds and they come forth into the world on a wave of water. It is our responsibility to safeguard the water for all our relations. Being a good mother includes the caretaking of water.”

Robin Wall Kimmerer Braiding Sweetgrass p. 94

“Why did you write the poem? It demanded to be written. I simply happened to be sitting at the particular desk on the particular morning when it chose to make its demands.”

Amor Towles A Gentleman in Moscow p. 4

This one was set on an election night in the U.S. I found it particularly compelling:

“When did Americans become so afraid?”

“What do you mean?”

“I understood the business of trying to go back to the safe glory of Islam’s past when it came to Pakistan. It came at the end of a long, slow decline the causes of which we didn’t fully understand. America is still the most powerful nation in the world. So why are its people so terrified all the time?

A map of the United States flashed on the screen, plashed with the colors of water and blood. I studied it as I tried to come up with an answer to the question Imtiaz Faris had posed.

“We Live on stolen land.” I finally said, “in a country built on slavery and reliant on the continued economic exploitation of other people. The oppressor always lives in fear of the oppressed. Americans have always been afraid–of those native to this continent, of Black people, of Japanese citizens they interned, and now of Muslims and immigrants. So the real question, I think, is who is next?”

Syed. M. Masood The Bad Muslim Discount p.352

Despite what we think about goal setting and life plans, things often turn out differently and in amazing ways, the journey reveals itself.

“It is rare that we move from one step to the next in a logical progression. More often, like a small child crossing a wide stream, we launch ourselves from stone to stone, every leap bringing us closer to some destinations and farther from others–but without a clear view of where our ultimate landing spot might be. Instead we prepare for the next jump, then the one after, until after a lifetime of motion is past, we are startled at least a little, by where we are and by what we have become.”

Madeline Albright, Hell and Other Destinations, p.38

I think I like Willie Nelson more as a grizzled old man than I did as a younger country-western singer. After all, with this thought, what’s not to like?

If you’re opposed to women having equal rights, then you’re clearly afraid of the competition.

Willie Nelson, Letters to America p.196

Finally, I discovered this one in This Tender Land, a sort of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn set first, in a boarding school for Native children, then, much like Huck and Jim, on a journey on a river.

“I’m afraid I’ll be taken from you and who’d look after you then?

“Maybe God?”

“God?” He said as if I were joking.

“Maybe it’s really like it says in the Bible,” I offered. “God’s a shepherd and we’re his flock and he watches over us.”

For a long while Albert didn’t say anything. I listened to that kid crying in the dark because he felt lost and alone and believed no one cared.

Finally Albert whispered, “Listen Odie. What does a shepherd eat?” I didn’t know where he was going with that, so I didn’t reply. “His flock,” Albert told me. “One by one.”

William Kent Krueger This Tender Land, pp 53-54

I was reading Sarah Vowell’s Take the Cannoli last night, when in the midst of her X-nay on the “My Way” essay on Frank Sinatra, I discovered the line that would have worked in my high school speech class assignment. What an AHA moment! Yes, seniors in high school were given a three-way assignment that was a genuine challenge that most of us tried, but failed in all but delivery. Our task was to find a sentence that, given changes in punctuation and expression, could be read with three different voicings to mean three different things.

Remember, this was 1965 and very pre-Google. It might be that now one could find such a sentence fairly easily, but in 1965, there was no such luck. We only had a few days to find or create the sentence and then design and deliver the setup. Alas, my only resource was mom and Reader’s Digest. It’s not that mom was a dismal failure, it was that while we could find a sentence that worked two ways, when it came to three ways, we were stumped. Indeed, I had to settle for “Woman without her man is an animal.” As originally written, it is woman who is the animal. Change the punctuation and the delivery and it becomes “Woman! Without her, man is an animal.” I got partial credit for the speech because, yes, I hit only two out of three.

Nevertheless, Sarah Vowell’s essay on the ubiquity of “My Way” in Frank Sinatra’s obituary tributes included her thoughts on all sorts of other Sinatra hits. And there it was. “What is this thing called love?” Bam! Three ways. There’s the first straight up query that simply asks for a definition. “What is this thing called love?” Then there is the scenario wherein perhaps a questionable dinner offering on the part of a spouse elicits the next question: “What is this thing called, Love?” This voicing would also work in a scenario when, in a moment when Green Bay Packer back-up quarterback Jordan Love has fumbled the snap again, the coach holds a football in front of him and asks in his fed-up voice, “What is this thing called, Love?” Finally there is the third that piggy backs off the first–and perhaps might be voiced in either outrage or disappointment: ” What? Is this thing called love?” Several scenarios run through my head at that one. Not all of them are G-rated.

Now, Mrs. Breitling, may I have full credit?

So there it is. Finally. An answer to the three way challenge far too long in the making. By this time my speech teacher has probably gone to the great beyond or is at least pushing the century mark. Her assignment has most likely gone into the deep recesses of her mind. Why should anyone remember this failure more vividly than the classroom successes? Why do the frustrations stick more than the brighter notes?

When I started writing here four years ago, my intent was to chronicle the first year of retirement, how I have adjusted and what I have discovered. What I have discovered in the past four years was that getting used to a drastic change of daily life has taken far longer than a single year. I am not completely sure why I have kept writing, but I have. I’ve posted book reviews, family stories, rants, successes and a few failures here. Lately I have been thinking about how my sense of time has changed.

I woke up this morning as I always have: Today is Wednesday, July 20. From there, I think first about having awakened again to a day full of possibilities. I took time to sort through the “have to’s,” those things that are always there as part of a routine. Because I wanted to send cards to friends who are still in the classroom, I thought about day one and realized that somehow I have forgotten about the specifics of the school calendar. For years, I thought, I have lived under several sorts of calendars that are not the usual January1-December 31 Gregorian calendar. First, there is the school calendar, which this year for my high school teacher friends starts August 8 for teachers, the 15th for students. While I feel that this summer is flying by, I don’t have an August 8 end of summer furlough day to think about. Wow.

Moreover, for many years my private life followed the church calendar. As a church musician, I had to develop a program of anthems and musical celebrations that were appropriate not only for the big hits of Christmas and Easter, but to also include music appropriate to Ash Wednesday and Lent. Long ago I learned to read the church calendar by observing the colors on the altar vestments–something I still do, even though now I am far from the business of directing the choir and the children.

Then within the school calendar, there was the pep band/athletic calendar and (to me the more important) concert/festival calendar. When I was performing in other groups as well, I had to keep track of their rehearsal/dress rehearsal/concert calendar. Thinking back, there was a great deal to juggle.

Today, I woke up and thought about making a store run, hitting the gym, and going to the library to sit here and work on this. I remembered to hang out our Ukraine banner in support of those who still fight for their own freedom abroad Life is simpler. Yes, I take time to visit the flowers in the morning, cliché’ though that may sound. Sometime today I’ll spend an hour or so reading, then some time knitting, though in this humidity, knitting is difficult. I may wait on that sock project until the heat index comes down. The yarn simply does not behave the way it does on cooler, drier days. At any rate. what I have learned over the past four years confirms what I knew, intellectually: time is a construct. Time is fluid and time is what I make of it.

I had initially thought I would be staying up late and getting up late. The reality is that no matter what, I still wake up at 0500. I don’t roll out of bed then, but take time to simply think and be grateful for both a good night of sleep and for waking in the morning. The whole staying up late business has gone by the wayside. Left to my own devices, I probably would be late to bed and late to rise, but because my body clock is set early, I am early to bed and early to rise. Sigh. Who would have known that the night owl of years past has become a chicken. No, I am far from a lark. It still takes significant time to get into the day, but here I am, more functional in the morning than in the afternoon.

In the end, old habits are hard to break. I still follow the school calendar for the most part. I feel like the old fire horse who thinks, when he hears the siren, that he has to gallop the length of the pasture to pull the pumper engine. The Back-To-School sales are starting! I have to get the fabric for that new first-day outfit! Do I have good, comfortable school shoes? I may not be going back to the classroom, but the old excitement at the sound of the bell still resonates. In my head echoes the song “Time has come today!” Forward is the direction in which I want to move. Let’s Go!

“If a book is the beginning of a conversation between the author and the reader, then the first few pages are just the author clearing his throat.”

Read Something Else Lemony Snicket

Over the past two or three years, I have come to observe a self-imposed as a fifty page introduction when it comes to personal reading. If I am not taken in by the end of those fifty pages, it may simply be that the book is not well enough written to be worth continuing. There are other factors, yes, but the quality of writing is at the top of the list. That is not to say that writing to voice a particular character whom I find to be less than appealing is writing that I will put down. Voice is important, particularly voice that changes over time. One of the things that is center to The Girl With the Louding Voice is the way in which Asunni’s voice becomes more powerful through the course of the narrative. I think it was Flowers for Algernon that first drew my conscious attention to voice. As Charlie evolves, his voice changes dramatically. The first clue that he is regressing to his original state is a subtle change in his voice. It amuses me that an Arkansas school district banned Daniel Keye’s novel because it described a sex act in four letter words. All these decades later, I only vaguely remember that there was a sex act as well as sexual abuse. What I remember was Charlie’s development and regression. I remember his voice.

Sometimes the author gets the voice wrong. The Autobiography of Henry VIII by Margaret George fits here. Written in first person, I found myself hearing his majesty’s voice in a feminine pitch. He sounded like me. I finished the book simply because this era of history fascinates me. I passed it on to the school librarian who returned it to me a week or so later because she said the voice was wrong. She had the same experience. It was only recently that I included this novel in the bag to go to Half Price Books. I hope someone will find it worthy.

Voice is what brings characters alive. For me, it is the music of the character. Even when reading student essays, I know the writer is on track when I hear that student’s voice as I read.

I have not always imposed the fifty page introduction. I remember reading Mika Waltari’s The Egyptian in ninth or tenth grade. I slogged my way through all 500+ pages waiting for something to happen. When I got to the end, I felt I had wasted my time. I think one of the issues is that I had no background in ancient Egypt; no knowledge beyond the book of Exodus and the film The Ten Commandments on which to ground my reading. Connections, after all, are important. I may feel differently had I had more information. Nevertheless, I persist in books that ultimately I feel are a waste of my time. Fifty Shades of Grey comes to mind. When I finished the novel, my first thought was that this represented a few hours of my time I will never get back. I didn’t go on to the other two books in the series.

At what point did I impose the introductory limit? That came about as a result of the relatively recent flurry of politically centered books over the recent years. So many of them have been rushed to print that should have been edited and revisited to make the language less clunky and the narrative have better flow. Stephanie Winston Wolkoff’s Melania and Me was the first on the list of “ick” reading. Wolkoff spent so much time on the issues surrounding the inauguration and the celebrations that I skipped whole chunks of the book. Really? How many times can you beat this dead horse? Move on, woman, move on. There have been others. While I have read probably too many of these recent publications, I have put down several who didn’t meet the fifty page cut.

Autobiographies and memoirs are also tricky. Geraldine Ferraro’s Ferraro: My Story was an early victim of the fifty page limit. I suspect that I never got to fifty pages. As the first woman nominated to run for vice-president in a major party, I was interested to learn something about her. Perhaps I might learn something of maneuvering through obstructions en route to something great. She may actually have gotten there, but I bailed when she related how learning to read from a teleprompter posed few problems for her. Really? It is my understanding that learning how to read from a teleprompter without sounding mechanical is an extraordinarily tricky business. If she downplayed that difficulty, then what else would she downplay?

Right now I am reading Deaf Utopia by Nyle DiMarco. I almost gave up on it, but now, having gotten through the first 100 pages, I am into the story. DiMarco is the latest of several generations of deaf offspring in a family line. I have been interested in deaf education since my own brush with hearing issues in sixth grade. I am indebted to a sixth grade teacher who noticed that I couldn’t hear anyone who spoke to me from a place where I couldn’t see them. She called my mother, who knowing that I had had ear infections the summer before sixth grade, took me to the doctor. After a course of antibiotics to clear the remaining infection, things were far better. Hence, my attention to these issues.

During summer youth band, on a trip to Washington D.C. for the national American Legion convention, we stayed at Gallaudet College, the nation’s only institution of higher education for the deaf. It was interesting to see how the college’s infrastructure was adapted for those who were part of the Deaf community. Decades later, I came across an article in Smithsonian about the college (now university) and learned that, yes, there is a difference between signed English and American Sign Language. Skip forward to the 1990s when I had two Deaf students in class who used an interpreter. She was delighted to learn what I had already learned and was amazing in her own way. She devised name signs for all 125 students in the academic family as well as for every teacher and administrator. Together we spent a class hour early in the year working with the students on how to work with an interpreter. She and I worked on strategies to make music class meaningful to our two students. What would be good for them would also be good for the others in the class. What sign I remember, I learned from her. On the other hand, I am getting better at the manual alphabet–something I can practice at red lights.

All that is to say that in this case, I had some background in the topic. There is deaf, then there is Deaf culture. I was after more about Deaf culture. Ergo, even though I read for the umpteenth time that ASL was the natural and beautiful language for DiMarco and his family, to the point that I was rolling my eyes and was ready to give up on this whole memoir as annoying, I didn’t. Here’s where perseverance has paid off. Now that we have gotten through the first 100 pages, things are getting interesting enough to keep going.

Finally, then, what is it that draws a reader into the book? For me, it’s that the book has to sound right. A voice that’s too officious is off-putting. Too simplistic? Same thing. It is important that the characters in a novel develop–that they have either grown stronger, changed for the better in some way, or somehow met the consequences of their actions. Science fiction author Robert Heinlein was under contract to write a “boy” book and a “girl” book annually. I found his girl book characters stilted and stiff. They tried too hard. The boy books were far more interesting. Moreover, I have learned through reading biographies of historical figures that not all historians are good writers, no matter how well they know their subject. A writer who is also a good historian is more interesting. Doris Kearns Goodwin, Ron Chernow, and David McCollough come to mind. Sara Vowell’s bordering-on-cranky histories are simply fun to read. I pick up her writing with great anticipation. Really, who else could write Assassination Vacation or Lafayette in the Somewhat United States? As with all good relationships, the conversation between the reader and the author takes time. If it seems that there is even some possibility after fifty pages, I move forward. If not, the book goes back to the library of moves on to a tiny library or Half Price Books. Life is too short to read what is to me, bad writing.