Dr. Metablog

Dr. Metablog is the nom de blague of Vivian de St. Vrain, the pen name of a resident of the mountain west who writes about language, books, politics, or whatever else comes to mind. Under the name Otto Onions (Oh NIGH uns), Vivian de St. Vrain is the author of “The Big Book of False Etymologies” (Oxford, 1978) and, writing as Amber Feldhammer, is editor of the classic anthology of confessional poetry, “My Underwear” (Virago, 1997).

DR. METABLOG’S
GREATEST HITS

  • Wisdom — Part 1

    Now that I'm eighty (80!) years old, it's time to think about what, if anything,  I've learned. For many years now, I've been waiting for wisdom to kick in, but so far, no thunderbolts or grand illuminations. Yet I seem to have accumulated a number of maxims and cliches, which leads to the dispiriting conclusion that perhaps there's no difference between ordinary commonplaces and sophisticated wisdom. On the other hand, it is undeniably the case that I am a different person now than I was twenty or forty or sixty years ago, so perhaps all these years have produced some changes in attitude and behavior. What follows is the first installment of either "wisdom" or "commonplaces" — take your pick.

    Although it is true that there are psychopaths and sociopaths, there are very few of them. Almost all the people I've known over the years have been poor struggling mortals, like myself, trying to act decently and respectably. The difficult people with whom I've had to deal are pathetic rather than villainous. They act badly because of their own inadequacies, anxieties and fear, not because they are innately vicious. A surprising number of people have endured dreadful traumas and most of them have recovered to live satisfactory lives. There are some poor souls who compensate badly. They cause pain to us, but more to themselves. It's not true that to know everything is to excuse everything, but knowing people's stories certainly helps you to become more empathetic and understanding. My younger self was much harsher and less compassionate toward difficult people than my present self.

    Genuine understanding between individuals is difficult and misunderstanding is rife. It's hard to translate what's in your head to your friend or neighbor, and just as hard to understand what's in someone else's head by words alone. If you're going to be surprised because someone misunderstood you, then you're going to spend half your entire lifetime in a state of dreadful shock. Although irony and understatement are most useful figures of speech, beware of them. There's nothing more awkward (and sometimes dangerous) than an ironic remark that is taken seriously, or a serious remark that is understood ironically. A meaningful exchange of ideas or insights can't be brief, because it takes time for a shred or glimmer of understanding to grow and ripen. If you want to have a real friend, make the time. Understanding someone else's brain is akin to Zeno's Paradox;  you get halfway there but you never get all the way.  

    Everyone is engaged in "presentation of self." You meet someone new, and they tell you about themselves, but they're not really doing so in any profound way. They're not trying to. They're acting out the "presentation" that they've devised over the years. They offer you a handful of anecdotes which they think represent themselves. But the fun and the satisfaction only begins when that first mask drops away. In order to know someone, you have to ask a question that is not truly intrusive but manages to take your new friend (or old friend, for that matter), a hair's breadth apart from their usual style of presentation. Sometimes it's not worth the effort,  but there are occasions when it can precipitate a worthwhile friendship. Too many conversations are not exchanges of information.  A says something from his repertoire of self-presentations; then B, impatiently waiting his turn to talk about himself, responds with a nugget from his own store. No genuine communication takes place. This kind of exchange is disappointing and almost useless. We all generate these forms of presentation partly as a defense against revealing too much of ourselves and becoming vulnerable, and because we all have our own follies and weaknesses. So we act a role. The further the contrived role is from the true self, the more transparent and even offensive it becomes. It's hard for people to be true to themselves;  it takes work.  

    More wisdom (or commonplaces) coming soon. Stay tuned.

  • Other People’s Lives

    Three times in the last few weeks I've had the opportunity to drop into other people's lives.

    The most recent was a visit to the Mountain Men Rendezvous in Antonito, New Mexico.

    "Rendezvous," you ask?  In the 1830s, fur trappers gathered in various places in western North America to sell their furs and purchase supplies for the coming year. According to the story, they drank themselves silly, fornicated as much as possible, and played at various games and sports to pass the time while they waited for the wagons to arrive from St. Louis. Modern re-enactors dress in 1820s costumes, and, at least in Antonito, engage in knife and "hawk" (tomahawk) throwing contests. 

    It was a world taken very seriously by the mountain men and their ladies. But strange, even otherworldly to me. I learned about the proper size of a hawk and how muzzle loading rifles work and I handled an elaborately beaded pouch made out of a bull's scrotum, owned by our host, whose "mountain name" was Long Tongue. But no liquor at this gathering. Lemonade only, I'm glad to say. I wouldn't have been comfortable with all those knives and hawks whizzing around if the guys and gals had been addled with alcohol.

    And also : a few weeks ago, in New Orleans, we shared lunch with the Lords of Leather. A scary, in-your-face name, but a more welcoming group of men I've rarely met. Some were costumed, but most of them looked like a bunch of accountants enjoying a weekend cookout. No doubt their fellowship engaged private matters that I don't know about and wouldn't understand. Lives very different from mine.

    Also in New Orleans, we attended a "ball."  Not a ball that involves dancing — more of a pageant, a display of elaborate costuming. It was sponsored by the Krewe of Iris, a group of women who roll their pageant wagons (floats) during Mardi Gras. We costumed ourselves for the ball — fancy long dress and tuxedo. The members of the Krewe a) take it all very seriously, and b) know that it's silly and c) take it seriously nonetheless.

    There must be thousands of these cultures and sub-cultures in our rich and various nation. I'm happy to have participated, a bit, in these worlds.

    And I wonder, of course, how strange and exotic my life and culture, bland and ordinary to me, might seem to some of the mountain men and leather-lords and Iris ladies.

  • A Sunday Morning Conversation

    He:  "These allergies are getting me down.  Every morning I seem to wake up with a liter of mucus in my nose. There's so much I should probably save it and put in the garden. It would be good for the soil."

    She:  "Yes, we could save it one of those nice plastic jars that the Talenti ice cream comes in."

    He:  "It might be a problem on the plane. 'What's that in the jar, sir.'  "It's a pint of my snot. I'm taking it to Vermont to put in the garden.'  ' Er, do you want to step over here, sir.'

    She:  "Perhaps we should re-think this."

    He:  "It's a good thing that we know each other pretty well. If I had said to you, five years ago when we first met, 'Hi, my name is…  I'm thinking of saving my snot and taking it to Vermont,' it would have ended the relationship right there."

    She:  "Yes, you were very wise to have waited five years to mention it. Very tactful."

  • Little Jimmy Hurt his Arm, by Ralph Ganesha Jefferson

    Today's contribution, Little Jimmy Hurt his Arm, was written by Ralph Ganesha Jefferson, the author of the best-selling children's book Leonardo, the Enlightened Lion (2017).

    "Little Jimmy hurt his arm.

    He said to his mother, my arm hurts. His mother said, let us pray over it. So they prayed.

    But it still hurt.

    So his mother took him to the wise women at the end of the street. She prescribed CBD oil. Jimmy's mother rubbed CBD oil on his arm.

    But it still hurt.

    So his mother took him to a psychotherapist. He gave Jimmy some anti-anxiety pills. Jimmy took them.

    But his arm still hurt.

    So his mother took him to a reflexologist, then to a Kirlian analyst, then to an aromatherapist. Jimmy did what they advised.

    But his arm still hurt.

    Then Jimmy said, 'why don't we go to a doctor.'  

    So they went to a doctor. And the doctor said to Jimmy, "Your arm is broken."  The doctor set the bone and put it in a cast.  

    Jimmy's arm stopped hurting.

    And then the doctor said, "While you're here, why don't I give you a measles shot?"  And he did.

  • The Comancheros (1961)

    This reprehensible film aspires to be an "inconsequential romp," as one reviewer suggests, but fails to meet even that exceedingly low bar.

    If a viewer could swallow the buddy-movie plot (Stuart Whitman as a New Orleans card shark and John Wayne as John Wayne), he'd still have to deal with Nehemiah Persoff as a brutal Mexican gang-and-cult leader and Ina Balin (the worst actress Brooklyn has ever produced) as his spitfire daughter. And also embrace the dubious proposition that the road from New Orleans to Galveston goes through picturesque southern Utah. And many other improbabilities.

    Ok, so the film is one big joke, a comedy masquerading as a western, or vice versa.

    But if the film is a "romp," then how in the world can we justify its treatment of Indians?

    In The Comancheros, Indians have three functions. The first is to be constantly drunk and constantly in search of whiskey. It offers a truly horrible, inexcusable scene in which a renowned chief falls drunkenly into his soup. Amusing? Not to any person with a modicum of fellow feeling. The second purpose that Indians serve is to be cruel: they torture and scalp. Their third purpose is to be cannon-fodder. Scores, perhaps a hundred are remorselessly cut down by our white friends. Not a one of them is awarded a trace of individuality — though, as is the custom in such films, they get to fall picturesquely from rocky overlooks or be dragged by the foot in the stirrup when they are shot off their horses.

    Even worse than these atrocities is a scene in which a bedraggled, impoverished line of hollow-eyed Indians, this time including women and children, trudge dejectedly across the landscape. A mini Trail of Tears. Not to worry, says John Wayne, they're "tame Indians." "Tame" means defeated, reduced to poverty, neglected, dehumanized. Tame as cows or dogs. It's a painful image, hard to ignore or to forget. 

    I imagine that we're supposed to say, Oh, this was 1961, we know better now. But by 1961, John Ford had made a few movies in which Indians were depicted with not a lot, but a bit of humanity. The Comancheros was reactionary and unenlightened even it its day, we have to admit, and embodied a transparently racist ideology. It's treatment of our fellow but slightly different humans is grotesque and unforgivable.

    Criminal, in fact. It is nothing less than a excuse and justification for genocide. Not inconsequential at all. 

    According to the story, Michael Curtiz set out to direct the film, but fell ill and withdrew. The actual direction was under the control of John Wayne himself, so it is at his feet that this appalling monster must lie.

  • Book Report: The End of Innocence

    I don't read much fiction, but when I do, it's usually one of the 19th-century classics. However, the "international bestseller" The End of Innocence (2016) by Benedict Wells came highly recommended, so I gave it a shot. It's pretty good, not bad, not great, and certainly a novel for today and not for all time — not even for the next decade. It's thin, simple. 

    Egomaniac that I am, I was less interested in the novel itself than I was in my own reaction to it, which was, in a couple of words, both resistant and resentful. 

    Why the hostility,  I ask myself?  

    In the first place, it's a novel without any sense of style. Perhaps it's the translator's fault, but gosh, it's written in the prose of a bad TV journalist. And second, it's ruthlessly manipulative. The the back-cover blurb, boasts "tear jerker." And so it is, shamelessly. Jules, the first-person narrator, loses his parents in an auto accident, is sent to a boarding school that is depicted as a quasi-penitentiary, is abandoned by his two siblings, suffers from paralyzing guilt, and when he finally marries, has to watch his wife die from cancer (a sequence which is narrated in extended, unnecessary detail).  

    I suppose these disasters might have been handled with enough circumspection and integrity to teach us something about the human condition. But no, only to wring a couple of tears from our reluctant eyes. And then the too easily won upbeat ending — goodness gracious! 

    Some parts, but not enough of them, rang true. The family dynamics among the siblings was complicated enough to generate some heft.

    Here's a single instance, one of many, to which I objected: a late middle-age writer suffers from Alzheimer's. Our hero, Jules, puts a gun in the man's hands, then walks away and hears the report of the weapon. He never confesses that he assisted in the death, and suffers no psychological ramifications from doing so. Peculiar, especially since the dead man was his rival for the love of his soon-to-be wife. I think most people would agree that assisting in a suicide is a fraught act and that a novelist neglects his duty and cheats his readers when he fails to acknowledge and explore its effects. A major, compromising misstep by Mr.Wells.  

    So there it is, in little: disappointed, exploited and cheated. Not a good feeling to take away from a novel.

    But I wonder at myself. The most manipulative novelist of all times is Charles Dickens, whose writing  I revere. Dickens is on a level several orders of magnitude more tearjerkery than Wells could possibly imagine, grasp, or emulate. How can it be that I embrace Dickens and reject Wells?

  • Old Words New to Me

    A "col" is the lowest point of a ridge between two peaks; a "barmkin" or "barnekin" is a walled courtyard; a "carr" is a fen or wetland overgrown with trees;  a "bauchling" (mostly Scots) is a reproaching or taunting in order to dare an adversary to fight; a "bastle" is a fortified farmhouse; a "cantref" (plural "cantrefi") was a medieval Welsh division or hundred of land; a "skurr" is a shed; a "warble" is a lookout mountain; a "garth" is a dike of sand and pebbles devised to catch fish; a "pele" tower is a small fortified keep or tower, such as this one: 

    A "dubb" is a deep hole in a bog; a "pune" is a quasi-legal reprisal short of revenge; a "terret" is a a metal loop on a harness, guiding the reins and preventing snags. Here's a 1st century Romano-British enamel terret:

    All of these beauties come from Graham Robb's The Debatable Land (2018), an exploration of the land that lay between the ancient Damnonii, Selgovae, and Votadini and remained a territory disputed by England and Scotland into early modern times.

  • The State of Ornithology in the Seventeenth Century

    I've just read Tim Birkhead's biography of The Wonderful Mr Willoughby, The First True Ornithologist (London, 2018). Birkhead's thesis is that Francis Willoughby was not merely a bird watcher, but an innovative, diligent, and imaginative scientist, the founder of a new area of knowledge. 

    Ornithology when Willoughby (1635 –1672) started to look at birds was astonishingly primitive. For example, students did not even agree that birds migrated. Perhaps, as Aristotle had suggested, they hid in holes during the winter. Perhaps they transmuted from a species that departed to a species that arrived. With no observers in southern lands and no rapid communication, it's not surprising that it was hard to imagine that birds flew south in the fall and returned in the spring. Even now, when all is revealed, migration still seems, at least to me, to be mysterious, miraculous, and wondrously improbable. 

    Before the "new philosophy put all in doubt," the assumption that governed all "science" was that the natural world should be studied for evidence of divine wisdom — a practice which blinkered understanding and limited speculation. The questions that people asked about birds were therefore not particularly challenging. They asked which ones were good to eat, which ones could be kept in cages, and which ones had medicinal value. 

    The first task of new ornithology was simply to take a census. What birds live here, by what names are they called, and how should they be classified?  In the non-standardized late medieval world, most birds bore regional or demotic names, and sometimes the same name was attached two or more species of birds. It took a while before the ars-foot came to be recognized and conventionalized as the great-crested grebe and to earn the official designation Podiceps cristatus. It was the same with the such regionally-named birds as the annet, bald buzzard, the Bohemian chatterer, the copped douker, the coulterneb, the didapper, the dun-diver, the fern-owl, the flusher, the gid, the glead, the gorcock, the ox-eye, the pickmire, the puit, the puttock, the pyrag, the rock ouzel, the scarf, the skout, and the witwall?  It remained to be demonstrated that the "yarwhelp" "was in fact the East Anglian name for the bar-tailed godwit and was to be distinguished from the similar black-tailed godwit." That the sea-pie was an oystercatcher. That the elegug was a guillemot. "The sea-swallows they there (on Caldey Island) call spurs, and the razor-bills are called elegugus…. This name elelgug some attribute to the puffin, and some to the guillem[ot];  indeed they know not what they mean by this name." Nomenclature was a thicket.

    Willoughby was an energetic surveyor and classifier. But as he became more familiar with bird life, he started to ask questions of genuine scientific interest. What is the function of the tomial tooth? Do all birds of the same species have the same color iris? How many birds have rictal bristles? Do birds who lay two eggs produce one male and one female? Do female birds ever have two ovaries and two oviducts? Can birds hold on to their eggs at will, or are they laid involuntarily? How do birds survive the cold of winter? Why do birds molt?

    While these are not necessarily the questions of a modern ornithologist, they certainly represent a new beginning. Many thanks to Birkhead for bringing Willoughby to our attention.

    How sad that the first true ornithologist died at age thirty-six. 

    Image result for francis willoughby birds

     

     

  • Blood Test

    I cooled my heels for more than an hour waiting for a "blood draw." Why so long? There was no long line of people ahead of me. Was it simply that the department was understaffed? That they all went out for ice cream? Or were the blood-collectors, the vampires, gossiping and lazing about behind the curtain? 

    I was miffed.

    But it wasn't long before I transitioned from passive miff to active glare. Now, "glaring" is a powerful, if ineffective, way to deal with such inconveniences. I think that my powerglare was beginning to get the attention of the poor schlub sitting at the desk pretending to ignore me. 

    But let me confess that there's a danger inherent in the glare, because if your lower lip quivers ever so slightly, you're no longer glaring, you're pouting. Of course I didn't want to be seen as a pouter. So I concentrated all my energy into my glare. I think I had it under control, but after a while, without making a conscious decision to do so, I escalated from glaring to seething.

    The seethe is more difficult to express than the glare. You can glare with just your eyes, but you have to put your whole body into the seethe. For proper seething, you have to cross your arms and hunch over. And once you're in that posture, you can then begin to move from seething to simmering. But you must be careful not to be perceived as sulking. 

    And then on to fuming. Fuming is very like seething and simmering — the same hunched body posture — but accompanied with heavy breathing and an occasional, intermittent through-the-teeth hiss. You've got to make sure that your hiss is a true angry hiss and not a pathetic sniffle.

    From fuming it was only a short step to boiling, which came at about the 55 minute mark.

    Good thing my name was called on the hour, because I was just about to blow my top.  

  • The Toaster

    When I downsized into my present residence in 2009, a few essential items disappeared, among them a venerable but excellent toaster. I did not replace it because I was distracted by more pressing matters. I went toasterless for almost five years.  

    Later, when I entered into a tentative new relationship, toasterlessness became a matter of concern. Toast was an essential item in the diet of my new lady friend. For a while, before she began to spend nights with me, she would daily transport in bag or backpack — along with toiletries and toothbrush and changes of undergarments — her glamorous red enamel Cuisinart toaster.  

    That this arrangement was comic became immediately apparent. No one can carry a toaster from one home to another day after day without feeling the irony. 

    As our relationship solidified, it became clear that something had to be done, toasterwise. And so we came to realize that it was time to progress to a stable two-toaster situation. 

    The Cuisinart went back to its original home and off we went to McGuckin's Hardware. There we acquired a Proctor Silex, with which we have lived until a short while ago.  

    I don't want to badmouth the Proctor Silex, but let's face it, it's a cheap lightweight contraption with too much plastic and a tendency to leak crumbs over the counter. A paucity of knobs and controls. It's an entry-level toaster, a "starter toaster." A provisional toaster that lacked the dignity that our maturing connection demanded.

    So yesterday, at Peppercorn on the semi-famous Boulder Mall, we purchased a superior toaster — a highly-recommended, weighty and substantial Breville two-slicer equipped with "Lift and Lock" and other bells and whistles (which we will no doubt some day master), the upper grill of which is inscribed with the comforting motto, "BAGELS FACE INWARDS." A toaster of heft and permanence. It's sitting proudly on the counter now.

    Moreover, we purchased it with our new joint credit card.

     

  • Amnesia on Film: Dead Again (1991)

    Usually the amnesia is the hardest bit to swallow. The amnesia in Dead Again is particularly unpalatable, because Emma Thompson shows up at a Catholic orphanage without any memory nor with any ability to speak. No explanation is ever offered for her disease, not a grain. No cracking the skull, no mysterious drugs, no trauma, nothing. Just a little all-purpose Hollywood-style amnesia to get the plot rolling.

    But spontaneous amnesia slides down the esophagus rather easily compared to hypnotically-induced past-life regression, huge trenchers of which we're expected to bolt and guzzle. I couldn't do it and the film became ridiculous and ridiculously baroque, gimmicky, inhuman. A waste of Kenneth Branagh's extraordinary talent. And the music –portentous, dictatorial, distracting. 

    I saw this movie when it first appeared, in 1991, and liked it. What was I thinking?  My salad days, when I was green in judgment. 

  • Another Film Written by Lenore J. Coffee

    The Great Lie.jpg

    It's hard to say how much of The Great Lie (1939) is original to its screenwriter Lenore J. Coffee. In the first place, the film is adapted from a novel, and secondly, at least according to the story, its stars Bette Davis and Mary Astor were unhappy with the screenplay and rewrote much of it. But how much? Nevertheless, in The Great Lie, as in Sudden Fear  and Lightning Strikes Twice, two other films written by Coffee, the heart of the matter is a head-to-head struggle between two strong women. In this film it's Sandra, (Mary Astor) and Maggie (Bette Davis) who go to the mat about first, a husband, who is apparently married to both of them (don't ask!) and then, a baby boy. Maggie (Bette) winds up with both husband and child, but it's touch and go for most of the film. I wish I could say that Coffee's dialog was brilliant, but not so. It's a serviceable, competent screenplay. George Brent, playboy and drunkard, isn't nearly as desirable a husband and father as the film asks us to believe. Not much of an actor, either. 

    Mary Astor won an Oscar and well-deserved it; she steals the show. It's ironic, and it may be significant, that Mary Astor herself had been involved in a child-custody case several years before this film was made.

    The music (by Max Steiner) is noteworthy — mood-appropriate variations on themes from Tchaikovsky's first piano concerto.

    Hattie McDaniel does as much with the stereotypical "colored" maid as an actress could be expected to do, but her scenes are still painful and embarrassing to watch.

  • What I Wore to the Oscars (2019)

    Actually, I didn't go TO the awards ceremony. This is what I wore to watch the Oscars on TV. Well, that's not entirely true either. I forgot to watch the Oscars. But I did wear the outfit.

    My ensemble: plaid wool shirt by Woolrich; trousers by Lee (regular cut — "smoky quartz" color); white cotton "Gold Toe" socks by Costco; shoes by Hoka (with orthopedic inserts by Dr. Scholl); genuine leather belt by SlideBelts; foundational undergarments by Fruit of the Loom and Carhartt; denim jacket by American Apparel. Accessories: eyeglasses by Kirkland Signature; hearing aids by Phonak. Traditional baseball cap by Otto ("one size fits most").

    Hair by Joe.

    Once again, I'd like to thank all the little people — my fashion consultants, suppliers, and supporters — for their imagination and hard work. I couldn't have done it without the entire team.

  • Inferior and Superior Street Names

    Among its other attractions. New Orleans (where I happen to be at this moment of writing) is a city blessed with street and avenue names that are both unusual, particular to the city, and glorious: Basin, Burgundy (accent on the gund), Calliope (three syllables), Desire, Dryades, Felicity, Frenchmen, Poydras, Prytania, Rampart, and of course Tchoupitoulas. Just a few to get the conversation started.

    These names are elegant. No wonder I suffer from a desperate inferiority complex concerning the names of the streets on which I've lived. East 9th Street, West 91 Street, 9th Street, 10th Street. Designations without character — gray and boring. No resonance, no power. Bland.

    Of course it hasn't been all bad: I once lived for a transitory summer (1961) on Snyder Hill Road — a semi-poetic name that gestures at rurality.

    I knew a guy who was raised on Old Oaken Bucket Road. I was initially dazzled — until I learned that his neighbors had petitioned the city for a name change — his street had formerly been called Third Avenue or Smith Road or something of that ilk. So it was not a real name — it was pseudo-historical kitsch. What suburban pretension! What a comedown! I'd have blushed with embarrassment if I had to admit that I lived on Old Oaken Bucket Road. It's almost as bad as Christmas Tree Drive (a real street in Boulder, Colorado, to the everlasting disgrace, nomenclature-wise, of our city).

    But now in this latter end of my life, I've achieved onomastic eminence. For half the year I live on Walnut Street, a name that is the epitome of small city authenticity (though it would be slightly better if there were an actual walnut tree anywhere nearby). And of summers I'm at Hackett Hill Road, which is just perfectly titled, and even more perfect because there are numerous Hacketts in our local cemetery and because, fifty years ago, I met aged Edna Hackett, the last survivor of the family that gave its name to hill and road.

  • Cookie Lavagetto’s Teeth

    Approaching 80, I've been studying the Brooklyn Eagle for the date of my birth, March 11, 1939. "War and war's alarms" dominate the news, but nevertheless day-to-day life in Brooklyn was reassuringly perennial. Here's a highlight from the Around the Town column:
     
    "One of the features at the Montauk Club's 50th anniversary dinner tonight will be the lyrics written by Dr. J. L. McAteer. The genial dentist wrote all the lyrics for the show and they are expected to be quite something."
     
    I have to confess that although I spent the first 17 years of my life in Brooklyn, I had never heard of the Montauk Club. But it exists! It was formed in 1890 and it's still there — housed in a fancy Venetian Gothic building in Park Slope.
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    But it's not the Montauk Club that's the subject of this paragraph — it's the "genial dentist" and lyricist J. T. McAteer who has quite something in store for us. "Around the Town" continues:  "Dr James McAteer is the dentist for the Brooklyn  Baseball Club and examines the teeth of each and every player on the club.  Seems that Business Manager Larry McPhail is fussy about it and insists on x-rays at least once each year. As far as McAteer is concerned, infielder Cookie Lavagetto has a perfect set of teeth, while good ones are owned by pitcher Van Mungo and infielder Johnny Hudson."

    So now we know. Cookie Lavagetto had perfect teeth! What a revelation. Information that has been hidden for 80 years. Everyone knows that Lavagetto broke up Bill Bevan's 1947 World Series no-hitter with a double off the Ebbets Field scoreboard. But who knew a damn thing about his choppers?  This is neglected news of historic proportions. 

    And it makes a guy wonder about the other players on the team (aside from those with semi-perfect teeth — the legendary Van Lingle Mungo and unknown-to-me Johnny Hudson). Were other Dodger teeth cavity-filled, crooked, misshapen, stained with tobacco juice, busted, false, even missing. No wonder the '39 Dodgers were so bad. Twenty-five players and only three to write home about, teeth-wise.

    So here they are, the fabulous teeth of Cookie Lavagetto, bright and shiny, glistening at us over the years (I'm sorry but I couldn't find a picture of Cookie's molars).

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  • Two Films Written by Lenore J. Coffee

    Lenore Coffee, born in 1897, wrote 50 or more silent films and any number of studio productions in the 30s, 40s and 50s. Her most notable achievement at Warner Brothers was the Oscar-nominated screenplay for Four Daughters, co-written with Julius J. Epstein in 1938. Epstein, with his twin brother Philip and Howard Koch, wrote Casablanca. Four Daughters is not on Netflix and not conveniently available, but I'll continue to search.  

    In 1951, Coffee wrote Lightning Strikes Twice, directed by King Vidor and starring Ruth Roman and Richard Todd. In 1952, she authored Sudden Fear, directed by David Miller, which won both Joan Crawford and Jack Palance Oscar nominations. Both films are well worth watching 

    Lightning Strikes Twice starts out as though it will center on Richard Trevelyan (Richard Todd), who has just been released from prison after a jury failed to convict him for the murder of his then wife, one juror dissenting. But it rapidly becomes Shelley Carnes' (Ruth Roman) movie. It's refreshing to see a film in which a strong woman shows "agency" but I have to admit that it is a little disappointing when she falls under the romantic spell of Richard Todd, who is supposed to be charismatic and sexual but who to me is an unappealing block of wood. Trevelyan's guilt or innocence is the nominal subject but the film focuses on the struggle between two women (Ruth Roman and Mercedes McCambridge) who seek his affection. It's a noir-y melodrama with a startling conclusion. 

    Sudden Fear is the stronger of the two films. Once again, a conflict between two women: Joan Crawford, a rich successful playwright, and Gloria Grahame, an on-the-make unscrupulous hoyden. This time the hypotenuse of their triangle is Jack Palance, who is more expressive than Richard Todd could ever be, and a heck of a lot scarier. Joan Crawford has some fine moments: when she realizes that she's been duped by a gold-digging husband who plans to murder her, she registers terror, thoughtfulness, resistance and finally resolve using only her eyes. Unfortunately her intricate plan to save herself goes awry. There are some unanticipated and surprising twists in the complicated plot.   

    My guess is that the censors intervened between the author's original conception and the eventual portrayal, in which Palance and Grahame are disposed of in such a way that Crawford is left without responsibility and without guilt. I would have been much more satisfied if Coffee had let Crawford kill her antagonists with that neat little silver revolver. Revenge would have been all the sweeter.

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  • How My Mother Did Laundry (Written For My Grandchildren)

    Old washboard Stock Photo

     
    This, young 'uns, is a picture of a washboard. It's an object that you might have happened upon in an antique store or a museum. The washboard — this one is made of metal, like the one I remember from my childhood, but they could be made of glass or even wood — sat in the "laundry sink," which was filled with hot soapy water. You scrubbed your clothes on the washboard. It might be hard for you to believe, but when I was a youngster there was no such thing as a washing machine. It came later — in our house, sometime in the early 50s, just a little after the refrigerator replaced the icebox. The washboard pictured above was cutting-edge technology in the 40s.
     
    What was a "laundry sink"?  At 539 East 9 Street, and I think in most regular-people homes, the kitchen sink had two parts — a shallow basin for everyday use, and a second basin, deeper and wider, for dirty clothes. In some houses, the laundry sink was made of soapstone or concrete, but ours was porcelain.
     
    Every Thursday was "wash day," which meant that my mother spent the entire day, dawn to dusk, doing the laundry, sometimes with the aid of a hired woman, but more often with the help of her mother, my grandmother, who lived just around the corner but spent wash day with us. It was a two-person job. Clothes were soaked, scrubbed on the washboard, rinsed, squeezed, then hung on the outside line to dry. Then, after a few hours, taken down and ironed. Sheets and pillowcases, if I remember correctly, were washed every week; blankets periodically.
     
    It was a difficult task, but I don't think anyone ever recognized how arduous it was. It was just the way things were. Women, as everyone knew, "did laundry." I am positive that I never thought to lift a finger to help, though I wonder, if my sister had survived, whether she would have been recruited to do so. Certainly, I never saw my father participate, not in the slightest. If my mother ever complained, she never did so in my hearing. "Wash day" customs were immutable, or seemed to be so. Gender relations in the world of my youth are embarrassing to recall.
     
    Then, sometime around 1950, came the wringer-washer.
     
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    Now no more hand squeezing. Clothes were washed in the tub, then fed through the mechanical wringer, which consisted of two rubber cylinders which were turned with a crank. The pressure squeezed out the water, eliminating the need for hand wringing. It was a great step forward. We owned a wringer-washer, portable, that had to be wheeled into place and connected to the kitchen faucets. It was a scary machine because a child had to worry that his mother's fingers would be accidentally wrung.   
     
    Sometime later (I can't remember exactly when) came the washing machine with a spin cycle. I remember that when I worked at the Sears Roebuck warehouse starting in 1957, that Sears sold and delivered many of them, so they must have appeared hard on the heels of the brief flowering of the wringer washer. 
     
    In retrospect, I don't think there's an innovation that contributed more to the revolution in housework and therefore to the revolution in women's work and status than the washing machine.  
     
    This morning I did my laundry. Two minutes to put the dirty clothes in the washing machine and another 30 seconds to transfer the clean clothes into the dryer. That's it.
     
    Let us therefore pause to appreciate the luxury and convenience of contemporary laundering. And let us pause also to appreciate our hard-working mothers and grandmothers.

  • Man of the West (1958)

    Judging by its almost-allegorical title, Man of the West claims, or seems to claim, that Link Jones, its conflicted protagonist, represents something fundamental and archetypical about the American western experience. And indeed it does, if Mr. Jones, played by rugged stalwart Gary Cooper, is to be judged by his exceedingly laconic manner, his resourcefulness, his fundamental decency, his initial aversion to gun play and ultimate resort to violence. 

    But in my opinion the title Man of the West is misleading. Man of the West is a noir in chaps and ten-gallon hat. Its western-ness is superficial. It's noirness is essential and real.

    Here's what we've got: a reformed criminal trying to go straight who can't escape his past; a crazed egomaniacal gang leader (played here by Lee J. Cobb but James Cagney would have been a better choice); a dance hall singer who's been mistreated by a succession of men even though she's got a good heart; a bank robbery that goes south and gang members who turn upon each other. No cowboys, no Indians, no horses, no cavalry. Not even a rattlesnake curling around the heroine's shoe who is shot by our hero. Scares her temporarily, but she's grateful.

    The film was written by Reginald Rose of Twelve Angry Men fame; it was directed by Anthony Mann (Side Street). Take away the cowboy hats and substitute fedoras and you could call it Man of the East. 

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  • Street Talk

    On East 9th Street, and probably in other parts of Brooklyn, a manhole cover was called a "sewer." I don't know why. Ignorance, perhaps. As far as I know, manhole covers provided entrance to electrical work and other utilities, not to watercourses. Openings to the sewers that were located along the channel next to the curb were also called sewers. A sewer was also a unit of distance. "He can hit a spaldeen three sewers." It was not a scientifically accurate form of measurement.  

    A "gutter" is in most parts of the country a channel for water. On East 9th Street, the word "gutter" referred to the street's entire asphalted area, not just the area near the curb. "Hey, kids, keep out of the gutter. You'll get hurt."

    "Stoop" referred to the stairs leading up to the porch. In "stoop ball," you throw your spaldeen at the stoop and catch it on the rebound.  Five points for a grounder, ten points for a fly ball, twenty points for a "pointer."

    I don't think there was a specific name for what is here called the "park front area"– the space between the sidewalk and the curb.  Nor a word for "curb cut." which was considered, linguistically, as a section of a driveway.

    East 9th Street had a wonderful tree canopy. In retrospect, I can identify and recall a very large sycamore and a series of Norway maples, but the only trees that had names were a trio of huge old elms which were called "Mickey's trees." I have no idea why they were so called nor do I know who was this Mickey of famous memory. The elms were cut down in the late 40s (Dutch elm disease) —  a tremendous loss to East 9th Street. 

  • An Unpleasant Cortelyou Road Memory

    Let's say I was thirteen, so this event would have occurred on or our about 1952. I had brought my Raleigh 3-speed to the Cortelyou Road bicycle repair shop which was between East 13th and East 14th. The shop was run by a small, fair, heavily-accented German man who was perhaps 50 years old. He was assisted by his father, an older and smaller, wizened, bald man who must have been in his 80s. Mr. Hart and Mr. Hart.The older Mr. Hart, whom in my adolescent wisdom I thought of as a gnome, was working on my bike — replacing an inner tube or adjusting the gears (which were fragile and frequently busted). A group of three middle-aged women gathered on the sidewalk in front of the shop, chatting. Mr. Hart the elder, the gnome, didn't like it. He looked up from his work and muttered to me, "A real hen-party."  A few minutes later, he said, as if he owned the sidewalk, "they're still there. Hen party." 

    I had never heard the expression "hen party" but I knew it was a slur. A piece of anti-woman bigotry. I mean, what was the problem with three women talking on a public street? 

    But what disturbed me was that Mr. Hart took it for granted that I was on his side — that we were linked by our maleness, our roosterness, against hens. I knew (in language that did not at that point exist), that I was being "co-opted."  But although I was uneasy, I was able to offer only silent resistance. I failed. Later I learned to challenge such mini-bigotries but at this point in life I was much too young, too unsure. 

    Of all the events that occurred in 1952, this trivial encounter is one that clings and needs to be exorcised. 

    But it is such experiences that shape us. As David Copperfield says, "Trifles make the sum of life."

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