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

  • Canyon Passage (1946)

    In our tour of classic western movies, we watched Canyon Passage (1946), directed by Jacques Tourneur, who is famous for the noir masterpiece Out of the Past (1947). Canyon Passage is a good substantial film and it's got everything a frontier drama should have: a cabin raising, a saloon in which a poker game is perpetually in progress, gold mines, muddy streets, Indians (unsympathetically depicted as mere murderous savages), gun fights, bar brawls, lovely landscapes, and Andy Devine. 

    At its emotional heart is a mighty curious three-way relationship between Dana Andrews as Logan Stuart, an upstanding entrepreneur; Brian Donlevy as George Camrose, a banker/gambler, and Susan Hayward as Susan Hayward. Hayward is engaged to George but attracted to Logan. She doesn't seem to know what is made obvious to us, that George is a compulsive gambler, a wastrel, an embezzler, a serious flirt, and eventually a murderer. Why Hayward, or Lucy as she's sometimes called, doesn't see him for what he is puzzles us. It's an even greater mystery that Logan Stuart, who knows George's faults, remains loyal — even, at one point, risking his life and imperiling his reputation to break his friend out of prison. 

    The oddest scene is one in which George gives his fiancee Lucy a tepid kiss. He turns to Logan and says, "Can you do better?" Logan takes the challenge and kisses his friend's fiancee; he wins — she clearly responds less to her intended than to his friend. What are we to make of this?  It seems borderline pervy. Is there a suggestion that the men are closer, more "friendly"  than the conventions of the western film ordinarily allow?  Or are Logan and George more than just good ol'  loyal buddies?

    After George is killed, Logan and Lucy wind up together, but more for convenience than passion, or so it seems to suspicious ol' me.  

  • Notting Hill (1990), Two on a Tower (1882)

    We watched Notting Hill, a cute 1999 "rom-com" or "date movie" with cute couple Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts. (It's hard to believe that the film is almost twenty years old. It's so slight and fluffy that I can't remember whether or not I saw it last millennium, but frankly, it wouldn't make much difference one way or the other.)  In Notting HIll, Julia Roberts plays a pricey celebrity actress ($15,000,000 a film) who happens to wander into Hugh Grant's tiny bookstore and — a few cute scenes later — into his tiny Notting Hill bedroom. It's a slight, unconvincing fairy-tale of a film and I'm giving away no secrets when I say that the cute apparently- mismatched couple not only overcome all psychological obstacles and class anxieties in order to marry but that also, in the cute coda scene, when she's lying in his lap on a bench in the park, she's well along in her pregnancy. Ah love! Ah romance! Ah idealized domesticity! Ah cuteness!

    Cynic that I am, I'm curious whether she's crammed herself into his narrow digs (and displaced his second-banana roommate) or whether she's purchased the biggest finest mansion in the upscale Notting Hill neighborhood and moved the new husband into it. And closed down the bookstore. The film is wise to sidestep concerns of such dreary ordinariness. 

    Notting Hill is a rip-off and inversion of Pretty Woman (1990), in which Julia Roberts was poor and Hugh Grant was Richard Gere, a mega-billionaire. Notting Hill might just as easily have been called Pretty Man – it's that close a parallel. Only without the shopping.  

    And Notting Hill, though upscale, is no Rodeo Drive. It's a neighborhood that has gone through a number of transformations. Once famous for its piggeries, by the middle of the 19th century, it was on the way up. In 1862, when Thomas Hardy left Dorchester and his Wessex homeland to apprentice himself as an architect, he took up residence in Notting HIll's recently constructed Westbourne Park Villas. And there in Notting Hill he wrote his first novel, never published and now lost, called with the remarkably appropriate Hugh-and-Julia title of The Poor Man and the Lady. 

    Lower class boy and upper class girl was a perennial theme in Hardy's novels. An obsession, in fact. By coincidence, I'd just finished reading — on the same day as I watched Notting Hill — one of Hardy's most thorough explorations of the poor-rich theme — his novel Two on a Tower (1882).

    No idyllic pregnancy in the park in the Hardy universe.

    In Two on a Tower, Lady Constantine falls in love with Swithin St. Cleeve, an impoverished amateur astronomer, but Hardy strews their path with one obstacle after another. For the Lady, a wastrel husband who is missing in deep dark Africa, and who may or not be dead; an inadvertent pregnancy; a duped second husband, this time a clergyman; for St. Cleeve, a badly-needed inheritance that can only be claimed if he remains single, and an extended exile. For both of them, misunderstandings, accidental damaging eavesdroppings, important letters gone astray, etc. And finally, when it appears possible that the poor boy and lady might find solace together, a sudden inexplicable spontaneous death.

    Good thing that Thomas Hardy didn't write Notting Hill. Trust me, there would have been no happy ending. Perhaps Hugh would been disfigured in the fire that destroyed his bookstore and his livelihood, and Julia, repulsed, would have returned to her abusive alcoholic boyfriend. But very likely something even more arbitrary and cruel.

     
    Two on a Tower.jpg

      

  • Cousins

    Hey there, internet pilgrims, searchers, wanderers who might be googling their own name or a relative's.  All of the following people are cousins of each other, cousins of mine. If  you find yourself here, identify yourself on the comments page, and I'll tell you how I think you are related. Hint: you're all descended from Lebe Hessel (d.1910) and Tsina Voloshen (b.1854).

    Talia Soglin, Oliver Soglin, Ella Pearlman-Chang, Lola Pearlman-Chang, Luke Pearlman, Caleb Pearlman, Asher Pearlman, Hannah Kaplan, Josiah Kaplan, Leslie Pearlman, Matthew Pearlman, Nancy Groce, Nora Groce, Susan Groce, Paul Pearlman, Ruth Pearlman, Owen Pearlman, Clara Pearlman, Karen Hessel, Dana Hessel, Alexander McCarthy-Hessel, Jane McCarthy Hessel, Deborah Hessel, Haley Roher, Jenny Roher,  Michael Hessel, Victoria Hessel, Mark Hessel, Andrea Hessel, Laurie Pearlstein, Jason Schoolsky, Rebecca Schoolsky, Allyson Schoolsky, Barry Pearlstein, Mitchell Pearlstein, Hunter Pearlstein, Remi Pearlstein, Holly Cooper, Alec Cooper, Elizabeth Cohen, Mateo Davis, Connor Davis, Christopher Cohen, Jonathan Cohen, David Cohen, David Markson, Aubrey Peluso, Samuel Markson, Zachary Markson, Nicholas Markson, Madeleine Markson, Wendy Markson, Charlotte Riley, Joelle Riley, Zoe Riley, Samuel Riley, Steven Gross, Ellen Gross, Edward Cohen, Terry Cohen, Joseph Cohen, Charles Cohen, Mahala Cohen, Judith Cimochowski, Alexander Cimochowski, Erica Cimochowski, Alexander Cimochowski, Lawrence Baizer, Judith Baizer, Sarah Baizer, Tessa Baizer, Barbara Pearlman, Rachel Wells, Andrew Wells, Steven Pearlman, Samuel Pearlman, Maya Terry, Nathaniel Pearlman, Benjamin Hessel Pearlman, Eve Pearlman, Nicholas Cohen, Mollie Liliana Sand, Adaline Sand, Jay Sand, Marc Sand, Daniel Cohen, Jonathan Cohen, Solomon Cohen, Emmanuelle Cohen, Abigail Cohen, Ella Cohen, Phoebe Cohen, Hannah Cohen, Ayanna Gould, Aiden Gould, Cole Pearlman, Reese Pearlman.

    There will be many errors and many omissions here.  Tell me. 

  • Amnesia on Film: High Wall (1947)

    In High Wall (1947), an extremely noir-y noir, Stephen Kenet, played by an unusually glamorless Robert Taylor, suffers from a fully credible traumatic amnesia. Did he, or did he not kill his wife. He can't remember.

    So far so good. Happens all the time in such films.

    But he's cured of his affliction in a most unlikely, most unscientific  manner. He's injected with "truth serum" –  sodium pentathol — and what was once lost is found. Such easy recovery of memory could ruin dozens of amnesia movies.  Good thing the treatment never caught on. 

    The gimmick spoils an otherwise grainy, hard-edged film. 

    Here's Kenet (Taylor), and Ann Lorrison, played by Audrey Totter. They're good as patient and doctor, but unpersuasive when they emerge as lovers in the last scene.

    Robert Taylor in High Wall (1947)Robert Taylor and Audrey Totter in High Wall (1947)Robert Taylor and Audrey Totter in High Wall (1947)
     
    The scenes in the asylum are painful especially when they're supposed to be amusing. To me, it's more like a concentration camp than a therapeutic institution. It's scary that it might reflect reality.
     

  • East 9 Street Between Ditmas and 18th, 1939 -1955

    Beginning at the northwest corner and preceding south — in the first brick house, a family of notably obese immigrant Syrian women who spoke no English; there were no children that I know of and no interactions with other neighbors. The house itself was not unusual but it was fronted by a wrought iron fence and a row of ancient stubbed catalpas which we called "umbrella trees." Next was the house belonging to Dr. Jerry Yurkovsky, our M.D. In retrospect, he was a kind man but a badly-trained, out-of-touch physician. He was also an immigrant — from Poland, I believe. My father, who rarely spoke badly of anyone, thought that he was a decent sort but that Mrs. Yurkovsky was "a real pill." I remember only her iridescent dyed red hair. Then came the Lampsons, Hubert and Dorothy. He was never seen in daylight but was rumored to own a "yacht"; she was the neighborhood grouch, known to slice in half any errant pink "spaldeens" that that might be punched (kids played "punchball" in the street) over her tall privet hedge and into her front yard. While I never questioned this neighborhood orthodoxy, I never saw a sliced spaldeen either. Then came the large Victorian house belonging until about 1950 to the Heidtmanns and then to another family whose name I can't remember but who had an impaired daughter who screamed and screamed at maximum volume at all hours day and night. Next came our immediate neighbors on the south, Mr. and Mrs. Pynn, who lived in a small old wood-shingled structure.The Pynns (did they have given names?) were extremely old, in their 90s I would guess. He was a retired Cornish seaman, believe it or not; she cultivated colorful gladioli in her small backyard garden. Their upstairs tenants were the Rhodins, Thor and Pearl. He was a tall gaunt ancient austere Norwegian whose only known activity was writing letters to local newspapers; she was almost as tall but Jewish and "went to business." They had three children but they were out of the house and too old for me to know them: Thor, jr, Yammie (Hjalmar), and Margeret. Thor was a physicist at Cornell rumored to have worked on the "bomb." I have written about the Rhodins elsewhere. Then came our house, a three-story 1912 Victorian of which our family of five occupied the top two floors. The first floor tenants were the Burnets (formerly Bernsteins), Albert and Bessie. He was musician who had retreated to accountancy. There were two sons, the older, Leonard, was troubled, and I now realize, probably gay; he played the sax; the younger son, Henry, had a cleft palate, later corrected by surgery, I believe, and banged on his drums incessantly. To our north were the Carps, who owned a brickyard or building supply business somewhere not in the neighborhood. They were a gloomy Dickensian family. Both of the daughters were nuns who came visiting once a year in their long black robes; the son, hang-dog Eddie, had the demeanor of a jaded funeral attendant. The Carps first act on moving into the house was to erect a tall forbidding chain link fence around the perimeter of their property which annoyed my father no end. Proceeding south, the next house was occupied by the Spollens, an immigrant Irish family who seemed to produce a new child every year. My memory is hazy about the south end of the street, under grand old elms until they fell victim to the Dutch blight, except that in one of the houses dwelt two tired bony sisters, perhaps twins, who every Sunday, trudged down 9th Street and past 18th Avenue to one of our neighborhood's numerous under-attended Protestant churches. They had a splendid garden of hollyhocks. Also at that end of the street lived, Mr. Mennino, who shared his personal variety of cucumbers with my father. At the very end of the block lived the dog-faced man..  

    On the other side of the street was an Italian family named Cocito, pronounced American'ly, ko-see-to. When Junior Cocito (perhaps he had a name, but everyone called him Junior) grew up and married, he bought the house next door to his father's. Then next, coming closer to us, were the Cunninghams. Mr. Cunningham was a large imposing firefighter; there was at least one daughter and two sons, Jimmy and Billy. Billy was our only celebrity; he became rich and famous as the "Kangaroo Kid"; he also played first base on my younger brother's baseball team. After the Cunninghams was another house of semi-mystery, occupied by an unfriendly family whose last name was Harris. I believe my mother told me that Mr. Harris was a school principal. There was a shapely daughter a year or so older than I whom I admired from a distance. She (Betty) married at 16 or 17 ("shotgun," I was told), and disappeared — as did the family. Then came the Burkes, directly across the street from us. There were two sons, Charley, a genuine dolt and high school dropout who became an armed guard for Wells Fargo, and lanky John, who was studying for the priesthood. There was also an uncle or cousin who lived with them and who spent every weekend waxing and noisily buffing his big new DeSoto. Then came the house occupied by Mr. and Mrs. Petranto along with their ancient father who spent all day every day watching the traffic from the oversize glider on the porch. There was an older daughter, Madeleine, whom I didn't know, and a son, Frankie, a bachelor, a contemporary of my older brother Eugene, who later found work in the U.S. post office and who, when I investigated a few years ago, still — eighty years later — lived in his childhood home. Upstairs from the Petrantos dwelt the Meinekes, Charlie and Tessie. He was a butcher; she was "at home." There was a rather sad ungainly but harmless daughter just my age, Charlotte, who dropped out of school early. I hope she a good life but I wonder. Next northward was another mystery house, probably a rental; for a year it was occupied by the Tebbets family. There was an attractive mid-twenties daughter whom my older brother and his peers admired no end, and a son, Lee, whom twenty years later I encountered in Vermont where he gave me an envelope of blue corn seeds (which I never planted). And then came the Constantino household. The father was a shoemaker, I believe. There were three children, Frankie, a terrific athlete; Regina, a beauty, and Carly, who dyed his hair henna and moved to Greenwich Village. There were two or three more houses at that end of the street, but I'm vague about them. Sorry, don't remember; too far away. The name Ortner comes to mind. Mystery houses.

    Even though I lived on the street for my entire childhood and until I left for college, I never entered a single house, nor did any of the neighbors ever enter ours. It wasn't that kind of neighborhood. Or perhaps we weren't that sort of people.

  • Garum vs. Ketchup

    The universal condiment in the ancient world, a staple of Roman, Greek and Byzantine cuisines, was garum. Garum was manufactured in enormous quantities and shipped in special amphorae all over the civilized, colonized universe. What is garum? It's a fishy sauce that any sensible modern apple-pie-loving American would avoid at all costs. Trust me, you would not want to slaver your bacon cheeseburger with garum.  

    To make garum, the innards — the guts — of fish (whitebait, anchovies, mackerel, tuna, etc.) were stacked between layers of salt and herbs and left in the sun for several months. Honest to Pete!! The result, which must have been malodorous and horrid, was then strained and bottled, or rather, poured into amphorae for transport.

    Don't believe me? Here's a direct quotation from a 10th century Byzantine manual: "the intestines of fish are thrown into a vessel and are salted; and small fish especially atherinae, or maenae or lycostomi are seasoned in the sun, and frequently turned; and when they have been seasoned in the heat, the garum is thus taken from them. A small basket of close texture is laid in the vessel filled with the small fish already mentioned, and the garum will flow into the basket." Sounds dreadful, you must admit. And I don't even know, and I don't know that anyone knows, exactly what sort of monsters of the deep are designated by the words atherinae and lycostomi.

    Here's a picture of a ruined garum factory in Baelo Claudia in Spain. The remains of such factories can be found all over the Mediterranean world. I myself have toured one near Pompeii. Garum factories were set as far as possible from centers of population because they, er, stunk. 

     
    Garum was the ancients' ketchup. What could they have been thinking?
     
    Strange to say, there's a etymological link between ancient fish sauce and modern ketchup. In the 1600s, there existed a Chinese concoction that was called, depending on the dialect, akôe-chiap or kê-chiap, guī zhī, or gwai zap; all these apparently translated as "the brine of pickled fish." By the early 18th century, the sauce had arrived in the present day region of Malaysia and Singapore, where it came to the attention of hungry, hardened  English colonists.The Malay word for the sauce was kicap (pronounced "kay-chap"). English settlers took kay-chap with them to the American colonies.
     
    But kay-chap was a long way from our familiar ketchup. The commonest kay-chap of the 18th century was not tomato but mushroom based. Tomato ketchup was a mid-19th century invention — the first recipe for "Tomata Catsup" appearing in 1812. Ketchup was popular long before fresh tomatoes because tomatoes were thought to be dangerous and possibly poisonous. A man named Jonas Yerkes is thought to be the first American to sell tomato ketchup in a bottle. But his initiative was overtaken and displaced by the 1876 ketchup launched by Henry Heinz. Heinz still controls 60% of the ketchup market. 

     
    Most of the world's Heinz tomato ketchup is made in the main U.S. plant at Fremont, Ohio (home town of President Rutherford B. Hayes). 
    Related image
     
    I imagine that the air in Fremont, Ohio is ketchupy, which is a heck of a lot better than if it were garumy.

     
    Ketchup was not used in my family of origin. It was a revelation when, a Brooklyn youth, I first discovered ketchup, along with french fries, in a local delicatessen. It's been a staple of my diet ever since. Garum, not so much. Nor salsa, an emerging contemporary competitor.
     
    I'm happy that I live in a post-garum world.

  • Nomenclature

    If a widow and a widower form a relationship when they're both in their seventies, what is the proper and appropriate name for their relationship?

    Legally, they're married, because here in the state of Colorado, if you live together and represent yourself as married, you're married, even if you haven't sought governmental sanction. Yet "husband" and "wife" don't come easily to the lips. They seem too doggone official. And they also seem like words out of an earlier era, especially "wife," which carries irrelevant overtones of a dominant-submissive relationship. "Just a housewife."

    But "companion" is only slightly better. To my ear, it smacks of "faithful companion Tonto." "Partner" is even worse; are we associates in a law firm? 

    "Girlfriend" and "boyfriend" are clearly ludicrous and inappropriate to persons of mature years. Such words lack seriousness and heft; they trivialize a weighty relationship. So, similarly, does the naked "friend," which in this context is colorless, neutral. "Ladyfriend" is a bit more serious. "Gentleman caller" was last said without irony in Peoria sometime in the middle of the nineteenth century. "Mistress" suggests that the friendship is merely sexual; its counterpart, "gigolo," is even more specific, and seedy to boot. "Lover" is also one-dimensional. 

    "Old lady" and "old man" are outmoded hippieisms. So is "significant other." Other archaisms: "main squeeze," "stud," "pal," "steady lay," "fancy man."  "Love-slave." 

    "Spouse"? No, too dry, too legalistic. "Consort"?  Disrespectful. "Odalisque"? "Handmaiden." Sexist. "Concubine?" 

    It's fascinating that we've had more trouble with nomenclature than with living, eating, working, and sleeping together.

  • A Truly Awful Western

    The Sons of Katie Elder (1965) — another film so awful that it's utterly, undeniably fascinating. It's packaged as a western, but underneath the arid mountainous scenery and the garish Technicolor, it's a film noir.  What's it about?  Well, a gang of crooks have been muscling in on the Elder ranch. Not an unusual circumstance, but in this case the heart of the matter, it seems, is that the four sons of frequently praised Katie Elder, proprietor of the ranch, have neglected their mother. They should have visited more often, or written, or at least called. The brothers are, in birth order, swaggering John Wayne, a gunman; sniggering Dean Martin, a gambler; colorless bland Earl Holliman, a failed businessman, and sophomoric Michael Anderson, whom the older brothers want to send to college, but whom they should rather send to high school to fulfill the prerequisites for Acting 101. It's all a mighty predictable — a string of cliches — and, just as expected, after the climactic gunfight the Elders get their land back from cheating Morgan Hastings and his gang of no-goodniks. The dialogue throughout is embarrassingly wooden; no, not wooden, harder than that, ceramic; no, not ceramic, titanium. 

    I blame it all on Henry Hathaway, the director, who had some good westerns and also a series of films noirs (The House on 92nd Street, The Dark Corner, Kiss of Death, Call Northside 777) to his credit. How could he have perpetrated this film? And someone, I don't know who, has to take responsibility for the ugliest, unfunniest, uncomic bit of grotesque "comic relief" ever perpetrated, in which Dean Martin auctions off his make-believe glass eye to a passel of local yokels. But I also think that some of the blame attaches to the producer, Hal Wallis. This is a film utterly without a female presence except for Martha Hyer,  who wanders into a couple of scenes without point or purpose. I couldn't figure out what the heck she was doing in the film until I read that she was married at the time to Wallis and that her career was on the fritz. I'm positive that Wallis told the screen writer, "Put in something  for Martha."  Well, he did, but it just made the whole mess a little messier, and if possible, a little less coherent.   

    The Sons of Katie Elder stoked my indignation. What a waste of resources! 

    But hey, there's a good three minute scene of a hundred or more horses being herded by the brothers, and there's George Kennedy as a gunslinger and Dennis Hopper as a neurotic youngster who gets killed  by his own father. It's something, but, sorry, not enough to dilute the indignation.

     

    Sons of Katie Elder 1965.jpg

    Addendum November 16.  I've just watched another western, Big Jake (1971), in which John Wayne parodies an earlier John Wayne. Just as awful as Katie Elder. Maybe less intelligible. You can infer a lot from the poster.

    Big jake ver2.jpg

  • Baseball 1958-2018

    1958:  First batter of the game is Smith. He's batting .278. First pitch is a ball. Smith is 5'9", 155 pounds. Married, two children, makes his winter home in Fort Smith, Arkansas. Sells tractors in the off-season. Good curve ball hitter.

    2018:  First batter is Smith. He's batting .278. His slugging percentage is .342. His OBP is .335. His OPS is .445. He hits .225 against right-handers and .303 against left-handers. First pitch is a ball. On first pitches he's batting .225. With a count of 2 and 0, he's batting .247. Second pitch is a ball. On two strike pitches he's at .175. On fast balls in the upper right quadrant of the strike zone, he's batting .345. On fast balls in the lower left quadrant he's hitting .175. On two strike pitches, he strikes out 25% of the time and hits fly balls 30% of the time. He bats .283 in his home park, .246 on the road. Day games, .290, night games .225. His OPS in away night games against a left-handed pitcher is .341. In this ballpark he's batting .283. He's batting only .125 against this pitcher, just two for sixteen lifetime, and one of the hits was a double, but that was in a different ballpark and in a previous season. He's batting .285 against fastballs, .276 against curves, .225 against four seamers, .215 against split fingers, and .275 against change-ups. He sees an average of 4.3 pitches per at bat against right-handers and 5.1 against left-handers. He swings and misses 38% of the time. Here's the next pitch; it's a strike. When he connects against a left-handed split finger fastball in the lower left quadrant the ball comes of his bat at an average velocity of 85 miles per hour to left field, 87 to center field, and 76 to right field. His average launch angle is 18 degrees. With men on base, he's hitting .285. With runners in scoring position, .290; his launch angle to right field against right-handed split finger fastballs in the lower left quadrant rises to 25 degrees, but only on his first at bat in a game. Afterwards, it declines to 17 degrees. But that's in April and May, on weekends. In August and September, under the lights, his launch angle is 20 degrees against change-ups from right-handers who throw into the upper right quadrant when there's a man on second or third and fewer than two outs. There's ball four.  

    Here comes the manager out to the mound. That's all for this pitcher. We'll be back in a moment. 

  • A Cliffhanger

    I've been reading the novels of Thomas Hardy. Some of them are familiar old friends, like Jude the Obscure and Return of the Native; some I've read so long ago that they're new again (Mayor of Casterbridge, Far from the Madding Crowd);  and then there are a few that I know I've never looked at before, such as The Woodlanders, Under the Greenwood Tree, and, the one I just finished a half a second ago, A Pair of Blue Eyes.

    Blue Eyes is an early novel (1873), moderately autobiographical. In it, young Stephen Smith is an apprentice architect of working class origins (as was Hardy) who woos Elfrida Swancourt, a maiden of a higher station. He has a rival for Elfrida's hand in a former teacher, elegant and prudish Henry Knight.

    It's safe to say that this is a novel only for confirmed Hardy enthusiasts. There's little in it that Hardy doesn't do better later on.

    On the other hand, Blue Eyes contains one rather wonderful piece of melodramatic excess. Elfrida and Knight go hiking on a dangerous cliff and Knight slips and gets himself into an awkward position, hanging on six hundred and fifty feet above the ocean. His foot "was propped by a bracket of quartz rock, balanced on the edge of the precipice." She's clinging to him and they're both stuck. Knight is ever the gentleman. "Clamber up my body till your feet are on my shoulders: when you are there you will, I think, be able to climb on to level ground." "What will you do?" asks Elfrida. Knight answers that he will wait "whilst you run for assistance." But just their bad luck, there's no one around. And so the chapter comes to a cliffhanging close (the novel was originally published in serial form in Tinsley's Magazine).

    Several minutes and several pages of reflection pass. At last, Elfrida reappears, her form "singularly attenuated."  She carries a bundle of white linen.

    Jumping jiminy, holy moly, I say, — the girl has removed her underclothes.

    She tears the linen into thin strips, knots them, and forms "a perfect rope, six or seven yards long." Knight 'clambers' up the rope, and is saved.  But by surrendering her undergarments,  Elfrida has, as Hardy delicately puts it, "absolutely nothing between her and the weather but her exterior robe or costume."  Goodness gracious me, the poor dear is clad only in her "outer bodice and skirt."  So, of course, to spare everyone further embarrassment, she runs away as fast as her little legs will carry her.

    Poor struggling Thomas Hardy has wrestled Mrs. Grundy to a draw.  

    Good thing Elfrida was clothed in sufficient unmentionables to construct a rope seven yards long. Suppose Knight had been down there couple more yards and she had to remove her "upper bodice."  Would she have done so, or would she have let Knight plummet?` Hardy arranges it so that Elfrida can defy social norms, but not to the point of actual nudity. Hardy is bold, but not too bold.  

    I suspect that if Hardy had his way and wasn't enchained by the humbug prudery against which he struggled all his life, he would have stripped Elfrida to the skin. How would Henry Knight have responded? Probably keeled over from the shock.

    What would Elizabeth Bennet have done in the same situation?  Removed her underclothes to save her suitor?  Probably not. The most likely answer: Jane Austen would never have let her go out walking near a cliff with a gentleman.  

  • For My Grandchildren: Anne Goss

    Dear T, O, E, L, L, C, A:  This is about your great-grandmother, Anne Goss. She was born Hannah Sarah Krull in 1912 in New Jersey, but I've forgotten which city, although I know that as a young person she lived in Bayonne, Hackensack and Paterson. Her parents, David and Katherine Meltzer Krull, were recent immigrants from eastern Europe. She was the oldest of five siblings: Anne, Jacob (Jack), Hyman, Freda, and Max (Mendy). Her father installed metal ceilings, her mother was what was then called a "practical" (i.e. unlicensed) nurse. The family was not wealthy. The five children shared two beds, boys in one, girls in the other, sleeping crosswise. Anne had a bout of polio at sixteen months which left her with a permanent limp and weakness in the left side of her body. Because of the effects of the illness, she endured an unusually difficult childhood — marked by a series of surgeries on her leg which may or may not have helped. But she was quick-witted and talented, learning to play violin and viola and graduating as high school valedictorian. About the Jewish religion, important to her parents, she told me, "I gave up that stuff when I was thirteen." She was intent on a college education which her parents opposed because the few dollars that she made as a dental assistant were crucial to the family economy. She won a full scholarship to Barnard College but it's sad to report that when she arrived on the first day of classes she discovered that she had to pay for room and board, which her family could not afford. She returned home but was admitted to Montclair State Teacher's College where she majored in chemistry. In a world with more advantages he would have gone on to medical school and become a distinguished physician, but such a career was not in the cards. At Montclair she played string quartets and met your great grandfather, Daniel Goss. There wasn't enough money to allow them to marry and no one lived together before marriage in those days. Anne once told me that the greatest mistake of her life was that she didn't go to bed with Dan until after they married, which didn't happen until he was 26 and she was 24. I think those premarital depression years must  have been hard and unsatisfying. And even after they married, still not so good because Dan and Anne couldn't afford a place of their own but shared an apartment with his parents (actually shared a bedroom, with a curtain between the parents'  bed and theirs). Dan's parents disapproved of Anne: "Why would you want to marry a cripple?" Eventually Dan was hired as a teacher of mathematics at Paterson High School and then in 1946 moved to Utica College in Utica, New York. Although Ann had been told that the polio made it impossible for her to carry a child, she gave birth to three daughters (Althea — your grandmother –in 1939; Phyllis in 1942, and Paula in 1951). She taught mathematics until she retired at the then-mandatory age of 65 but continued with her tutoring business through her seventies. Meanwhile, she had mastered the domestic arts: cooking, baking, sewing (she made all her daughters'  clothes through their childhoods) and knitting. She was a hard-working woman, often to be found knitting, reading a book, and watching TV at the same time. Dan died in 1966 and so she spent many more years as widow than as a wife. Her life was filled with pain (two dozen major surgeries) but she never complained. She was independent, frugal, and adventurous. She was also strict, cool, not at all affectionate, and humorless. Not exactly humorless — she never laughed, that I can remember, but sometimes she would respond to a joke by saying, "That's funny."  She played bridge to win and not for fun and she liked a rough game of Scrabble with her grandsons. She was easy to respect but difficult to love.

    She moved to Boulder at age 87 and lived to be 97, though much impaired. At her 90th birthday party, in 2002,  she was still functioning well but "looping."  If she had died at 90 she would not have missed much. She was demented and bedridden for the last few years of her life. The last coherent statement she made to me, in her last month, was "I'm not afraid of this dying business."  

    A good memory: Anne spent most of her early life wearing a heavy metal brace on her bad leg. But when she was in her early 90s, she acquired a brace made of a light space-age material. I took her walking in the mountains. First time. She was thrilled.

    Here's another: she liked to help grade Althea's math exams and she liked to talk calculus with her grandsons. I remember saying to them, "You have to understand something. This is unusual. Your standard run-of-the-mill grandmother does not understand calculus."

  • A Choice Euphemism

    Victorian novelists had a hard time describing bodies, especially female bodies. Their usual practice was to sidestep such subjects entirely though the more daring of them might resort to suggestion or innuendo.

    Here's an instance in which Thomas Hardy ties himself into comical  knots trying to tell his audience that although Tess Derbyfield (in Tess of the D'Urbervilles, 1891) is very young and almost childish she has already developed a large bosom: "She had an attribute which amounted to a disadvantage just now; and it was this that caused Alec d'Urberville's eyes to rivet themselves upon her. It was a luxuriance of aspect, a fullness of growth, which made her appear more of a woman than she really was. She had inherited the feature from her mother without the quality it denoted. It had troubled her mind occasionally, till her companions had said that it was a fault which time would cure."  So very elliptical. It's distressing that frank-minded Thomas Hardy had to resort to such circumlocutions.

    A later novelist might simply have noted that she was physically mature and that her emotions would eventually catch up but for now she was vulnerable.

    Back in Brooklyn we might have said, "Though she's only a kid, he has a pair of gazongas on her like you wouldn't believe and they're going to get her into a whole lot of trouble"

  • Year of the Rooster

    The rooster came to our attention about a month ago. We heard him before we saw him. He was living at the edge of the forest, about one hundred yards from the house. After a few days he became bolder and we were able to catch a glimpse now and then. He's a Barred Rock, fully mature, with a bright red comb and superior wattles, but with woeful tail feathers. We don't know from where he came. We asked around but none of the neighbors is missing a rooster. We guessed: he's an escapee, or, perhaps his owner became tired of him and kicked him out of the truck, or (my favorite theory) he was in a rooster fight, lost his tail feathers and retired to the woods in shame. But in fact, we have no idea how he came to settle on our property.

    Little by little he started to become more comfortable with us. He would spend his day in the flower garden, furtively eating insects. He was especially fond of earwigs. A good occupation, I thought. No harm except to the bugs. Eventually he came to tolerate our presence. He would sit a few yards away, studying me while I weeded. He gained our respect, because he managed to survive even though the forest is filled with foxes and fisher cats and weasels and coyotes and the air is patrolled by hawks. He liked to visit the donkeys and peck around their manure piles.  When he started to roost not in the forest but in the blueberry bushes close to the house I became concerned — this may be more of a rooster guest than I need. And then he took up the habit of cock-a-doodle-do-ing at dawn just outside our bedroom window. And during afternoon nap time. And familiarizing himself with the vegetable garden, where he snacks on cucumbers. (He loves cucumbers.) He became ever more bold — a few days ago he was just outside the kitchen, pecking on the glass door, hoping, I imagine, to be let inside. And when I didn't let him in, he left a large retaliatory splash of rooster dropping right at the doorway.

    Screen Shot 2021-05-01 at 3.33.28 PM

    We looked out of the small north window of our bedroom and there he was perched on the railing, peering in. A peeping-Tom rooster. (Did he catch an eyeful!!) 

    One day a near neighbor telephoned: "Your rooster is here."  "He's not my rooster."  

    And then he disappeared. For the first time in a month, there was no crowing at dawn.  OK, we thought, some predator got him. One of these days, we'll stumble upon a bunch of black and white feathers in the forest.

    But then a friend who lives on Ira's Pinnacle told us that he had seen a pair of chickens on Hackett Hill Road about a half a mile up the road. He couldn't be sure, but he figured it must be "your" rooster and a hen. 

    So that's where he's been!! He's a gallinaceous gallant gallivanting with the local ladies. I thought, good for him; I don't have to concern myself with him any longer. He'll go feral and start a family. He must not know about Vermont winters.

    But not so. This morning he was back, solitary, crowing vigorously outside my window. His romance, if it were a romance, didn't work out. I can't imagine why because he's become quite a handsome bird. He personable, friendly and he's grown an an impressive new set of tail feathers. He's plump and shiny; his walk, once furtive, has become a decisive strut. There he is now, cock-a-doodling his head off in the patch of cucumbers.

  • Mr. Mitchell

    I don't know why, but after 66 years I found myself thinking about my first English teacher at EHHS, Mr. Stephen Mitchell . Here's what I can recall. Mr. Mitchell was a lazy guy. I remember that on many a day he would give us busy work assignments, take up his New York Times, rest his feet in the lower drawer of his desk, and read, while the class occupied itself doing who knows what.  In retrospect, Mr. Mitchell was probably a classic burnt-out case.  Perhaps he had been young and enthusiastic at one time, but in 1952, he needed desperately to retire. 

    I remember also that in his class we read "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner."  His instructional technique: he taught us some vocabulary, such as "onomatopoeia" and "personification." Then one student after another was asked to take a stanza and search it for examples of onomatopoeia or personification or perhaps metaphor and also to identify iambic tetrameter or iambic trimeter.

    Of the romance of the Rime, we knew nothing and learned nothing.  

    All the while, Mr. Mitchell's feet never left the drawer.

    In retrospect, I wonder whether he might not have been a WW2 veteran, not quite recovered from the trauma.

  • Side Effects

    LENFERA is generally safe to use, but possible side effects include stuffy or runny nose, headaches, goosebumps, hiccups, cramps, sensitivity to bright lights or glare, shingles, gingivitis, numbness of lips or upper palate, dry scalp, ringing in the ears (tinnitus), acid reflux, dizziness, hair loss, hearing loss, kidney stones, constipation and/or diarrhea, sudden loss or gain of weight, inability to swallow, drooling, dessication, macular degeneration, bunions, uncontrollable twitching or muscle spasms, rectal itch, toenail fungus, nausea, abdominal pain, difficulty with breathing, edema, fistula, halitosis, absence of libido, tachycardia, swelling in knees or other joints, scabiosa, bots, flatulence, loss of insight, roseola, Osceola, bloat, priapism, Purim, bowel obstructions, failure to thrive, scoliosis, creeping phlox, aggression, acne, increased facial or body hair, world-weariness, dyspepsia, rash, fatigue, agoraphobia, lycanthropy, high fevers, tremors, blurred vision or sudden blindness, frostbite, ringworm, procrastination, irritability, hot flashes, mange, barnacles, pellagra, night sweats, bladderwort, paranoia, clumsiness, thrush, zeugma, migraine, feelings of humiliation, heart arrest, tuatara, memory loss, white nose, rapture, paralysis, stage fright, bioluminescence, scurvy, hallucinations, chancre, catarrh, pink eye, red eye, rabies, insomnia, nightmares, spontaneous combustion, Coggins, blurring of gender identity, wasting disease, aphasia, blackouts, suicidal ideation, nosebleeds, woe, catatonia, gangrene, acute pain, multiple organ failure, death.

    If symptoms persist, consult your physician.

    LENFERA has been approved by the FDA.

  • Cliche of the Decade

    There's this woman of a certain age, good looking, usually blonde. Generally, she's a detective but she could be reporter or a spy — some sort of investigator. She has an instinct for her work, an unusual insight or gift. There's a murderer or villain out there and she's determined to get him; it's personal with her and often she has to violate procedures in order to bring this character to justice. She regularly confronts her superior, an older man who is a stickler for the rules and wants to shut down the investigation. As a last resort, she'll ask for 24 hours, or more rarely 48 hours, to bring the villain in. And guess what — it turns out that her instinct was right all along and after a brief struggle, in which her life is in danger (often there's an attempted assassination, usually by speeding vehicle), the criminal/mastermind/murderer is handcuffed (British version) or shot (American version).

  • A Most Peculiar Dream

    The ol' dreamatorium was working overtime last night. The protagonist, who was and who was not me was a mature, bearded gentleman, a prosperous landowner in what seemed like the antebellum South. He, or he/I, was the target of a plot by a younger cousin in league with a scuzzy lawyer to have him/me declared insane — and therefore his/my property to be confiscated and transferred to the control of the villainous cousin. The heart of the dream was a hearing or trial in which he/I was cross examined and every of his emotions mischaracterized by the lawyer and the panel of mental health experts. For example, if he/I expressed indignation and anger, it was interpreted as paranoia; if he/I remained impassive it was understood as catatonia. Every emotion became its parodic extreme. As a result, he/I was placed in an institution; a rather bucolic one, but still a place of incarceration. However, after some while, another hearing was held, and he/I was able to convince a judge that there had been a miscarriage of justice. So he/I was set free to reclaim his property. But, he/I said to the judge, I have no money, no clothes, no means of transportation, so no one will believe me. The judge then offered to loan me/him some money, but was clear that it was a loan, not a gift. In the last scene of the dream, he/I is mounted on a horse (black and white one, like a Holstein), wearing a Confederate uniform, and carrying, believe it or not, a shiny sword. Then I woke up.

    I cannot interpret this beaut, this honey of a dream.  It was very cinematic, very vivid, and very long. But it doesn't apply to my life in any obvious way. I've never been accused of insanity, never lost any property, don't know any corrupt lawyers, never been institutionalized, never even been on a horse, and certainly don't carry a sword.  Moreover, it was an undreamlike dream: no fantastic elements or objects morphing into other objects. It seemed less like a dream than like a lost chapter or sub-pot to Gone with the Wind. Mighty puzzling.

  • “Foody” Talk on the Airplane

    Stewardess:  "Chicken or pasta?"

    Dr. M.:  "Which do you recommend, Madam?"

    Stewardess:  "It's airline food.  They both taste exactly the same."

    Dr. M.:  "I'll try the chicken."

  • Contra Tattoos

    Here are some reasons, young' 'uns, why you should steer clear of tattoos.

    a) because tattoos are permanent and because taste, your taste, is impermanent and will inevitably change. There's a poster on the wall of your bedroom that you love. Five years later, you're indifferent to it, and ten years later, you've trashed it. "How could I ever have thought that thing was beautiful?"  Same with your taste in all the visual arts. So with the tattoo. You may think t's beautiful now, perhaps, but ten or twenty years on it has become the permanent insignia of your callow taste. Without remedy or the possibility of amelioration. You're stuck with it.

    b) because ink fades and bodies sag. That crisp tattoo is going to bend, distort and twist as your body ages. Face facts:  that tattoo is going to become uglier and uglier. Have you caught sight of someone of my age who's tattooed?  If you have, you know what I'm talking about;  if you haven't, don't look. It ain't pretty.

    c) . Tattoos are expensive if they're done by someone with talent. The cheap ones are horrid. What a waste of money! You could donate the same amount to a useful cause and feel good about yourself. 

    d)   Tattoos hurt in the application; sometimes they become infected.

    e)   because tattoos limit your romantic options. For many a potential partner, that pseudo clever tattoo will be a deal breaker. "You have a tattoo?  There?  Right there?  Ugh?"  And also, don't tattoo yourself with the name of your beloved. Consider the divorce rate.

    f)   If the tattoo is in plain sight, it will lower your earning power.  No problem getting a job as a dishwasher, but perhaps that upscale employer is going to think twice before hiring someone who made such a bad choice. Because the employer doesn't want to offend potential customers.

    g)   because the Bible tells you so. "Do not cut your bodies for the dead or put tattoo marks on yourselves. I am the LORD” (Leviticus 9:28). Your body is a temple; do not mutilate or desecrate it.  And for god sake don't tattoo yourself with religious symbols. To do so is like throwing sand in the face of the Almighty. The injunction against tattoos is one of the few biblical proscriptions that I can sincerely embrace.  

    h) because tattoos are an expression of vanity, like wearing show-off jewelry or expensive designer clothes. Let us take pride in our achievements and not in our shallow foppery.  

    j ) because you don't want to cause me, ME, to look askance or into the air and wrinkle up my nose whenever I meet you.

  • Amnesia on Film: Crossroads

    What a strange little movie, odd even by amnesia-on-film standards!  Film amnesia is the most malleable and flexible of illnesses, as fact free (and fact-averse) as the EPA under Trump.. 

    In this modest 1942  adventure, David Talbot, played by William Powell affecting a slight now-you-hear-it-now-you-don't French accent, is either an amnesia victim or an amnesia scammer. He either was or wasn't a criminal before the accident in which he apparently lost his memory.

    An extortionist-grifter Henri Sarrou, played by Basil Rathbone, who looks like "two profiles glued together," is trying to squeeze him for a million francs in exchange for not turning him over to the police for a murder that he might or might not have committed in his former life, if he had one.

    I don't think I'm giving away any secrets to say that all turns out for the best. But what is interesting, amnesia-wise, is that there is no recovery of memory.  Talbot's amnesia never resolves, and he comes to the end of the film with no knowledge of three-quarter of his life, and that this painful situation doesn't seem to compromise or concern him the least little bit. Off he goes, at the end, blithely, with his luminous bride Hedy Lamarr, at his side.

    There are holes within holes in the plot, but what is most striking, I think, is how casually amnesia is deployed,  as if losing one's memory is no more a challenge to selfhood and identity than a case of sniffles.  

     

RECENT POSTS

ARCHIVE