SmokeSound

31 December 2012

People read the Bible and try to tell us how women should behave, or whether people today should have as many, or fewer, wives than Abraham.  Or King David.  Or Muhammed.  Or Mickey Rooney. My mother was ten years old before women in this country were allowed to vote.   Slavery was permitted in the US until 150 years ago.  It was declared to end, not by our Constitution, but by a war, and a war declaration.   *    *   * During World War II, a German theologian, puttering with his books while the war went on, published a little study that asserted that Biblical writings were really framed by an outmoded world view; a three-storied universe, with Heaven above, and Hell below, the earth, with beliefs about demons causing epilepsy, and handkerchiefs healing diseases, and earth a testing-ground for eternal hell or heavenly happiness.   I gave up trying to be a clergyman because it was evident that most people in the Church thought that to be a Christian one had to live in th

When I was young and both stronger and smarter than I am now, I put my might and brain to work doing nothing useful, unless it might be thought that hand/foot/eye coordination might come in handy.  Those were skills to be learned and practiced.   I found an iron bar our grandfather had shaped in his blacksmith shop.  He took old car, truck, or wagon axles, and made tools from them for digging post holes.  He sharpened one end to a tip, and the other to a blade.  Washington State, like many places, had a hard layer of soil, probably created by water and limestone, or some such materials, that made digging holes a miserable chore.  The bar chipped through the natural concrete so that a shovel could take it up.   I found Grandpa's iron bar, and since I was young and dumb and strong--or so I thought--decided to punch a hole down to hardpan and ultimate truth.  I knew how to do that.  Raise the bar vertically with both hands, and then slam in straight down.  On the second try, aimi

Annie Cat is old.  No one knows how old she is--not even she--because, at the shelter where we got her, they guessed she was "about six".  And that was about ten years ago.  So she is "about" sixteen. A few months ago she suddenly lost a lot of weight, and since it was my turn to guess, I guessed that Annie might be nearing her demise.  All of our cats, over the years, have eaten dry cat food, and I wondered whether I ought to see if that was a problem.  A vet advised me to give her food intended for young, growing cats. Fooling around in that ultra-scientific, somewhat hearsay way, we have come to this:  Annie loves whole milk, with a little canned cat food containing krill.  "Krill", I thought.  "Why not?  It is a staple in the food chain.  Maybe it is working. But milk is a problem.  Sometimes Annie sits near her food dish, thinking about Kant and Descartes, not noticing that her tail is dipped into the milk dish.  Eventually she notices,

Dante, Michael's Boxer, is a really good dog.  Michael brought him along when he came to dinner on Christmas Day. In some ways, it was a frustrating holiday for the good dog.

Roadrunner goes through the garden, scratching out holes  you could hide in, if you could not run as fast as he. "You again!", he says, not really caring. He was here before we moved in. He leaves the radishes alone. "Where are the bugs and snakes?", he asks.  "Protein!  Maybe a tomato!"

"Ther'll be flies on me and flies on you,  but there ain't no flies on Jesus." We here, at our house are outside the fly-free zone. I left two brats on the stove a bit beyond the browning stage and the smoke alarm went off. We opened the doors and windows and ordered an inadequate fan to blow into the teeth of the west wind,  and the flies came eddying in. It is Christmas Eve Day and Mari keeps muttering  something about no flies on Jesus, or his whereabouts. "No flies on Jesus" is probably an apocryphal hymn, something like being "Under the Spout where the Glory  Comes Out", and wanting to be "A Jesus Cowboy in the Holy Ghost Corral", but our flies are real, and evil.   But I am a believer, and I believe that my chances of getting a Christmas present, this year, have narrowed.  

We have two or three holiday meals planned, and it happened to my mind, this morning, that I should learn precisely when they shall occur, but then I remembered that the world ended yesterday, and we have no calendars.   But some things remain the same: Kenny had not "gay-ron-tee coated" the driveway, and the cat is still as deaf as a post.  As concerns the cat, she cannot hear that she now meows loud enough to wake the dead--and she does, every day-- so I get up every morning to give her more food. She--Annie Cat--apparently does not need a calendar. The end of the world means nothing to her, but it will if she does not tone down at dawn.   Pay no attention to the fact that the Mayans did not predict the end of the world, at all. But do  pay attention to the fact that loony Christians, not all of whom are in Kansas, do  slip off their rockers fairly regularly, trying to get a good look at Jesus coming on a cloud to lead them out of the Promised Land,

Well, this is it! The end of just about everything! December 21, 2012.   Right now, where the Mayan calendar  ran out of  carving space, we find ourselves  in a post-Mayan world: no more Mayans, maybe; no calendars; faced with the prospect of a life without John Boehner as Speaker of the House; doom and degradation in all around I see! I have proof of the end of civilized life as we have known it. Today--December 21, 2012-- Kenny rang the doorbell! Kenny offered to recoat our driveway, which--God knows!--needs recoating.   "Now, Kenny," I said to him,  "you understand that this does not apply to you, but you know that your business is filled with recoat reprobates who coat driveways with water-soluble licorice and then leave town.   "Not us!", Kenny said.   "There ain't no licorice in our sludge! We use nothing but the best asphalt, rubber-based, hand-troweled stuff! We give you a letter guar'n'teen our work.

Once upon a curious time ago, Fred Nyline asked me to read the Lincoln lines in Aaron Copland’s “Lincoln Portrait”.   I have never been so overwhelmed in my life.   Fred gave me a kind of abbreviated version of the score.  You can tell from my ignorance of what it is called that I was hopelessly ignorant of what was going on.   My understanding of music is limited to, “One, Two, Three, Four, Who do you appreciate?”, or something like that, by a factor of two.   If you saw the recent movie, “Lincoln”, you will understand the quiet and scornful abuse I took when people commented on my tenor voice, certain in their conviction that mountains shook when Abraham Lincoln spoke, and the waters roiled.  I was just trying to count, “One, Two, Three, Four, now!” It was on December 1, 1862 that Lincoln addressed Congress.  The issue was what should happen to former slaves.  The nation, Lincoln asserted, had been spellbound, captivated, itself enslaved by the fact of slavery.  

In a couple of days, the world is going to end, not as the ancient Mayans did not actually predict it, but from Anxiety.   I would like to use the German word, angst, because it conjures up dead Swiss psychologists, but that would take too much of an oceanic leap, and to do that I would have to introduce Thor Heyerdahl and his raft of peculiar assumptions.   Even a quick glance at the Mayan calendar is enough to convince all but the most unaware that the end is near, if it has not already gone past us.  You did notice the results of our recent election, did you not?  Is there any way to explain how Mitt Romney, who did, after all, managed to steer the Winter Olympics through Utah, could have lost?  Even Newt Gingrich allows how he could have done better than Mr. Romney, and if the prospect--even the absurdly theoretical notion of Newt Gingrich as President does not alarm you--then you are not really thinking about dying at the top of a ziggarat.   I am old and ripe, so the fac

I am not going to tell you the details because it necessarily involves another person  who has the right to her own privacy, but my attitude toward abortion  changed in one day.   It was only the fact that abortion was illegal that was in question.   And perhaps you should know that no abortion resulted: perhaps a missed period;  perhaps a natural miscarriage. In any event,  during the course of one day, talking together, talking to an honest doctor, I recognized that  sometimes, reluctantly, and with almost infinite sadness, an abortion might be necessary and wise. And this week,  just as suddenly and just as necessarily, I know that we have to do something about guns.   It is insane to allow  unregulated access to murderous machines. It might be murderous not to regulate guns.   We license and regulate cars,  keeping track of who owns them, and specifying who cannot drive them for various reasons:  age, eyesight, abuse of alcohol, driving r

Sometimes in spring a young man's thoughts  lightly turn to what a young woman has been thinking about all winter.  

Jao, at his Grandparents' house,  just trying to fit in  to the retired life. Where's  the cat?

Troy is Mari's sister's son, and he lives here in Arizona, too.  His is a more adventurous life, he having just returned from a tour of duty in Afghanistan to a quiet civilian job as a police medic on a helicopter.   There is something wrong with Troy:  he likes cold places, having spent time in Alaska doing what he does here, In Anchorage, and halfway up Mr. Denali.   Marriage and Other Less Dangerous Circumstances led to his short-term move to Flagstaff.  Flagstaff can be thought of as a kind of Bait and Switch Trap.  From the perspective of Perfectly Ordinary People like me, Flagstaff lures the unwary to its 7,000 foot altitude in summer, stunning the senses with pine odor and brisk mornings, and mountains all around, all the while dulling the sensibilities until winter, when any drop of moisture east of the Pacific Ocean eventually drifts over Northern Arizona and drops as snow on Flagstaff.  Were the snow just a bit farther north, it would fill the Grand Canyon to t

The Weather Outside: The Weather Inside:

An old man A young woman A child in a stroller The young woman caught sight of something "Here!", she said, "You take the kid!" making what might be thought of as a dive into the crowd "Hey!", the old man called "He has a name!" Another young woman A child in a stroller A man tending the waiting stroller The young woman  returned with a prize A god-awful calico red-checked dress for the child "I bought this for yew-oo-oo!", she said waving the dress like a signal flag Blank stare from the child

Dan and extra-special friend, Elliza Mike and son, Nathaniel Jao Montri Hubbard Happy Grandma Mari, and Jao Our delightful new Grandson, Jao (which means Prince in Thai). Conrad and his best friend, Teresa's Seafood Soup Once, when the world was young, ‘tho I was older still, Mari and Michael and Daniel and I drove to the Bay Area, and to Sonoma, where the world was composite, and the aroma of aged wine contented us. It was there that Mari and I--married almost a year, having drifted together like continents come together, pushing against each other to reach an equilibrium--sat in the town square with Michael (nine years from Thailand) and Daniel (five years from more Iowa loinage).   I knew that we sat in the sun on a fine bench in a wondrous place, a crumble-cake of continental fragments older than Adam, older than the notion of the gods themselves, having drifted there from almost everywhere--split off from Africa, and even from Asia-

" It is that time of year! You can skip it all year,  but one fine day,  you have to go to the Mall! Or maybe a gas station, and then you hear it: "Y ou better watch out You better not cry Better not pout I'm telling you why Santa Claus is coming to town He's making a list And checking it twice; Gonna find out Who's naughty and nice Santa Claus is coming to town He sees you when you're sleeping He knows when you're awake He knows if you've been bad or good So be good for goodness sake! O! You better watch out! You better not cry Better not pout I'm telling you why Santa Claus is coming to town Santa Claus is coming to town" It isn't about Santa Claus. It is about God; God for kids. "He sees you when you're sleeping He knows when you're awake He knows if you've been bad or good So be good for goodness sake!" God is just Santa Claus, writ large. Is that not what you learned in church? God watches

It is an odd thing To wake in the night And think that this day I will be 9-squared old.  I am eighty-one. Four-score and seven years ago I had not been born  By six years.   I will never be  A famous quote. Since in sleep My head had already been working On arithmetic Converting my age To a Matrix Nine on a side I began to consider  A counting system  Based on nine But that seemed  Too close to octal So I did what I do sometimes And worked on a base Of twenty-six: A through z.   Let z be zip Or zero. A is 1, b is 2, And y is 25.  Then az is 26, And aa is 27. But I am three 26es And three more So I today Am cc Never thought To be So old Just saying it cc Sounds ancient Next year I will be A cd Unless I wake  On another base

I don't believe the world is going to end because the Mayans ran out of space to carve on a flat rock. I don't believe that when it ends, as T. S. Eliot described it, that there will remain only a thousand lost golf balls and an asphalt road.  (That isn't exactly what he said, but it is close enough, and it may not have been T. S. Eliot who said it, either.  I do not live in a fact-based reality.)   I am not the least worried that the world will end soon, or that when it does, or I do, that I will be sent to spend the rest of eternity in a hot place.  I know that there are those of you--unbelievers, every one of you--who think that Tucson is hell on wheels in the summer, but you have never been to a swap meet in Yuma, have you?.  No, my fearlessness in the face of doom, destruction, and deserved torture at the hands of a good and loving god is not based on the threats of hot places at all.  As Mark Twain said, it is with the serenity of a bishop holding four aces t

Tonight I sat immediately in front of the most negative man I have ever been near.   The University of Arizona basketball team played Southern Mississippi, and it was a close, ragged, rugged game.  The arena was nearly full--14,400 were there--and the students were, as usual, exuberant and funny.  The man behind me was in top form:  nothing happened that did not offend him.  "Ah, c'mon!  You are seven feet tall and still you can't walk on water!"   He didn't actually say that.  I wish he had.  He kept his eyes focused on the scoreboard that showed fouls, turnovers, and bad breath.  He was ready for every mistake and every ordinary bit of evidence that seven footers cannot walk on water.   I, on the other hand, was a model of ideal deportment.  I did not tell him what I was thinking.  He was bigger than I.  I suspected he had a bad temper and a permit to carry.  I am no fool.  I did not dare even to turn around and look at him. I recall once playing golf

Around Lake Nokomis, Minneapolis Theodore Roosevelt Park:  Wild Horse

Not the house:  just an example. Once upon middle age, I spent a month in Mexico City, to attend a language school.  Not wanting to live in the posh part of the inner city where the school was located, I negotiated a room near the Metro, near Chapultepec Park.  I could walk a few blocks from my tiny room, available to me only at night, because during the day Senor Montenegro used it as an office: a desk, a chair, and a gun for him, and a cot for me.  He took the gun with him when he left at the end of the day. The large old building had once been grand, with an open-air atrium, with a central fountain.  Large gates opened to the street when Senor Montenegro wanted to park inside the gate. Large old houses in fine preservation stood side-by-side with more ordinary little houses on the street.  The house I was in housed about eight males who had come to Mexico City to work.  Some of them went home, elsewhere, on weekends. The rich and the poor lived side-by-side, isolated by p

My father--the father of seven of us--was born 107 years ago, today:  December 3, 1905. in Norway. It has always helped me to remember that the Bergen waterfront burned down the same year.  I do not know that there is a connection.   There is a small psychological . . . not a jolt, but at least a twitch . . . in being able to say that one's parent was born at least a hundred years ago, or that both of them were.   It is a little twitch reminding us of our own, logically necessary, mortality.  It is like saying that Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin were born in 1809.  It does not have the same profundity of saying that the earth is 6,000 years old, but it is more believable.   To say that the earth is 6,000 years old il like saying that my father was born a little over a day ago.  But we are not discussing religious absurdities here:  this is no Sunday pulpit, this is the real world.   In the real world, one of the hardest things we have had to learn is that the time-sca