Food, Gas, and the Oxford Comma

We drove one of our aged Volvos to Bellingham yesterday so that our trusted mechanic could work on it. Bellingham's 90 miles north of Seattle, which is about 50 miles north of where we live, so you can see how eccentric our auto-mechanic arrangements are. After we drop off the car, we take Amtrak home. Amtrak's arrangements can be eccentric, too, however. From Bellingham, one takes an Amtrak bus to Seattle, and then one may take either the Sounder, a local commuter train, or the Cascade, which goes all the way to Portland. Why Amtrak is unable to schedule a regular train from Bellingham to Seattle remains a mystery, at least to me.

On the way, I saw a sign that read as follows:

FOOD-GAS
LODGING
NEXT EXIT

I think the choice to put a hyphen between FOOD and GAS was ill-advised because doing so makes "food" function as an adjective modifying "gas." Consequently, the sign informed me that methane gas in some form (one doesn't want to spend too much time reflecting on the subject) was available by means of the next exit.

If I were in charge of writing such signs, I probably would have written "Food, Gasoline, and Lodging: Next Exit," but more letters and punctuation translate into a bigger sign and greater expense. I understand. Still, I prefer the series of three, with the comma before the "and"--a comma known in some circles as the Oxford comma because it is favored, I assume, by many British writers and editors.

For about three years (quite some time ago), I wrote a books-column every two weeks for a local metropolitan daily. The copy I wrote was apparently fairly "clean" because the copy-editors rarely edited it significantly, although of course the headline-writer also gave the column its title. After I'd been writing the column for about a year, however, a copy-editor called me and said, "Look, in almost every column of yours, you use the Oxford comma, and I take it out, so how about you stop using it?" He was pretty ticked off. I don't blame him. I should have been more sensitive to the fact that the AP Style Manual does not recommend using the Oxford comma. I agreed that, from that point forward, I'd leave the Oxford comma out of the columns I wrote.

On occasion, the absence of that comma may cause some confusion, but that's pretty rare. I think I just like the symmetry and tidiness of the comma: X [comma] Y [comma] and Z [period].
Probably we shall never see the following road-sign:

FOOD, GAS, LODGING, AND THE OXFORD COMMA: NEXT EXIT.

Happy New Year From Emily and Elvis

Karl Shapiro published an essay called "The Career of the Poem." I haven't read it in ages, but I recall that, in part, it continues his genial quarrel with T.S. Eliot's poetry. Mainly, however, I remember having been mystified by the title and having thought, "How can a poem have a career?"

Probably the only poem of mine to have a "career" is "Emily Dickinson and Elvis Presley in Heaven." By "career," I mean the poem seems to have gone on a journey of its own and to signify a wide spectrum of things to a variety of readers. It's a modest journey, to be sure; the poem is hardly famous. But for reasons I can only guess, people often respond to the poem favorably. Editors have asked to reprint the poem a few times, and (here's a scary thought), I think the poem may have ended up in some collection that's used in a few Advanced Placement English classes in high schools. The poem also gets posted on blogs from time to time. And a collage-artist named Deb Richardson constructed the collage, based on the poem, that appears above. Thanks again to her.

My ambition for the poem was simple: I wanted to publish it at least once. That was achieved in the late 1980s, in a magazine called The Sucharnochee Review. ("I'm Sucharnochee. Who are you? Are you Sucharnochee, too?") From there the poem seemed to manage its own odd wee career, without a manager, an agent, or an entourage.

So here's the poem again, this time functioning as an indirect Happy New Year from Emily and Elvis to poets, poems, blog-posters, rockers, listeners, and readers here, there, and everywhere. After the poem appears a short form of its resume, which reflects its career, which (oh, my) is in its second decade now.

Emily Dickinson and Elvis Presley in Heaven


They call each other `E.' Elvis picks
wildflowers near the river and brings
them to Emily. She explains half-rhymes to him.

In heaven Emily wears her hair long, sports
Levis and western blouses with rhinestones.
Elvis is lean again, wears baggy trousers

and T-shirts, a letterman's jacket from Tupelo High.
They take long walks and often hold hands.
She prefers they remain just friends. Forever.

Emily's poems now contain naugahyde, Cadillacs,
Electricity, jets, TV, Little Richard and Richard
Nixon. The rock-a-billy rhythm makes her smile.

Elvis likes himself with style. This afternoon
he will play guitar and sing "I Taste A Liquor
Never Brewed" to the tune of "Love Me Tender."

Emily will clap and harmonize. Alone
in their cabins later, they'll listen to the river
and nap. They will not think of Amherst

or Las Vegas. They know why God made them
roommates. It's because America
was their hometown. It's because

God is a thing without
feathers. It's because
God wears blue suede shoes.



By Hans Ostrom, The Coast Starlight: Collected Poems 1976-2006 (Indianapolis: Dog Ear Publishing, 2006). Published previously in the Sucarnochee Review, The Washington Post Book World (“Poet’s Choice” column by Rita Dove), 13 Ways of Looking For a Poem, by Wendy Bishop (Longman), and Kiss Off: Poems to Set You Free (Warner Books). Copyright Hans Ostrom.

Entrepreneur

According to a Web site called theholidayspot, here is how one says Happy New Year in Afghanistan:

Saale nao mubbarak.

In Persia--such as Iran:

Sale-e no mobarak.

In India, where Hindi is spoken:

Naye Varsha Ki Shubhkanyen.

I hope this site is sufficiently trustworthy that I haven't written something like "please chew on a pebble," or worse. If I've misplaced my trust, I apologize.

Happy New Year in Swedish is as follows: Glad nytt år. So "year" in Swedish sounds like "oar" in English. That's what that little circle does to the pronunciation of the a.

In Italian, HNY is buono anno nouvo, I think.

In French: Bonne annee.

Which brings me, because I wanted it to do so, to the word entrepreneur, which springs from the French verb entreprendere, at least according to the OED online. And that verb means "to undertake [something]," but not, I presume, in the sense of what an undertaker does, although of course one could undertake mortuary-work and thereby undertake undertaking and be an entrepreneur.

It is a wee bit ironic that one of American capitalists' favorite words is French, partly because American/French relations have always been composed of "love/hate," but also because Americans tend to think of entrepreneurship as so essentially "American." Further, after France did not fully support the U.S. invasion of Iraq, rightward-leaning American folk became most incensed; you remember the silly "freedom fries" episode in the political spectacle back then.

I remember the comedian Dennis Miller's sounding off at the time. (At some point, Miller decided his views were mostly in line with those of George W. Bush, and he even has a gig on Fox News now, where he seems uneasy.) He said that because of France's absence of support for the invasion, "France is dead to me." I found that statement pretty amusing even though he did not intend as a joke. Of course, it seems to be borrowed from gangster lingo, but for one citizen of a country to say that a whole nation is dead to him or her may reflect an overly expansive view of that citizen's power. I don't think France is worried about "being dead" to one one American comedian with a spotty but extremely entrepreneurial resume. Imagine an American's response to learning that a French mime considered the USA "dead to me."

Oddly enough, "entrepreneur" in English originally referred to someone who organized musical events. That is, it seems to have been limited to "show business." In this sense, one of the earliest references is from 1828, in England. But by 1852, the word in English meant pretty much what it means now. It is always of interest (to me) when a language and/or a culture seems to "need" a word from a different language to fill some kind of perceived hole in the native language. Such is the case with "ombudsperson," for example--a Swedish word, one of the very few imported directly into English.

In business-like fashion, I've attempted to write a poem concerning this word, entrepreneur. I'm afraid I have been too business-like with regard to the title.


Entrepreneur

Think of this poem as a new business.
Welcome! How may I help you?
We're running a special sale
on images, including a blackened
big toe, the variegated fur of a
domestic cat, and a freckle
on a woman's lower back. Will
that be cash or credit?

Alas, this business fails
to turn a profit. Isn't that
just like poetry? --Always
thinking of itself and not
the bottom line. What

was Andrew Carnegie's
favorite poem? . . . Oh, dear:
Thugs sent by this poem's
venture-capital investors
have arrived. They want
their money back, plus
the vig. We must escape.
We'll meet up later in a bar.

A bar. Now there's a real
business: exchanging vessels
of distilled and brewed liquids
for cash, listening to failed
entrepreneurs--and poets
of every kind--tell their
tales of woe, wiping the dark
wooden bar clean. "Last call!"


Hans Ostrom Copyright 1008 Hans Ostrom

Top Secret

(image of Spy vs. Spy, from Mad Magazine)





Top Secret


How does a secret reach the top?
Also--the top of what? I think
of secrets that never reach the peak.
They remain in huts on a slope,
run out of provisions, succumb
to despair and gravity, and stumble
toward a village of common knowledge
where they are nobody special.

What percentage of secrets deemed
Top should a government share
with everyone? Answer: always
a greater percentage than the
government claims. Incidentally,
who manufactures the stamps
that spell TOP SECRET? Is
this information secret?

I might have made a semi-
excellent spy because I tend
to forget secrets people tell me.
The safest place to keep a secret
is one you can't find again. If
someone needs the secret,
the situation may seem awkward.

I know there are good reasons
to keep secrets, but not as many
as the bad reasons. Information
isn't power. Power is Power. It
keeps secrets chiefly because
It can. Because It will. Sometimes

when I stood next to an alpine
creek, fast water would arrange
itself just so, so it became like
a liquid lens with no distortion.
The complex beauty of the creek's
multicolored, gravelly basis, with
bits of debris and a trout's dark
back, struck apprehension clearly.
Transparency's a transfusion.


Hans Ostrom Copyright 2008 Hans Ostrom

Bats and Bobs in My Belfry

I'm not exactly sure why, but in Winter, the reading I do that's not connected with my professorial work tends to include either Russian novels or classic detective fiction or both. With regard to Russian novels, I guess one reason may be obvious: who "does" Winter better in fiction that the Russians? With regard to detective fiction, well, I can remember having read the collected Sherlock Holmes tales for the first time in the winter, and I even remember reading them by candle-light when the power went out for a few days. So maybe that experience welded Winter to the reading of detective fiction, in my case.

So I've dipped into War and Peace for the umpteenth time, and I've decided to read Dorothy Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey detective novels again; in fact, I'm reading a couple of them for the first time. I'd read Strong Poison and Whose Body? before, for example, but I'm reading The Nine Tailors for the first time. (The photo is of Sayers.)

It has nothing to do with tailors, at least as referring to people who put clothes together. It has everything to do with bells. Church bells. Ringing church bells--the tradition and practice of which are bewilderingly complex--and fascinating. In the beginning of the novel (I'm not spoiling the plot), Lord Peter is pressed into service as a parish church literally rings in the New Year--with 8 bell-ringers ringing a bell each for nine hours, from midnight to 9:00 a.m. That's some serious bell-ringing. The narrator also lets us know that one of the bells was forged in the ground; that is, a hollowed out piece of pasture was used to mold the bell, back in the day.

There are probably cultures that immerse themselves in arcane, eccentric practices more fully (one wants to say more madly) that the Brits, but I can't think of any at the moment. (And for every arcane pursuit, there seems to be a BBC radio show.) Apparently, serious bell-ringing began in the 17th century, and soon ringers were performing elaborate, mathematically complex tunes, although I thing I'm supposed to use "change" in place of "tune." Soon thereafter, an elaborate and seemingly impenetrable vocabulary emerged. For instance, "tailors" is, according to the OED online, a corruption of "tellers," which probably is related to "tolling." According to a bell-ringing glossary online, "bob" refers to "a type of plain method" of ringing in which a "lead or a half-lead" is deployed. All righteee, then.

I know I'm over my head with a subject when the definitions of terms seem as confusing as the terms they allegedly define. It was that way with trigonometry.

In bell-ringing circles (that word seems apt, given how sound radiates), "wrong" doesn't mean incorrect. It is "a device that causes an odd number of bells (often 3) to vary their work"--usually related to the "Treble's full lead." There, now; we've cleared that up!

Sayers was not just a Brit, but also a Dante scholar, a devout Christian, and a feminist. This combination helps to make her a most readable detective novelist, full of surprises, knowledge, wisdom, and wit. I wouldn't say her villains are especially interesting, but her detective, Wimsey, is distinctive enough to rival Holmes, and his side-kick (and wife), Harriet Vane, a liberated woman of the 1920s, more than rivals Watson, except for the fact that Watson is our narrator in the tales, and for the fact that Harriet is not in all the novels.

The devout-Christian part induces Sayers to defend ferociously the practice of bell-ringing--in an author's note before the novel begins. She asks, rhetorically, why anyone would complain about bell-ringing in an age of the automobile and the "wails" of jazz--especially when bell-ringing is a tribute to God. The novel itself makes bell-ringing--like book-collecting, fly-fishing, and all manner of pursuits--and end in itself. Highly proscribed subcultures like this no doubt provide great comfort to people in a bewildering, chaotic world. Meanwhile, ordinary folks who aren't maniacally devoted to such a pursuit think the bell-ringers, et al., have "bats in their belfry." I always thought that was a charming term for insanity. I heard it quite a bit when I was growing up (not always directed at me, I hasten to add), but I don't hear or read it anymore.

In any event, here I am in Winter's darkness, immersed in a Sayers book and immersed in her immersion in bell-ringing. And this pleases me? Yes, I'm afraid it does. I'm 40 pages in, and there's yet to be a murder, so I must be pleased. I usually like at least one murder--or some other serious crime--to occur within the first 25 pages of detective novels.

So when you ring in the New Year, think of . . . Dorothy Sayers, Lord Peter Wimsey, bats in the belfry, and bob, who is not only your uncle but also "a type of plain method . . .".

If there's a bat or two in your belfry and you'd like to know more about this obscure art of bell-ringing, well, here's a link:

http://www.cccbr.org.uk/ringing/ringing.php

Winter-Mix

The lingo of those who report weather-news to us fascinates, although it may fascinate less when we're focused on the news itself and how it might disrupt our lives.

A term new to me is "winter mix," which I feel obligated to hyphenate because winter is a noun pressed into service as an adjective. At any rate, it apparently refers that anything-can-happen weather, when rain, snow, freezing rain, or just cold air may greet you when you step outside. There is a note of resignation in this term that appeals to me, as if, subtextually, the weather-person were saying, "You know what? It's winter, and the weather's unpleasant, so sue me." Ellen DeGeneres has a nice bit about how people tend to blame weather-reporters for the weather-news, an attitude sometimes enacted clumsily on the set of local-TV news-shows, where news "anchors" display mock outrage toward their climatological colleagues. "Please tell us the snow is going to stop, Amanda!"

Still, "weather-mix" doesn't measure up to my favorite term, used almost exclusively in the Pacific Northwest, as far as I can tell: "sun breaks," which also should be hyphenated, in my opinion. Essentially, the terms means "cloudy," and everybody knows that, in some circumstances, sunlight may break through clouds momentarily. But saying "there will be sun-breaks" instead of saying "it's going to be cloudy again" may qualify as protesting too much. I hope the "financial" reporters don't start saying, "The economic outlook is still horrible--but with prosperity-breaks in the afternoon, followed by a few minutes of economic justice overnight."

So anyway, I decided to play around with a poem concerning this winter-mix business.


Winter's Mixed Results

Snow to rain and back to snow
again. Then comes just cold,
which freezes slush and snow
and mud. At last we're slowed
down and up, our feet and wheels
and winged chariots set back
to sluggish paces, in some cases
even stopped by frozen slop
of slush and snow and mud.

This weather lurks beneath
the mean temperature. We're
put in a mercury-mood--heavy,
gray, not quite solid, depressed
by cold. After thaw, abrasive
rains scour streets. Hard wind
mutters under eaves, in
gaps between urban structures.
We escape again into feverish
bustling and maniacal toil, into
the flow of routine we hold dear.


Copyright 2008 Hans Ostrom

Hope

(photo of Jacques Ellul, looking hopeful)






A professor from whom I took graduate courses in 18th century literature (many moons ago) especially liked this quotation from Samuel Johnson:

"The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope."
Johnson: Rambler #2 (March 24, 1750)

He was bit dour, this professor (as was Johnson), rather chronically disappointed in almost everything. So I think he interpreted the quotation as bearing on humans' penchant for false hope.

Given the news from almost everywhere about almost everything, hopelessness is a tempting position. Turn where one might, much seems hopeless: the plight of the poor everywhere, the health of the planet, Middle East politics, and so on. No doubt you have your own pertinent list handy.

At the same time, one might posit that hopelessness is a luxury. For example, today I found myself lapsing into a hopeless attitude toward conflict between Palestinians and Israelis, but at the time I was driving on calm, if pot-holed, streets, headed to a well-stocked grocery store. Easy for me to indulge in hopelessness. If I were trying to raise a family and/or support friends somewhere in the midst of conflict, violence, and oppression, I might not have the option of focusing on my private hopelessness. I'd probably have to focus on surviving, getting through a day or a week.

And, indeed, perhaps the most important word in the Johnson quotation is "natural," a word about which social scientists, among others, are quite skeptical. Nature v. nurture, essential v. constructed, and all that. Maybe there is some hopeful hard-wiring in the brain, however. Who knows?

At the same time, as a close friend of mine is fond of saying, particularly of organizations that can't get their stuff together, "Hope is not a strategy." I find that assertion hard to argue against. In my limited experience, preparation, attention to detail, persistence, and focus have seemed to be more productive than hope. But I'm also open to the argument that hope helps make these practices possible.

I'm also emboldened, or at least made hopeful, by people who maintain hope in extreme situations, who "beat the odds," at least for a while, and who do what had seemed like the impossible. Emily Dickinson, who knew much hardship and pain, famously took the side of hope in this poem:

“Hope” is the thing with feathers—

That perches in the soul—

And sings the tune without the words—

And never stops—at all—

And sweetest—in the Gale—is heard—

And sore must be the storm—

That could abash the little Bird—

That kept so many warm—

I’ve heard it in the chillest land—

And on the strangest Sea—

Yet, never, in Extremity,

It asked a crumb—of Me.

There may be some of Dickinson's attitude in that of Jacques Ellul, 20th century French theologian and political scientist. Ellul's book, Propaganda, is arguably the very best single volume on the subject, and what he had to "say" about propaganda and mass media seems more pertinent with each new technological "advancement" in media. Ellul's book is not entirely hopeful, and Ellul himself had seen France occupied by Hitler's military (but then also unoccupied, or liberated). Oddly enough, Ellul settled on a combination of anarchy and Christianity as his hopeful, feathery perch amid the gale. He saw Christianity as having been rooted in anarchy--"anarchy" in the sense of being opposed to oppressive hierarchy. And he perceived non-violent Anarchism as the stance most likely to lead to liberty and justice.

How does Ellul reconcile Christian faith and political anarchy (not chaos, mind you, but the political philosophy of anarchy, as defined by Bakunin and others)? Well, in the short run, I'll rely on a one-paragraph summary taken from amazon.com:

"Jacques Ellul blends politics, theology, history, and exposition in this analysis of the relationship between political anarchy and biblical faith. On the one hand, suggests Ellul, anarchists need to understand that much of their criticism of Christianity applies only to the form of religion that developed, not to biblical faith. Christians, on the other hand, need to look at the biblical texts and not reject anarchy as a political option, for it seems closest to biblical thinking. Ellul here defines anarchy as the nonviolent repudiation of authority. He looks at the Bible as the source of anarchy (in the sense of non-domination, not disorder), working through the Old Testament history, Jesus' ministry, and finally the early church's view of power as reflected in the New Testament writings. 'With the verve and the gift of trenchant simplification to which we have been accustomed, Ellul lays bare the fallacy that Christianity should normally be the ally of civil authority.'" - John Howard Yoder

In the long run, I'll rely on Ellul himself. A translation of his book, Anarchy and Christianity, appeared in 1991 and is still available in paperback, and maybe in a locally owned used bookstore of your choice. If, however, the combination of anarchy and Christianity just seems too preposterous to you, seems to be a perch to which you have no hope of (or interest in) reaching, then I hope you'll glance at Ellul's Propaganda sometime, if you haven't already. One absolutely need not be either Christian or anarchist to benefit from that book; indeed, it's the sort of book that's easily imported to all sorts of world-views. As is the wisdom in Sam Johnson's essays and poems (and the dictionary), come to think of it. Johnson said of Paradise Lost, as one might say about this post, "no one wished it longer."

Hash? Sheesh!

So we trekked all the way to Seattle to meet a garrulous group who had trekked all the way from Whidbey Island; we rendezvoused at the Sorrento Hotel, which refers to itself as "the longest running luxury hotel in Seattle" (I didn't see it move, let alone run), and we "brunched."

To my mild astonishment, if astonishment can be mild, corned beef hash was listed on the menu. It was easily the most interesting dish listed, and the sight of the words made me a wee bit nostalgic, so I had to order the dish.

Alas and alack, I was served, not hash, but simply strips of corned beef. I managed to find sustenance in what I ate, but nonetheless, I was disappointed that I hadn't actually been served hash, which is ground-up meat. My parents and many in their generation routinely made hash with a cast-iron meat-grinder. Hash of this sort is connected with some social-class issues and "stretching a dollar." If you have a piece of tough meat left over, one way to use it is to grind it up into a hash and serve it for dinner or breakfast or both. Probably through the 1950s and into the 1960s, hash was also a mainstay of diners' breakfast-menus. One hardly ever sees it now. It''s much too folksy, and it probably takes too much time to make, although I think you may still buy it in a can.

A fellow I was dining with had also remembered hash of the old-fashioned kind, and he opined that, in this economy, corned beef hash might make a comeback. He also observed that Spam (referring to meat in a can, not to unwanted email messages) has become much more popular and that in Hawaii it has remained popular because Hawaii has to import most of its meat. "Spam and hash are inexpensive ways of getting protein," he said, cutting to the economic and metabolic chase.

According the the OED online, hash (as referring to ground-up meat), goes back linguistically to the 17th century, and Samuel Pepys's (pronounced Peeps) famous diary is cited as a source. Not too long thereafter, "hash" took on a derogatory connotation, meaning a mess, as in "he made a hash of things." A poem by Alexander Pope from 1735 is cited in this case. Pope uses the term figuratively and writes of a "hash of tongues," a mixture of languages--not ground-up tongues.

Then the term "settle [his] hash"--as in vanquishing a person--came into the language in the early 1800s. I almost never hear the term anymore, and in fact I didn't hear it all that often in my childhood.

Apparently, hash-browned potatoes, as a term, arose in the language after 1900. Probably most of us think of hash-browned potatoes as fried (browned) potato slices, but some people think of them as bits of potatoes fried--hence the link to hash, I assume.

As to corned beef itself: it refers to salted beef. "Corning" is a form of "curing" meet, and the connection is to corns or pieces of salt, not to corn itself. A "corned beef and cabbage" meal is still associated with Easter Sunday and with Irish cuisine. I rather liked corned beef and cabbage when I was growing up. The (boiled) cabbage (of the light green, not of the purple, variety) was served with vinegar.

"Hashish" actually pre-dates "hash," going all the way back to 1598 and referring, of course, to processed Indian hemp-plant, which was also called "bhang." I think I prefer "bhang" to "hash" in this instance--not that I know anything about smoking hash, but I did have a friend once who smoked it, and according to him, it was mightily more powerful than marijuana and had the effect of removing the top of his head, gently. "Hash" as referring to "hashish" came into the language in the 1950s, at least according to the OED online, which cites Norman Mailer, of all people. Perhaps things got a little complicated in big cities when people walked into diners and asked for "a plate of hash." "Would that be the Irish or the Indian hash, sir? There's a bit of a price-difference, and are you a cop?"

Being a nerd to the third power, I had to wonder of "hashish" was related in any way to "assizes," as in "the court of assizes" in Britain. Nope. "Assizes" refers to judgments, and it's related to the Old French "assise," which concerns sitting down. So if you go to the court of assizes, you and the judge and your expensive barristers and solicitors sit down, and you get your judgment, unless you're stuck in Jarndyce v. Jarndyce in Bleak House, but then that's the court of chancery.

And finally, on a football (American) field, there are small white dashes or marks toward the center of the field, and these are called "hash-marks," but the linkage is to marks on a military uniform, also called "hash-marks," and as far as I can tell, there's no connection to smoking hash or eating corned beef hash, although the rules of American football seem to have been devised by people who had smoked hash, and I know at least one NFL referee who seems to make rulings on the field without benefit of the top of his head.

Oh my goodness, I've made a hash of this post.

Us

I like the way William Golding went about writing novels, to the extent I know by inference how he went about writing novels. It seems as if he invented premises or situations that would allow him to investigate and represent human behavior in isolation and in relatively extreme situations. Indeed, he didn't limit himself exclusively to human behavior. In The Inheritors, he imagined the world of Neanderthal people more or less at the "moment" when they encountered (and just before they seem to have been overwhelmed by) humans of our particular species. This novel is The Inheritors. (Incidentally, some scientists in Europe are supposedly attempting to rebuild the genome of Neanderthal "man.")

Of course, his most famous novel, and one of the most-assigned novels in American high schools, is Lord of the Flies, the isolation-maneuver in this one being the use of an island on which adolescent males are stranded. Then there's The Spire, which is the Golding novel I happen to like the best; it describes the building of a Medieval cathedral, with all the attendant and conflicting forces of ambition, faith, greed, mystery, engineering, labor, and so on.

Pincher Martin is not my favorite, but it's still a good book, in my opinion. Golding takes extremity to its extreme. Mr. Martin is stranded on a rock, just a rock, in the ocean, and there is also some question in Pincher's mind whether Pincher exists. And what a great (first) name--reducing all of humanity to a crab-like form (if we take pincher to equal pincer). I read that novel when I was 17. It was a bit much for me at the time. --A good mind-stretcher, however.

If his novels are any guide, Golding was ambivalent, to say almost the least, about what constituted essential humanity and the extent to which something good was a part of that essence. His was a guarded view of humanity, I'd say, so I thought of him after I'd written this small, pincer-like poem.


Us

So, to recap, we staggered out of Time,
became aware of our awareness. We
found, used, and made tools. We got
big ideas, learned to draw and build.
We refined storage, trade, war, art,
and sex. Now we are too many for
the space allotted. Our killing-tools
have outgrown war itself. We've
progressed so much that we've
regressed to the predicament of
a self-threatening species. I wonder
what's going to happen. Shall love
and sense somehow prevail? That
would be lovely, but as the "somehow"
nervously suggests, I feel obligated by
all those practical jokes I fell for early
in life to have my doubts. At the same
time, who cares about my doubts,
when the percentage of us I constitute
is too small to calculate? Carry on.


Copyright 2008 Hans Ostrom

Poem to Poet

Poem to Poet


"If you don't mind," the poem said
to the poet, "I'd prefer not to begin
with a vivid description of place,
a surreal image, or an attention-grabbing
statement." "As a matter of fact,"
said the poet, "I do mind. I write you.
Your job is to stay written." "But
not published?" said the poem.
"Ouch," the poet said. "And,"
continued the poem, "poetry--
that's me--is not a matter of fact.
Facts are like weights you attach
to the corpses of dead poems so
they'll sink." "In a marsh?" asked
the poet, trying to be helpful.
"Sure. Whatever--a marsh," the
poem said. The poet inhaled
substantially, held the breath,
and let it go. "Fine, then," said
the poet, "how might you begin
yourself?" "Your inquiry sounds
insincere," the poem said. "Don't
change the subject," replied
the poet, "or are you all talk
and no poetry?" "Okay," said
the poem, "this time I'd like
to begin with a question--this
way: 'Why do washed clothes
dried outside in sunshine
smell so extraordinarily fine
that I when I release them
from the line, I plunge my face
into the clothes and sniff them?'"


Copyright 2008 Hans Ostrom

Goya Humbug

The Winter break seems to be my time to catch up on movie-watching--on television. I saw the better part of Apocalypto today and was not disappointed, or rather I was as disappointed as I expected to be, so I don't think this counts as disappointment. From the point of view of craft, Gibson knows how to assemble a movie and make startling images, and he seems to make movies that make money, and I guess that's the point. But a huge percentage of the film is essentially a chase-scene that recycles conventions not only 0f chase-scenes but of Old School "jungle" movies--including predatory cats, poisonous snakes, booby-traps, and (wait for it!) quicksand. Oh, how I loved quicksand in movies when I was about 11!

I also saw Goya's Ghosts, directed by Milos Foreman. Like Amadeus, the movie is, to some extent, about the artistic personality and about society versus art. The King of Spain, played by Randy Quaid, is a ditto of the King of Austria, played by . . .um, the actor who played the newspaper editor in Deadwood. Jeffrey is his first name, I believe. A visit to IMDB is required, I see.

It is not a subtle movie, and many scenes are predictable, such as when violence erupts and we cut away to . . . chickens. Later, when someone is being tortured to death, we cut away to a burro eating hay. The bad guy--a Catholic priest who later becomes a Napoleonic rationalist (and is a thug in both incarnations)--becomes a Christ-figure in the end. He's played nicely by Janvier Bardem. Natalie Portman is okay, but she's given about as much to do in the movie as most women are given in Hollywood movies, although this may be an "independent" Hollywood movie, meaning a bank somewhere else funded the movie, which was then distributed by Hollywood.

Goya is played by a Swede, Stellan Skasgard (circle over the second a), and that turns out to be a nice piece of counterintuitive casting. The movie's a pretty thinly veiled rant against torture and against the corrupting nature of all power (whether it's "rational" or "religious"). In the end, it presents a kind of Jonathan Swiftian, misanthropic view of history: same megalomania, greed, and pathology, different era. Pope, General, President, or Emperor: all the same.

After watching these movies, I took one of my "urban hikes" and ended up, as usual, at Starbucks, where I learned that the barista had worked 9 hours on Christmas Day and found the customers, including longtime regulars, grumpy. I commiserated on both counts and was especially careful not behave grumpily, not that I ever behave that way in a cafe. My sense is that most people over the age of about 11 are grumpy at some point on Christmas Day. There are so many reasons TO be grumpy. For one thing, it may not be a holiday or a holy day for a lot of people. For those to whom it is a holy day, the commercialism is distasteful. For everyone else except retailers (but including the front-line workers in retail), the commercialism is distasteful--not to mention exhausting. And there's all that pressure to be cheerful and have a good time. Also, in many cases, families are forced together. So Foreman's bit of Goya humbug seemed appropriate, even as I had enjoyed the 25th very much.

Because I walked after the sun had gone down, a family member insisted that I wear one of those orange and yellow reflecting vests. --Not a bad idea, except that I'm not a small person, so I looked like a bus. In fact, I walked past a bus-stop and someone waiting there looked disappointed that I didn't stop and open a door on my side. I merely smiled and said hello when I might have said, "Humbug." I went into Starbucks and ordered a cup of diesel.

Mirth

I got to know the work of G.K. Chesterton first through his Father Brown detective stories and then through his fantastical thriller, The Man Who Was Thursday. Then I started reading his writing on religion, including Orthodoxy and The Everlasting Man. Chesterton's an extremely witty, agile writer, although in nonfiction he may rely excessively on the paradoxical flip, as in the following quotation:

Too much capitalism does not mean too many capitalists, but too few capitalists." - The Uses of Diversity, 1921

The sentence is smart and witty. Sentences of this kind seem ubiquitous in the books, however, so sometimes one yearns for another mode of rhetoric.

You might not guess as much by considering this photo (above) of G.K., but he was a mirthful (albeit single-minded) defender of mirth. In fact, he claimed mirth was one of the benefits of being Christian, a faith he relentlessly defended, partly through a running argument--in print and on the radio--with G.B. Shaw, famed atheist. At the same time, Chesterton was most interested in egalitarian economics and some forms of socialism, but of course not the forms that dismissed religion. He was in favor of distributing wealth, in other words, and probably would have (and did?) mock the idea of "redistributing" wealth. He may have argued for distributing wealth first and then worrying about "redistribution" later, as the quotation above may suggest.

Based on my imperfect understanding of Chesterton's work, I assume he would attribute the existence of mirth to God's having given it to humans. I'm willing to entertain that possibility, but I think it's also entertaining to ponder whether mirth is something that evolved, along with opposable thumbs, for example. Cats and dogs certainly play, but do they experience mirth? Do primates? (I know: "define mirth.") How much does the human brain have to develop before it generates a sense of mirth, triggers a laugh? No doubt Chesterton would mercilessly and mirthfully skewer my desire to understand mirth through the lens of evolution. In any event, I couldn't help thinking of Chesterton as one reader over my shoulder when I drafted the following poem.

The Birth of Mirth

I don't know how many cells a creature
must possess until it develops a sense
of play as distinguished from or in concert
with function. (My knowledge of science
is a source of mirth to scientists I know.)
Regarding mammals, more particularly
humans, I've deduced with my Left Brain
that at some dim prehistoric parliamentary
meeting of variables, babies started laughing
soon after birth if not before. At that
unfalsifiable point, the mythical door
of mirth opened. What a nice selection.
How funny. Perhaps, like me,

you've laughed at babies who laughed
unprompted, and you felt the quirky purity
of mirth. Maybe sometimes you just want
to go out or stay in and have
a few laughs. Anyway, it's all traceable
(this is a lie) back to the birth of mirth.
How is humor? Why is funny? Mirth must
be. This much we know, or this little.


Copyright 2008 Hans Ostrom

Bowl Season Redux

About a year ago, I wrote a post about the strange American phenomenon, "bowl season," when college football teams play before large stadia-audiences and cameras, each bowl sponsored by corporations and each team's university rewarded handsomely with cash. I even looked up "bowl" in the OED online, and if memory serves (it rarely does), "bowl" in connection with American football, stadia, and the games played in the stadia entered the language early in the 20th century. (Pictured is the Rose Bowl stadium in Pasadena, where the game, the Rose Bowl, is redundantly played.)

Bowls (of this kind) must be one of those American traditions that flummox many observers of American culture. Probably Europeans can connect bowls in some vague way with soccer competitions, but the proliferation of bowls, the bewildering way in which teams are selected, and the corporate sponsorship must seem impenetrable.

When I was a lad (this was in the 17th century), the main bowls were the Sugar, Rose, and Orange Bowls, and then the Blue Bonnet and Sun Bowls seemed to sneak in there. The proliferation seemed to occur in the early 1980s, so that now there's the Holiday Bowl, the Poinsettia Bowl, and a bowl of bowls with corporate names.

In last year's post, I listed bowls I'd prefer to watch in place of the current ones. My favorite possibility is still the Despair Bowl, in which the two most inept, despondent teams in the land compete--or commiserate. I also liked the Absurdity Bowl and the Zen Bowl. The Poetry Bowl is probably an acquired taste.

Corporate-sponsors were so eager to support these bowls last year that I thought I'd offer up more great ideas, including the Obsessive Compulsive Bowl, in which both teams run the same play throughout the game, trying to make it perfect, and the crowd loves it because they share the same trait with the compulsive players and coaches. I agree that this may not make for "good television." I, however, would find it compelling.

Putin and Cheney, among others, seem so wistful for Cold War days that I think we may need the Cold War Nostalgia Bowl to exorcise these demons ritualistically. The teams could allegedly represent the USA and the former USSR, but then of course both teams would include spies and double-agents. A musical tribute to Joseph McCarthy and Nikita Kruschev might occur at halftime. Left-leaning fans could wear pink. Illegal wire-taps would be placed on all telephones affiliated with the teams.

The "Where's Our Money, Buster?" Bowl might be appropriate for this year. The teams would be made up of bankers, and we'd need to make the field extremely muddy. The winning team would earn the privilege of helping people rescue their foreclosed homes.

The Post-Modern Visual Media Bowl might work. All players and coaches and all fans in the stadium would wear their own wee video camera, first-person perspective, and the resulting maelstrom of images would be broadcast, perhaps with some great electronic music, the kind associated with raves. We'd all experience the experience of experiencing the experiences of the bowl, but don't worry; we'd still have traditional commercial advertisements, just so we could catch our breaths.

I'm so alienated from college football now that I don't know which teams are playing in what bowls for what illusory status. By chance, I do know that the TCU Horned Frogs defeated the Boise State Idahoans (I made up that last part--I think the mascot may be a bronco or a fox terrier--some kind of animal) in the Poinsettia Bowl last night. And I still don't like poinsettias.