Betsy Devine: Funny ha-ha and/or funny peculiar

I saw a one-winged angel this morning. Driving down Hampshire Street, late to the gym, I got stuck behind an erratically driven old car. Nor was I in any very Christmas-y mood–until I noticed the battered Christmas-tree decoration the woman had hanging down from her rearview mirror. Hmmm. Tonight, looking for images tagged with “christmas” over at Flickr, I spotted “Gloria” here, half of an angel from some creche scene in Australia.* I could write a long piece now about imperfect angels, but your own imagination can tell you the same story better. Here’s wishing you happiness and warm appreciation for all of the imperfect angels of your own holidays.

* Photographer “The Department” blogged this angel too.

Twenty-five years ago today, Mark Chapman shot John Lennon in NYC. Tonight, December 8, 2005, it is perishing cold. The Dakota, where John Lennon lived, has hired some very bulked-up security guards in case tonight’s mournful crowds rush their uniformed doorman. We wouldn’t do that. We’re just passing by, en route to “Strawberry Fields” in Central Park, so that we can join mittened hands and frosty breath with other sad strangers for a few choruses of Beatles songs. “Eight Days a Week,” “Yesterday,” even “Hey, Jude.” Then back to our hotel, hand in hand, past the little memorials of flowers and photos and poems that people like us, but having more foresight than we did, have taped to the Dakota’s ornate ironwork.

Update: I flickred my photos; so did many others.

The scariest ghost you can meet on Halloween is your very own. Princeton was full of those ghosts, for the past three days.

Blue-jean clad students strolling past the Woodrow Wilson School–do these kids still call it “God’s bicycle rack”?
That’s what Frank and I called it, back in our grad student days, as we hiked past the very same fountain and magnolia trees, maybe at midnight, off to get coffee before going back to the lab.

Or are these laughing students the doppelgangers of later students, pre-meds of the early seventies, who worked so hard in the bio labs I TAed that I got in trouble when their median grade came out a B+. (And one student who got a B+ was close to tears at that terrible grade.)

Students lugging big ludicrous backpacks could also, in another era, have been friends of my children, headed off to some ultimate Frisbee occasion.

Or maybe some of those kids we just met this spring, when Frank joined in a Princeton student Frist filibuster.

As I morph these lively present-day students back through my multiple memories of Princeton, I feel myself shifting and sliding around in so many different past tenses. Halloween black and orange will stand for Princeton, this year.

p.s. It was great to revisit so many real live friends in Princeton too. In fact, that was more like an early Christmas!

p.p.s. We’re spending tonight in Harrodsberg, Kentucky. The Shaker Village hotel has restful charms but most likely not wifi.

A leafhopper in a glamorous lady’s hat? Actually, what I’m talking about is the art of bugging people, but very politely. And here I mean not bugging innocent strangers, but politely bugging people whose job is to help you, but who have decided that they really don’t have to help because….well, let me just tell you the story. We got into Uppsala pretty late Friday night, and the promised Internet connectivity of our hotel room was busted, zero, zilch.

Next morning, we tried lots of plug-and-unplug-and-restart-and-etc. on both our computers. Nope. So my goal for yesterday, (Saturday, alas) was to solve our Internet problem before Frank came home from the Lepton-Photon Conference.

The front-desk staff was sure (on zero evidence) that my computer had to be the problem. Nothing they could do if my computer was the problem, so very sorry.

I kept my cool, and I also kept politely coming back with new ideas about how my problem might get solved.

Polite, even friendly persistence is the best way I know to turn people-who-don’t-want-to-solve-my-problem into people-who-do-want-to-solve-their-own-problem, which is that I keep turning up, hoping they’re going to help me.

They finally agreed to let me try the connectivity from a different hotel room–and it worked! Then, since nobody knew how fix the cable to our room which was clearly broken, they “gave” us an empty single room just for its Internet.

In one way, this less convenient than having an Ethernet hookup in our own room. But in another way, it’s better, because here I sit typing this all by myself while Frank is peacefully napping down the hall.

Anyway, the Polite Bug is what Julie Kavner in This Is My Life would call a “life lesson” from Sister Age. Just keep on politely bugging the people who are supposed to help you, and even if they weren’t planning to help you….they will.

..reminiscing about the days before we “all” had cellphones? (Or iPods
or SMS, if you’re even younger?)

Kottke’s
childhood memories of TV feature Doctor
Who, VCR tapes, and a tuna “hot dish” with lots of noodles
stewing in Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom soup.

That brings back memories–of the tuna hot dish, that is–my mom’s
recipe was identical.

But
my childhood TV memories don’t include VCRs or scifi doctors. In 1952
or thereabouts, my family’s very first TV arrived–also the first TV in
our neighborhood. My favorite show featured cowboy Gabby
Hayes
and Quaker cereals–“They’re shot from guns!” Gabby ended each show by
firing a cannon-full of puffed wheat at the camera. I was just about
six–and not only would I obey his warning to “Stand back away from your televisionary set”,
but we four Devine kids would hide behind couches and chairs as soon as
Gabby wheeled his cannon out.

A bit later in my TV-watching career, I was quite disappointed when Big
Brother Bob Emory announced that his show would be in color from now
on. My mom later explained that Big Brother Bob wasn’t lying, even
though his show still was still black and white. Only people who bought
a new kind of TV that showed color would see any change.

A TV set that showed color? “Who,” asked my mother, “would want to
waste money on that?”

So how did my family end up with a
color TV? Let’s just say that my dad would have loved an
iPod….

My great-grandfather,Hugo A. Dubuque–his 1928 obituaries described him as “a credit to his race,” said race being French-Canadian. He put himself through college, trained for the bar, and ultimately became a Massachusetts Superior Court Judge, spending many days riding the circuit far from his home and family in Fall River. And, late in 1918 he became something very like a blogger. My sister and I discovered his “blog” tucked away in the pages of our father’s baby-photo album–a series of short letters, written almost daily, that Judge Dubuque mailed home from his travels, addressed to his brand-new grandson. The series begins with a letter to his daughter Marie. The judge, clearly shaken by his youngest and dearest daughter’s delivering her first child in her girlhood bedroom: …I cannot tell you how glad we all are that you came through the ordeal all right. How pround Frank will be when he gets the happy news, and his folks also. You can now see, better than you ever realized before, why a mother is the center of such sweet and tender affection. The explanation is that she has earned it by going through the great trial and suffering for, and devotion to, her offspring. Suffering purifies and ennobles all things…. May God bless you and your dear little son, and bring back to you safely his father home [from the World War I battlefield]…

Here’s a characteristic “post” from January 1919:

I envied you this morning, my boy, nice and warm in your cozy bassinette. It was very chilly for grandpa — the wind was North and snowing — the walks were very slippery, but Gaga is always careful so he did not fall down.
There is no heat at all in the Elevated cars in Boston on account of the influenza.

What was that I heard this morning? that you gave an unearthly shriek, like a sort of Indian war whoop, because you were so hungry? That is very rude for a little boy to do that, and scare his Mamma and Atta Paul [Aunt Pauline]. But, of course, when a young man is hungry he cannot always repress his feelings. So be a good boy and we will all love you dearly.

Two weeks later, the proud grandfather has something new to blog:

It is the first time, yesterday, that my voice as a singer was ever appreciated. And you, sweet little grandson, were the one to do so. Nothing pleased me better than to see you apparently enjoy grandpa’s singing. You evidently could stand it with delight, on the ground, presumably, that any noise will do as an amusement.

Wait until your Dad gets home, he will sing “lullybys” for you. It will be great for you to be carried around by a hero of the greatest war in the history of the world, that of 1914 – 1918.

Springtime is a great inspiration to bloggers–even those of March 1919:

You missed it, Murray, in not getting up at 5 A.M. the same as your Gaga did this morning– There was a nice white frost, the harbinger of spring, spread over the trees and ground. The air was so sweet and pure. It is a real delight to be out early.

The spring will soon be here, and by the way this is your first spring. While you have seen flowers in the house, they are much nicer on their own stems in the sunlight outdoors.
Gaga expects to have a garden this spring, back of the house; so you’ll see things grow and you will learn farming and horticulture — garden and flower production — And you will sleep surrounded by flowers and vegetables, which will form a background to the picture of my little grandson–I hope your dad, when he takes you to Manchester, will have a little garden, if it is only to grow some flowers and a few of the ordinary vegetables like lettuce, tomatoes, rare-ripes, and the like…

I transcribed only a few of these letters–of course I now wish I had copied out all of them. A good excuse to go visit my sister again…

On Monday, our little born-in-1988 dog Marianne–well, I’m not up to blogging much, so I’ll quote you some email I sent to Frank…

After you left this morning, I got Marianne cleaned up and took her out for some spring air. She just wanted to go home, however–she was drooping. She lay in her basket panting and whimpering. The vet examined her carefully and told me she couldn’t figure out just what to do next. She said that Marianne’s pain patch was already the best option they have for a dog in such discomfort.

So she gave Marianne a strong sedative that made her fall peacefully asleep while I sat with her on the floor patting her. Then the vet injected an overdose of anesthesia and listened for Marianne’s heartbeat. Then it was over. They let me stay by myself with Marianne for a while. Then I left her there and went home and phoned the girls. Marianne has been part of all our lives for a very long time.

I feel very sad about having to make this decision. But I do also feel I made the right decision. Marianne trusted me to take care of her, to protect her, to love her. And she was right to trust me, because I did all those things.

I miss you, Marianne.

Tags: Sister Age

Eternal life of a Willy Loman

February 16th, 2005 · Comments Off on Eternal life of a Willy Loman

Stephen Hawking liked to joke about his ambitions for A Brief History of Time:

“I’m so ambitious that I want my book to be sold in airport bookstalls.”

A goal even more ambitious than Hawking’s bestsellerdom and celebrity would be…to see your book a standard of high school English. Because then, for the rest of their lives, people would be checking back with their teenage selves to see if what your book told them kept on making sense.

Short works with not too much sex–didn’t you all read these?

• To Kill a Mockingbird
• King Lear
• Death of a Salesman

These are the ones I remember, because these are the ones made me cry then and kept on making sense afterward.

You can get learned texts on Death of a Saleman; you can get a DVD of it with Lee J. Cobb and George Segal (1966) or with Dustin Hoffman and John Malkovich(1985).

One of my own very favorite Willy Lomans was Kevin Klines’s wonderful loopy dinner theatre rendition in the movie Soapdish (1991). (Horrifyingly, the scenes were said to be based on an actual Florida dinner-theater production starring Vincent Gardenia and Julie Harris. Shudder!)

I was reminded of Willy Loman today by a touching article called ”
The F word” (it’s “Fired,” in case you don’t know.) The author, James Atlas, took comfort from thoughts of Willy as his young boss told him his job was ending. Reading Atlas’s story, I realized again how ignorant, back in the sixties, were my teenage tears for Willy. It’s something I don’t mind being reminded of….and I hope James Atlas keeps writing.

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Tags: Sister Age

Dried marjoram from her grandmother’s garden

February 8th, 2005 · Comments Off on Dried marjoram from her grandmother’s garden

A sick child.

A plain broth soup.

The magic ingredient to make plain soup look good is sprinkles of dried marjoram from her grandmother’s garden.

Imagine the scene in Victorian London, and the broth soup would be beef tea or barley water. For my poor sick twenty-something child, I found a Trader Joe’s box of organic vegetable broth–not enough salt for my taste, but that’s easily fixed.

The best part of that soup was finding a tiny glass jar that my mother had given me almost five years ago labeled “Marjoram 2000.” The green leaf bits inside still held the oregano smell of her summer garden. Putting some in the soup was more than mere decoration.

I remember myself, long ago, lying sick in bed while my mother brought me the prize home remedy of the 1950s–Campbell’s chicken soup, with noodles or rice. Her own real soups were too rich or too garlicky for any unhappy stomach.

Some day, maybe, I’ll get to be the grandmother, with time enough to plant herbs and tend them and dry them and pack them in shiny glass jars saved from mustard or pickles or jam.

Right now, in between, I’d like to thank both my daughter and my mother for a truly magical moment today in my kitchen.

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Tags: Sister Age

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