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

Happy St. Patrick’s day! OK, I’m late. But I don’t want you to be “late,” so I’m going to share one of my Devine-ly Irish dad’s favorite “Pat and Mike” jokes.

Pat and Mike are on top of the Empire State Building. Pat says to Mike, “I’ve half a mind to jump down.”

Mike says to Pat, “No, Pat! ‘Tis such a long way, and ye’ll surely get hurt.”

Pat says to Mike, “Ye great coward, just watch me.” Pat jumps off the ledge. A minute goes by. Then Pat calls back up, “It’s like flying! Come try it.” So Mike jumps. They’re both flying down and having a great time together, until Pat hits the ground. And he calls out, “Mikey, go back! It hurts now, go back, go back!”

The people now claiming that mask time is over, we’ve all had a very mild omicron which didn’t hurt us — those people remind me of the high-flying Pat. I’m not going to join Pat, and I hope you won’t either.

My great-grandfather’s name was 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 proud 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 and of course I now wish I had copied out all of them. A good excuse to go visit my sister again.

[Footnote, my friend Ronni Bennett posted this story into her “Elderstories” page long ago. I am preserving it here, so I can more easily find it again.

I did a small but messy project this week. I made “strawberry stones.”

We are growing strawberries in our garden and of course the bright color attracts birds that want to peck them. So the idea of berry stones is to surround berry plants with little stones that you have painted bright red. Then birds learn, “Oh, those pretty red things don’t taste good.”

Anyway, I made a thick roux of flour and water and colored it bright red with food coloring. Then I dumped some gravel stones into this red “mud” in my saucepan, and fished them out to let them dry on a cookie sheet. They actually looked more convincing in the garden than on the cookie sheet, because the little flecks of dirt that get on them look realistic.

This is the technology news of the week for me.

Strawberry plant with some gravel next to it, and also a few pieces of gravel that are painted bright red to look like small strawberries.

Pieces of gravel covered with a thick paste of flower and water, colored red with food coloring

From Wikimedia Commons category “dogs eating.”

Later, I heard parents use, “That’s not appropriate!” More recently, parents are saying, “That’s not a choice.”

Because children, like dogs, don’t know language except what we teach them, it’s likely that children, past present and future, translate all these three into the same basic knowledge: “I expect you to learn some behavior is not OK, not now and not ever.”

But nevertheless, these three different sayings are different–in their effect on the parents who say them. And thus, important progress has been made. “No, don’t do that” incites power struggle, with parent v child. “Not appropriate” implies moral rules a parent just describes, with the child as a potential sinner. “Not a choice” reminds parents as well as the children that other behaviors exist that would be better.

Maybe this improved language can also help in our “parenting” of ourselves. “Don’t do that” is the internal language of will-power. “Not appropriate” asks guilt and shame to step in, when pride hasn’t been enough to change our behavior. But the world-view of “not a choice” could be useful. I’m going to try that.

My second grade teacher Miss Egan had a giant set of beautiful shiny white flashcards, with second grade words and some pictures. I remember them well, because I would often be sent to the back of the class to play with those flash cards when she was helping her more basic readers. (My mom taught me to read very early, so I spent hours of the years between four and seven boastfully reading aloud to my little sister and brother, an uncritical audience, while my mother had naps and phone chats and cocktails.)

Miss Egan’s flashcards gave me my very first shock of learning, suddenly, that something I thought I knew was entirely wrong. From the flashcards I learned that “then” and “than” were really two different words!!!! As a bit of a careless reader, a skimmer really, I had imagined that “then/than” was one word with two different possible meaning (like wind(n) and wind(v)), which writers sometimes carelessly spelled two slightly different ways.

Back to Miss Egan and a darker second grade memory. Our class had a “reading book,” one-inch thick and full of a year’s worth of stories, in the opinion of second-grade planners in 1950-something Manchester, NH. NOBODY was supposed to read ahead of the class in our class reading book. But, regrettably, I could not help reading every story in it, all the way to the end, during the first few months of school, hiding it under my desk and reading by glances whenever Miss Egan was doing something that bored me. I managed to stay undetected until, one fateful day, Miss Egan asked the class if we ever had heard the name “Ebeneezer.” Of course, I shot my hand up in the air, which Miss Egan rightly ignored.

Miss Egan (I realize now) moved though her lesson plan, asking the class, “What kind of name do you think Ebeneezer could be? Who could be somebody or something you’d name Ebeneeze?” My classmates started guessing, a boy, a girl, a dog, etc. etc. Finally everyone was stymied.

Of course, I shot up my hand up then and said, “Ebeneezer could be a big red tractor.” Consternation and uproar! (it was the right answer.) “You have been reading ahead,” said Miss Egan. “That is cheating.” “No, no!,” I defended myself, horrified that my clever answer was earning me scolding rather than praise. “I really just guessed it.”

I hope I have become more honest in subsequent years, but do I ever want to become less cheeky?

Oh those quaint old days of the 20th century! Do you remember them too?

Do you remember the soft creaky groaning of dialup, when you waited for that connection? Do you remember when Netscape Navigator added images to internet pages of text? Did you make your own animated GIF avatar for Compuserve forums? Do you remember why we called it the World Wide Wait?

In 1998 (or thereabouts), our family moved to the Netherlands for 3 months, because Frank had a Lorentz Professorship. About two days before takeoff, I figured out how to sign up for Hotmail, just in case it turned out to be useful. In those simple days, short email addresses were super easy to get.

When we moved to Cambridge, about 2000, I was very anxious to have good internet cables running up through a wall between Frank’s study and mine, so we could both work at our desks with computers online. I also proposed, as a bit of a lark, that we might try something new I had read about in MacWorld, something called wifi. Without much expectation, we bought a new wireless router, which affected our lives in ways we never imagined.

Now you could unplug your computer from your desk and use it in the kitchen to try a new recipe, or even out in the garden on beautiful day. And every time you looked, there was something new online that ysou wanted to try. There were blogs, and anybody could start one! And then Cameron Marlowe made a blog tool tracking which blogs were following certain news stories, and there was a big news story about GOP shenanigans that I wanted to see blogs linking to, so there was a reason for me to start a blog, so of course I did.

Then out of nowhere, there was a guy named Dave Winer at Harvard holding big meetings where amateur bloggers could even meet tech superstars. There was a “social software” from Google called Orkut, where you could ask techy acquaintances to “friend” you, a heady rush of pleasure when they said yes.

Then bloggers got RSS, and then I got a job working for Scott Johnson at Feedster, and then along came Bloggercon and Joi Ito’s chatroom and SXSW, even more connections that put real life and your computer together. Because there were always more web things to try. Things like del.icio.us made by a #joi chatroom friend Joshua Schachter, which we all had to try. Things like Second Life, where a 2003 Newsweek story about becoming a real life millionaire selling virtual stuff there motivated so many people to give it a try. I must confess that although I did make some real-life money in Second Life, it was never enough to cover the real-life money I spent, mostly on “rent” for beautiful places to put the wild buildings I also bought, but also on bubblegum pink hair and beautiful “textures” and other fun things.

So now, just a bit more than a decade later, I can visit foreign countries without learning the important local language sentence, “Where is the nearest internet cafe?” In fact, now I am writing this blogpost while riding an airplane from Shanghai to Boston. There is probably room for another blogpost to cover the time in between, but I want to finish this one before I run out of my airline wifi!

Many years ago, when I was a young mom with two young daughters, we loved a cartoon we called “the dainty lady.” All three of us, deeply attuned to “tomboy values” like climbing trees and rescuing worms from rainy sidewalks, laughed with delight at the pink-and-white ruffled and flouncing Mary Sunshine, who ends her flutey song about “11” by falling into some mud. “Ewww, mud!” we laughed. We were not afraid of mud. We would never, ever be dainty ladies.

Is it harder today, to raise confident daughters, in a world that sells princess fantasies to little girls? The hyperfeminine flirty-girl was just a figure of fun to long-ago Sesame Street ( the clip first aired in a 1973 episode featuring Stevie Wonder, wow!.) But turn off the sound and the dainty lady looks a lot like a princess.

For a cheerier note, here’s an article I found from Twitter, whose Spanish title translates as “I don’t want to be a princess. I want to be a quantum physicist and study antimatter!” There’s a lot of cool stuff to do besides quantum physics, of course. But it helps at the start to climb lots and lots of trees.

“Let the Mystery Be” sang Natalie Merchant and 10,000 Maniacs, including David Byrne. (Only after coming to love this performance did I discover that Iris Dement wrote and performed it, a performance that many prefer to the one I learned to love.)

Digression: I remember Arthur Wightman‘s speech at his 80th birthday party. He boasted that he had expanded beyond Ohio origins so that now he could say, in 25 languages, “Where is the toilet?” After demonstrating that phrase from Arabic to Zulu, he told us his least favorite thing about being 80: “My behind looks like something that somebody sat on, for 80 years.”

My behind is nowhere near Arthur’s, I’m happy to say. But the end of my 7th decade introduces strange new effects, almost as disturbing.

For example, I don’t remember, in earlier decades, feeling such strong connection (for example, while cooking dinner) to generations of women who did the same thing. I do remember, painfully, hearing in my mind the harsh criticisms of women to other women, echoing as an antiphony to my own decisions. But I don’t remember, ever before, this sense of hard-working women extending a silent endorsement of my own not-so-hard-working choices.

Many religions share a promise of eternal life after your death. My new experience seems like the opposite, an infinite track of family, all behind me, nodding in some taciturn satisfaction that I extend their other-loving choices. Or perhaps, that the best of me extends the best of them, and that the less-than-best of me is not their concern.

Research shows that people get happier as they get older. Isn’t that a good thing? But I wish I understood more about what is happening, right now, in my lengthening life, to my own happiness.

We spent every childhood summer with my “aunts,” who were in fact no relation to any of us. Aunt Martha and Aunt Harriet were the surviving two of three unmarried career women who had adopted my mother when she was just 18 months old. Aunt Martha and Aunt Harriet spent most of each year in New York City (36 Gramercy Park,) but they returned every summer to the house where Aunt Martha (and later my mother) grew up.

Leda Carpenter (we children called her “Matante” with no clue that was not her name but Canadian-French for “my aunt”) was another summer constant for Devine children. Matante spent her days in the kitchen, although she too had her own bedroom upstairs, in the back of the house. Matante did all the cooking, day after day after day — fresh doughnuts for breakfast and sturdy thick soups at lunch time. Dinners were of course what everyone ate for dinner in my childhood memory… a big slab of meat with potatoes (baked, mashed, or roasted) plus a small pile of some kind of vegetable engulfed by yellow pools of melting butter.

Aunt Harriet and Aunt Martha were sweet ladies of leisure, always ready to read a story or play chess or Mah Jongg with children (children ALWAYS would win.) Matante was not sweet, she was tart. Although happy to see us when we visited her kitchen, she kept the most interesting things there off-limits to children’s fingers. I remember she had a big jar full of chocolate chips that I really wanted to get my hands on. Naively, I asked her how she would know if somebody just happened to eat some when she was not looking.

She fixed me with her fierce bright eyes and said, “I count them, every morning, and every night!” This was all the persuasion I needed to leave them alone!

Leda was in fact my mother’s real aunt. Leda was the reason the leisurely wealthy ladies adopted my mother, brought her up in comfort, and sent her to Smith College when she was old enough. But Leda came from a much darker childhood than my mother knew. On Leda’s 12th birthday, her school attendance ended, because a child 12 years old could get a job in the textile mill, 12 hours a day, from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. Of Leda’s earning, her mother let her keep two nickels a week, one for the collection plate at Sunday Mass, and the other to save up for buying presents at Christmas. Daily lunch was one slice of bread, and if Leda was very, very lucky, there might even be a piece of salt pork spread over her bread.

I was reminded of Leda today, when I went looking through all my old recipe collections for a scalloped oyster dish that my mother especially liked. Please don’t be too shocked by the recipe that follows! It is not exactly health food, but it is delicious.

Leda Carpenter’s scalloped oyster casserole

Preheat oven to 350, grease casserole dish

1/2 pint of shucked oysters
1/2 cup of milk or cream
1 cup coarse cracker crumbs (saltines or oyster crackers)
1/4 c butter
1/8 tsp salt

Drain oysters into milk. Melt butter and mix with crumbs.

Put a thin layer of crumbs into casserole dish. Add layers of oysters, crumbs, oysters, and crumbs, so top layer is buttered crumbs.

Pour salted milk mixture over everything. Bake 35 minutes.

Scalloped oysters were a popular 19th century dish (Abraham Lincoln loved them.) Apparently they are also a popular holiday food in the southern US. But this particular recipe makes a very small casserole. I remember that my mother would sometimes make this as a treat when I visited her. A party recipe would need to be quite a few times as large. I am guessing that my mother’s memory of this recipe was also of a small special treat that Matante would make just for the two of them, in the long winter months when the elegant aunts were all away in New York City. But I really don’t know.

Memories remind us how many people we knew that now we would like, when it is much too late, to have known a lot better. Memories remind us, “Pay attention today. All our yesterdays vanish so much too fast.”

Who knew, who imagined that there would be new news about the winged victory of Samothrace—but there is, from the Louvre:

Samothrace via the Louvre:
This monumental statue of the winged goddess of victory (also known as the Nike of Samothrace), standing in the prow of a ship set on a low plinth, was offered to the great gods of Samothrace following a naval victory…The fourth conservation treatment, which has just been completed, has revealed the splendid colors of the marble and provided new insight into the way the statue was conceived and presented.

So, even a beautiful sculpture from BCE can still make news.