Channeling Charlie

It snowed last night, so naturally the first thing a responsible midwesterner does, after a shower and a cup of coffee, is shovel the sidewalk, dontchaknow.

It will only get worse in the course of the day, so I might as well get it done while the gettin' is good. There are a few sets of footprints packed down, and the crust of freezing rain on top doesn't make it any easier, but it isn't too solid yet.

The details make a difference, and I learned it all from my dad. Take a wide stance and step into each stroke, almost like swinging a bat. That way you clear a wider swath of snow with each pass of the shovel, and you save energy as your weight shifts back and forth.

If it's deep at all, common sense says to angle the shovel so the overflow spills out on the unshoveled surface rather than where you've already cleared. How wide is each stroke? Depends on depth. The deeper the snow, the more overlap with each pass. The heavier the snow, the more you have to lift and toss each shovelful, rather than just push through it like a snowplow. It's the lifting, of course, that wears out your back.

I like to alternate right and left sides. Push from right to left a few strokes - like batting right-handed - then switch and push from left to right for a while. The sidewalk ends up looking more evenly cleared, and I end up equally tired in both shoulders. I'm convinced that switch-hitting prevents overuse injuries.

I also like to stop and bend backward every once in a while, whenever my lower back says so. When the time taking breaks exceeds the time shoveling, it's time to go inside. For that reason, it's important to prioritize. I usually start at the back gate and work my way in to the back door, clearing the highest traffic path. If possible, it's nice to have a path cleared back to the woodpile.

In courtesy to America's mail carriers, it's only fair to shovel the front walk, at least up the the mailbox. And where I come from, it's a test of character to shovel the entire front walk along the street, so the neighborhood kids don't have to walk through ankle-deep snow on the way to school. It also shows the neighbors what kind of people live here, because it's the right thing to do.

McSweeney's Quarterly Concern

I came across this book in the library while looking for something else; dontcha love it when that happens? I think it was the cover design that caught my eye: a nice cloth binding with a two-color landscape with horses by Leif Parsons. I'm looking at McSweeney's 15 (2004), published by McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, San Francisco, California, and it's unusual in every way. Check out the copyright page:

All rights are had by those who have them, and not us. We are writing this copyright page from Albuquuerque, New Mexico, on November 2, because we were hoping to contribute some manpower to this state, which was seen as winnable by the good guys in this terrifying and also extremely terrifying and did we mention completely fucking terrifying election.

It goes on like that for a full page, telling a story about real people - the staff of 8266 Valencia - who, among other things, put together a collection of short fiction every once in a while, teach writing classes, and, I'm guessing, do a little writing themselves.

And indeed now, at 3 a.m., in this Albuquerque as the networks continue to draw maps and await concessions, the night is black and the air ever-colder. The only upshot is that fairly soon, and at least for a whort while, things will be quiet. We will be able to take a breath, for a moment, and brace ourselves for the next beheading.

There are 20 stories in this book, half of them translated from Icelandic. Apparently just about everyone in Iceland is a writer, and they have this wonderful tradition of contemporary fiction as well as the old heroic sagas. Some of them, such as "Uninvited," are a little disturbing in a well-meaning way, and others, such as "Nerve City," are just plain hilarious.

This is a book to hold in your hands and take your time reading. The paper is a heavy, high-quality, creamy color and texture. A fine line boxes every page of text, and under the title of each new piece is a small illustration, either engravings carved on stones from the eighth to eleventh century, or runes carved on barrel lids, cheese blocks, and magician's handbooks.

Still Life with Pear

In the foreground a ripe purple plum, chunk of Swiss cheese, slices of somewhat stale bread, a pocket knife, a paper napkin. In the background a photograph of a pond with weeping willow tree, beside it three small flat gray stones. One corner of my cube contains these visual elements, their colors and textures being indescribable in the languages of your planet.

To the left is wooden inclined desktop work surface set at the lowest angle, a small stack of page proofs with multicolored tabs flagging corrections. To the right is a black stapler, black tape dispenser, gray phone, black cup filled with pens of various colors, another black cup filled with yellow pencils, a white cup for tea.

In the central desk area three small rough stones, a black and white photo of a cat on a chair, a Dell computer standing on end and a monitor on a semicircular base enclosing three flat stones, a mouse on a mouse pad, a stainless steel line gauge, a color photo of a young red-haired woman in glasses and a green tee-shirt reclining on the capitol mall smoking a cigarette, three loose pens (red, black, purple) and two pencils (black, green), and a hand-sized almost-square ceramic bowl containing pushpins and business cards.

On the far right end of the desk lie a stack of thin books and stapled bookmaps, two file folders, a spiral-bound steno pad, a plastic CD case, a stapled stack of production schedules, two black steel standing file holders filled with page proofs in binder clips. The everyday stuff inhabiting a horizontal plane inside a cube, one of many small spaces within a bigger space. Outside it's snowing.

Jessi and Zelda Golly, booksellers

So I says to the wife, "Yo, the son found a room in a house with some friends in Brooklyn, across the street from his sweetheart, a 20-minute subway ride from his job at a bookstore in New York freakin' City, the publishing capital of the world. Pinch me, I must be dreamin'."

So she did. Ouch, I ain't dreamin'.

So the wife she says, "Yo, the daughter ain't doin' so shabby neither. She works at a pretty good bookstore with a nice benefits package, she just graduated from college, and once in a while she comes home for dinner. Now if I could just get her to clean her room." Then she pinches me again, harder.

Ouch. "I didn't say pinch me."

"Just makin' sure," she says.

It seems like a small thing, both kids being gainfully employed. It's not like they were made partner in a major law firm, got tenure at a university, found a cure for cancer. These aren't those kinds of career moves. Neither one has published a book (yet). I realize these are small steps. But my heart bursts with joy that they are doing things they care about, which also happen to be the kind of things their mother and I care about.

Jessi started working at Forbidden Planet a couple of months ago and seems to be doing well making the transition to a full-time job. He had been doing a number of part-time gigs in New York, Tucson, and Portland for the last few years, so it's a bit of an adjustment going in to work all day every day. From all accounts, he is holding up just fine. I'm really anxious to see his new digs and to browse the shelves of the store. Sounds like a good excuse for a trip to the city, eh, wife?

Zelda has taken a different path into the bookstore business, somewhat more straight and narrow but not without its twists and turns. Staying with the academic program - and becoming much better at it than she was in high school - was reason enough for Ma and Pa Golly to be happy. Her student jobs at the local branch library, then at the University library, and finally at the stadium, were the kinds of things we could relate to, and her summer internship at Large Publishing Co. was a timely capstone to the whole curriculum.

This bildungsroman is far from over. It just happens to be at a very satisfying point in both their trajectories toward wherever they are going. In both cases, as most of my friends are tired of hearing me say, the best part is the conversations I am able to have with my grown-up, literate, critical, thoughtful, independent-minded, creative, bookish, authority-questioning children. And I'm looking forward to reading the next chapter.

Molly

“There are two kinds of humor,” she told People magazine. One was the kind “that makes us chuckle about our foibles and our shared humanity,” she said. “The other kind holds people up to public contempt and ridicule. That’s what I do.”

Did she ever. Molly Ivins died last Wednesday. If you've read her work, chances are you either love it or hate it. She was bursting with intelligence, outrage, and attitude. I happen to have agreed with 90 percent of her ideological views, so it was easy for me to appreciate the raw information that she so indelicately put across. Like any skilled journalist, she informed and entertained.

In my own moderate, middle-class, mostly polite, midwestern family, opinions run the gamut on such a big, loud woman with big, unashamed opinions and a writerly voice to match. Where I come from, ladies don't act like that. It's alright for big, fat men to blather lies about the kind of women they hate, in fact it's both socially acceptable and funny in a manly kind of way, don't you think? But, so goes this line of thinking, for a working woman to factually disrespect the Leaders of the Fatherland is just wrong.

If someone must question authority, well, let's leave that to the authorities. No, let's not. As one of the obits points out, her main contribution to public discourse was the gall to skewer the powerful, especially when it's popular and safe to skewer the powerless. Thank you, Molly, and rest in raising a ruckus.

Larry

A friend of mine died three weeks ago, not someone I was terribly close to, but someone who stepped into my family's sphere 20 years ago and made a difference. So I have to stop and recognize the passing of Larry Pickworth.

Larry was just starting out as a chiropractor in 1986, fresh out of school and opening an office on the West Side called Hilltop Chiropractic. His new bride Kathleen Jones, also a chiropractor, was his professional partner as well, and they had big plans. Gven Golly was their office manager, receptionist, problem solver, and was instrumental in the success of the business.

You could say they bonded. Larry and Kathleen had graduated from Life Chiropractic College in Atlanta; Gven grew up in Atlanta. They were coming home to Ohio to start their professional lives as we were moving to Ohio to go back to school. A few months into that first year, Gven made the decision to study massage therapy, seeing the need and the opportunity; Larry and Kathleen gave her a massage table for Christmas. We had two little kids, one of whom would later babysit for their two little kids.

There were differences, of course. Larry was 100 percent Buckeye, an ardent fan and booster of everything Ohio State. I was more blase about the football team and my student tickets, which were like gold to him. He was hard-working, ambitious, careful with money, and skilled in his profession, but without my intellectual pretensions or interests. They did very well. In a few years, they moved from the apartment over their office to a big house with a pool in Upper Arlington. They drove nice cars, went on exotic vacations, and their girls went to private schools.

Gven worked with Larry for a couple of years but got to know Kathleen pretty well. They started a book group that met once a month for several years, and they both developed a social/professional network of women in health-related work, so they have many mutual friends and colleagues around this big small town.

Larry had some health issues a few years ago involving an irregular aorta that forced him to slow down from his hard-driving pace. He seemed to have recovered and adapted well but recently had an episode that put him down for the count. His funeral was a packed house of somber folks - working-class, ruling-class, old, young, OSU athletes, independent women, a real central Ohio cross-section - laughing and crying over this guy dying way too young, leaving a wife and two little girls. It was one of those gray, rainy January days when everything seems overcome by gravity.

Stopping by Costco on a snowy evening

Whose mall this is I think I know.
Their money is in the market though;
They will not see me stopping here
To watch the parking lot fill up with snow.
My co-workers must think it queer
To stop outside core hours here
Between the mall and the interstate
The darkest evening of the year.
They give their car keys a shake
To remind me, in case there's some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of H-VAC wind and traffic's shake.
The stores are full of products stacked in heaps,
But I have deadlines to meet,
And files to proof before release,
And files to proof before release.


- With abject apologies to Robert Frost

I laugh at you, ha ha

The gray '97 Ford Ranger turns onto the northbound residential street, and from half a block away a brand new red Chevy Tahoe SUV comes up behind. Despite the snow, the big bad truck bears down menacingly, tailgating the pickup to make a statement. They both have to stop at the next intersection, and the buzz-cut in the heavy Chevy glowers beneath his baseball cap at the gray ponytail in the Ranger.

It's Tuesday in Methodistville, so the garbage trucks are out, and there's one stopped across from a parked car halfway down the next block, leaving just enough space for the gray Ford to pass through with inches to spare on each side, leaving big red Chevy Tahoe-man pulled off to the curb waiting for the street to clear sufficiently for his attitude to continue up the narrow street.

2³×7

What would Piaget do? What would Ericson say? What would Jung make of it?

Developmentally, you hear a lot about seven-year phases of growth. You have an identity by age 7, you're into adolescence by 14, adulthood at 21, etc.

I've heard athletes and coaches say that it takes seven years of training to become a (fill in blank: runner, swimmer, cyclist). If you extrapolate that principle, it takes seven years of training to become a dancer, guitarist, painter, programmer, or - editor?.

I suspect it has something to do with the rate at which cells die off and replace themselves with new cells. As people age, they grow a new nervous sytem, organ systems, muscles and bones, and everyday practice trains it in a set of habits. Therefore the person that's been practicing activity A for seven years is, in a way, a new body, a runner/painter/editor's body.

As of four weeks ago, I have been working at Large Publishing Co. for - you guessed it - seven years, so, according to the neo-Piagetian logic abaove, I guess I'm an editor now. I am also passing a marker for a multiple of seven in age, so gee whiz, something is happening here, and you don't know what it is, do you Mr. Jones.

I've had rumblings of impending change, but there's nothing new about that. Let's see, I've already used up my allotment of "midlife" crises, endured something akin to empty-nest syndrome, and undergone enough career changes for several lifetimes. I've been spared the worst of traumatizing losses. I've entertained other, imaginary, life-changing events but, so far, confined them to the realm of fiction and speculation.

I've been lucky. More luck than sense, my friend Dr. Smith used to say. Not always smart. I've dodged a few bullets and made a few decisions that didn't work out so well. That would be another story. For the present, I'd have to say that things are going well, but not so well I could afford to relax or lose my focus.

In fact, I expect another major challenge just around the bend. I'm not going to tempt fate by naming it right now, and I'm not even sure what form it will take, but there are enough potential problems - personal, professional, financial - staring me in the face that any one of them could become a crisis at any time. Just to add a little tension to the story.

But that's the thing with a milestone with no clearly legible label: you know you're turning a corner, but you don't know which one or what street it is. At this point, I wouldn't expect any radical changes, and most of the major choices have already been made, so radical changes are not really an option. Maybe that's the anticlimactic corner I'm turning.

new balance

The end of a project brings a mixed bag of reactions, and I don't even know yet what that mixture will be, but I can already feel it happening. To go into great detail here would be unwise, imprudent, unhealthy, and possibly self-destructive, but in general terms I think I can process it better if I write something.

The symptoms so far are not unlike any other loss. Relief, good riddance, a gaping vacuum in my day, looking around occasionally for the usual obsessive-compulsive need to throw myself into the fray. Like in high school at the end of basketball season, after being immersed in conditioning, practice, preparation, and games since October, so now what do I do?

I do other things, obviously, and it's nice to have a minute to tie up some other loose ends. Like moving Zelda out of her apartment in Cuyahogaville the other day, when her furniture was packed all snug in the truck, and we secured the bed frame on top of the mattress with ropes, finally tying up that last loose end to the corner of the truck bed. Kind of like that.

But different. I've had recurring dreams of last-minute lists of items to double-check and forgotten page-proofs that turn up after the fact, then I wake up relieved that they were dream page-proofs and dream lists, baut not completely believing that either. Getting dressed over the weekend I was actually looking forward to doing some things that need to be done - notes, correspondence, house repairs, car maintenance, family time - with the caveat that now I don't have The Project as an excuse for not doing the hundred other things that I didn't have time for before.

Then there's everyday practice. During the peak intensity of The Project, I managed to keep a relatively healthy routine going; not the balanced life I would recommend but not a downward spiral either. I was eating a reasonable diet, except for the Skyline Chilidogs on late nights at the office, and exercising at least a little bit every day. My workouts have been baseline maintenance, just enough to keep me going, get enough sleep, and function unimpaired, but I haven't done the kind of workouts that builds strength or endurance.

Alcohol consumption has gone up, and I've become a familiar face to the friendly Vietnamese clerk at the State Store. I will probably cut back a little and undoubtedly feel better now that there's less need to self-medicate.

It will be a different rhythm, and it will be a welcome change. I can tell that it won't happen all by itself, and I won't magically pick up totally wholesome habits; ironically, it will take work to find the new rhythm, and the things I've been neglecting haven't fallen into place by themselves, huh. I remember when I was a T.A. in graduate school, one of my students, an actor, did his final project by placing a running shoe and a taiji shoe on opposite sides of a yin-yang symbol to signify the change in his personal fitness routine. The brand of running shoe was, of course, New Balance.

sorry, glass still half empty

The song says, We shall overcome, we'll walk hand in hand, we shall all be free, we are not afraid, we are not alone, and we shall live in peace.

Maybe I've just had a long week, I'm a little tired, there's a lot going on, and I could use a break. Yeah, well, who couldn't. I won't recite the evidence of the individual and collective, local and national and global, political and social and spiritual not overcoming, not hand in hand, not free, and especially not in peace. It's that day every year at this time when I choke on the words and fail to articulate the reason. And the only way I can think of to appropriately celebrate it is to notice how much work there is to do.

Despite my psychic armor, Rev. Susan succeeded in penetrating my self-absorbed suburban existence yet another time, and it's worth it, of course, to be reminded of what is true about "us". The opening hymn was the Holly Near standard "(We Are) A Gentle Angry People" which demands answers to the follow-up questions "Why so angry?" and "Why be gentle?"

Let's be positive, let's be optimistic. Let's celebrate the official national holiday established by the president most responsible for dismantling the programs set up to address the poverty and racism leftover from slavery. Let's take a day off work and consign that struggle to the history books, because that was a problem in the fifties, and it was taken care of in the sixties, and it's time to move on.

The short answer is, if you're not part of the solution you're part of the problem (zing goes the cliche-meter). To benignly ignore racism/sexism/homophobia and not get angry is to tacitly support the malignant status quo.

Jerry

What is the meaning of Gerald Ford?

The television eulogies were polite, respectful, and full of references to 'honesty' and 'loyalty' and 'realism'.

The real-world water cooler dialog questioned whether backroom deals had been made to pardon an indicted criminal ex-president. Debate gaffes were recalled, in which the appointed incumbent misstated a belief that Eastern Europe was not dominated by the Soviet Union. He was not exactly in his element, and he was forgiven.

I recall President Ford gamely staying on message during the debate with Mr. Carter, gesturing palms-downward while repeating the phrase "Keep the lid on spending" with reliable Republican anal retentiveness.

My lasting impression of that debate was the amiable and folksy Carter driving his horse-drawn vehicle of virtue along a branching, twisting, turning cowpath into unknown territory, and the the grimly determined old jock Ford driving his Ford determinedly for'd down a known and charted course toward a known and nonexistent destination.

Of course the electorate quickly wearied of its adventure in the cart and its driver, knee-jerking back to a slicker version of the known road four years later with a pitchman who was quicker on his feet but lacked both the honesty and the realism of the Eagle Scout from Grand Rapids. As my college advisor said at the time, maybe he wasn't a great president, but he was more of a man than either of his successors.