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First Sentences

“Ever since my mom died, I cry in H Mart.” Michelle Zauner, Crying in H Mart.

“Thomas Wazhashk removed his thermos from his armpit and set it on the steel desk alongside his scuffed briefcase.” Louise Erdrich, The Night Watchman.

“The dead would be moved for Disneyland.” Erich Schwartzell, Red Carpet: Hollywood, China, and the Global Battle for Cultural Supremacy.

“She can feel hope, like the Christmas lights on fade in Pound Saver.” Susie Steiner, Missing, Presumed.

“On 18 December 1912 Arthur Smith Woodward and Charles Dawson announced to a great and expectant scientific audience the epoch-making discovery of a remote ancestral form of man—The Dawn Man of Piltdown.” J.S. Weiner, The Piltdown Forgery.

“Between what matters and what seems to matter, how should the world we know judge wisely?” E.C. Bentley, Trent’s Last Case.

“When you imagine the founder of home economics, who do you see?” Danielle Dreilinger, The Secret History of Home Economics: How Trailblazing Women Harnessed the Power of Home and Changed the Way We Live.

“Sir Walter Elliot, of Kellynch-hall, in Somersetshire, was a man who, for his amusement, never took up any book but the Baronetage. . . .” Jane Austen, Persuasion.

“As a young woman with modest means and few prospects, Ruth Middleton transformed her life by moving north.” Tiya Miles, All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley’s Sack, a Black Family Keepsake.

“On a Tuesday I came home from school to an empty house, watched the evening news, and then took two Equanil caplets lifted from my mother.” Rosalie Knecht, Who is Vera Kelly? (A Vera Kelly Story).

“Louis Bean spent eighteen months in Vietnam.” Kathleen Belew, Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America.

“She was born peculiar, or so she thought.” Jim Harrison, The Farmer’s Daughter.

“For ten thousand years, a cave on the northern tip of Prince of Wales Island in Alaska served a resting place for the remains of an ancient man.” Jennifer Raff, Origin: A Genetic History of the Americas.

“I would like to say a few things about my first husband, William.” Elizabeth Strout, Oh William!

“Right now, in a classroom somewhere in the world, a student is mouthing off to her math teacher.” Jordan Ellenberg, How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking.

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Snippets

As too often happens, my wispy hair, almost completely gray, was standing up and out at all angles, and I thought of what the spouse has never said: “You are as smart as Einstein. You should look more like him.”

A friend told me, “If your wife laughs at your jokes, you can be sure that you know some good ones or you have a good wife.”

Is this true? “If you believe that God made women without a sense of humor it is because then they could love men without laughing at them.”

Much is said about culture wars, which today seem to center on gender and gender identity. But not long ago we had culture wars about something different—evolution. What has happened to that? Did one side win, and if so, how? Did the anti-science battlers give up? Did the other side conclude that the Bible was literally infallible? Or is that culture war still going on?

“True science teaches, above all, to doubt and be ignorant.” Unamuno.

David Foster Wallace wrote, “I’m not saying that television is vulgar and dumb because the people who compose Audiences are vulgar and dumb. Television is the way it is simply because people tend to be extremely similar in their vulgar and prurient and dumb interests and wildly different in their refined and aesthetic and noble interests.” Is he right?

I was in college when I heard a classmate say that he was going to buy “an ice cream.” I had never heard that phrase before and thought it was silly. You can buy an ice cream cone. You can buy an ice cream bar. You can buy an ice cream sandwich. You can buy a pint of ice cream. You can buy some ice cream. But you can’t buy an ice cream. I hear that expression often, and it still grates.

For most of their history, beliefs of Southern Baptists were firmly antithetical to those of Roman Catholicism. Now increasingly the institutions are allied and similar. For example, when Roe v. Wade was decided, the Southern Baptists were not against legalized abortion. Now that Roe has been overturned, Catholics and Baptists find themselves on the same side of that issue. The Southern Baptists were firmly against public aid to religious schools. Now both institutions seek public moneys for their schools. Southern Baptists were opposed to their churches being involved in politics, but that, too, has changed, and the Baptists are like the Catholics. And now the news indicates a tragic way that Southern Baptists have become more like Catholics. The Department of Justice is investigating widespread sexual abuse in the Southern Baptist Convention and its churches.

The philosopher was right: “You cannot humiliate a hog by throwing mud at him.”

At this time of year I wonder how the ant acquired its reputation for being extremely industrious when so many are on a picnic.

“None preaches better than the ant, and she says nothing.” Benjamin Franklin.

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Bless the Teachers, Especially Miss Dahlberg

With a new school year about to begin, I have been thinking about my own school days. I thought I came out of high school well educated for an eighteen-year-old, but I quickly learned otherwise at college. Those who had gone to top secondary schools such as New Trier or Stuyvesant or elite prep schools were much better prepared for college than I. Mine was a good basic education. I knew a lot of history, for example, but much of that was merely dates and names. I had not been challenged to think about historical causes, trends, or ramifications. I could excellently summarize the classic novels I had been assigned, but I could not probe them for any deeper resonances or cogently assess what made some books better than others. And so on. Even though many of my college classmates brought more to their study than I did, I was arrogant enough about my own intelligence to think that they were not smarter than I was. I thought that I could catch up and outdo most of them, but it took a while and a lot of effort.

What hurt the most, however, was my writing ability. I admired writers and thought I wanted to be one. My high school writing assignments always came back with an “A” and a note or two of praise. I was a natural I thought. My hopes were dashed when my first college paper was returned with a bold, underlined “You can’t write!” I examined what I had turned in, and I realized that my professor was right. I took as many courses as I could that forced me to write, and I started to read books about how to write, something I have continued for most of my life. After much practice and study, I was able to write competent, clear, and succinct prose, but it still required a good deal of effort. Writing still does not come easily, but I take pride in many of the things that I have written, which, as a lawyer and an academic, has been a lot. I am never the stylist I would like to be, but I keep trying.

Looking back, however, I have realized that, while my secondary education could have been better, the fact that I was able to learn and catch up with my colleagues came at least partly from good, caring elementary school teachers. I benefited from the few opportunities that women had when I was young. Bright working women at that time disproportionately went into school teaching because only nursing and secretarial work seemed possible as other career choices. More on them in a moment.

My first male teacher didn’t appear until the seventh grade when I had Mr. Cutting for social studies. (In high school I had more male teachers. The math teacher was excellent; the English teacher was good; a physics teacher was bad; and the German teacher was awful.) I liked Mr. Cutting even though I don’t remember much about his classes. An old friend remembers Weekly Reader quizzes on which she shined. I do recall his reaction the day after Sputnik’s launch when he said that the United States was no longer the leader of civilization. I did not understand that, but I did grasp that the Russian entrance into space was a monumental event.

I remember Mr. Cutting more on a personal level. He was a member of the First Baptist Church I attended. (There was no Second Baptist Church or any other American Baptist Church in town, but we were still the First.) The church was small, but I don’t think I ever saw him in attendance. Our membership in the same church, though, may have been why he went out his way for me. He got me several parttime jobs that a youthful boy who did not like to work could handle. He helped me learn how to thread and operate the school’s film projector. After having mastered those mechanical skills, he asked me to man (boy?) the projector at the Masonic Lodge where he was a member. No embarrassments come to mind as a result, so everything must have proceeded smoothly.

Another teacher at about the same time also reached out to me to do some work. Miss Bass was like other teachers who seemed old and not quite human to me. She lived in an apartment near the waterfront and hired me to wash her walls. (In this town of one- and two-family homes, this was the first time I had been in an apartment building.) It made me very nervous. I did not talk easily around adults, but she regaled me with stories about the trips she and other teachers took during vacations. I realized for the first time that teachers might have a life outside a classroom–a life, in fact that might be quite interesting. Nevertheless, it came as a shock that teachers had any life, any existence, when they weren’t in school. P.S. I also learned to start wall-washing at the bottom so that soapy water near the ceiling would not leave streaks as it ran down the wall.

I was sometimes asked to stay after school to clap clean the blackboard erasers in the school yard. One time upon bringing them back, my first-grade teacher told me that she was getting married during the summer and would not be returning to teach the next year. I never had a Mrs. Teacher; all the women teachers were single. (In some school systems in those days, married women were excluded from the profession. I don’t know if that was true in my town.) She then showed me a photo of her in a bathing suit. This perhaps could get her fired today. I did not tell anyone about it, maybe because I did not fully understand my reaction to the picture. She was awfully good-looking in that bathing costume.

Sixth grade was, in retrospect, the one most important to me. Before that year, school simply filled up part of the day. I did fine, but in sixth grade I felt for the first time that I wanted to learn and that I could learn. That had a lot to do with the teacher, Miss (of course) Ebba Dahlberg. I don’t remember anything particular that she taught me, but she imparted a desire to learn and somehow an ability to learn. (And yes, she had a life apart from the classroom. I did not know what to think about the fact that she had been in a women’s branch of the armed forces in World War II and had parachuted out of airplanes!) She also went out of her way for me. She saw that I was a reader and perhaps knew that there were few books in my house. She seemed also to understand that there was little left for me to explore in the children’s section of the Mead Public Library. One day Miss Dahlberg took me to the library to talk with the librarians. Miss Dahlberg convinced them that I should be able to use the adult section of the library. After that I got adult “privileges,” which Miss Dahlberg noted to me in a whisper should be a secret from others. This is not something that was part of her duties, but it opened up worlds for me. Later on, as an adult, I found her address in the upstate town where she had retired and wrote her a letter thanking her. She probably had no idea who I was, but in her reply she was grateful that I remembered that she wrote on the blackboard with yellow chalk, which she had purchased out of her own funds and used because she thought the students could see it better.

Looking back at my education, I realize that my secondary schooling did not prepare me for college as well as I might have hoped. On the other hand, before that, teachers, without my being fully aware of it, taught me how to learn, and that has served me well my entire life. That gift came from bright and caring teachers. I am so thankful for the good teachers that I had. And I know that there are still many all around this country. It’s a reason why we need to support them and our schools.

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I Weep for Wisconsin

I had only been outside its borders once before I went to college. And yet I already knew that Wisconsin did not take up much space in the national consciousness. The coasts seemed more important—the glamor of New York, the sunny promise of California. It did not have the fables of Texas, the loyalties of New England, the energy of Chicago or the bluesy fascination of New Orleans. Even so, I was proud of being from Wisconsin.

The topography did not have the drama of the Rocky Mountains or the Southwestern Desert, but the kettles and moraines of Wisconsin had visual interest that softened the landscape. The state did not have an ocean coast, but it had the Great Lakes with a grandeur that non-midwesterners did not grasp. Lake Michigan is like the ocean, but oh no, it’s not. It’s Lake Michigan with its own majesty. (A friend has just returned from golf at a course on the Lake Michigan shore. He was surprised that the water was blue and clear. He assumed, based on no knowledge, that it was brown. I could see that ignorance about Wisconsin abounds, but since few think about Wisconsin in the first place, the abounding is limited.) Unlike other places, Wisconsin had smaller lakes everywhere—no one in Wisconsin was more than ten or fifteen minutes from several—that afforded fishing, boating, swimming, mists, and soothing, primordial sounds. Perhaps the landscape was not as awe-inspiring as some locations, but it was pleasant and welcoming. And it had walleyes.

The climate, however, while interesting was not always pleasant, but even that could afford some pride. People whose only opinion about the state seemed to come from televised playoff games at Lambeau Field (aka, the frozen tundra) would ask me about the cold (and yes, okay, it was cold). However, I would rather haughtily reply that it was just winter in Wisconsin implying that unlike the questioners, Wisconsinites were tough.

The human institutions, however, were the real cause for my pride. They had led to a better state and society than elsewhere in the country. The public education system was excellent starting, at least for me, with two years of kindergarten culminating in an affordable, flagship university that was considered one of the best in the nation.

Politics, while not totally free of rancor, did not have the bosses or the machines of other places. Local elections were nonpartisan, which helped to reduce blind partisanship. Although rich people were elected to office, money was not necessary to hold office. In the 1980s, William Proxmire spent less than two hundred dollars to get reelected to the Senate.

Wisconsin had a tradition of reform and innovation that others in the country copied to make their states better. It had created the first unemployment insurance program, for example, which acted as a model for other governments, and people from this Wisconsin tradition helped create Medicare. As a recent magazine article stated, “The state’s home-grown social-democratic tradition, which fused support for open government, public institutions, and economic equality, remained largely bipartisan.”

Of course, not everything was wonderful. I was dismayed when I learned that Milwaukee was one of the most segregated cities in the United States. And, of course, Wisconsin produced Joe McCarthy, leader of a movement that took his name and did so much damage to the country. Still, Wisconsin was a place to be proud of. It was a place of clear skies, clear water, and clean, transparent, and sensible politics.

Then something happened. The news that seeps out of Wisconsin now makes it seem as the state has become nearly as corrupt and crazy as many other places. Legislators have been indicted for various acts of corruption, something I do not remember happening in my youth. Money, as elsewhere, has become central to politics. Five million dollars were spent on a state Supreme Court race to defeat an incumbent. Seven hundred million–seven hundred million!!!–is expected to be spent on the 2022 elections. Wisconsin has undermined its educational system. State funding for the University and K-12 education has decreased. A Dean at the University of Wisconsin told me that the school was no longer a public university but a university with some public assistance. Wisconsin has become a leader in attacking and denigrating teachers as well as a leader in corporate giveaways, both in money and in permitting pollution. The state also has become a poster child for partisanship adopting one of the most gerrymandered legislatures in the country. The state has also made it harder to vote, but the gerrymandering means that votes don’t matter that much anyway.

This sort of news made me realize that Wisconsin was no longer a beacon for reasonable government but had become just like many other states.

Then came the aftermath of the 2020 election. The crazy comments and actions escalated—too many for me to summarize, but here’s one for you to consider: Imagine a government official saying that there is no evidence that you did not commit murder last year. Would you be shocked? Outraged? Would you laugh at such idiocy? Would you lose faith in the government official or the government itself? Now consider that one of the six officials on the Wisconsin Election Commission said about the 2020 election in Wisconsin: “There’s no evidence voter fraud did not occur.”

Oh, Wisconsin, grand old Badger State. What has happened to you? I wanted to think that Joe McCarthy was an aberration, but his insanity now seems to have taken hold.

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Snippets

With age comes knowledge. When I was young, I had no idea how hard it was to cut a toenail when old.

A friend told me that he knows a married couple who are just two minds without a single thought.

Brittney Griner was given a harsh sentence for bringing less than a gram of cannabis oil into Russia. This result certainly seems to be the equivalent of hostage-taking and has caused many Americans great concern, as it should. But perhaps we should also be asking about the many people in the United States who are imprisoned by our overly harsh drug laws and enforcement.

Much has been made of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán denouncing race-mixing. I wondered what he meant by “race” and read the speech in Hungary where he made his pronouncement. Apparently by “race” he means “European,” although he also states that the “time will come when we have to somehow accept Christians from [outside Europe] and integrate them into our lives.” However, race has never had a fixed meaning and has been used for all sorts of groups that might now be defined by ethnicity. For example, not only Jews but the Irish and Italians were once seen as distinct races. Orbán seems especially concerned about immigration from Arab countries, but I wonder what his reaction would be if there was a widespread movement of Irish people to Hungary. Would he be accepting? In any event, it is surprising that he and Hungary are now a centerpiece for conservatives. Hungary has universal healthcare, and I have not seen anything that suggests Orbán would get rid of that. Hungary permits abortions, and I have not seen anything that suggests Orbán would get rid of that.

“The highest function of conservatism is to keep what progressiveness has accomplished.” R. H. Fulton.

I doubt that this story about Herschel Walker is true. When he was at the University of Georgia, Walker had to pass chemistry to be eligible to play football. After much discussion among faculty, administration, and, of course, wealthy alumni, it was decided that Herschel would pass if got fifty percent on a special oral exam. It had two questions. He was asked, “What is the color of blue vitriol acid?” He said, “Pink,” and that was wrong. He was then asked if he knew how to make sulfuric acid, and he said, “No.” That was right, so he was able to play football.

“Politics is perhaps the only profession for which no preparation is thought necessary.” Robert Louis Stevenson

Perhaps the most frightening thing about Josh Hawley is that, by comparison, he makes Ted Cruz seem almost reasonable.

An astute observer said, “When a politician has not time to bother with digging up the facts, he can always get up and discuss great moral issues.”

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Snippets

My life has been limited. I see that people are upset that Klondike will no longer make Choco Tacos. Alas, I never had one.

The protester in the photo held a sign saying, “PRO-LIFE! From conception to natural death.” I think I understand the concept of conception, but I was not sure what “natural death” meant. Was she opposed to any death that was not natural? Was the protester against the death penalty? A lethal injection or electrocution or hanging or a firing squad is not what I would call a natural death. Murder, presumably, is not a natural death, and I guess that the sign carrier would not condone homicide. But death in combat or by bombing or by a drone strike does not seem natural either. Was she a pacifist and against war? Did she hold up a sign when we invaded Iraq? And what would she have to say about modern medicine? I think I would be dead except that I have stents and an artificial heart valve. These are not “natural.” Chemotherapy and radiation treatments are not natural. Will my eventual death be natural after such life-extending interventions? Is she against such medical treatments? And what if, when that time comes, I am given morphine or some such alleviation, to ease my way out of this world? Is that a natural death? My understanding is that natural birth is one without painkillers? Does natural death mean no painkillers? Or had the protester not really examined the full ramifications of her placard?

“There can’t be a revolution in America,” a wise person said. “Not enough people are mad about the same thing.”

I recently wrote about a project that the spouse undertook during Covid. She rebound a set of books we got out of a dumpster many years ago. My Covid project was to refinish walls in our Pennsylvania cottage. The living and dining rooms are paneled in a soft wood. Even though I have often refinished furniture, I am still not good at identifying wood, but my guess is that the walls are pine, which probably have been up since the house was constructed 120 years ago. From the two fireplaces and the century-long accumulation of gunk, the walls had darkened. At the urging of the spouse, I decided to sand away the dirt to see how the wood might look. I bought a “dustless,” battery-powered orbitalsander. It did capture a lot of the grit as I worked, but it was hardly dustless. I figured that a thorough cleaning after it was done was the price I had to pay for the project. Each day for months, I sanded one or two boards, and when I had finished a section, I put an oil finish on the wood. There was always a satisfaction in seeing the steady progress. In a time of lockdown, I was accomplishing something. When I finished the project, not only were the walls several shades lighter–a welcome improvement in our dark house–but the wood grain stood out as it had not before. I was pleased with my efforts. However, there has not been one guest who had been in the house before and after the work who has noticed the difference. Even so, I frequently admire the result and am glad that I did it. There is, however, more paneling that could be sanded and oiled, but I believe that I should leave a project for the next owner.

An anonymous bit of wisdom: Don’t worry about what people are thinking about you; in fact, they are not thinking about you but wondering what you are thinking about them.

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Rule Encyclopedia Britannica–Eleventh Edition

I don’t regularly read the Eleventh Edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica that we rescued decades ago. But it’s more useable now that the spouse has rebound it.It is overwhelming. Each of the twenty-nine volumes averages about 1,000 pages with entries I would not even think of looking up—“Hydrasine,” for example, is followed by “Hydrate,” which precedes about 180,000 words and scores of illustrations, charts, and equations on “Hydraulics.” But in its new state, I do consult this Britannica more often than I did before.

I thought it might be interesting to see what the learned books had to say about some important topics today. I looked up “Ukraine” and found but five lines telling me that it was a former name for a district of European Russia and that the “portion east of the Dnieper became Russian in 1686 and the portion west of that river in 1793.” That nearly-empty-cupboard entry perhaps tells me something of significance for today’s conflict, but I don’t know what. (On the same page, six times more space was given to “Uist, North and South,” which I had never heard of. Okay, I will tell you that they are islands in the Outer Hebrides, with a population then of about 5,000, apparently swelled sometimes by anglers.)

I then went to “Filibuster.” The brief entry first traced the word’s origin from Dutch through French and Spanish, where it became a term for pirate. It went on to say that in nineteenth century America it came to mean adventurers who organized expeditions in the United States to take part in revolutions in Central America and the West Indies. It concluded: “From this has sprung the modern usage of the word to imply one who engages in private, unauthorized and irregular warfare against any state. In the United States it colloquially applied to legislators who practice obstruction.” I did not learn–as I had hoped–the 1910 view about how congressional filibusters originated or their usefulness.

More satisfying, however, have been entries about places I plan to visit. We have booked an autumn trip to Rochester, New York. I appreciated getting some information about the city’s early history. I had no idea about the dramatic river cutting through the town. I wonder whether the landmark buildings the entry described will still be there, but it reminded me of some of the famous and important people who lived in Rochester in the nineteenth century. After reading the entry, I became even more eager for the trip.

The encyclopedia’s entry on Iceland was less enlightening because I had already visited and read books about the country when I looked it up. The topographical, geological, and historical discussions added little to what I had already seen or heard about. What was most surprising about the entry, however, was that more than half of it was devoted to the literature of Iceland, centering on ancient texts in an opinionated, authoritative tone. (“Taste has sunk since the old days, but still this rimur poetry is popular and genuine.”) But since I am interested in modern writing, the descriptions of what seems to be hundreds of ancient works held little interest for me.

Perhaps the most joy that the set has given me are the serendipitous discoveries when I search for something and my eye is drawn to an illustration. When I looked for Rochester, I saw five color plates accompanying “Robes,” and I (temporarily) learned that the garment for The Most Ancient Order of the Thistle is green with black and white accents and a long, golden braided cord hanging from the neck. (I also incidentally learned, again temporarily, that there is [or was] such a thing as The Most Ancient Order of the Thistle.)

Coronation Robe
Robes

Black and white photographs make me move on to “Round Towers,” and I learn for the moment that a “peculiar class of round tower exists in Ireland.” My search for Ukraine is interrupted by eight color plates of “Uniforms.” I can see how “France: Sergeant Alsace Regt: 1690,” “Ludhian Sikhs,” Prussian Generals, and many more were attired.

Uniforms

The most striking feature in the encyclopedia are its maps. Every volume has several, usually in color, that fold out to fifteen by twelve inches. The “Hus-Ita” book has foldouts for maps for Idaho and Montana, Illinois, two for India (Northern and Southern parts), Indiana, Iowa (but in black and white), and Ireland. The detail is incredible and serious examination requires a magnifier. (In a square inch of the Ireland map, I spot at least thirty-five labels.) They are maps, but also works of art. They are well preserved in the set. I feel a strong temptation to razor them out, mount them, and then add onto the house so that I can have a map room, but there are so many exquisite ones, it would have to be a somewhat large addition.

Map: Russia in Europe
Detail: Russia in Europe

I am grateful that the spouse rebound our long-possessed 1910 Encyclopedia Britannica, for while I doubt that it will be an everyday occurrence, I expect that I will dip into it more often now than I have in the past. And if you perhaps would like to know an early twentieth century viewpoint on something, let me know. As always, my research fees are reasonable.

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Rule Encyclopedia Britannica–Eleventh Edition

I spotted them spilling out of a small dumpster in front of the store’s window. This was fifty years ago, and I was on Fourth Avenue in lower Manhattan. On and around the seven blocks of Fourth Avenue from Astor Place to 14th Street had been what was called “Book Row,” New York City’s used-book district. The heyday for this book center had been the 1940s and 1950s, and by the time I came to New York City, many of the stores were gone, but a sizeable number had hung on.

The Fourth Avenue bookstores called to me because of a cherished day. I had finished law school and was living in New York City where I had been working for a while. The college alumni magazine had published a list of books, in effect a syllabus, for studying the American revolution. Most of the books had been published a decade or more earlier. My recent reading had been largely aimless; I had never taken a course on the Revolution; and I thought that it could be interesting to read as many of the books on the list as possible. In those ancient days, you could not simply go online to order the books; you had to physically find them. I had set the next Saturday for my book hunting, but a winter storm hit with seventeen inches of snow stopping at four on Saturday morning. Being then young and full of vim and vigor (what is vim?), I decided to carry out my self-appointed task despite the storm. Many streets were yet to be plowed, and many walks were uncleared, but the local subway was running.

          I got to Manhattan’s Sixth Avenue and Eighth Street and started walking east. The sky was a brilliant winter blue. A nippy wind made everyone’s cheeks rosy but tramping through the drifts and mounds of still-pristine snow kept me warm. Without traffic, it was quiet, and we few pedestrians treated each other reverentially as if we were the deepest friends on a meditative retreat. It was the kind of day where I was thrilled that there was a winter and I was in it.

A few wonderful bookstores still existed on Eighth Street, and I stopped in each of them, but my real destination was Fourth Avenue. Most of the Fourth Avenue stores had a loose organizational layout at best. I might find a handwritten sign on a bookcase that read “US History” to aid my search. The shelves had no apparent organization, and I would have to scan all the volumes to see if there were any on my list. The stores, it turned out, had a surprising number of them, and every time I found one, I got a bit excited as if I had found something much more than an out-of-print book. I had found instead some sort of little treasure that could only be found after an effortful search—the kind of thrill a seeker does not now get on the internet.

And I got another little thrill that day eighteen months after my Revolutionary expedition. I had spotted several sets of the Encyclopedia Britannica that were being tossed out. I picked up a volume and saw that it was the Eleventh Edition of what was more formally, according to its title page The ENCYCLOPÆDIA BRITANNICA: A Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, Literature, and General Information published in 1910 in twenty-nine volumes. Somewhere I had heard the eleventh edition was the best edition of Britannica ever published, and since this set appeared to be free, I wanted it. I hurried home and got the spouse, who was also excited by the find, got in our Dodge Dart, and quickly drove back, hoping the books were still there.

We began our dumpster dive trying to throw into our car a complete set. We later found out that we were not completely successful. We did “acquisition” twenty-nine volumes, but we inadvertently retrieved two copies of one volume and therefore missed another one. However, we were still thrilled with our find.

This was probably not the fanciest set of that Britannica. It is small. The pages are eight-and-a-half inches by six. The print is eye-straining. It can be barely read without a magnifying glass, but it calls out for one. Still, however, we had a classic edition and put them on a bookshelf. And they mostly remained on a bookshelf.

There were several problems. Of course, many of the entries were outdated, and in Britannica fashion, the articles often are long. Perhaps there might be some amusement in reading what the encyclopedia says about “Fasting,” but the entry is nearly fifteen thousand words and requires more of a commitment than my casual curiosity wishes to expend. (Not all the pieces are this long. The one that follows “Fasting”—“Fastolf, Sir John”–is a mere 700 words. I learned that he died in 1459 and that the soldier has a “lasting reputation as in some part the prototype of Shakespeare’s Falstaff.”)

And while the bindings had held the pages together, the covers were some sort of faux leather that had become friable. Pulling a volume out and handling it produced a downpour of desiccated brown flakes on the shelves, floors, hands, and laps. Although the set was moved from place to place as residences changed, it was rarely consulted.

The pandemic, however, has changed some of this. Housebound at the beginning of Covid, the spouse decided to rebind our Britannica. With YouTube videos and online readings and purchases, she stripped off the leather covers and replaced them with brown cloth. They may not look as handsome as they did in 1910, but they can now be handled without a major vacuuming job.

(Concluded August 3)

Posted on by rjonakait

How to Write the Season (guest post from the spouse)

AJ’s dad and I pass the fall and winter in the clamor of New York City. In summer we escape the heat of the City by absconding to eastern Pennsylvania to a small, tree-cluttered community clustered on a small rise in the Pocono Mountains. In the City, whether it rains or snows is, of course, important to the functioning of commerce. But aside from checking the temperature, we are not particularly aware of Mother Nature’s activity. It’s in Pennsylvania that we become more attuned to the way the sunrise colors the valley, or how the wind whips up the trees heralding an impending storm. Being naïve, I tried my hand at writing about those sunrise colors and that impending storm. It was really hard work, and I was terrible at it. Then it dawned on me that the authors that I am reading this summer are masters at describing weather and landscape and atmosphere (not to mention character, humor, and dialog). Since my own attempts were so feeble, I thought I’d share some of their mastery instead.

The inestimable Charles Dickens begins. The Pickwick Papers is a joyous celebration of good food, good company, rousing adventures, and enduring friendships, with dark undertones of injustice, poverty and mental illness. In this–one of the merrier passages–we join Mr. Pickwick and his Pickwickian comrades as they prepare to celebrate the holidays:

As brisk as bees, if not altogether as light as fairies, did the four Pickwickians assemble on the morning of the twenty-second day of December….Christmas was close at hand, in all his bluff and hearty honesty; it was the season of hospitality, merriment, and open heartedness; the old year was preparing, like an ancient philosopher, to call his friends around him, and amidst the sound of feasting and revelry to pass gently and calmly away. Gay and merry was the time, and gay and merry were at least four of the numerous hearts that were gladdened by its coming.

Now on their way out of London to Dingley Dell for the festivities:

They have rumbled through the streets, and jolted over the stones, and at length reach the wide and open country. The wheels skim over the hard and frosty ground: and the horses bursting into a canter at a smart crack of the whip, step along the road as if the load behind them…were but a feather at their heels. They have descended a gentle slope, and enter upon a level, as compact and dry as a solid block of marble, two miles long. Another crack of the whip, and on they speed, at a smart gallop: the horses tossing their heads and rattling the harness, as if in exhilaration at the rapidity of the motion: while the coachman, holding whip and reins in one hand, takes off his hat with the other, and resting it on his knees, pulls out his handkerchief, and wipes his forehead: partly because he has a habit of doing it, and partly because it’s as well to show the passengers how cool he is, and what an easy thig it is to drive four-in-hand, when you have had as much practice as he has. Having done this very leisurely (otherwise the effect would be materially impaired), he replaces his handkerchief, pulls on his hat, adjusts his gloves, squares his elbows, cracks the whip again, and on they speed, more merrily than before.

No author that I have read is more in touch with the changing landscape of the seasons than Haldór Laxness, Nobel Prize-winning author of Independent People. The book brings us intimately into the lives of sheep herders–crofters–in Iceland at the turn of the last century. After the long darkness of winter, the arrival of spring is, indeed a momentous event, which Laxness expresses in exquisite detail.

Little by little the snow retreated before the sun, and soon there was in the air the scent of heather and withered grass and the first fresh shoots as they emerged from the drifts on the slopes….Those were the days when the willow twigs were budding on the heath, when the bilberry opened its fragrant flowers in red and white and the wild bee flew humming loudly in and out of the young brushwood. The birds of the moor had laid their first eggs, yet they had not lost the love in their song. Through the heath there ran limpid little streams and round them there were green hollows…, and then there were the rocks where the elves live, and then there was the mountain itself with the green climbing its slopes. There was sunshine for a whole day. Mist came and there was no sunshine for a whole day, for two days. The heather-clad hummocks rose up in the mist, but the mountains were no more. The moss grew brighter in colour, the fragrance stronger and stronger; there was dew in the grass, precious webs of pearls in the heather and on the soil where the ground was bare of turf. The mist was white and airy, overhead one could almost glimpse the sky, but the horizon was only a few yards away there at the top of the dingle. The heath grew into the sky with its fragrance, its verdure, and its song; it was like living in the clouds….One lives for the spring.

Finally, I come to John Banville’s The Sea. Winner of the Man Booker Prize, this quiet book features the somewhat unremarkable Max Morden, a recent widower who has returned to his boyhood summer community to escape his grief, to renew some memories, and to complete a never-to-be-completed essay on the post-impressionist painter Pierre Bonnard. The book, as the title implies, is all sea air and sandy shore coves. His descriptions are not the long paragraphs of Laxness; they appear as introductions to events or emotions. He sometimes appropriates the colors of Bonnard in his descriptions, and the landscape often mirrors Morden’s own feelings…past or present. Here is only a smattering of Banville’s elegance:

It was a sumptuous, oh, truly a sumptuous autumn day, all Byzantine coppers and golds under a Tiepolo sky of enameled blue, the countryside all fixed and glassy, seeming not so much itself as its own reflection in the still surface of a lake.

As steep-slanted flash of sunlight fell along the beach, turning the sand above the waterline bone-white, and a white seabird, dazzling against the wall of cloud, flew up on sickle wings and turned with a soundless snap and plunged itself, a shutting chevron, into the sea’s unruly back.

[After a momentous event], I had expected everything to be changed like the day itself, that had been sombre and wet and hung with big-bellied clouds [in the afternoon] and now at evening was all tawny sunlight and raked shadows, the scrub grass dripping with jewels and a red sail-boat out on the bay turning its prow and setting off toward the horizon’s already dusk-blue distances.

I often ask myself what makes a book a work of art. I’ve decided that it’s sort of like pornography: I’ll know it when I see it. I see it in these remarkable authors.

Posted on by rjonakait

Snippets

I am fascinated by those religious institutions that allow so many to feel self-righteous by making the lives of others so much worse.

A perspicacious person said: “A bigot delights in public ridicule, for he begins to think he is a martyr.”

Perhaps Shakespeare could produce so many works of genius partly because he did not have social media or a touch screen.

“It is impossible to enjoy idleness thoroughly unless one has plenty of work to do.” Jerome K. Jerome.

FEMA says that the states with the most disaster declarations since 2017 are Texas, Louisiana, and Georgia. Politicians from these states are often the ones who rail against the federal government “interference” and its spending. Nevertheless, they would be pretty unhappy without that FEMA money.

The spouse left me a shopping list that included “1 zucchini.” How many of you are confident that there is a double “c” in that spelling? She is (and she’s right!). (Parenthesis added by the spouse.)

At the Amish farmer’s market on Friday, there was a young woman behind the counter who is not always there. She told me that her name was Barbie, short for Barbara. I asked if she was the sister of Annie, the regular checkout person, who was standing next to her. She said no, that she was a cousin. I asked how many cousins she had. Annie and she exchanged sly glances, almost blushing. It was clear that neither had a definitive answer or perhaps even a good estimate. Barbie then said more than a hundred. Annie, I know, has eight siblings.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court recently held that drop boxes for voting violate Wisconsin law even though such devices have long been used in the state. Although the 2020 election was not at issue in the case, Donald Trump quickly said that decision meant that his certification as the loser of Wisconsin in the last election should be overturned. This was to be expected, but more surprising is that a Wisconsin legislator agreed. The drop boxes were not just for presidential votes, but for all electoral contests including all the state legislators running in 2020 and for every Wisconsin seat in the House of Representatives. Perhaps the decertification claim by the state legislator could be taken more seriously if she had said that she, too, was illegally elected and would not sit in the legislature until there was another election. But she did not say that. It is an interesting Catch-22 situation. If she wishes the legislature to decertify, but there has not been a validly elected legislature, what happens?

A wise person said: “Politicians are as good as you are, for the way you vote creates politicians.”

No sensible explanation has been given for an attempted attack on a boobish New York candidate for governor. However, because of what the miscreant had in his hand, I learned that there is such a thing as a Hello Kitty Self-Defense Key Ring. I did not rush out to buy one but come December it could be good for a stocking stuffer or Secret Santa.