“Early though the laurel grows . . . ”

Facebook is a puzzlement.  I hardly ever understand what is going on.  My friend Sue recently sent me an important private message—and Facebook didn’t notify me.  Isn’t it supposed to do that?  If she hadn’t mentioned it in a “regular” post, I wouldn’t have known.  And I never understand who sees what or where anything shows up.  But, Facebook has done one really good thing:  it has kept me in touch with many former students, which is a delight.  And recently there was a post from Alyssa, one of my favorites.  She put up a picture of two books, The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius and A Shropshire Lad by A. E. Housman, that I must have discussed in class or perhaps even given out copies; I did that sometimes.  That simple post sent me on a trip down memory lane.

A Shropshire Lad was the first book of poetry I ever bought.  I still have it and there’s a photo of that book above.  That edition is copyrighted 1950, but I know I didn’t buy it then; in the 50s I was still a hick down on the farm and certainly wasn’t out buying poetry, although I was already reading it in school books.  I’m guessing I got it in the early 60s; I have a very faint recollection that I got it at an English language book store in Hong Kong or Kowloon (still a British colony in those days).  But I’m not sure.  I could have got it in Oklahoma City or Washington, D.C.  My memory, like the color in the cover of the book, has faded seriously with time.

Oh but I loved that book and those poems!  Instinctively, I think I understood that I had more in common with Housman than just poetry, but that revelation was to come much later.  Somehow, those simple poems would waft me away to someplace—undefined—where life was different, and oh so melancholy.  These are lovely poems, beautiful of language, but they have a great sadness to them.  Just what a young 20-something wants as he—I, that is—mooned about steeped in self-pity.  Who misses those years?

The most famous poem from the book is probably “XIX: To An Athlete Dying Young”: 

     Smart lad, to slip betimes away

     From fields where glory does not stay

     And early though the laurel grows

     It withers quicker than the rose.

And one of my favorites and, perhaps, a poem written in reference to Housman’s great unrequited love for Moses Jackson, is “XIII”:

When I was one-and-twenty

       I heard a wise man say,

“Give crowns and pounds and guineas

       But not your heart away;

Give pearls away and rubies

       But keep your fancy free.”

But I was one-and-twenty,

       No use to talk to me.

When I was one-and-twenty

       I heard him say again,

“The heart out of the bosom

       Was never given in vain;

’Tis paid with sighs a plenty

       And sold for endless rue.”

And I am two-and-twenty,

       And oh, ’tis true, ’tis true.

Rereading these poems led me to Tom Stoppard’s brilliant modern play, The Invention of Love, which deals with Housman’s love for Jackson.  Interestingly, the two actors in the play portraying the young Housman and the older Housman, Robert Sean Leonard and Richard Easton, both won Tonys for portraying the same person in the same play at different ages.  If you like A Shropshire Lad, this play is well worth seeking out.

One final poem from A Shropshire Lad, the last poem, “LVIII”:

I hoed and trenched and weeded,

  And took the flowers to fair:

I brought them home unheeded;

  The hue was not the wear.

So up and down I sow them

  For lads like me to find,

When I shall lie below them,

  A dead man out of mind.

Some seed the birds devour,

  And some the season mars,

But here and there will flower

  The solitary stars.

And fields will yearly bear them

  As light-leaved spring comes on,

And luckless lads will wear them

  When I am dead and gone.

Newly Discovered Gems

Lists are a guilty pleasure of mine—one of many.  I keep all sorts of lists, from groceries to what to take on an upcoming trip, from all the lottery scratchers I’ve bought (and lost money on) to my CD collection (by genre and then alphabetically by composer).  If a magazine, newspaper, or internet article that has “10 Best” in front of it, you can bet I’m going to read it.  The end of the year is a lister’s paradise; every type media has its lists.  Okay, most of them are just plain silly (does one really need to know the ten worse Canadian cities to visit?).  I read them anyway.  But some have to be taken a bit more seriously; when The New York Times lists the ten best books of the year (they also do the 100 best books of the year) one had best pay attention, even if, depressingly, I haven’t read any of them.

And right now one of The Guardian’s (theguardian.com/us) book bloggers, Robert McCrum, is running a list of 100 of the best novels in English.  Frustratingly, he’s only releasing one a week, moving historically from the past to the present.  So every Monday my little coffee klatch gathers around the latest release to see if we have read it, or, more importantly, see if we approve of his selection.  And sometimes, to marvel that he lists a book that we (usually I) have never heard of.

McCrum’s surprising first selection (remember, this is historical, not in order of preference) was The Pilgrim’s Progress, by Paul Bunyan.  After a little reflection, I agreed with this.  I read this novel as a teenager and thinking back as I read McCrum’s short essay (which accompanies each release), I was flooded with memories of the novel, even after all these years.  I won’t read it again, but it’s nice that 50 years later it has stuck with me.  Some of the selections are obvious choices and couldn’t be left off:  Gulliver’s Travels; The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman; Frankenstein; Moby Dick; others are expected authors, but perhaps not the work I would have chosen: Jane Austen’s Emma rather than Mansfield Park; David Copperfield rather than Great Expectations.

Some are just plain head-scratchers (for me, anyway): Edgar Allen Poe’s only novel, The Narrative of Gordon Arthur Pym, is included; Little Women by Louise May Alcott; and the Sign of the Four by Author Conan Doyle (a terrific novel, to be sure, but one of the best 100 ever?).  Wind in the Willows comes in at number 38, and what a terrific novel it is, but to make the final cut?  Other great books are going to have to be eliminated for these, and I’m not entirely comfortable with that.

And then there are books I’ve never even heard of.  I expected a good many on the list to be books I’ve never read, but surely I would have heard of them all.  Nope.  Number 20 was Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome.  Who?  What?  Number 37:  Hadrian the Seventh by Frederick Rolfe; never heard of it.  Nor number 40, Zuleika Dobson by Max Beerbohm.  At least I’ve heard of Beerbohm, even if I haven’t read a thing by him.

Some books on the list I’ve heard of the author but don’t know that particular work.

Released this Monday was his selection number 41:  The Good Soldier, by Ford Maddox Ford.  This is one I haven’t read, but at least I’ve heard of it.  Everyone has heard of Benjamin Disraeli but how many people have read Sybil, McCrum’s number 11.

Which leads me to the book pictured above: The History of Mr. Polly.  Eveyone knows H. G. Wells.  How many know he wrote 50 novels!  And not all science fiction.  From McCrum’s discussion of  The History of Mr. Polly I decided to read it.  And what a delight it was.  Mr. Polly is sort of an Everyman at failure, in his life, his work, and his marriage; early on he declares he “hated Fishbourne, he hated his shop and his wife and his neighbours. But most of all Mr Polly "hated himself.”  But Mr. Polly is a master neologist.  Some examples (I kept a list): sesquippledan verboojuice, eloquent rapsodooce, intrudacious, jawbacious, and retrospectatiousness.  Spellcheck might not like these words, but I love them! 

The History of Mr. Polly, a newly discovered gem indeed.  And surely that’s the main function of my beloved lists.

Why I'm Skipping the Pride Parade

Today is the Chicago Pride Parade.  This is one of the premier pride events in the world; the crowd this year is predicted to be up near 1,000,000.  It’s a colorful and fun-filled day, and everyone should go at least once to such an event.  But I’m skipping it this year, even though the route passes less than a mile from where I live.  The explanation is simple: I’m just getting too old.

I attended my first Pride Parade was when I lived in San Diego.  It was an astonishing event, for this country boy from Oklahoma.  Three things about that first parade stand out.  One is that the superintendent of schools marched in the parade with a group of his gay and lesbian teachers.  Such a thing could never have happened in Oklahoma (probably still doesn’t) and I thought of all the closeted gay teachers back home who would lose their jobs for coming out.  Second were the contingents of police and firefighters marching in the parade, led by the fire chief and the police superintendent.  Again, such a thing was unimaginable back in Oklahoma.  And my third strongest memory of the parade is when we were all walking from the parade to the Pride Festival at Balboa Park: from a hilltop I turned and looked back down the hill and there were hundreds—thousands—of men and women celebrating gay pride, heading in a mass movement to the park.  It was a revelatory moment, and one I’ll never forget.

And then when I moved to Chicago I went to the parade my first few years here—it was a short walk there, after all.  These were much bigger parades, and I didn’t last the entire day (my knees couldn’t take it), but there were several things that stood out at those first parades.  One was that the governor walked the entire length of the parade (as well as many other politicians—but look at the size of the GLBT voting block!).  Again, there were contingents of teachers and firefighters and police.  Many businesses had floats, and all the media outlets had floats.  Gay bars were represented, but so were many organizations, both gay and straight; and many churches are represented also, something perhaps not seen much in Oklahoma and Texas.  Truly, this city turns out in support of equality and fairness.  Last year was the first year for the parade after Illinois joined the states allowing same-sex marriage; not surprisingly, the turnout last year was a record.  But the size of the audience keeps growing.  And judging by what I saw as I walked part of the route this morning heading for my regular Sunday-Morning-Coffee-with-Jack, there are as many straight people as gay, perhaps more.  And many people bring their children, too, both gay and straight couples.  Chicago does love a good parade/party.  And Chicago supports fairness and equality.

But it’s supposed to be 90 degrees today.  And my knees haven’t gotten any better over the years.  So I’ll stay home again today.  I’ve got good memories of the other parades I’ve been too.  And I’ll let the younger set do the celebrating for me.  They deserve it.  Okay, I deserve it too, but they will have to stand in my stead.

Fun and Games with the Texas Republicans

It’s that time again: the Texas GOP has published their new platform—for 2014—although it seriously looks like it’s for 1914.  It would be funnier if the platform didn’t hurt thousands of people in many different ways.  Here are a few of the ignorant and egregiously wrong elements of the platform:

1.  I can’t even imagine these sentiments in the year 2014: irrelevant and ignorant and completely out of touch with reality:  “Homosexuality is a chosen behavior that is contrary to the fundamental unchanging truths that have been ordained by God in the Bible, recognized by our nation’s founders, and shared by the majority of Texans. Homosexuality must not be presented as an acceptable alternative lifestyle, in public policy, nor should family be redefined to include homosexual couples. We believe there should be no granting of special legal entitlements or creation of special status for homosexual behavior, regardless of state of origin. Additionally, we oppose any criminal or civil penalties against those who oppose homosexuality out of faith, conviction, or belief in traditional values.”*

2.  Every legitimate psychological and psychiatric association has disavowed the idea that “reparative therapy” works to “cure” the gay.  And anyone who knows anything about this dangerous and often damaging “treatment” knows it’s a fraud.  But facts just don’t seem to matter much those Texas GOPers:  “We recognize the legitimacy and efficacy of counseling, which offers reparative therapy and treatment for those patients seeking healing and wholeness from their homosexual lifestyle. No laws or executive orders shall be imposed to limit or restrict access to this type of therapy.”

3.  In line with the national GOP ideas, using the term lightly, Texas Republicans would do away with Social Security and transition to a private model.  We’ve seen how that would have worked after what happened in 2008: “We support an immediate and orderly transition to a system of private pensions based on the concept of individual retirement accounts, and gradually phasing out the Social Security tax.”

4.  Pornography is equated with cocaine and meth?!  “We encourage state and federal governments to severely prosecute illegal dealers and manufacturers of addictive substances, including pornography . . . “

5.  Not surprisingly,  they want nothing to do with climate change, completely ignoring science and the facts—again:  “While we all strive to be good stewards of the earth, ‘climate change’ is a political agenda which attempts to control every aspect of our lives. We urge government at all levels to ignore any plea for money to fund global climate change or ‘climate justice initiatives.’”

6.  Of course Islamophobia raises its ugly head as the GOP believes laws should be passed to prevent Sharia Law from becoming the law of the land, even though that hasn’t happened and couldn’t happen (and a federal appeals court blocked such a move for a similar law in Oklahoma as the court “did not know of even a single instance where an Oklahoma court had applied Sharia law or used the legal precepts of other nations or cultures, let alone that such applications or uses had resulted in concrete problems in Oklahoma”).  Texas either: “We also urge the Texas Legislature and the United States Congress to enact legislation prohibiting any judicial jurisdiction from allowing any substitute or parallel system of law, specifically foreign law (including Sharia Law), which is not in accordance with the United States or Texas Constitutions.”

There’s more, but I am sick to my stomach and have to stop.  Additional items include these GOP shibboleths: get out of the UN; lots of hate on immigration—but little on compassion; of course they don’t forget the rich, and they clearly support greater income inequality; and it wouldn’t be a good Republican document if it didn’t include Benghazi.

There are some terrific people in Texas, including relatives and friends of mine, but this GOP platform ought to horrify them.  It won’t.

*These quotes are from the released GOP platform available readily on-line.

Vivian Maier

I’ve never been cutting edge—on anything, really.  I’m almost always so far behind the cultural curve that the beginning is long out of sight.  But recently, I can say I was there at the beginning of something that, or so it seems, is important: the discovery of a “new” artist, Vivian Maier.

“New” is in quotation marks as the great street photographer was totally unknown until after her death.  She was discovered by John Maloof when he bought a box of negatives from a storage space that was being auctioned.  He didn’t realize what he had at first, but once he got into the negatives, he realized that here was a true artist with the camera.  He went back and searched for the buyers of other boxes, bought them, and eventually ended up with over 100,000 photographs, many—perhaps even most—of a remarkably high quality.  Maloof didn’t really know what to do with them, but he had some high quality prints made, framed them, and talked the Chicago Cultural Center into showing them.  The show was a huge success, the biggest exhibit in the Cultural Center’s history.

And that’s where I come in: I saw an article about the exhibit at the Cultural Center and went to see it with my good buddy Roger.  We were astonished at these photos—and the story behind them, and I have become a fan of this talented woman, visiting all three of the exhibitions held here in Chicago.  Vivian Maier was a nanny in New York City and Chicago.  She never had an exhibit; apparently, she never shared her photos, many of which were still undeveloped, and she died in obscurity.  Without the foresight of John Maloof, these photos might have been lost or destroyed.

And now Maloof has made a documentary film about Vivian Maier: Finding Vivian Maier.  It’s a brilliant film and I encourage everyone with any interest in photography to see it.  The film’s web site is http://www.findingvivianmaier.com/.  And the web site devoted to her photos is http://www.vivianmaier.com/.

With shows around the world and news stories on the major networks and in all the major papers, Maier is no longer unknown.  And I was there for the very first exhibit.  

Resurrecting the Dead

I have few regrets about my life.  I figure if one is happy with the way life has turned out, then one must be grateful for all that went before, good and bad.  And so I am.  But of course there are a few moments one would like to go back and change.  For me, a major regret is that I never got an advanced degree.  That’s especially sad as I went through an entire master of arts program in creative writing, 1973-1974, did all the course work, and completed everything, including a thesis.  Since it was a creative writing program, my thesis was a novel.  Mine was called In Mighty Silence.  I worked on it for a year under the supervision of the writer in residence, Marilyn Harris.  At the end of the year, instead of submitting the novel for final approval and sitting for the oral defense, I decided, in a moment of noble foolishness, that the book wasn’t good enough.  I was going to write another one.  Ah, well, you can see where this is going.  So I did everything except the actual oral defense of the thesis, put the novel away—and then never wrote another.  Or another one for the masters program.  Not having the advanced degree didn’t seem to affect my getting a job in Oklahoma and Texas, but it certainly affected my salary for those 26 years I taught.  And I feel educationally “incomplete,” unfinished, as it were.

I haven’t dwelt on it over the years; what would be the point.  But there is that little niggling regret always in the back of my mind.  I wouldn’t be thinking about it now, or blogging about it, except, much to my surprise, I found the manuscript of the novel the last time I was in Texas, a manuscript that I thought was long lost.  It was tucked into a cache of papers I had stored.  When I went to clean out the storage space and toss most of the junk in there, I found In Mighty Silence.

And I have decided to retype it, revising it as I go, almost exactly 40 years on from finishing the novel, resurrecting the characters like zombies.  So far, it’s been an interesting experience, to say the least, and I’ve only just finished chapter 1.  The novel is better than I expected it would be; and it’s still not very good.  But I am plodding away on it, reworking it as best I can, trying to read the faded type through the yellowed paper, my marks and corrections, Marilyn’s annotations, missing pages, duplicated and altered pages.  I have no plans for publication, although should I get it into some kind of finished product I’ll have a few copies printed up for . . .  I don’t know why.  My “legacy”?  That seems hardly worth the time.  It’s probably just to get a sense of completion, even though I’ll not get the degree for it.  But having the book in front of me, printed up, copyrighted, bound with a cover, somehow makes the time I spent on it somewhat worthwhile.

I’ve done more foolish things for much less reward. 

Am I a Socialist?

Any time the discussion over coffee or drinks turns to politics, it becomes evident pretty quickly that my views lean far to the left.  And it doesn’t take long before someone asks, “Are you a socialist?”  I wish I could give a quick answer.  But the fact of the matter is that there is so much confusion and misunderstanding out there about socialism, so many myths and errors, that to answer yes would just lead to more confusion.  So let me clarify a few things before I try to answer the question.

First off, the is no one socialism, no block of beliefs carved from stone.  There are many socialisms.  A quick glance at Wikipedia and you’ll find these, among others:  Utopian socialism, Marxist socialism, anarchism, democratic socialism, eco-socialism, religious socialism, and even libertarian socialism (which seems to me to be an oxymoron); and some of these categories have sub-categories.  There are also a number of historical political movements that have used the term socialism which were not remotely socialist—The National Socialist German Workers' Party, the Nazi Party, comes to mind.  There are a number of socialist political movements through history which perhaps started as socialist, or at least envisioned themselves as socialist, which either weren’t or didn’t last long in that form: the USSR and Communist China, for example.

The most basic definition I can come up with would be that socialism is the communal ownership of the means of economic production and the subsequent management of that production.  But there is more than one problem with this definition: what does “communal ownership” mean, for example?  Does that mean government?  A co-op?  A group of workers?  A city?  Mostly, the answer depends on the type of socialism you are talking about.  And what is meant by “management”?  Certainly not the type of dictatorship we saw quickly grow in the USSR.  But some entity has to do that management.

Want to see a good example of socialism?  Check out the U.S. military:  “[I]f there was any question about how socialist the army is, they removed all doubt when they adopted their last slogan: Army of One. That sounds positively communist. Why don't they just call it the collective? And in the US military everyone pledges to support one another no matter what. No one gets left behind. Everyone gets government provided housing, health care, and even government clothing. The military is the most socialist institution we have.”*

And let’s make one thing clear: regardless of what Fox “News” and the ignorant Palins of the world claim, President Obama isn’t remotely a socialist; hell, he’s not even a particularly good leftist.

What socialism could do is stop or curtail the built-in, self-destructive structural problems inherent in capitalism, “the concentration of wealth at the top, which eventually makes economic growth impossible — stagnant wages mean capitalists’ customers don’t have the money to keep the economy growing—and leads to crisis.”**  

Socialism can put ethics back into politics.

So when people ask me if I’m a socialist, I hedge; I ask them what they mean and when they mention the USSR or Marx or, good grief, President Obama, I say simply, “Probably.”  If pinned down I’ll call myself a democratic socialist (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_socialism).

The sad fact is that, at 71 years of age, I will not live to see a socialist society as I envision it.  For now, capitalism reigns supreme, and one has only to watch the news on a regular basis to see where that is leading us.  Frankly, I am pretty pessimistic about the future.
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A couple of short videos to watch if you want to know more:

The great Howard Zinn on socialism:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJ9UChMSJPU


Bill Maher on socialism:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMS_P09dKbc

Three books I can recommend:
Looking Backward, by Edward Bellamy
The Case for Socialism, by Alan Maass
Imagine: Living in a Socialist USA, edited by Frances Goldin, et al.
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*http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cenk-uygur/is-the-us-military-a-soci_b_252526.html
**http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/04/04/1199205/-Socialism-what-it-isn-t#