Sunday Afternoon Potpourri: Old Memories, New Beginnings, and a Future Knee

Happy Mother’s Day, everyone. To the current ones, and to the red and white carnation versions, I hope your day is a pleasant one.

***

I spent last Wednesday afternoon near Real City, at the suburban surgical center where I’ll be turned into a cyborg on Thursday. I was there for some patient education. The most reassuring part for me was when the nurse/educator told me that if my knee buckled under me, which it has on occasion for a few years now, then I was definitely in need of the replacement. “When it’s causing falls, it can be genuinely dangerous.” So I reckon I’m due, and I can go in with a clear conscience.

I found out that they’ll be going in from the side of my leg, rather than the frontal incision common in the past. She told me that my surgeon has apparently put some of these procedures on YouTube, but I think I’ll skip that, thanks. I also learned something that probably should have occurred to me already, but that I hadn’t considered. Because my new components don’t come with an immune system, I’ll need to be very cautious about infections for at least the next couple of years, to the extent of going on prophylactic courses of antibiotics before dental checkups and work and other poky/bleedy situations.

The next day I went to my regular doctor for my pre-op checkup, which I passed with, if not flying colors, at least careful walking colors. So now I guess there’s nothing to it but to do it, and so I shall. By the way, several of y’all have already extended best wishes and prayers for this pending knife fight, and I appreciate them very much.

***

Of course, I couldn’t be that close to Real City without hitting a used media emporium, so I also picked up another Nameless Detective novel, an omnibus edition of Spider Robinson’s first three Callahan’s collections, and Dominion, an alternate-history novel from C.J. Sansom, who unfortunately died on 27 April, at the age of 71. I’ve read and enjoyed Sansom’s Shardlake series, mysteries set during the reign of Henry VIII. Apparently an eighth Shardlake novel was scheduled for release late last year, but it was delayed for reasons I suspect are apparent. It remains to be seen if that one will ever be published, but I hope it was in publishable condition; it would be nice to have one more adventure of the hunchbacked Sergeant of the Law.

***

I’ve mentioned my friend and former classmate Dr. William Harris in the past. Will was a year ahead of me, and I got to know him over my two years at Transylvania U, where we were on the same scholarship — unlike me, he maintained his for the duration. He went on to grad school in math, and is Professor of Mathematics at Georgetown College in Kentucky, about 15 miles from Transy. Like me, he’s a music buff, and he (usually) blogs about the intersections of music and his life at a blog called (logically enough) The Music of My Life. While there is musical content in his latest entry, there’s also a story there that overlaps with my own roots and reminiscences, so I thought I’d provide some background and commentary from my side of things.

As I mentioned, Will and I were both at Transy on full academic scholarships. The college is actually one of the older ones in the U.S., founded in 1780 when what we now call Kentucky was Transylvania County of Virginia — hence the name. But a couple of hundred years later, the school had, perhaps not declined, but needed a boost in reputation and academic profile. The administration decided to achieve that by buying the best students it could find, via the Thomas Jefferson Scholarship, which paid full tuition, room, and board — you know, the sort of star treatment that normally only went to major college athletes. The scholarship, which began in 1981 (I think), went to 25 kids in each entering class, who were expected to maintain a 3.5 GPA. The winners were chosen out of a group of 50 finalists who came for visits, interviews, and the like.

[Side note: The scholarship was quite successful — at one point, Transy had more National Merit Scholars than the nearby U of Kentucky, which was twenty or so times larger. In fact, it was so successful in accomplishing its goals that the school really didn’t particularly need it any longer, so it now exists in a renamed version, covering tuition only and going to about four kids per class. So I did my first two years of college as a loss leader. End side note.]

I made it through my Freshman year, with grades that weren’t spectacular, but sufficed. (Part of my struggle was that I was taking STEM courses nearly exclusively — I didn’t actually start playing to my strengths until my self-inflicted academic challenges got me invited to the world. Ah, well — as Heinlein notes, “You live and learn. Or you don’t live long.”) And late in each year, the college would host the candidates for the coming year’s crop of T.J.s (as we were called.) The candidates would spend a night on campus, staying with current recipients, and mixers, receptions and such would occur

In the Spring of 1984, one of those candidates was a young woman from Nashville named Kristine Tucker. Kristine was short — maybe 5’3″ or so, with dark brown hair in that neo-Dorothy Hamill style that remained popular in that time. She was funny, interesting, and engaging as well. Kristine intended to become a veterinarian (a dream she eventually accomplished.) In any case, fairly late that evening, Kristine, Will, Will’s roommate James Kolasa (who has also been a frequent character at this blog) and Your Genial Host wandered off-campus to a nearby White Castle, where much banter and goofery ensued — some of it occasioned by a surprise appearance by her folks, who really weren’t expecting to find their little girl at Le Chateau Blanc with three college boys. Nothing untoward happened or was going to happen, as we were all Nice Young Men(TM Pending), but it was awkward for a bit.

Anyway, after the aforementioned banter and goofery (including numerous Monty Python bits, which she knew as well as we did), we got her dropped back at the women’s dorm (Yes, housing was single-sex in those days), and we made our way across the quad (known as the “Back Circle”) to our dorm. James and I looked at each other and said, simultaneously, “I’m in love.” (As it turns out, Will was smitten as well, but I didn’t twig to that for decades, and he played it cool.) Ah, Kristine — seductive porch lamp to the moths of Transy’s STEM boys. (In fact, for a week or two thereafter, some of the girls in our circle were a little miffed at our being collectively gaga over her.)

The next day, Kristine told us that she likely wouldn’t take the scholarship — she had been offered one at a different school that essentially guaranteed her admission to veterinary school. She gave us her address back in Nashville. But she had made another decision as well. Around lunchtime, we had made our way into a music practice room in the women’s dorm and I had played her a couple of songs I had written or co-written in previous years. Afterwards, we went into the hallway between the practice room and the lounge where she was supposed to meet her folks, and she said, “Aren’t you going to kiss me goodbye?”

Well, yeah. And that’s how I found myself in a long-distance summer romance. And just in case that wasn’t sufficiently romantic, we discovered that her folks didn’t like me. They said I was arrogant — maybe I was, but more likely it was bluff from a spectacularly insecure 18-year-old from a socioeconomic background that wasn’t typical of the kids at Transy. I knew I was an oddball. I had been informed of that in no uncertain terms through middle school, high school, and to an extent at Transy as well. But my reaction was what it always was, doubling down on being the campus flake, and funneling my anger into being, really, pretty abrasive. So anyway, this meant that our shared infatuation had to turn clandestine — and as any student of courtly love knows, that just made it crazier. I sent her letters via a friend of hers, and sometimes care of the shoe store where she worked, and she would surreptitiously send me her replies. Eventually we — Will and I — met up with Kristine in Nashville, where in retrospect, I was far more selfish than I should have been, although I plead naivete and infatuation. Shortly after that, Kristine called it a day, which was likely the wisest course of action, all things considered. Some years ago, we reconnected as friends. As I said, she has become a successful veterinarian, and now lives happily with her husband in England. So, happy endings all round for that one.

Because of all that stuff I mentioned in the last paragraph, I have no doubt that even by my own standards of insufferability (already pretty high), I was pretty tough to hang around for the rest of the school year. But James and Will were both kind enough to put up with me.

Our overt communications with Kristine used the quintessential mode of the early/mid-1980s: the mixtape. Before she left for Blighty a few years ago, she sent the tapes back to Will, and well, that brings us back to his blogpost, which deals with a tape he, James, and I made almost exactly 40 years ago. [Fun fact: The Stephen King parody referenced on the tape and in Will’s post was written by Charlie Kaufman, who would go on to become a famous screenwriter and director.]

I can’t disclaim the Smitty Moore on that tape or of that time, even if my hair is now white instead of red. I was big and clumsy — indeed, I still am. I still have a remarkably dark sense of humor, as anyone who has read my fiction will attest, and I suspect that it was amplified by the National Lampoon of that era. And it was years before I learned that the designation of the Jeep as a “quarter-ton truck” referred to its payload, not its vehicle weight. I stand corrected. And my abrasiveness, and my selfishness, came at least in part from being intoxicated by the idea that a smart, cute girl might want me.

But later that summer, when my dad’s cancer was diagnosed, I made my way into a very bad year, which culminated in my getting the boot from Transy and having to find other routes, the ones that brought me to my current way station. So I’d like to think that Smitty Moore did at least some growing up, and became a little less angry. At the very least, I’d like to cut him some slack — he turned out okay, I guess.

And at least he had enough sense to see through Rod McKuen, even then.

***

As Will relates, each of the three of us put some songs on the tape. While I still find reasons to smile at all of the ones I chose, here’s the one that has held up the best for me, I think. As Will has noted to me, the video is very 80s. . . but it still works.

See you soon, or as soon as I can!

Sunday Afternoon Potpourri: Finish Lines Approach

I have finals to give, some odds and ends to assemble, and then Gradeapalooza and the academic year will be put to rest. Commencement is six days away; my surgery is five days after that. But this afternoon I have a bit of a lull, so here we are.

***

I’ll admit it: the knee replacement surgery unnerves me. Yes, the doctors over the years have told me that my knees are arthritic, and that the right knee is severely so. I feel the pain there even as I sit in my office recliner and type this post. It isn’t excruciating, but I know it’s there. I can feel it running about halfway down my right shin, and a slight bit above the joint, at the femur’s end. Call it a one or two on a scale of ten.

But there’s the rub, I think. (And not the Ben-Gay or Aspercreme kind.) It’s not that I think suffering is a virtue, but I find myself wondering if I’m being, well, a wimp. Effete. Am I sufficiently jacked up to justify going through the business of getting a new component, disposing of/replacing an actual body part?

I find myself thinking of my grandfather, who was born 115 years ago yesterday. He had both of his knees replaced in 1985, when he was 76. His doctors were astonished that he had waited so long, telling his daughters (my mom and my aunt) that he should have done this years earlier. “When we asked Mr. Harris why he was only coming to us now, he simply said that he had things he had to do and hadn’t had the opportunity.”

When they explained to the doctors that he had been caring for his bedridden wife until her death, at which point he came to the surgeon, the doctors replied that it shouldn’t have been possible for him to have done as he had. But he had done so. So there was no question that in his case, the surgery was justified, and his final two years of life were much the better for it.

Likewise, my brother needs to have his knees replaced. He requires a cane to get around, and apparently has needed it for several years — at least since before COVID. But Mike has been through assorted vehicle accidents and other chances to get mauled. While not at Evel Knievel levels of damage, he would at least be in the conversation. I can understand that he’s due. (Heck, he’s sufficiently mangled that the prison officials think the work is justified. I would think that’s a tough room to work.)

And then there’s my mom and dad, who dealt with their own sets of broken bones and illnesses. Remember, when my mom was told by a doctor that records indicated that she had suffered a heart attack some years before, she replied, “If I had known that, I wouldn’t have gone to work the next day.” So toughness and endurance have been characteristics of my family for generations. No one would have faulted any of the folks I mentioned for having work done if they could — they all had endured physically hard things.

I haven’t — whatever struggles I may have faced have been in other arenas. Consequently, I find myself wondering. Am I having surgery for something that I rightly should, if not “walk off”, at least put up with? Is this just an aspect of aging that my life has been too soft for me to handle? Am I breaking a butterfly upon the wheel? “Is this trip really necessary?”

Or what if I have it done and I find out that it hasn’t really improved things very much? I mean, I did manage to get around New York earlier this month — yes, I was slow moving, but I always have been. What if I still find myself taking stairs one at a time, or having to brace myself to launch myself out of a chair?

As I’ve mentioned previously, I’ve never had surgery or even a broken bone before. I don’t really know what to judge my level of pain or my quality of life against — so I don’t know if the action I’m going to take is justified. And that troubles me.

There’s a part of me that sees the shadow of Zontar the Enormous in all this. And maybe that’s the case — perhaps I’m comparing myself to an unreasonable standard. I certainly seem to have a knack for finding myself wanting, a theory proven by every failure, but not refuted by any success. It’s imposter syndrome written over the course of my life. And it’s forestalled my attempting a number of things, while leading me to abandon others. Why should I be surprised that I’m facing it now?

Eleven days to go.

***

This week’s reading has taken me across some familiar ground. I read Mourners, the thirtieth of Bill Pronzini’s Nameless Detective novels, a few days ago. By the time a series reaches this point, a series either needs to evolve (e.g., Matthew Scudder) or to enter the world of Romance, where the participants aren’t characters as much as they are archetypes (cough Parker’s Spenser cough.) Pronzini has taken the first option, and at this juncture, readers had best be at least a bit familiar with the assorted characters and their backstories. I do have that familiarity, so the book offered me the pleasure of reconnecting with old friends.

As usual, Pronzini constructs an interesting mystery — or in this instance, a pair of intersecting ones — which kept me turning pages. An interesting aspect was that he would shift viewpoint characters from chapter to chapter, with Nameless narrating in first person in his chapters, while the other characters’ chapters were written in a close third person. It proved to be more effective than I expected it to be at first, but that again may be due to the fact that I already had a sense of the characters going in.

In any case, Mourners was a quick, entertaining read, and it reminded me that I enjoy the series, even if it isn’t top of my mind in the way that Scudder, Cuddy, and Sean Duffy have been over the years. I don’t think I’ve read a bad book from Bill Pronzini — perhaps you’ll find reasons to agree.

I also spent a little time reading science fiction this week. From a recently purchased Roger Zelazny collection, I read “A Rose for Ecclesiastes“, “Damnation Alley“, and “For a Breath I Tarry.” I enjoyed all three, although I think the third one was my favorite, and not just because the title is a line from Housman. “Damnation Alley” (the original novelette, not the expanded version) is a good old-fashioned adventure yarn, taut and engaging. But the other two stories explore what it means to be a person, and what the consequences of belief may be. That puts them squarely in my wheelhouse, and reminds me of why I’m so fond of what was called the New Wave of SF.

I’ve mentioned before that Zelazny was my dad’s favorite writer, and that I adore his final novel, which I pressed upon the Spawn. But I didn’t really get into the Amber novels, which most folks seem to consider his masterwork. Of course, that was decades ago, so maybe I should give them another shot.

And speaking of SF, reading the Zelazny made me think of other SF writers, and my random connections led me to look into Theodore Sturgeon, who (along with Heinlein) led science fiction’s charge into the realms of serious literature, where the New Wavers would pick it up and run with it. That’s not to say that there weren’t other people doing heavy lifting in the field of speculative fiction (Fritz Leiber, for example), but Sturgeon and Heinlein helped move the genre from pulp to slicks, literally and literarily. Interestingly, Sturgeon is seen in some ways as one of the genre’s “might have beens”, having exploded onto the scene in the 1940s and 50s (by which time he was the most anthologized English-language author alive), and then largely dropping out of sight in the coming decades (publishing all eleven of his novels by 1961), although he continued writing until two years before his death in 1985. In fact, he somewhat ironically called a 1971 collection Sturgeon Is Alive and Well.

I haven’t read as much of Sturgeon’s work as I probably should have, in part because of my drift from SF toward crimefic. I knew some of his stories (“Thunder and Roses” (1957), “Microcosmic God” (1941), and “Killdozer!” (1944), but there’s a lot I haven’t seen before. So this week I read “And Now the News” (1956) and “The World Well Lost” (1953). Both of them are remarkable stories, and even 70 or so years later, both possessed the power to move me and struck me as being appropriate for our audience, just as they were for the audiences of their day. I forwarded a copy of “World Well Lost” to the Spawn, who found it striking as well. Give it a look, and remember it was published in 1953.

***

I’ll close this one up, I think, and so it’s time for some music. This time, we’ll go with a band I once opened for back in my grad school days. Although they were formed in Rockford, IL (home of Cheap Trick), Die Kreuzen are generally considered a Milwaukee band. I don’t know how they wound up headlining a rent party in Lexington, KY in 1988 or so, but it happened, and the opening slot fell to an outfit I had joined called Reno Nirvana. The bassist was a classmate of mine in the UK Masters program in English, and the lead guitarist was a pre-law student. But the vocalist was a guy named Howie, and he’s the one who I’d encounter in front of Memorial Coliseum a few months later, and he recruited me into the Groovy Kool, which was a major factor in my M.A. taking me five years to finish. It was Reno Nirvana’s only show, and my principal memory of it was that the hosts were selling cans of Sterling Light Beer, which probably meant they should have been tried at the Hague.

In any case, Die Kreuzen were seen as somewhere on the line between punk and metal, and they were loud enough to curdle the air and crack plaster where we played. Here’s a taste of what they were doing around that time. From 1986, this is “Man in the Trees.”

See you soon!

In Which a Fourteenth Bloggiversary is Noted

In the word of Seamus Heaney’s Beowulf, “So.”

Fourteen years ago, at the Mad Dog’s urging, and driven by my need to distract myself from The Big Noise, I. . . well, I started writing again. I didn’t really think of it that way at the time, but that’s how it turned out. I kind of figured it would be like the diaries I attempted to keep when I was a kid (or maybe my efforts to lose weight), petering out after a few days, or perhaps a week or two, but here we are.

Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear:

As the title suggests, I’m a professor at a small college. My specialty is medieval literature. I’m 44 years old. My politics are best described as “small-l libertarian”; that is, I see government as a necessary evil, but both those words matter. This makes me rather unusual in academia, and particularly in the humanities. I’m also passionate about rock and roll — particularly garage and psychedelia, but anything loud and fast will get my attention. In keeping with that, I play drums, and have since I was a pre-teen.

I’m happily married to Mrs. Mondo, and the doting father of The Spawn of Mondo, a gifted teen girl who is into many of the same geekeries as her dad. My best friend, Maj. Mad Dog, is a lawyer in the U.S. military who is my complete opposite on political matters.

In addition to my professional reading, I spend lots of time reading genre fiction, especially noir/crimefic, 50s-60s sf, and fantasy of the same approximate vintage. At various points in my life, I’ve been a DJ, stand-up comic, bar band musician, teacher, magazine editor, music critic, architecture critic, advertising copywriter, tire and battery salesman, and convenience store janitor. I’ve been paid for all of these. I’ve also done other stuff for which I didn’t get paid, including the writing of 1.5 unpublished novels.

I spent my childhood south of the Ohio River, but really tend to think of myself as a native of Suburbia.

Some, but not all, of these points remain the same. I’m still a professor at the same small college, but where I was a rookie Associate Prof when I started, I’m now in my tenth year as a full Professor. While I still teach (and enjoy) medieval lit, I now see myself principally as a creative writer. I’m now 58 years old. If anything, I’m even more skeptical of politics than I was back then, and try to have as little to do with it as I can. I’m still passionate about rock and roll, and I still think of myself as a drummer, although I haven’t played in a few months, and haven’t performed publicly in several years (and my knee surgery in seventeen days will likely put things on hold for a while longer.)

Mrs. Mondo and I are midway through our 31st year of marriage, and look forward to going into the grandparent biz in a few years. The Spawn is now in her late twenties and is happily engaged to a lovely young woman, with an eye on tying the knot within the year and helping us into the aforementioned grandparent biz within a few years of that. The Mad Dog has retired from the military, has married the Mad Doc, and now lives in Tennessee, where he continues to dabble in politics, typically of a sort of which I disapprove (but as I indicated earlier, nearly all sorts of politics these days earn my disapproval.)

I’m still at 1.5 unpublished novels, but they’re now made up of three different ones at half-done each. My finished one became a twenty-year overnight success story, seeing publication in 2013 and getting reissued in 2017. If you don’t have a copy, you can buy it here. In the meantime, however, I seem to have found a metier as a writer of short fiction, and it’s my hope that I’ll have some things to say about that sooner, rather than later (fingers crossed). This, of course, is in keeping with my lifelong habit of finding the least remunerative ways of doing interesting things (see also teaching at a small college.)

I remain well to the south of the Ohio River, and have now lived in Mondoville longer than I’ve lived anywhere else in my life, but I still think of myself as a suburbanite, and occasionally entertain brief dreams of returning to Kentucky, ideally near my beloved Wildcats. (This is unlikely, however, as the grandparent-oriented retirement plan takes precedence. When you don’t have a lot of family, you want to be close to the ones who are around.)

The blog has allowed me to meet and develop connections a number of interesting folks, both virtually and in meatspace, and while I’m not arrogant enough to think that I’m scintillating to hang with, I do appreciate each and every one of you, whether you’re a regular reader or just drop in from time to time. I guess it’s a good thing that for a change, I’ve stuck with something.

As is my habit, I’ll close with a bit of music. The name isn’t right, but the celebratory aspect works, I think.

See you soon!

Sunday Afternoon Potpourri: Cresting the First Wave

… of Gradeapalooza, that is. I finished papers from my freshpeeps and upperclass this weekend. I have one more batch of papers coming on Wednesday, and then finals next week, which means that I can have a couple of days in the meantime to bayonet the wounded. In the meantime. . .

***

The Spawn and her Intended (upgraded from Squeeze, but still including the title) did something last night that I haven’t done in just over forty years: they attended a screening of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Their local repertory cinema had a showing last night, with most of the appurtenances, including the live actors performing in parallel to the film, that I remember from my high school days. As I told the Spawn, I haven’t seen the movie since I was old enough to see the movie, but in my high school years, it was a pretty regular part of my summer Saturday nights in Nashville (I spent chunks of every teenaged summer staying at my grandparents), and occasionally in Cincinnati. I know I saw it more than a dozen times, thanks to the combination of a friend’s fake ID and my own unusual size. I certainly saw it enough times to have the audience responses pretty well ingrained — I remember many of them to this day.

The last time I remember going to a screening was the weekend that I graduated from high school. Various fellow seniors and I went into Cincinnati — of that lot (including my then-girlfriend), I was the only one who had seen it before. There was a contingent of other oddballs and misfits from Boone County (I was sort of the intersection of the two sets) who were regulars and saw it more than I did — Hi, Tony! — but as I said, this night I was the veteran of my group. In fact, I was an ad hoc draftee into the live performers that night, playing the bit part of Ralph Hapschatt.

When I moved to Lexington for my undergrad, I’m sure there were occasional screenings at the local rep theater, but I didn’t have much money in those years, and so my midnight moviegoing was primarily limited to films like Dawn of the Dead and Eraserhead. But as I said, I still remember a remarkable amount of the components of the Rocky Horror experience, and I’m pleased that the Spawn has had the experience as well. “A toast. . . to absent friends.”

***

On a much more serious note, I’ve taken a professional interest in the current campus unrest. Readers won’t be surprised to know that I’m supportive of a two-state solution, even though I have no hope that it will be achieved; after all, it takes all parties to make a peace. You can mourn the loss of innocent lives while acknowledging that that’s how wars work. If you aren’t willing to accept that, then don’t start a war. As one of Mr. Block’s characters has noticed, turning to violence is like initiating a romantic interlude with a gorilla. It doesn’t end when you decide it’s over — it ends when the gorilla decides it’s over.

It hasn’t been an issue here in Mondoville. A reason for that, I think, has to do with a conversation I had with my dad when I was a teenager. I had been reading about the 1960s, and about the campus and other protests of the era. My dad said, “While all that was going on, most people were just trying to live their lives. Your mom and I didn’t have time to do things like that — we were too busy raising you and making a living.” Likewise, our students aren’t generally the sort that you’ll find at elite schools. They’re trying to make lives for themselves — taking classes, working outside jobs, and taking care of family members. As was said of Atlanta in years past, Mondoville is “too busy to hate.”

But an aspect that particularly fills me with disdain when I look at the goings-on elsewhere is the shock and outrage expressed by “protesters” who face sanctions for their performances. I don’t think I need to prove my free-speech cred to anyone at this point, but I’m astonished by what appears to be a serious misunderstanding of civil disobedience. Breaking the law/rules/policies/outlines of common decency is a legitimate, and sometimes perhaps a necessary act. But pretending that some self-adjudged nobility of purpose obviates consequence is just foolish. Indeed, the moral force of such activity is in the idea that the disobedient individual is willing to suffer for the cause. “This expression of my belief warrants my imprisonment, dubious treatment, or other manifestation of Coventry.” Without that fear (or at least acceptance) of consequence, then the action is empty theater or a tantrum.

If you really think that what you’re doing is the right thing, then go ahead and risk something for it. The Freedom Riders and the folks who marched in the civil rights movement knew they would be facing dogs and fire hoses, that they would be spat upon and hated, and that there would be beatings and a genuine risk of death. As I noted recently, Salman Rushdie has come closer to death than anyone should, but he continues to speak, and live, and face risk — because he believes in his purpose. If you believe you’re doing the right thing, then accept that it might cost you the privilege of attending an elite university, and count it as cheap. Otherwise, you’re simply LARPing. If you don’t believe in what you’re doing enough to suffer for it, then quit before it gets to that point, and recognize that you’re surrendering because it isn’t worth what you’re risking. As I tell my students, “Take what you want and pay for it.” What we’re seeing here is people who think they should get it for free. And that’s contemptible.

***

Last night I started reading the collection of Thomas Hardy shorts that I picked up last week. I’ll admit that I haven’t read Hardy’s fiction since. . . well, since I was going to Rocky Horror screenings. Jude the Obscure was one of the texts in my 12th-grade Brit Lit class, and I thought at the time that it was an over-the-top exercise in gratuitous misery. Even now, I have the same opinion of Little Father Time that Wilde had of Little Nell: Only someone with a heart of stone can read that without laughing. (Maybe it’s the sentimentality of “Little” in the names.)

However, I’ve always been keen on Hardy’s poems, with their combination of irony and grim fortitude, and when I happened across Life’s Little Ironies at the bookstore last week, I figured I’d give the fiction another shot. And it turns out, I like it. Make no mistake — none of the stories I’ve read thus far are the feel-good stories of the year. We’re definitely talking liver-flavored toothpaste here. In fact, what we have is, I think, a kind of social naturalism. Instead of a Jack London character’s battle with the Yukon wilderness, or Stephen Crane’s universe with no sense of obligation, our characters are snuffed out by the class system, or notions of respectability, or their own mistakes.

My colleague David Rachels has argued that what we think of as noir can be traced to books like McTeague and An American Tragedy. But these stories of Hardy’s pre-date both of these, and the stories they tell are as psychologically brutal as Jim Thompson, if more Latinate in diction. (In fact, insofar as Gay Brewer‘s description of Thompson as a satirist applies, I can see the same in these stories.) Characters aspire, try to achieve their dreams, and are squashed like bugs, either by their own flaws or more darkly, just through bad luck (as Hardy explores in one of his poems.) Maybe I should give Hardy’s novels another chance. But probably not until the semester is done.

***

I’ll go ahead and cap things for the time being — and since it’s my blog, why not close it with a plug for a friend, even if only of the electronic variety?

Marco Rossi is originally from Glasgow, although now he’s based in Dorset. I got acquainted with him through his reviews of psych and prog rock in one of my favorite music magazines. Since then, we’ve built a bit of an e-correspondence, and he’s served as an electronic “guest lecturer” with me when I was guest lecturing a class on psychedelic rock in the music department. But Marco is also a musician himself, with a run as lead guitarist in the Kevin McDermott Orchestra back during my first trip through grad school.

Marco just completed a solo album, called Since Returning from the Moon, which is available digitally at the usual locations, and will be out on CD on Friday, 10 May. He writes about the album here, noting that a friend describes it as “Angry Prefab Sprout”, but I hear it as a less jittery XTC. “Lightweight” is his favorite of the lot, and I thought I’d share it with you.

See you soon!

Oh, No! It’s a Mondoplicity!

I was catching up on my web surfing this afternoon, when a friend and former colleague messaged me on the Book of Faces. She’s a reader of this blog, and follows it via the designated FB page. But this afternoon, the Zuckgorithm offered her a blurb from what appears to be a steampunkish SF cosplay character. . . called Professor Mondo. Professor Herman Aloysius Mondo, to be precise, and he has a Facebook page as well.

Accept No Substitutes!

Now while I do maintain my interest in SF, comics, and such, and while my first published stories were actually in those genres, I figure since I’m on the East Coast and primarily in the crimefic world and blogosphere, and since Prof. H.A. Mondo is based on the West Coast and dwells in the aforementioned SF/cosplay fandom, there’s probably sufficient room for both of us — it’s a good sized continent, after all. However, I have gone ahead and reached out to the fellow. I’ll let you know if anything interesting happens. And to forestall the inevitable question, I’m pretty sure that I’m the evil one, since I have the beard.

As for Prof. Mondo Kagonyera, a Ugandan veterinarian, academic, and politician. . . he’s on his own.

A tip of the Mondo Mortarboard to Dr, Kristi Pope Key, of the Louisiana School for Math, Science, and the Arts.

Sunday Afternoon Potpourri: A Dispatch Before Gradeapalooza

Two weeks remain before finals begin, with Commencement a week after that. I’m caught up on grading this weekend, but the deluge begins on Wednesday when my freshpeeps hand in a batch of papers, with the inflow being pretty constant over the nine days following. But this afternoon offers me some time to get caught up on other matters, so why not take avantage?

***

Yesterday was the eightieth anniversary of my mom’s birth, and in its way, the opening of what is a difficult season for me each year. Dad’s birthday will come near the end of May, with their wedding anniversary a little over two weeks later, and the fifteenth anniversary of the murders four days after that, to be followed by the anniversary of the funeral ten days later. In this area of my life, the fact that I have an unusual memory doesn’t always redound to my benefit.

I’m at the point now at which I recognize that even had the Big Noise never happened, it’s quite likely that neither of my folks would have made it this far. Mom was in serious physical decline after decades of the ravages of MS, and Dad had faced cancer three different times, when he was 41, again when he was 56, and the final time two years before his death. Still, I wonder how much time was taken from them, and what other experiences they could have had in that time.

So as I said, this is a challenging time for me each year. But since I had the weekend free, I decided to head down to Real City yesterday for a bit of retail therapy at a pair of used media emporia. I picked up several books, ranging from a copy of the final Travis McGee book (replacing a copy that I lost over the years) to a collection of Thomas Hardy’s short stories, while also snagging a collection of shorts from my dad’s favorite author and a novel that Spider Robinson finished from an incomplete Heinlein work.

But the fifth book? Well, I have a story behind that one. Seventh grade was a lousy year for me (and the two that followed weren’t real prizes either, for a variety of reasons, but I digress.) I was at a new school in Nashville, and because I stood out in a variety of ways (red hair, size, clumsiness, intellect) I was the target of a great deal of bullying. The situation plunged me into what I now recognize as my second bout of what would eventually be diagnosed as clinical depression. But that wasn’t really something people recognized in that time and place, and I don’t really know that having a name for it would have helped much.

As has always been my way, reading and music were my escapes. I’ve always been one to read anything I could find, and that included any textbooks that caught my interest. My seventh-grade literature textbook was just the ticket. Because it was 1977, and because the people who compiled seventh-grade lit textbooks wanted to be relevant, I noticed that it had things like the lyrics to “Eleanor Rigby” and “The Sounds of Silence,” but it also had prose fiction. like Ray Bradbury’s “The Flying Machine.” In any case, it had a fairly long story called “General Garbage”, about the travails of a smart seventh grade boy trying to make his way through school and summer camp in the Bronx. I read it several times, but over the blurring of the years, it became a memory of a memory. I remembered the title, and that I had liked the story, and that it had been in the anthology, but I didn’t know the author’s name, and I had forgotten the plot, and even why the story had that title. (I did remember one joke from it, though. Go figure.)

Years — decades — later, the title and my memories of memories resurfaced, and I decided to put my research training and computer skills to work. After a bit, I managed to discover that what I read was an excerpt from a 1948 novel: City Boy, by Herman Wouk. It’s not one of his better known works; it was his second novel, between Aurora Dawn and the book that made his career, The Caine Mutiny. It didn’t cause much of a stir when it came out, and remains something of a trivia question to this day. But in the years between my discovery and yesterday afternoon, I would occasionally check the fiction section of used bookstores under “W”, in the hope that it might turn up. And what do you know? It eventually did, in a Ballantine paperback from about 1969 that set me back about a buck and a half.

[Side note: “Mondo, why didn’t you just order a copy from Amazon, or get a copy via Interlibrary Loan, or something like that?” Well, as I said, the story/novel would only pop up in my consciousness every once in a while in the Collyer Brothers’ apartment that is my mind, and I guess it would only occur to me when I wasn’t in a position to do those very sensible things. But when I’m in used bookstores, I have certain habits. I look for books from specific authors — usually authors I already have in abundance, like LB, Harlan Ellison, Jim Thompson, William Kotzwinkle; or Heinlein; or authors from whom I have part/most of a series (Parnell Hall, Michael Slade, Jeremiah Healy) or almost an entire backlist (William Goldman). After making those rounds, I just wander around until something comes to mind or grabs my attention (e.g., the Hardy collection). It’s a disorganized, even ramshackle approach to the entire business, I suppose, which is to say that it precisely encapsulates how I do most things in my life — I wander around looking for some things on purpose, but otherwise experiencing my life rather like a Prince of Serendip. (This may be why at least one of my students describes me as having “completed so many side quests.”) So I generally only realize that I could have done things in the abovementioned sensible manner after the fact. And a bonus is that it does make those accidental purchases feel like fun — a happy coincidence, or even a treat from the Universe. End side note.]

So after I got home last night, I started reading it, some 45 years after I had discovered it. In our current cynical age, I suppose this is when I should have discovered that it wasn’t very good, that I had outgrown it, or experienced some other sort of letdown. And who knows? Maybe it will, but it hasn’t yet. In fact, I’m finding the narrator’s voice to be wise both in the ways of the world and those of 12-year-old boys, who in some ways have changed very little since the 1927 of the novel. So in that respect, it was a bright spot in my troubled day.

***

Another book I read this week was an advance copy of Knife, Salman Rushdie’s memoir of his near-fatal wounding by an attacker seemingly inspired by the decades-old fatwa issued against Rushdie after the publication of The Satanic Verses. As a writer, as someone with a passion for free expression, and as someone with some experience of the consequences of violence (though fortunately less directly than Mr. Rushdie), I found the book to have power and resonance.

Although the book is brief (a little over 200 pages) and episodic (with sections as short as two or three lines in some instances), I think the book reflects the fragmentation that happens to us after sudden, unanticipated violence. Rushdie discusses the damage that was done to his body in a nearly clinical manner, but also discusses the impact of that damage in the half-minute of the attack and the weeks and months of his recuperation.

He also talks about the crucial role his wife and their marriage played in his recovery, both in terms of physical caretaking and the inspiration of their love in his (and her) emotional recovery. Emotional without getting gushy, Rushdie’s account of the love and support of his wife and family demonstrates the different ways in which support matters.

And of course, he speaks of the necessity for artists to do what they do in the face of opposition and attempts to silence them, whether socially, politically, or, yes, physically. Given that the check he wrote with Verses has been cashed both in years of isolation and now in physical suffering, he certainly has the right to challenge our society — and that of the larger West — to defend that right to expression, which he notes is under attack both from what we think of as the Left and the Right, as well as from the sort of fanatics who both pronounced the fatwa and have attempted to fulfill it. He mentions the Charlie Hebdo Massacre at several points, and I found myself thinking of Molly Norris as well. As a creator myself, I know I don’t have that level of moral courage, but I’m thankful for those who do. Mr. Rushdie and I may (and do) disagree on quite a number of things, but I’m grateful we have him. The book is recommended, and may be ordered here.

***

I’m beginning to adjust to the idea of my pending knife fight vivisection knee replacement, now less than four weeks away. I’m still nervous about it, and already irritated at the inconvenience of the recovery (“I won’t be allowed to drive for how long?”), but am now looking forward to being able to function with less pain by midsummer, and certainly by this fall’s classes and Bouchercon. Of course, then I’ll have to think about the left knee…

[Side note: My brother was tentatively scheduled for knee replacements before COVID, but between the pandemic and other subsequent medical issues, he’s been on hold there, and so it looks like I may beat him to that particular punch. Possibly the only time I’ve ever beaten him in a race. End side note.]

***

I’ll go ahead and wrap this installment up. Since I mentioned Herman Wouk’s book City Boy above, I thought I’d go with a song from the band of the same name. City Boy was a sort-of-progressive, sort-of-pop band from England that ran in the 70s and 80s. They had several hits at home and on the Continent (and oddly enough in the Philippines toward the end of their run), but this was their one appearance in the US Top 40, where they were no doubt heard by my friend (and fellow prof) Will Harris. The song was originally released under the title “Turn On to Jesus”(!), and disappeared pretty much without a trace. However, they changed the lyrics, recut the tune, and had a hit. From 1978, this is “5.7.0.5.” And I’ve got to admit, I’ve always been a sucker for the clear acrylic Ludwig Vistalite (or maybe Fibes) drum kit.

See you soon!

Sunday Afternoon Potpourri: “Shiplap!” Edition

I got a class’s worth of papers graded yesterday. While I have two more sections of papers to grade, those don’t require a fast turnaround, so I’ll poke at them over the course of the coming week. But in the meantime, this.

***

Friday was Mrs. M’s birthday, heralding the 5 1/2 months that she and I are the same age, before I hit a prime-numbered birthday this fall. In addition to her choice of various retail items, she received her traditional birthday poem — a sonnet, this year — and we went to a seafood restaurant in a nearby town that houses Mondoville’s former arch-rival. It’s one of our favorite special-occasions places, and as usual, the food was both tasty and plentiful. If you’re in the area, you could do much worse. Heck, you could even tell them that Mondo sent you — granted, they’ll just look at you with puzzled expressions and ask you if you’re okay, but you can do it if you want to. It’s America, after all.

Also, happy birthday, Deb. I love you.

***

This morning, as we often do on Sundays, Mrs. M and I were watching HGTV. The show featured one of the network’s innumerable female designer/male contractor teams (not Chip and Joanna Gaines, but a reasonable facsimile, I suppose), and in order to make the resemblance to the Gaines archetype even more apparent, the woman was talking about using shiplap on the interior of the current project.

This reminded me of the fact that I occasionally fall in love with odd words, and I’ll roll them over and over in my mouth and mind until I’ve made a thoroughgoing nuisance of myself, The word barratry is one such example, and well, shiplap has now become another. Shiplap shiplap shiplap. I spent the rest of the morning saying “Shiplap!” at my wife, with various intonations, ranging from threatening whisper to battle cry. Such is life with a word guy, I guess.

***

We’re now 32 days from my impending knife fight — that is, my scheduled knee replacement. I’m still kind of anxious — not so much about the carving proper, but the recovery. I’ve been told various horror stories about the post-op physical therapy, generally with reminders of the therapy’s mandatory nature if I want to resume a normal life. I’m only too aware of my own physical cowardice, and combined with my native tendency toward indolence, I worry that I may not do well. That doesn’t even take into account my basic klutziness and ability to make the wrong physical move in most situations.

I’ve mentioned before that while my family has always esteemed toughness and courage, I don’t see myself as having much of either. In that regard, I’m fortunate in that I haven’t required a great deal of either. Whenever I read or teach Beowulf, I tend to see more of myself in Unferth than in Wiglaf. If I have anything, it may be a sort of resilience and resourcefulness — the ability to fail and try again, even if in a somewhat unorthodox manner. That’s how I see my undergrad career and my return to academia after my time as a journalist. When I went back for the Ph.D., I knew I was taking the short end of a bet, both in terms of my past academic history and the job prospects in the field. But I was lucky enough to have Mrs. M backing my play, and we got through.

Here’s hoping we can this time as well.

***

After grading papers yesterday, I treated myself to a book I received this week. Noise Floor is the latest installment in Andrew Cartmel’s Vinyl Detective series, and as usual, is a great deal of fun.

In this one, our hero (an obsessive record collector) and his companions (girlfriend/muscle Nevada, stoner/audiophile Tinkler, and wheelperson Agatha (a/k/a “Clean Head” for her shaven dome) are on the trail of a missing electronic dance music creator, known as Imperium Dart. The client(s) are three women who form what is called a “polycule” with Dart these days, and who think that the Detective may be able to track Dart down through a shared affinity for obscure records. However, the eccentric Dart has more than a little Merry Prankster in him, and there may be other players in the game as well.

The first-person series is cheery throughout, and this installment is no exception. Not quite cozies (although we do have cats and kitchen scenes), the Detective and his (highly) Irregulars make for a fun, light read, and that’s an honorable goal. I think readers of the late Parnell Hall’s Stanley Hastings series might find the Vinyl Detective good company as well.

***

I’m pleased to note that Mark Pope, the new men’s basketball coach of my beloved Kentucky Wildcats, graduated from UK with a B.A. in English and a Rhodes Scholar nomination in 1996 (the same year he helped win the school’s sixth NCAA title.) From there, he played seven years in the NBA, and completed two years of med school at Columbia before turning to coaching basketball.

So the next time someone asks “What can you do with an English degree?”, feel free to reply, “Well, you can make $5.5 million a year.” But honestly, I’d accept less for the right position.

***

I’ll go ahead and wrap things up for now. In the abovementioned Vinyl Detective book, a significant plot point involves a rare copy of a 1957 Blue Note pressing of a self-titled album from saxophonist Hank Mobley. Here’s a track from that album, the Mobley-composed “Double Exposure.” Enjoy!

See you soon! And also, shiplap.

Mondos in Manhattan: This Time, It’s Plural!

While I trust that my coming knee replacement in six weeks will be relatively uneventful, we don’t know how it will impact my summer activity, including my ability to travel. I’m scheduled to teach a course in June, but that’s going to happen online, so I can do that from here at home. So Mrs. M put forward the idea that we get a trip in beforehand (beforeknee?), and as her spring break is this week, she suggested a long weekend in New York. I assented, and built a couple of work-on-your-own days into my syllabi to keep the kids occupied.

After some weeks of anticipation, departure day was Good Friday, since both of us had the day off. We threw our baggage into the Blue Meanie and made the trek up to Charlotte — the most economical starting point for non-stop flights. That economy also led us to book our flight on, um, an unnamed, low-cost airline whose livery has been described by my cousin the Delta pilot as “the colors of crime scene tape” and by me as “the Waffle House of the Skies.” It was precisely the sort of no-frills (or perhaps no human dignity) experience one might expect from the foregoing description. Many of our fellow passengers were the sort of folks who should have been plucking banjos and talking to geese, and the seats were about one step above being chained to an oar. (Note to the unnamed airline: Not even I am willing to accept the “chained to an oar” option.) But Mrs. M and I can tolerate a lot of things for a two-hour span — we both endure faculty meetings, after all.

[Side note: I was pleasantly surprised to discover that I no longer require the special seat belt extenders I’ve had to use on airplanes for years, which meant that I felt less like a circus attraction than I typically have in these situations. Score one for somewhat cleaner living. End side note.]

We arrived at LaGuardia without incident and caught our shuttle on time. We were sharing the ride with several other folks, and issues like leg and head room meant that Mrs. M sat with the rest of the passenger while I wound up riding shotgun. We were the first passengers to be dropped off, and after establishing base camp on the 42nd floor of our Lower Manhattan/Financial District hotel, scouted around for some lunch.

***

Our hotel was located just a few steps from the Cortlandt Street subway station, and across the street from the World Trade Center’s transit/shopping hub, the Oculus. The place has a Kubrickian science fiction vibe:

Look! My hair matches the architecture! (Photos by Mrs. M unless otherwise noted)

After gazing around a bit, we made our way to the nearby Eataly — a combination of Italian restaurants, groceries, and cooking supplies. Mrs. M found a salad, while I got a couple of pieces of Sicilian-style pizza. We followed that with some gelato, and then went back and checked out the various shops in the buildings.

Eventually we walked to the 9/11 Memorial. There wasn’t much of a crowd around the perimeter of the former North Tower’s disappearing pool, and we stood there for a time, thinking about the enormity that took place nearly a quarter-century ago. It occasioned a variety of thoughts and feelings for me; because I’m what they call a “surviving victim of homicide”, I found myself thinking of the families of the people who died in what was, after all, a mass murder. I saw some of the victims’ names on the polished black panels that rim the pool, and thought about how many panels there were surrounding the two pools. At first, there don’t seem to be enough names on any individual panel to include every victim, but then upon considering the sheer quantity of panels, it gives a sense of the vastness of what happened. At the same time, I found myself looking at the activity around me — shoppers, visitors, and even the hucksters peddling guidebooks to the site — and saw something of a victory, in that despite the efforts of barbarians, civilization endured. This does not diminish what happened there, any more than the fact that the home where my parents were killed now houses others diminishes that, But I do take comfort in the fact that contrary to the country song, the world did not stop turning. If we survive, we continue — not always willingly, but we do.

***

We went back to the hotel for a little bit, and then returned to the Oculus for dinner, finding a multi-ethnic food court on the lower level. In fact, that location’s combinations of food stands and a convenience store made it a fine place to start each day. But by the time we finished, the travel and our walks had taken a toll, and we returned to the hotel for the evening.

[Side note: The Oculus includes a veritable multiplex of transit connections, so that’s where we picked up our all-you-can-eat Metrocard passes, allowing us onto public transit as often as we liked, for $35 each. I haven’t done the math, but I’m pretty sure we came out at least even, if not ahead of the by-the-ride fares. Seriously, folks — when the guidebooks encourage visitors to use the subway, 1) they mean it, and 2) they’re right. Even I — someone who is both gimpy and who wrote a story about someone being pushed off a subway platform — found the subway pleasant, safe, and comfortable. But I did stand well away from the platform’s edge.]

***

Saturday morning, the sun’s reflection off One World Trade (formerly the Freedom Tower) woke us up, and after getting civilized, we had a full dance card. We grabbed breakfast — a cinnamon roll and a blueberry muffin from a nearby bakery — and walked down Broadway to the Battery. Along the way, I read the various plaques identifying the folks who were celebrated in ticker-tape parades along the Canyon of Heroes, and talked about them as we walked. To Mrs. M’s credit, she didn’t slug me. The sidewalks were busy, but we made our way down to the park and I found a bench with a view of the Statue of Liberty. Because Mrs. M and I have both been to the Statue over the years, we didn’t take the ride this time. Instead, I took a break and did some people watching while she ranged a bit farther along.

From there, we caught a train at the Bowling Green station and rode up to Times Square. We picked up a few souvenir trinkets — in this case, refrigerator magnets to accompany the ones we have from Toronto, Myrtle Beach, and San Diego. Then we found ourselves wandering around the Theater District, on the way to acting on a tip from some of Mrs. M’s coworkers and stopping at Junior’s for some “Disco Fries” (a sort of Manhattan Poutine: fries with brown gravy and mozzarella cheese) and the famous cheesecake. I had most of a slice of the chocolate mousse version, while my date had the strawberry cheese pie (which is essentially a cheesecake with — surprise — a pie crust.)

While we sat at our table, a young family — mom, dad, long-haired 8-year-old boy and toddler girl — parked themselves at the next one. I happened to notice that the boy was wearing a Dandy Warhols T-shirt. While I’m sure his parents picked out the shirt for him, I still was impressed, and recognized that I’ll never be at that level of hip.

***

Back on the train after that, with a ride to the Village. While Mrs. M wandered around a bit and picked up her first authentic NYC bagel, I went to one of my favorite places.

“Get Back to Where You Once Belonged”

I’ve only been to the Mysterious Bookshop twice before this trip, but ever since I learned it existed, it’s had a lot of personal meaning to me. Obviously, as a reader of crime fiction I enjoy the idea of a store that specializes in work I like, but of course it also serves for me as a validation of my adventures in fictioneering. My previous two visits had been with Lawrence Block for signings of anthologies he edited and in which I appeared. That’s the sort of thing that thing that reminds me that I actually get to play in the big leagues in my own way. But this time, I was there simply as a customer, and I bought copies of LB’s Autobiography of Matthew Scudder and Jordan Harper’s short story collection, Love and Other Wounds. I already had both on Kindle, but I guess I’m still enough of a physical media fetishist that I wanted the hard copies. As a bonus, the Scudder book was a signed copy.

As I moved around the store, I noticed a copy of Black is the Night, the Woolrich-themed anthology in which I appeared a couple of years back. I asked the store worker if they’d like me to sign it, and he agreed, so I guess I didn’t lower the value as much as one might think. If you swing by, it may still be there.

***

It was a good thing that we were in the Village anyway, because we had an early dinner date with our friends and former neighbors, Lawrence and Lynne Block. We took a short subway ride to their neighborhood in the West Village, walked a few blocks, and found their building. They had been a bit under the weather recently, but were feeling better and made us quite welcome to their lovely place. After some catching up, we headed to a nearby French restaurant for a spectacular dinner. I had one of the specials, an exceptional blanquette de veau, served on mashed potatoes, while Mrs. M had a chicken dish that she seemed to find delightful. Afterwards, the Blocks and Mrs. M had cappuccino while I had a pot of tea. But the best part was, of course, the company.

Even if El Bee weren’t a friend and mentor, spending time with him and his Frequent Companion(TM pending) would be a delight. they’re terrific hosts and engaging conversationalists. We talked about various topics, including some Harlan Ellison anecdotes that I’ll likely share with future classes. After we finished our coffee and tea, we said goodbye and made it back to the subway and downtown.

***

Easter Sunday meant a bit of knocking around the neighborhood, followed by a subway trip to Union Square, where we grabbed some pizza slices for lunch and settled down at a sidewalk table. Again, the people-watching was excellent, and we split up afterwards so that Mrs. M could investigate local retail while I went to the Strand Bookshop. I found a copy of Matt Goldman’s A Good Family, and spent a nice chunk of time in the rare book section, where among other things, they had a number of original Edward Gorey books and a copy of Ringo Starr’s recent photo book — all of which, alas, were outside my range. Perhaps another time.

From there, I went to the Barnes & Noble flagship on the other side of the Square, and hung out there, eventually meeting up again with Mrs. M and going back to the hotel. Mrs. M picked up some Chinese takeout for me while I rested my knees, and then we relaxed around the room for the rest of the evening.

***

Monday was our last full/real day in town, so after breakfast across the street, we completed our Squares trifecta, adding Herald Square to the previously visited Times and Union versions. We went to Macy’s, and the store’s flower show was (and as of this writing, remains) in progress. Back in my journo days, I worked for a magazine that covered retail design and merchandising, and we’d regularly discuss things like the Christmas window displays, and yes, the flower show. I haven’t written about those since 1998 or so, but it was nice to finally see it for real. Meanwhile, Mrs. M found a cute dress, so that part of the trip was a success.

After that, we went out onto the street, grabbed lunch from a hot dog cart, and availed ourselves of some public seating near the display windows and not far from the Empire State Building. As we sat there, a family was standing nearby. The mother was taking video of the streetscape, narrating in a Romance language I couldn’t hear quite well enough to recognize, but that didn’t stop me from listening. As she panned to the Empire State Building, I heard, among the string of words I didn’t know, “Keeng Kong.” I smiled. Some things are the same across languages.

***

Mrs. M had more shopping to do, but I had another appointment, so I hopped the train to Brooklyn. After getting turned around for a bit, I had the pleasure of meeting David Randall, Director of Communications at the National Association of Scholars. We met in the blogosphere, and have corresponded for some years, but this was our first face-to-face encounter. He took me along the Brooklyn Promenade, and we overlooked the river and talked about the goings-on in academia and the world. Even better, he gave me a quickie tour (suitable for my creaky knees) of the neighborhood, and we found our way to the Starbucks on Montague Street to continue the conversation over coffee. After our adieus, it was a short subway jaunt to the hotel, where Mrs. M and I tested another pizza-by-the-slice place, watched the streetscape from our perch 42 stories up, and then called it a night.

***

When we woke up Tuesday morning, we packed up, occasionally stopping to look out the window at the WTC across the street. “We really are close to where it all happened, aren’t we?” Mrs. M asked.

“Yeah. Matter of fact, this hotel was damaged badly enough that they had to close for about a year and a half afterwards.”

People walked onto the plaza, into the buildings, and toward the North Tower’s pool, beginning days of work, reflection. . . and life. The city and its people persist — and although we were only there for a few days, it felt good to be part of that persistence.

***

The shuttle picked us up on time, and we made it back to LaGuardia in plenty of time to catch our flight home on the unnamed airline. It wasn’t any more comfortable than the trip up, but it got us back to Charlotte, so I reckon we got what we paid for.

It was a good trip. No, we didn’t get to go everywhere we might have wanted to go, but we enjoyed the places we did visit, and besides, that gives us an excuse to head back before too long, right? At the least, I can go into my mid-May knife fight with the satisfaction of having seen some of my favorite people and places again.

See you soon!

I’m Back, but More Importantly…

…Today was the day for my installment of this year’s Newberry College Lenten/Easter devotional series. This year’s series is based on the Beatitudes, and as usual, each piece consists of a quote from Scripture, a reflection, and a prayer. So here you go.

Matthew 5:4 (AKJV) Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.

The other day, I was filling out one of those “getting to know you” surveys that you find on social media from time to time. After revealing my affection for chocolate pecan pie and the color blue, I was asked to name my favorite holiday. I realized that my answer had changed over the years.

Like most kids in our culture, my favorite holiday was Christmas. Seeing my grandparents and cousins, having big, Southern-style dinners, and of course, getting new toys – all of these were things I loved, and I loved the excitement and happiness I saw around me, and the sense of hope that went with it, that the world could be saved by someone as unlikely as a Child in Bethlehem.

I still love Christmas, but with the passage of time, I’ve come to love Easter even more. You see, as we go through our lives, well, we lose things, and even worse, we lose people. Friends, family, even the things in us that make us who we are – all of them go away from us, or we go away from them, whether suddenly or slowly. And we feel those losses. Some of them are loud; others are quiet, and others may diminish in emotional volume over the years without ever entirely disappearing. But those people, those things, those pieces of ourselves that we attached to all of that? They go, and we miss them. My grandparents, my parents, the closest friend of my childhood and others through the years. . . they’re gone, except in memory.

And if that were how the story ended, it would be dark indeed, and the hope that came with Christmas would be a lie. But today’s Beatitude, and the Easter holiday we celebrate, remind us that the story doesn’t end there. It may pause, just as the world paused for the three days from the Passion to the Resurrection, but it doesn’t end. Christ rose, and in that, He offered us the promise that we shall rise as well, and so will those we love, and we will have each other again, not only as we were, but better and unceasing.

I have had Christmases, the joys of opening the gifts of life, the relationships, and the companionship of reuniting with people we love. I trust I will have others. But now, when I think about the people and other gifts that I’ve lost, I might feel those absences and mourn them, as is natural to do. But Easter? Easter tells me that the loss will be restored, that the joys God enables us to share with Him and with each other will return, will renew, and that all of us who mourn will be comforted.

Heavenly Father, thank you for your promise of comfort for the mourning, and for Your return that proves it, as we celebrate it under the name of Easter. We offer this in the name of Your Risen Son, Amen.

Meanwhile, I got back from NYC at about 5:30 this afternoon. I need to prepare for the remainder of the week’s classes, but I’ll give you a full update in the days ahead.

Monday Night Potpourri: I Have An Excuse!

OK, maybe part of it is my fault — midterm grading and such, but late last week my computer’s recharge port apparently got wobbly, before tanking altogether this past weekend. This meant I had to use the computer very sparingly, in order to make sure that it had enough juice to do the things I needed for work. It’s at our IT office now — I’m using a spare machine that was bought in 2019, and hadn’t been updated until this morning. Until I did the updates, I couldn’t even log into WordPress, so here we are. The sick machine is under warranty, but I’m told that there’s about a 50/50 chance that the company will find a way to disavow it. If that’s the case, I’m stuck with this one until at least the end of the fiscal year. But I’m still here, so I thought I could at least let y’all know.

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The right knee replacement is scheduled for 16 May, not quite a week after Spring Commencement. I passed the college’s mandatory online pedagogy course, so while I plan to teach a class this summer, I’ll be able to do it a few weeks post-op, from the comfort of home — I hope so, anyway. If things go as well as we hope, I’ll likely have the left one done in a year or few. But the urgency scale definitely tends toward the right one, so it’s the first to go.

In the meantime, Mrs. M and I are heading up to NYC this weekend, and since I figure I’ll be doing some walking, I went ahead and got cortisone shots in both knees today.

The tan badges of courage.

I’ve had several shots in the right knee over the years, and as I mentioned elsewhere, the biggest ordeal of the day wasn’t the shots — it was having to go to the monthly faculty meeting afterward.

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In more pleasant news, I got a note from Mr. B a week or two ago, telling me that someone at a major university in the Midwest is using my stories in class. Thus far, they’ve looked at “Office at Night” (from In Sunlight Or In Shadow) and “Ampurdan” (from Alive in Shape and Color.) I’m delighted, of course, but I have to admit that I’m also amused. The school in question is much higher on the academic food chain than Mondoville — not only would they not be willing to hire someone with my background, I’m reasonably certain they wouldn’t have admitted me to their grad programs. (I applied to about ten M.A. programs, but the only schools willing to give me a shot were the home state programs at the U of Kentucky and Western Kentucky U. I applied to three Ph.D. programs — Ball State was the one to give me a chance. I’d like to think I’ve justified their decision.) But I’m glad to know that someone in the big leagues of academia thinks I’m worth sharing with their students — that’s a rush. I may have to start writing “Literary Figure” on the waistbands of my underwear.

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I also have officially tendered my resignation from my position as Humanities department chair, effective at the school year’s end. By then, I will have served the year I promised to serve, so I can step down with a reasonably clear conscience. I don’t especially feel that I’ve done a very good job — I knew going in that I wasn’t organized enough for the gig and nothing has happened to change my mind, so I expect that my successor will be an improvement. Also, I found that the position was occupying enough of my head space that I had trouble focusing enough to write (see also my less frequent blogging this year.) Honestly, while I don’t expect to make a significant contribution to the fields in which I find myself, I do think that what I do as a writer is considerably more valuable than what I might do as a pseudo-administrator. (Humor me.) In any case, I feel like I’ve fulfilled my obligation as a good citizen of the college and department, so I can pass the office to someone else with a smile on my lips and a song in my heart.

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Tomorrow, I’ll be recording my contribution to our Lent-and-Easter devotional series. This time, our subject is the Beatitudes, and as usual, I’ll share mine here on or about the appropriate date. In the meantime, you can check the series out here.

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All right; I have to talk about Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe tomorrow, so I’d better call it a night. But why not share a bit of music as I leave? I shared this one about thirteen years ago, in the early days of the blog, but I still like it, and if I can share an Auden poem multiple times, I can repeat a song on occasion. From Stroudsburg, PA, here are the Bentleys.

See you soon!