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.
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 fightvivisection 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.
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!
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.
…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.
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.
***
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.
***
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.
***
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.
***
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.
***
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.
Spring Break is here, and I’m enjoying it by… sitting in my office. I don’t have to be here, but home is where the compact discs are, or something like that, and it’s just a couple of minutes from home, so after picking up some tea at the grocery, I thought I’d come over here and catch up on a bit of blogging. So let’s get on with it, shall we?
***
I’ve mentioned in the past that one of my favorite musical streams is Hans Kesteloo’s Beyond the Beat Generation, from Utrecht in the Netherlands. He plays ’60s garage and psych ranging from the (relatively) known to the downright outré. I’ve listened to it for years, and found a number of the groups and songs that have appeared at this blog through his stream. In between the songs, he’ll occasionally slip in radio spots and such from the era.
Falling into the category of “and such,” we have my latest CD acquisition. Folks of a certain age (mine, or a bit older) will know that in the 60s and into the 70s, mainstream radio was on the AM band, while FM stations (despite superior sound quality) were much thinner on the ground (or on the air, I suppose.) Parents and teenyboppers were likely listening to AM — when I was a grade schooler in Nashville, I listened to 1300 WMAK and 1510 WLAC (especially in the car; FM car radios were a luxury my folks couldn’t swing in those days) — but if you switched to FM, you could find the public radio station, and even examples of the free-form, undergroundish radio that would eventually morph into AOR, and then become utterly homogenized thanks to folks like Clear Channel. If you wanted to hear something unconventional, disreputable, or at least different, you likely listened to an FM station in the late 60s.
And in the late 60s, John Rydgren counted as different. Rydgren, frequently known as “Brother John,” was an ordained minister in the American Lutheran Church (one of three Lutheran denominations that eventually merged into the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America — Mondoville College’s patron institution.) He was also head of the ALC’sradio and TV films division. As part of his outreach efforts in the mid-60s, he produced and syndicated a series of Christian broadcasts called Silhouette. The show consisted of a mix of popular-to-underground music and Rydgren’s semi-sermonic monologues, delivered over beds of similar music. The monologues (which occasionally included clips of currently popular musicians — from Paul Revere of the Raiders to Peaches, Herb, and the Association’s Brian Cole, all discussing spiritual topics) were non-denominational, a little quirky, and delivered in Rydgren’s absolutely stellar bass-baritone, first from a Minneapolis church basement, and later from “real” studios. The shows were eventually syndicated across the U.S., and even were broadcast in Vietnam on Armed Forces radio, and the series ran for about three years, before Rydgren moved first to new York, and then to Los Angeles, where he hosted a radio show called “Heaven Is in Your Mind.” Think of him as a religious Ken Nordine.
It’s no shock that we live in a cynical, ironic age — I occasionally ask my students to try to remember the last time they made it through a day without saying something snarky, or the opposite of what they actually meant. [Narrator: “And Mondo is no different.”] Christian outreach has not been spared — nor should it have been; after all, the specter of Chaucer’s Pardoner still pops up on a pretty regular basis. The mockery of that sort of thing ranges from mild (Jokes about youth pastors trying to be “down with the kids”) to savage (Moral Orel‘s skewering of Davey and Goliath, the latter of which was occasionally part of my childhood TV on Sunday mornings.)
But Rydgren’s Silhouette segments generally seem to hold up pretty well. Occasionally they get a little cheesy (“the Hippie’s 23rd Psalm“, for instance, or his similar version of the Creation story, which reminds me of Lord Buckley.) but generally he manages to be affable and sincere without condescension. One of the things I particularly like is that he’s not interested in selling a Shiny, Happy Jesus. Rydgren freely acknowledges that Christianity is not a ticket to earthly happiness and prosperity — Christians will face problems, pain and death. . . but then, so did their Master.
Unfortunately, Rydgren learned about that the hard way as well, suffering a debilitating stroke in 1982 (from which he recovered, defying doctors who predicted he would never speak again) and dying of a heart attack in 1988 at the age of 56. But along the way, he recorded three LPs (or as my students call them, “vinyls”) of his Silhouette bits and other pieces, including a cantata that some have compared to the Electric Prunes’ Mass in F minor and Mind Garage’s Electric Litugy. All of those recordings were gathered onto a 2-CD set released in 2012, and that’s what I got in the mail last week, and what I’ve been listening to a good bit over the last few days.
Ultimately, I suppose we can see Brother John’s work as a precursor of the “Jesus People” movement of the early 70s. But as I said, I think some of it holds up, and I’m pleased to say that I think his work will find a place on the airwaves again — at least once I upload it to the college’s radio station.
***
On my reading list for this week are a collection of essays on fiction writing from Benjamin Percy and a collection of some of Robert Nathan‘s novels. I rediscovered Nathan’s work some weeks ago, knowing that he was an influence on Peter S. Beagle, among others (Beagle has made it clear that his first novel, A Fine and Private Place, was strongly influenced by Nathan’s work). He published novels in seven different decades, and while I’ve only read a couple of very early works, I’m struck by the grace of his authorial voice. By contemporary standards, his books may read as overwritten, but he made it work in a manner that makes me think there may have been a baby in some of the bathwater that Hemingway tossed out. He seems to have been known chiefly as a contemporary fantasist, but there’s a fair measure of bite in what I’ve read so far. I read The Bishop’s Wife a few weeks ago; next up is One More Spring, and probably Portrait of Jennie after that. Reports to follow, I reckon.
***
I’ll go ahead and wrap up this installment, and in keeping with today’s post, I’ll close with one more of Rydgren’s pieces. Over the backing track of Dave “Baby” Cortez‘s 1962 hit “Rinky Dink,” here’s the Silhouette segment of the same title.
I spent this afternoon grading Beowulf papers from my Early Brit Lit class. Tomorrow I’ll try to knock off the papers from a section of FroshComp, and if I can do the other one in the next few days, I should be able to make it into Spring Break the following week without having anything hanging over my head. And how are you?
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Back when I was in high school (now 40+ years ago — Egad!), one of the highlights of the weekend for my small circle of friends was the latest episode of SCTV. [Side note: I’ve been in love with the city of Toronto since I was about ten or eleven. I don’t really know why — it started, I think, when I discovered the music of Klaatu, a welcome addition to my almost exclusive focus on the Beatles that had begun a year or two before. And oddly enough, as I kept running into things that resonated with me over the years — the music of Rush, the comedy of SCTV and The Kids in the Hall, and even the literary theory of Northrop Frye — the city took on a spot in my mind as The Place Cool Stuff Comes From. Mrs. M and I made our first trip up there in 1992, and we’ve been there a dozen or so times since, most recently in 2017 for Bouchercon. While I’ve found other places in which to joy — New York, for example — I still think that I must have been a Torontonian in a previous life. End side note.] The characters and catchphrases of the sketch comedy show became shibboleths for my little group of intellectuals and oddballs (and at Boone County High School in the early 80s, that Venn Diagram approached a perfect circle.)
Of all the bits, though, my favorite episode was 1981’s “CCCP 1“. The conceit was that the fictional TV network “Second City Television” was having its signal commandeered by the Soviet Union’s propaganda broadcasters, with shows like these:
and
Given that the Cold War still had nearly another decade left to run, laughing at the USSR and its rhetoric was a good time indeed. However, it was a 30-second bit from the show that really hit the spot.
(North) American media was fond of pointing out the flaws in Soviet society, and around that time, there had been a fair amount of coverage of the nation’s uncomfortable relationship with the Uzbeks, a Muslim ethnic minority in central Asia . The SCTV gang riffed on that a couple of times over the course of the episode, as seen in the “Hey Giorgy!” sketch and this “PSA”:
Hmmm… a disaffected bunch resisting (and held in contempt by) an oppressive system? Yeah, that resonated with me, and with my fellow residents of our Island of Misfit Toys. By the Monday after the episode had aired, we were calling ourselves “Uzbeks”, and by Friday, we had probably gotten on the nerves of everyone in our orbit — I mean, we were 15 to 17 that year. Getting on nerves was part of the job description. But it was still another way of letting our freak flags fly, and we were committed to the bit.
I own a few seasons of SCTV on DVD, and finding folks who can go back-and-forth with me on the show has led me to several friendships over the years. As I said, it was a password, a lodge tile, and it remains so today.
It happens that a few months ago, I was surfing around one of my favorite sites for T-shirts with pop culture elements. One thing led to another, and I found this, which I finally got around to ordering:
I’ve worn it to class a couple of times over the past two weeks. I suspect that my students just consider it part of my being the campus flake (a role for which I suspect I’ve trained all my life, honestly) if they consider it at all. But I do know that at least one of my colleagues (Hey there, Nerd Girl!), at least one other reader of this blog, and those of my high school friends who have seen it get the joke, and that’s enough for me.
***
I mentioned Bouchercon a few paragraphs ago. I’ve also mentioned that I’ve already registered for this year’s version, which takes place in the city of my birth, the week before Labor Day.
One of B’con’s associated activities each year is the presentation of the Anthony awards (named for William Anthony Parker White, whose pen name of “Anthony Boucher” gave the conference its name.) Science fiction is noted for its Hugo and Nebula awards; the Nebula is given by SF writers, and the Hugo is given by the fans at each year’s Worldcon (an arrangement that has led to considerable controversy in recent days.) The Hugos are, I think, better known to the general public. In mystery and crime fiction, it’s the other way around: The Edgars are awarded by the Mystery Writers of America, and are relatively well known. The Anthonys (I suppose “the Tonys” was pre-empted) are nominated and voted upon by Bouchercon attendees, and are less publicized, although I’m sure the recipients hold them in high esteem. I certainly would.
Anyway, it’s currently nominating season for the Anthonys, running until the end of April. I sent in my nominations a few days ago, at least in those categories in which I felt qualified to hold an opinion. (About YA works, for example, I thought it best to remain silent.) I put in nominations for a number of works you might expect me to nominate, ranging from Jordan Harper’s Everybody Knows and S.A. Cosby’s All the Sinners Bleed to Something Bad Wrong by Eryk Pruitt and Steven Powell’s bio of James Ellroy, Love Me Fierce in Danger. In the category of “Best Anthology”, I put in a good word for Mr. B’s Playing Games. . . and that brings me to this.
If you attended Bouchercon last year, or if you’ve registered to attend this year, and if you have yet to submit your slate of nominations, I’d appreciate it if you’d give some consideration to my stories “Lightning Round” (from the abovementioned Playing Games) and/or “Bear Hunt” (from issue #2 of Dark Yonder.) If you aren’t in a position to submit any nominations, you should feel free to check them out anyway, by picking up copies at your favorite bookstore, or that website named for the Big River.
***
I’ll go ahead and close this installment in my usual manner. I’ve been a big fan of the New Wave band The Call since I discovered them in 1983. One of the cooler moments in my occasional work as a rock journalist was when I interviewed the band’s driving force, the late Michael Been. In fact, one of the earliest posts at this blog was my remembrance of Mr. Been after his death. I had the opportunity to see the band a few times, including on one of my first dates with the woman who would become Mrs. M.
As it happens, the surviving members of the group have gone into the vaults and found some unreleased tracks, a condition which they intend to remedy. They’re also working to remaster and reissue two of the albums from their mid-80s heyday, when if you squinted, you could imagine them as an American U2 (although they eventually morphed into something closer to an American version of The Band.) If you’re interested, you can find details here. Anyway, this is a song from the upcoming Lost Tapes album. Not to be confused with the Jim Reeves song, this is “Welcome to My World.”
Stipulated: To live as an academic is to move voluntarily to Kooktown. Fine, and many, even most of us recognize that. But even voluntary residents can complain about the weather from time to time.
I’m not the Lone Ranger on this, of course. While the efforts of the campus left to create or maintain a hegemony of discourse are nothing new, recent events (particularly surrounding the Israel-Hamas conflict) are reaching the point at which Len Gutkin has addressed it in academia’s weekly newspaper, The Chronicle of Higher Education.
To his credit, Gutkin has been keeping an eye on the campus varieties of political agon for quite some time, and to my eyes, shown remarkable balance. Similarly, Gutkin writes today in the Chronicle‘s e-mailed newsletter about a recent NYT article about the doings in the rich section of academe. Gutkin notes:
Here’s the pattern: A group of faculty members, disturbed by what they see as the illiberal, censorial campus atmosphere of the last decade or so, band together to demand that their institutions affirm a bundle of principles and commitments including Kalven-Report-style institutional neutrality, robust protection of controversial research or disfavored speech, and, implicitly, limitations to the influence of DEI administrators on core academic activities like curricula and hiring. Other faculty members then criticize this group, whom they tend to see as involved in a stealth operation meant to increase the power of political conservatives on campus and suppress the activities of student activists.
He goes on to note that at Yale, a group of faculty has called for the administration to do the following (quoting, but for some reason I can’t get the italics to work):
insist on the primacy of teaching, learning, and research as distinct from advocacy and activism, and on the centrality of the faculty to these core activities;
confirm Yale’s commitment to robust free expression, including affirmative efforts to foster more open campus and classroom discourse, coupled with institutional neutrality;
affirm the university’s commitment to the pursuit of excellence; critical thinking applied to all points of view; and a tolerant and broad-minded campus ethos and culture;
urge greater administrative transparency and increased faculty oversight of all pedagogic and academic activities.
An opposing faculty faction has replied:
“To the Future President of Yale University” is quite a bit longer, and quite a bit fuzzier, than the “Faculty for Yale” statement it is responding to, but it can be reduced to two key points. First, the protection of academic freedom is not only not in tension with diversity administration, each requires the other: “We call on you to reject calls to ‘Make Yale Great Again’ and continue to work toward making Yale a model for inclusion and diversity — the true guarantee for excellence.” (The suggestion that the Faculty for Yale signatories are essentially Trumpian is one of the response’s more aggressive flourishes.) Second, [. . .] neutrality is to be rejected: “Inaction always feels safer than action — but we would like to encourage you to realize that with the challenges facing our academic institutions, our society, our planet, taking a neutral position is itself a choice with dire implications.” (Given the earlier rhetorical deployment of Trump’s campaign slogan, this antagonism to neutrality presumably takes on partisan coloring. It implies although it does not state outright that Yale should align itself with the Democratic Party.)
Readers of this blog are probably quite aware that my inclinations tend toward the first group. I’m particularly grateful that Gutkin notes the tone of the second group, a fine example of what he earlier called the hyperbolic style. And (he said, finally getting to the point) that brings me to an all too frequent example.
One of my favorite gripes about latter-day academic discourse (and the larger cultural discourses variously impacted/infected by it) is the tendency in some sectors — typically, alas, in the Humanities — to term the expression of disfavored ideas as “violence.” Having had some experience both with argumentation and with the consequences of violence, I feel qualified to note the difference. The conflation of the two is at the least, linguistic inflation, and in practice, a cheap stunt designed to forestall earnest discussion. I’m glad Mr. Gutkin is out there, and even committing acts of journalism.
The course I’m taking in online pedagogy has thrown me off schedule. Whereas under normal circumstances, I’d be spending my Sunday afternoons doing this, I’m more likely now to spend the afternoon thinking of ways to connect with students I may never see in person, or how I might better incorporate HTML into my online lectures. There’s a strong temptation to say it’s spinach and to hell with it, but the college now requires the course for those of us who want to teach online in the summer, as I frequently do. But that doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten about you guys, so let’s catch up a little.
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I suppose the big personal news is that I visited my local orthopedic surgeon earlier this week, and am tentatively scheduled to become the Bionic Medievalist on 16 May, unless I chicken out. Should I stick with it, I’ll be getting new components for my right knee, which the doctor described as “severely arthritic.” This didn’t surprise me in the least — after all, I’ve been gimping around on it for years, and it really does make life more difficult sometimes. I’ve mentioned in the past that it will occasionally buckle under me — sometimes I fall down when that happens, and sometimes I don’t, but it’s never pleasant. There’s also some psychological discomfort with that; because I don’t feel certain that my leg will hold up, I tend to walk (or limp) in a really gingerly fashion, stepping slowly and carefully. Likewise, things like getting out of a chair or pacing around the classroom as I lecture feel riskier, and I get self-conscious about it.
Still, I’m nervous about the whole thing. I’ve never had surgery before — for that matter, I’ve never even had a broken bone, to my knowledge (with the possible exception of a somewhat bent toe on my left foot.) And frankly, I think of myself as something of a physical coward. I discovered fairly early in my life that pain hurts, and have made a practice of avoiding it over the years.
By contrast, my brother has literally broken more than a dozen bones over the years, whether by going over the handlebars of a bicycle as a kid (both arms and wrists, several times each), rolling my car after he stole it as a teenager (collarbone), just falling down the wrong way (radius and ulna, again as a kid), and collisions with various stationary objects or the fists of people with bad intentions (the nose, repeatedly.) It got to the point where my folks would take him to Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, and they would question him privately to make sure that Mom and Dad weren’t smacking him around. Likewise, both my parents broke bones in vehicular accidents; Dad broke a vertebra in a car crash when I was a kid, and broke his shoulder when he was celebrating the completion of his cancer chemotherapy by taking Mike’s motorcycle for a spin (Yeah, I know.) Mom one-upped him by falling off a minibike and suffering a basilar skull fracture (of a sort she was told had about a 95% instant mortality rate. She got off with some facial paralysis.) and broken collarbone, as well as some broken ribs from falling down a flight of stairs. My life has typically been far more sedate, and thank God for that.
So yeah, I’m worried about dealing with the surgery and accompanying physical therapy. But more than that, I always tend to get stressed when I’m on the verge of doing something irreversible. As I told Mrs. M, “If it doesn’t go well, it’s not like they can put the old knee back..” She wisely pointed out that the condition of my knee at present is equally irreversible, so there’s no reason to think that the new joint would be any worse. On the upside, the surgeon assures me that I should be able to resume playing the bass drum in fairly short order, and the Spawn has already informed me that she’s going to come down and serve as an extra set of hands for some days post-op. (I don’t recommend this as a way to spend time with your kid, but if it works…) I reckon we’ll see.
***
This past week, I made my way to Real City for a Noir at the Bar event. I was one of eight readers, and did a reading of my rock and roll story “Rough Mix,” from At Home in the Dark. Because of the event’s proximity to Valentine’s celebrations several stories dealt with romance gone wrong, and two stories offered perspectives on the St. Valentine’s Day massacre. As usual, it was a nice time.
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However, the week also brought its share of very bad news. Dr. Jonathan McGregor was a colleague of mine in the English program here at Newberry in the months before COVID hit. He wasn’t here very long — he received and accepted an offer to teach in his native Texas, close to both his own family and his wife’s so he left us for SMU. I regretted losing him both as a teacher and writer — he was exceptional at both — but also as a guitarist and songwriter. He had become a member of our post-Berries project, and we hated to lose him.
Jennifer and Jonathan
But now we’ve lost him in a much more important way. Jonathan died of colon cancer this past Tuesday, at the terrifyingly early age of 36. He leaves his wife Jennifer and his two daughters, both of whom are under the age of ten. In lieu of flowers, his family has asked for contributions to a college fund for the children. If you are in a position to help, you can contribute here. If not, then listen to his music and think about the people you love. I think he would have appreciated that.
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I’ll close this installment with one of Jonathan’s songs, from last year.
So long, Jonathan. I’m glad I got to know you and play alongside you, if only for a little while.
Professor Mondo 