A Pilgrim’s Digression

Recently I have been thinking about the past almost obsessively. Every once in awhile I become moody and preoccupied with things that happened a long time ago. From about 1978 to about 1984, I attended a small elementary school in Point Pleasant, West Virginia, called Ordnance Elementary. For many years, I have always wondered about the name of that school. Ordnance is defined as the materiel of war, such as weapons, ammunition, and so on. Perhaps the school was founded during wartime, and the founders had a sick sense of humor. At this point, who knows.

I moved away from Point Pleasant long ago, around 1984 when I was in the sixth grade, but over the years naturally I often remembered my experiences there and thought about my early years in Point Pleasant. When one has moved away from a town that is so prominent in the growth and development of one’s psyche and persona, one always remembers it as it was and supposes it must remain unchanged until the end of time. I went back once soon after we moved away, but since then, I have never returned. As it turns out, through some simple research I did on-line, my old elementary school, Ordnance Elementary, is now defunct. The county built two schools to replace it, a primary school for grades k-3, and an intermediate school for grades 4-6. I recognized some teachers’ names on the faculty list. The websites are pretty threadbare, though, as Ordnance itself was once, and as its replacements probably are now as well.

I never realized back then the impoversihment of the Mason County school system. Ordnance was a small, red brick schoolhouse, with about three classrooms per grade, and a student/teacher ratio of about 1:15. We had the same teacher all year in the same classroom. At the end of a schoool year, it was always a thrill to receive our final report card, on which would be the name of the teacher we would have the next year. Then we would go around asking, “Who’d you get” of everyone, and trying to form an idea of what our class would be like next year. I was always disappointed by the fact that I was never placed in the same class as my best friend, Mac Stricklen. He always got the best teachers, I thought at the time. I was only moderately lucky, in that I never got any of the “mean” teachers, but I also rarely got one of the “nice” teachers either. My teachers were neither especially nice nor especially mean, by pre-adolescent standards, though each classroom had a paddle that hung over the chalkboard. However, I think by then corporal punishment was outlawed. Even so, if corporal punishment was still practiced, I can well imagine our principal using one of those paddles. Mr. Barnett was a big man with a flattop haircut from which one could have launched F-16 aircraft.

My mother swears that Mr. Barnett paddled me once, but I don’t believe her. My memory is not the greatest, but I think I would remember something like that, or at least I would have written about it somewhere. I do know that I found myself in the principal’s office on a few occasions. Most significantly, one day I punched a bully in the nose. He had shaken me down several days in a row, and finally I figured I’d given him enough comic book money, so I slugged him. His name was Eddie Rice, a lanky redneck probably a foot taller than me … or maybe my memory exaggerates his height to make the story better. He always wore flannel shirts–in my memory I see blue flannel–and the generic Rustler jeans that poorer kids like he and I wore instead of Levis. Eddie also had a flattop haircut. I remember that because it was unusual for boys in the early eighties to have short haircuts. Even though Eddie was a tough, boys older than him still teased him about that haircut.

Eddie immediately started crying, and he screamed at the top of his lungs, “He hit me! He hit me!” We were on the playground, and the two women teachers on playground duty started looking our way. “Here!” I said, trying to force the change in my pocket on him. “Just take it! Stop crying!”

His hands over his nose, he said, “But I’m bleeting!” and screamed all the louder. I felt ashamed of myself for hitting him, as well as afraid because of the attention Eddie was attracting. The teachers came over and broke us up, sent Eddie to the nurse and me to Mr. Barnett. I forget my punishment for that “fight.” Mr. Barnett, for all his stern appearance, was a good man, and I don’t remember being punished excessively. Maybe that was the occasion of the paddling my mother swears to, and I’ve just repressed it.

At Ordnance, our library was literally a janitor’s closet converted into a library. Bookshelves lined the small room, and the books were stacked on every available surface, including on the top shelves way above our heads and on the floor. They were ordered not according to Dewey or LC standards, but according to appropriatenes to grade level. One had to get special permission from the teacher to read above one’s grade level. There were no tables or chairs, so one spent only enough time in the library to choose a book or two, and then we went back to our classroom to read our choices.

Our classroom teacher would take us to the library once every week or two to check out a book, and somehow we would all crowd into that small space. I recall library time as a favorite with everyone, equivalent to recess. I don’t think children learn to hate books until they reach at least sixth grade. To me, even though our library was a closet, the close-packed, high-stacked books always made it seem much bigger. I think my love of libraries and books stems from those early visits to that library. There was something comforting and cozy about being cramped in such a small place with so many books.

Not having a librarian on staff, the library was kept locked between class visits, so that made it even more special. I still remember many of the books I discovered there. I read the Laura Ingalls Wilder books, which I felt I had to surreptitiously check out because they were “girl’s” books. I read about King Arthur. I even remember reading a book about Martin Luther. Not the civil rights leader, the boring, long-dead Lutheran guy. I read James and the Giant Peach. I read “junior” editions of classics, such as Treasure Island and The Count of Monte Cristo, which was one of my favorites, though I liked to call it “The Count Of Mommy’s Crisco,” as a sort of inside joke. Crisco was a kind of lard my mom used to cook with; I don’t know if it is even still available. I read a book called City Under the Sea about humans living under the ocean. It never occurred to me to think that our library, let alone our school, might be underfunded, or somehow inferior to other schools. Never did the thought even cross my mind.

On the playground, probably every piece of equipment would be considered a lawsuit waiting to happen these days. I recall one day, a boy named J.R. Eads and myself were playing chase. On the playground, there was a series of metal poles sticking up out of the ground, their purpose long since forgotten. Maybe they were part of some kind of obstacle course. One of them had been dug out of the ground, and it sat in a hole, it’s concrete base a kind of ovular pivot on which kids could stand and twirl around and send each other sprawling. As J.R. and I chased each other, he grabbed the pole and swung around it in a kind of Keanu Reeves Matrix-style move, with me right behind him, and when he let go of the pole it flew up straight into my forehead knocking me cold for a few seconds. I think it scared him to death. When I came to, it was like one of those movie moments where the hero awakens to a circle of faces looking down at him.

The teacher on playground duty took me to my classroom, and I lay on a table for awhile, a small bag of ice on my head. Finally someone called my mother, and she came and took me to the hospital. Nothing was broken, and as far as I know there was no brain damage. I had a huge knot on my forehead just above my eye, and to this day when I touch the spot I can feel a small lump just under the skin.

One other incident of note occurred in second grade. We were making a Christmas ornament with small beads. Another boy, Michael Taylor, dared me to stick a bead up my nose. What kind of dare is that, I thought? So I stuck a bead up my nose, and it stuck. “It’s going to go into your brain, and you’re going to die!” Michael said ominously. I started to get scared, and I picked furiously, trying to get the thing out. What a sight that must have been. Finally, my teacher, Mrs. Spurlock, noticed and said, “Matt, stop picking your nose.”

I said, “I can’t. I’ve got a bead stuck up my nose!” “What!?” She said. “How in the world …?” “I dunno,” I said, perfectly innocent. She sent me to the principal, and he and the school nurse worked over me for quite awhile. Their method was to have me blow it out, but it did not seem like it was going to work. Finally, they resigned themselves to the fact that I would have to go to the hospital. “We’re going to have to call your father at work, Young Man. What do you suppose he is going to say about this?” Mr. Barnett said. At this point, I started to cry, and the lubrication apparently helped the bead come out in the next blow.

All so long ago now. I can now literally say it all happened in another century.

The striking thing about Kerry’s entrance in Boston is that it mimics President Bush flying onto that aircraft carrier last year. Yet President Bush has roundly been criticized for his arrogance in participating in what was clearly a stunt, a photo op, an advance campaign advertisement. Now how long before the Republicans start crying foul over Kerry’s stunt, photo op, and campaign advertisement?

My question is, what are the differences between what Kerry did and what George Bush did? Both men served their country, though in different branches of the armed forces. Both men’s military duties involved details consistent with their respective campaign stunts: George Bush flew planes for the National Guard; John Kerry was commander of a boat. George Bush wore a flight suit while Kerry wore a politician’s suit, true. Other than that difference, why is one stunt more execrable than the other?

It seems a bit premature to reach that conclusion, since the iPod has not yet been attacked by its first virus. Yet the Merrill Lynch analyst in the article linked to in the blog entry title believes Apple could become as dominant in music as Microsoft is in software. Clearly Apple holds a strong position in the realm of digital music. The question will be whether or not they can hold onto it in a field rapidly succumbing to overcrowding. Personally, I do not believe Steve Jobs is going to allow Apple to fall into the same traps that relegated the Macintosh into a niche market. In the same article referenced above:

The deal involves Apple creating an iTunes mobile music player for the world’s No. 2 cell-phone maker, which Motorola will adopt as the music application for mass-market music phones that are expected in the first half of 2005.

This means that for the first time, Apple has licensed software it has developed, in this case its “fair play” DRM, for use in a device other than the iPod. That is significant, and it is not being reported. The equivalent would be Apple licensing the Mac OS to IBM in 1986 for use on the IBM PC. If only …

Song currently playing on my iPod: “Behind Blue Eyes,” the Limp Bizkit cover of the equally great (greater?) The Who version.

I have to buy anew iPod soon. I am still using the original 5 GB model first released in 2001. The battery has held up well. I keep charging and recharging it, and every day I think, “It’s gotta conk out sometime!” But it doesn’t. I still get about two days erattic use out of a charge. A totally dead battery would be a great reason to buy one of the new models.

Eponymous must be one of the most misused words in the English language. Many people use it; few know what it means. Its root is the noun eponym.

Epoynm: A person whose name is or is thought to be the source of the name of something, such as a city, country, or era. For example, Romulus is the eponym of Rome.

William F. Buckley uses the word correctly in his autobiography, Miles Gone By:

“…when I sail in the Caribbean, I go on what we call “Buckley Watch Time,” the only eponymous enterprise I have ever engaged in.”

Thus rock bands are aways engaging in eponymous enterprises, e.g., Black Sabbath released it’s first album under the title “Black Sabbath.”

Recently, I read the following in a Washington Post review of the movie I, Robot:

Asimov purists looking for a faithful visualization of the seminal 1950s sci-fi parables should check such expectations at the multiplex door. “I, Robot” doesn’t do for the eponymous book what “Blade Runner” did for Philip K. Dick’s “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”

Correct usage? What do you think?

On the recommendation of a friend of mine, I am trying to keep my posts shorter, which may mean I post more than once in a day/lunch hour.

I watched the first two prime time hours of the Democrat convention last night, which perhaps resulted in my poor night’s sleep and my need to read The Waste Land early this morning. I did not stay up for Bill Clinton’s speech at ten. For someone who does not sleep well on a normal night, and who has to get up anyway no later than five-thirty the next morning, ten o’clock is too late to stay up for a speech, even if it were made by Christ or the Buddha himself. Clinton being neither, I had all the more reason to skip it. I listened to Gore’s speech at eight, and I thought it was quite effective, though it is hardly remarked on in the papers this morning. Typically, the focus of the media is on Clinton. I do think he drew the wrong conclusions from his loss to Bush in 2000. Gore said the thing to take away from that experience is that every vote counts, which seems to me to stand in stark contradiction to what Election 2000 really said about the importance of an individual’s vote.

That criticism aside, Gore asked exactly the right questions of those who supported Bush four years ago: did you really get what you expected from the candidate you voted for? Is our country more united today? Or more divided? Has the promise of compassionate conservatism been fulfilled? Or do those words now ring hollow? John Kerry needs to repeat these questions like a mantra to every crowd to which he speaks. And Gore ended on a positive note, almost a Reagan-like “morning in America” note, when he spoke of the need to make America new again. Optimism is the Democrats best weapon, if they can arm themselves with it. Contrary to received wisdom, I don’t think the Republicans have much of that these days. For one thing, Bush’s Achilles heal is the drama that has attended his Presidency. David Brooks says as much today in the New York Times, Kerry at the Wheel. So I guess I can’t claim credit for the idea, though it really did occur to me first. I think it highly probably that a large number of undecided people who might otherwise lean to the right are simply sick of feeling afraid. If the Democrats can capitalize on this, present themselves as a sunny contrast to the Republican pessimists and fearmongers, the Democrats can win.

In contrast with Gore, Jimmy Carter was a sad, aged figure from the past with little to offer in his speech, except Bush-bashing. He may have won the Presidency one time, but it is a mistake for the Democrats to trot Carter out as some kind of elder statesman hero. It would equally be a mistake for the Republicans to give Gerald Ford a place on the stage. Carter is a relic, properly enshrined somewhere behind the altar for veneration, but not for use in routine communion. Carter looked depressed as he walked to the podium, as if he were doing something he really didn’t want to do. Perhaps a couple Democrat thugs had shown up at his door a few days before with a suit and a speech and said, “OK, Boy, time to do your duty for Party, Country, and God.” And so Carter, barely able to manage a smile, showed up and made his speech. He began by reminiscing about the Truman and Eisenhower years, which is hardly likely to invoke a tear of nostalgia from a crowd so young that the oldest of them probably can’t remember back much farther than Lyndon Johnson. His first shot, though, was an all-too obvious crack at President Bush’s National Guard service. I found that pretty crass coming from an ex-President, and an ex-military ex-President, at that. Carter went on to critique the Bush presidency, particularly President Bush’s foreign policy. It all rang hollow coming from Carter. In order to keep from totally disregarding what he had to say, I had to recall that Carter was a one-termer, too, so he certainly knows something about failed Presidencies. Yet I could not get past the fact that here was a man, Jimmy Carter, critiquing our current President–the same Jimmy Carter who himself single-handedly ushered in 12 years of Republican rule through his mismanagement of the economy and foreign affairs. Who in America mourns the lost second term of Jimmy Carter? Why should we listen to what he has to say?

As I said, I did not stay up for Clinton’s speech. I did not even finish listening to Carter. This morning, I did hear a clip of Hillary, shrill as ever, exhorting people to put Kerry in office in November. Maybe she can’t control it, but when she is trying to rouse enthusiasm, the woman’s voice goes up a couple octaves until she sounds like every man’s first wife in a lamp-breaking, dish-throwing fit. Perhaps this is the result of learning to speak publicly at feminist bra-burning rallies in the sixties. It is little wonder so few men can bear her.

I still do not know who I will vote for in the coming election. Luckily, for most of us, our lives go on much the same as always regardless of who is in office. There are very few personal tragedies, save the death of a soldier, one can lay at the feet of the President. But this does not solve the problem of who to vote for, because there are differences, if only cosmetic differences. I’ve heard Limbaugh, apparently speaking from Republican talking points, saying that the Democrats are forcing upon themselves an extreme makeover to hide their essential ugliness from the American people. Teresa Kerry’s “shove it” remark is, in this view, an example of the mask coming off and the true face of the Demcorats showing itself. Typically, Limbaugh neglects to mention that the Republcians are hardly honest in their presentation of themselves. No one expects honesty, really, no more than people expect others to come to work looking exactly as they did when they fell out of bed in the morning. We all construct appearances which we present to others, and political parties and political candidates are no different. Politicians are all fictions. For ordinary people in an election year, the question is “which fiction do I believe?” For thinking people, the question is, “Which fiction do I want to believe?”

At least once a year, I take time to read The Waste Land. I never plan precisely when I will read it. Like rain after a long drought, it just happens. At one time I attempted to memorize it, but I only managed the first two “chapters,” though theose two chapters have stuck with me fairly well over the years. This morning, unable to sleep, I lay awake in the dark a long time remembering these passages before turning on the light and taking my small paperback copy of Eliot’s selected poems from the bedside table drawer. I felt that this morning was the right time, and so I sat up in bed and read The Waste Land in the early morning gloom. At five-thirty, I finished reading, closed the book, and got up for work. What shall I do now? Hot water at five-thirty. No breakfast, and out the door. Hurry up please, it’s time; doors closing. Boarding the train, the faces around me are already exhausted at six-twenty. We shuffle on like dead souls boarding for the final journey across the river. At night–”the violet hour,” Eliot calls quitting time–we return, no more happy to be returning than we were unhappy to be departing ten hours previously.

Unreal City,

Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,

A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many …

Unreal city. I sometimes feel I sleep all day and remain awake all night, though in darkness. I don’t sleep well, but my day passes in a daze. I can’t remember much of what happens to me during the work day, maybe because nothing happens and I am left to write, once again, about the grinding ritual of getting up for work in the gray early morning.

I had not thought death had undone so many.

Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,

And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.

Flowed up the hill and down…

down East Capitol Street, and to work. Eliot worked in a bank when he wrote The Waste land, so I have always read the poem as in part a horrific reflection of the modern working life. He was also suffering marital problems, and so those troubles are also reflected in the poem. It is a long, anguished outpouring of depression and misery, comparable to Munch’s painting “The Scream.” What does it mean? Nothing, nothing. Do you know nothing? Do you see nothing? Do you remember nothing? I remember knowing what it meant once.

This is the real deal, my blog entry for Monday. So a woman goes into a pharmacy and asks for a product to remove the hair from her schnauzer … Wait, that’s a bad dirty joke my Grandpa told me last week. And by “bad” I don’t mean “good.” I mean bad. Suffice it to say, it ends with the woman unable to sit down for a week. OK, rewind. I’m bopping along to Elvis on my lunch break, so I’m feeling free to ramble. I’m just rubbernecking today, watching the news go by and events transpire. Just so I can earn the right to be critical of the Republicans in September, let me make a few cracks about Kerry and his compatriots in Boston.
The song currently playing on my iPod is in honor of John and Teresa Kerry and the Democrat Convention in Boston: “I Got a Woman” by Elvis Presley. No, it isn’t “I got a woman mean as she can be …” that’s a different “I Got a Woman” (Mean Woman Blues by Roy Orbison). This one goes

I got a woman

Way cross town

She’s good to me

Yesterday, Teresa apparently exhibited two of the more charming traits of the Parisian French: 1. Inability to admit she is wrong, 2. Rudeness. Here you can check out the story and video behind Teresa going all-out French on that Pittsburgh reporter. Go get ‘em, Ketchup Queen! Actually, any number of Elvis tunes could apply to John Kerry and the Democrat Convention right now. Take the tune “One Sided Love Affair” for example. Or how about “Money Honey.”

I called the woman that I loved the best.

I finally got my baby about half past three,

She said I’d like to know what you want with me.

I said,

Money, honey.

Money, honey.

Money, honey,

If you want to get along with me.

The protesters in their razor-wire “Mad Max” cage could always sing “Jailhouse Rock” to pass the time. If the convention gets out of hand–or even if it stays under control–some might say the song “Paralyzed” fits it pretty well. And if Kerry loses in November, he can offer as his farewell a cover of “I Was The One.”

I read today in the New York Times that the Web Diarists Are Now Official Members of Convention Press Corps. I have to wonder whether or not it even matters whether bloggers are covering events in Boston from Boston. Everyone knows there is little news that actually comes out of these conventions, and so I suspect the bloggers will be left to report ironically on the ironies of a stage-managed political convention. They could do that from the comfort of their home. The Washington Post has a lengthy article about Kerry’s political life, John Kerry: A Political Life: Shifting Within Party to Regain His Footing. The media latches on to these handy generalizations about candidates, such as Kerry’s waffling, or Bush’s stubbornness, and pretty soon the candidate is trapped in his own caricature. Every Senator who has ever run for President, including Dole in ‘96, has the same problem: overcoming the fact that to the critical eyes of outsiders, for various reasons, their voting record may not be consistent. Consistency may be something one demands of a spouse, but why do we expect our political leaders’ views to be immutable once they take political office? Is it not a good thing to change one’s mind? To me, inconsistency reflects a willingness to reconsider one’s actions or beliefs in the light of new evidence, better logic, or simply a change of heart. Oh wait, that’s constancy we demand of our spouses, not consistency.

I intend to watch the coverage of the convention tonight. I hope to have something to say about it tomorrow, but I would not want to make a bet on that. My past experience tells me these events are real snoozers, like the State of the Union, or any other public political event where all spontaneity, imagination, and vision is sytematically sucked out of the event like the spent confetti after the event is over and the delegates have gone home.

Song playing on my iPod now: “Le Monde Comme Un Bébé” by Angélique Kidjo. My transcription may be imperfect:

Je sais le monde imparfait

Je sais comment le changer

Imagine le monde comme un Bébé

Carresser et beaucoup pardonner

Those are sentiments to which I would hope everyone can assent.