December’s poems

Say it isn’t so! Loveless by My Bloody Valentine has been removed from Spotify.

John-Paul: “What’s Spotify even for, if Loveless isn’t included?”

Karin: “A lot, considering how many hours Spotify is used in this house.”

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Here are reggae lyrics from The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole. Bear in mind, the diarist/​poet is in his younger teens.

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

Hear what he saying by A. Mole

Sisters and Brothers listen to Jah,

Hear his words from near and far,

Haile Selassie he sit on the throne.

Hear what he saying. Hear what he saying. (Repeated 10 times.)

JAH! JAH! JAH!

Rise up and follow Selassie, the king.

A new tomorrow to you he will bring. (Repeat.)

E-thi-o-pi-a,

He’ll bring new hope to ya.

Hear what he saying. Hear what he saying. (Repeated 20 times.)

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

Not a Christmas poem, exactly, but certain themes are characteristic of the season.

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Another quasi-Christmas poem:

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

Little boy, O so small,

Please don’t pull upon my mole.

It’s attachèd to my neck.

When you pull, it hurts like heck.

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

Karin wrote it.

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Mother Goose:

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

When good King Arthur ruled this land,

He was a goodly King;

He bought three pecks of barley-meal,

To make a bag-pudding.

A bag-pudding the King did make,

And stuffed it well with plums,

And in it put great lumps of fat,

As big as my two thumbs.

The King and Queen did eat thereof,

And noblemen beside;

And what they could not eat that night,

The Queen next morning fried.

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

Not only have I run out of “mole” poems, I must give up the “Christmas” pretense.

“You are the main trouble with this university”: body-text fonts, pt. 39: ITC Galliard

More Thurber (“University Days,” in My Life and Hard Times):

The typeface is the ubiquitous ITC Galliard, implemented successfully or not depending on the paper, the ink cartridge, the positions of certain celestial bodies, etc. Just look at all those Library of America volumes with their uniform design. In some, the text is beautiful and legible; in others, it’s too dark or too light.

Compare with this sample from Hammett:

Of course the scan quality also affects these samples, but my point is that the print quality varies greatly – even from page to page. I admire Galliard’s letters but never have been tempted to make them the basis of a printable document. Printing body text set in Galliard would be like playing the lottery.

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P.S. regarding the passage in the first sample:

It’s a joke, of course. But as I age, I find myself agreeing rather often with General Littlefield, especially when I use social media. I catch myself thinking that this or that individual pip-squeak is the main trouble with this country (this church, this fanbase, this social class, etc. – and yes, this university, or universities in general).

As far as I can tell, this attitude is indefensible. But the feeling is so strong, it would be illuminating if some philosopher could put together a half-plausible rationalization for it. (Not for scapegoating, which I take to be primarily concerned with types or groups rather than individuals.)

“Buck, your time has come”

From James Thurber, “More Alarms at Night,” in My Life and Hard Times:

My father was sleeping in the front room on the second floor next to that of my brother Roy, who was then about sixteen. Father was usually in bed by nine-thirty and up again by ten-thirty to protest bitterly against a Victrola record we three boys were in the habit of playing over and over, namely, “No News, or What Killed the Dog,” a recitation by Nat Wills. The record had been played so many times that its grooves were deeply cut and the needle often kept revolving in the same groove, repeating over and over the same words. Thus: “ate some burnt hoss flesh, ate some burnt hoss flesh, ate some burnt hoss flesh.” It was this reiteration that generally got father out of bed.

On the night in question, however, we had all gone to bed at about the same time, without much fuss. Roy, as a matter of fact, had been in bed all day with a kind of mild fever. It wasn’t severe enough to cause delirium and my brother was the last person in the world to give way to delirium. Nevertheless, he had warned father when father went to bed, that he might become delirious.

About three o’clock in the morning, Roy, who was wakeful, decided to pretend that delirium was on him, in order to have, as he later explained it, some “fun.” He got out of bed and, going to my father’s room, shook him and said, “Buck, your time has come!” My father’s name was not Buck but Charles, nor had he ever been called Buck. He was a tall, mildly nervous, peaceable gentleman, given to quiet pleasures, and eager that everything should run smoothly. “Hmm?” he said, with drowsy bewilderment. “Get up, Buck,” said my brother, coldly, but with a certain gleam in his eyes. My father leaped out of bed, on the side away from his son, rushed from the room, locked the door behind him, and shouted us all up.

We were naturally enough reluctant to believe that Roy, who was quiet and self-contained, had threatened his father with any such abracadabra as father said he had. My older brother, Herman, went back to bed without any comment. “You’ve had a bad dream,” my mother said. This vexed my father. “I tell you he called me Buck and told me my time had come,” he said. We went to the door of his room, unlocked it, and tiptoed through it to Roy’s room. He lay in his bed, breathing easily, as if he were fast asleep. It was apparent at a glance that he did not have a high fever. My mother gave my father a look. “I tell you he did,” whispered father.

A textbook example of “gaslighting.”

Library statistics

Karin will go back to her job on Monday, leaving me alone with Daniel and Samuel and Jasper and Ziva … and the mice, who seem to have found a passage from the mud-room into the basement, to our dismay. Jasper killed four mice today. Or, I assume, he is killing the fourth mouse; he has it with him under a bed.

The other night, Samuel and I read The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin, which is especially bloody. I felt some revulsion. Not so much after today’s infestation.

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The St. Joseph County library system has just one book by R.K. Narayan: Waiting for Mahatma (an e-book). This, despite Narayan’s sales, acclaim, cultural salience, etc.

Not that I’ve read anything by Narayan. But if I ever do, it won’t be thanks to the SJCPL.

It’s not that the SJCPL is oblivious to Narayan. Its catalog includes the following e-books: (a) three critical studies of Narayan; (b) one book discussing Narayan along with three other Indian authors; and (c) four GALE “study guides” on different titles by Narayan.

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I decided to write down the library branches of every book I found through the electronic catalog from March 8 to April 8. (Hard copies only.)

• Book 1: Francis, Francis, Francis, Main, River Park.
• Book 2: Centre, Main, Main.
• Book 3: Main.
• Book 4: Centre, River Park.
• Book 5: Centre, German, Main.
• Book 6: Main.
• Book 7: Main.
• Book 8: Centre, Centre, Centre, Centre, Francis, Francis, Francis, Francis, German, German, Main, Main, River Park.
• Book 9: Main, Main.
• Book 10: Main.
• Book 11: Main, Main, Francis.
• Book 12: Main.
• Book 13: Main.
• Book 14: Francis, River Park, Western (my branch!).
• Book 15: Centre, LaSalle, Main, Tutt.
• Book 16: Main.

Summary: Centre, 8 copies; Francis, 9; German, 3; LaSalle, 1; Main, 18; River Park, 4; Tutt, 1; Western, 1.

The books that interest me are not kept in the neighborhood where I live.

Of course, I can request just about any book in the system. I simply go to my branch and pick it up after a few days.

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A good blog I found: Down Among the “Z” Movies. Better reviews than mine, though writing about turkeys probably isn’t hard to do. Watching them is hard to do.

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P.S. It turns out, Jasper hasn’t killed the fourth mouse.

Usually he is more prompt.

Karin tired of waiting; she rescued the mouse and took it outside. I don’t believe it will fare very well. It seemed rather dazed.

This week, there has been snow.

Highsmith; Dickens; Potter; Schulz

We had to tell Karin’s dad that we couldn’t attend his Christmas party this year due to COVID-19. He looked terribly sad. Then he perked up when he saw Patricia Highsmith’s The Price of Salt on my bookshelf. It seems he enjoyed watching the movie Carol, which is based upon The Price of Salt. (Also, his girlfriend’s name is Carol.)

I haven’t read The Price of Salt or seen Carol, but what I am reading, for the first time, is A Christmas Carol.

It’s pretty funny. Some do-gooders ask Scrooge to donate to a homeless shelter during the Christmas season, and Scrooge is like, What? Are there not enough prisons?

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Beatrix Potter is hard to read to Samuel – we don’t often get farther than two or three pages before he loses interest – but the other day we did make it through all of The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies (the link is to the Project Gutenberg page). I kept laughing out loud, which must have been very confusing for Samuel.

Then I remembered how, in Snoopy Come Home, Snoopy laughs and laughs at Miss Helen Sweetstory’s Bunny Wunny books until the librarians throw him out onto the sidewalk.

I wonder if Schulz was recalling his own experience of reading Beatrix Potter.