Where Everyone Knows Your Name

Posted on May 8, 2010 by nowandthenadays

Okay, I know that there are folks who hear “high school reunion” and think, “I’d rather have a colonoscopy.”   I am just not one of them.  The reality is that our memories make us unique among beings in the animal kingdom (although there could be something going on in minds of elephants, I grant you).  As animals with memory, we all have a history that lives in our minds.  There are parts of that history that we prefer to remember more than others, which partially explains why high school reunions get such a bum rap.  But, based on experience at my last four high school reunions (20th, 25th, 30th, and 35th), I have discovered at least three laws of reunions you should keep in mind before you decide against attending your own.

First law: Reunions are not the exclusive province of the svelte, happily married, hirsute, and highly successful.  Every high school class probably has a Pulitzer-prize winning playwright and an Emmy-nominated actress, but these classmates of critical acclaim are often reunion no-shows.  The vast majority of people at a reunion are relatively unknown teachers, stay-at-home moms, horse trainers, car mechanics, electricians, government employees, with some doctors, lawyers, and car dealers thrown in.  Most have gained weight and many have lost hair.  The truth of the first law speaks for itself:  if only those people who looked like they did in high school showed up, reunions would have passed the way of the dinosaurs a long time ago.

Second law: Reunions are not parties for just the most popular in high school.  After all, how many homecoming queens, cheerleaders, and football heroes does one high school class have?  Also, great popularity in high school means very little in the world after high-school.  Does anyone put “Prom Queen” on their resume or get elected to public office based on cheerleading prowess?   I once saw the yearbook of a good friend in which she was depicted in full “most-popular” splendor — she was prom queen, homecoming queen, head cheerleader, just to name a few.   On top of that, she peered from the pages with a face like a young Patti Duke, my favorite actress from way back when.  But as I perused the pages, she explained how she “peaked” too soon and her life had been on a downward slide ever since high school.  She contrasted her experience with mine as I was heading off to law school at the ripe old age of 35 and figured that I had a ways to go before I peaked, encouraging me to think that my lesser popularity in high school was a good thing. Yay, me!

Third Law:  Reunions are opportunities to rediscover ourselves and, in some instances, find closure.  In his book, The Blank Slate, Steven Pinker explores the nature vs. nurture debate, seeking to explain how human children become the adults they grow up to be.  He concludes that it’s a pretty even split between our genes and environment.  But considering environmental influences, he cites to research tending to prove that the biggest influence is not our parents or family, but our peer group.  If this is so – and it does explain differences among siblings – our classmates (some for as many as 12 years) are our true brothers and sisters.  So, their influence in our lives should be recognized.  Yet, I’m always pleasantly surprised to find classmates who carry around little parts of me in their memories.  Someone I haven’t seen since high school will often recall something about me that I had long forgotten or tell me about something I did or said that they admired or found amusing.  And when one guy tells a group of us gals how he had been haunted by the memory of falling off his bicycle as we stood down the block, we could tell him that he should be haunted no more. . . we never even saw the fall from where we stood.

I’ve come away from every reunion with a sense of awe about the power of reuniting with those with whom I spent those formative years during which we acted with or reacted to each other, the events of the time, the teachers and other authority figures.  No matter where we’ve gone in life and what we have or haven’t done, there is a divine element in bearing witness to our past and honoring the connection of our shared history.  In this here-today-gone-tomorrow world of nowadays, the high school reunion is the place where everyone knows your name, everybody is somebody, and showing up is 100% of what it takes to ace the test.

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Absolutely in the Rearview Mirror

Posted on May 1, 2010 by nowandthenadays

Here’s a new award for you:  Jeffee’s Excellent English Speaker (s)Hero  (“JEESH”) award.   Although it’s pretty clear what it takes to win this award (unlike an Oscar, for example) but to give you an idea of bad word use that will absolutely disqualify a speaker for consideration, here’s a good example:  “absolutely” as the response to a question where “yes” would be the appropriate answer.   This rampant absolutely use is annoying because — if you think about it — there are very few things in life where “absolutely” is really proper as a response.  It just sounds stupid unless you are expressing the answer to a problem in mathematics  and/or Newtonian physics.   Everyone knows that if you try to fly out the window, your body will obey the laws of gravity and fall to the ground.  Absolutely, without question.  So, why do so many English speakers, when answering a question about good restaurants, the actions of the Federal Reserve, or reasons for teenage pregnancies, etc., feel inclined to respond with “absolutely!”  Mind you, these same responders probably spent 15 minutes that morning looking for their car keys or got to work and found they left their wallet/glasses/Ipod ear buds in their other jacket.

My own theory is that, for some, particularly those of the “talking heads” persuasion, four syllables carry more credibility than the one lonely syllable in “yes.”  If you need a little emphasis and live here in Texas, of course, all you need is one more syllable with a, “Hell, yes!!!” But those folks who inhabit our televisions and radios throw around these four syllable affirmatives as if they were throwing beads off a mardi gras float.

Aside from actual mathematicians and physicists like Stephen Hawking, few individuals merit a pass to use “absolutely,” in my books.  One is Zbignew Brezenski (former National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter) who earned his absolutely credentials on the Morning Joe program with a burst of breathtaking certitude.  In reference to Joe Scarborough’s comment about the Bush administration’s lack of blame for anything on the Gaza strip, Brezenski replied:  “You know, you have such a stunningly superficial knowledge of what went on that it’s almost embarrassing to listen to you.”   I still can’t decide which part of that sentence was more lethal, “stunningly superficial knowledge” or “it’s almost embarrassing to listen to you.”  Either on their own would have been enough, but taken together,  I still marvel that Joe’s head didn’t blow up!!

And Oscar Wilde, were he alive, might be allowed an absolutely here and there.  Even Ziggy Brezenski would admire Wilde’s assuredness:  “The longer I live, the more I see that I am never wrong about anything, and that all the pains that I have so humbly taken to verify my notions have only wasted my time.”

But most of us should resist the urge to be “absolutely” sure about too many things. For example, you might say you will absolutely never kill another living thing (or at least nothing bigger than a cockroach).  But, what about the situation where lifting the cover of the toilet bowl brings you face to face with a wet, beady-eyed rat?  And when you put on gloves and try to pick it up to take outside and it bites you?  If you listened to NPR’s This American Life last Sunday at http://www.thisamericanlife.org/  you would understand how short the path is between an absolute pacifist and cold-blooded killer.   I’ll  bet you that prior to his rat experience, the guy in that radio story would have affirmed to the world at large, “I absolutely will never kill anything in my toilet bowl.”  But, all the same, he became the Toilet Bowl Rat Killer!

The good news is that I’m hearing “absolutely” a lot less these days.  Maybe with our economic woes, it felt wasteful to use so many syllables.  Or maybe those heads have begun to realize how you can paint yourself into a corner with “absolutely” and, oh by the way, we now know we really didn’t know as much as we thought we did.  So, nowadays I am hearing a more back-to-basics affirmation, a simple, but effective, “yes.”

Now that you have an idea concerning standards for the Jeesh awards please forward me your nominee for consideration, or, stay tuned to hear about the candidates of my choosing.   Is this going to be fun or what?!  Did I hear an absolutely???!!

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Me No Alamo

Posted on April 24, 2010 by nowandthenadays

Thanks to the Texas Leg, April 21st is a state holiday for its employees, albeit one in which “skeletons” are required at offices to provide bare bone coverage of functions.  Instead of some Okie from Muskogie wondering why no one answers the phone down in Texas, skeleton crew folks are able to help him renew his hunting license or whatever his needs might be with the Lone Star State.

Of course, every Texan knows that April 21st is San Jacinto Day.   (NOT!!!)  Truth is most fellow-Texans have no idea why I’m out shopping on a perfectly laborable Wednesday afternoon.  If it were the 4th of July, of course, everyone would know that I’m fulfilling my patriotic duty to fuel the economy, preferring a cool mall to a roasting Texas sun and roasted weinies.

So, as part of my duty as a Texas patriot, maybe I’ll educate you a bit about San Jacinto Day.  April 21st commemorates the day in 1836 when the Battle of San Jacinto took place where La Porte is located today, not far from the Houston Ship Channel.   Although it never warranted a big-budget film with John Wayne like the Alamo, it is remembered because it ended the Texas revolution against Mexico and opened the door for the United States to complete its occupation of the whole central part of the continent.  “Few military engagements in history have been more decisive or of more far-reaching ultimate influence than the battle of San Jacinto,” says Wallace L. McKeehan here:  http://www.tamu.edu/ccbn/dewitt/batsanjacinto.htm

At that website, you can read about the battle, the events leading up to it, and the capture of Santa Anna afterwards, but for me, the most amazing thing about the Battle of San Jacinto is that it lasted 18 minutes.  I don’t know much about the relative length of battles, thenadays or now, but if I were going to attend one, 18 minutes sounds about right.  It seems like the fight would be over before you had to dodge too many shots coming your direction, particularly if they were shot from the old muzzle-loading weapons.  In stark contrast, the battle of the Alamo was one day shy of a two-weeker.   Maybe that’s why the Battle of San Jacinto didn’t inspire screenwriters….not much to write about.

But the Battle of San Jacinto was a ferocious battle, largely inspired by what had just occurred, less than two months before, at the Alamo.   The Battle of the Alamo began on February 23, and ended on March 6, 1836, and everyone knows what happened there.  What is less well known is that on March 27, Texians were executed at Goliad after surrendering to Mexican forces on Santa Anna’s orders.  Both of these massacres served to fuel the ferocity that General Sam Houston’s forces let loose on the battle field at San Jacinto.  The Texians vocalized their anger as they charged the Mexicans with cries of “Remember the Alamo” and “Remember Goliad!!!”

The Mexicans knew — or soon figured out — what had caused the wrath of these avenging Texians.  So as the battle was winding down,  those who survived tried to negotiate with the Texians for a prison cell instead of a coffin, explaining that they were not to blame for what happened at the Alamo or Goliad.  In broken English, they cried out “Me no Alamo!!” and “Me no Goliad!!”  Suffice it to say that it didn’t matter what they said or where they were — these disclaimers did not save them.

What was saved, however, was that plaintive cry —  “Me no Alamo” —  when we want to establish our blamelessness, e.g.,  “Don’t blame me for that big mess!  I was 300 miles away!”  Not only does it serve to establish your Texas credentials, but it’s also a handy phrase when you get blamed for eating the last piece of cheesecake or causing that dent in the back bumper of your parent’s car.  Simply put, “It wasn’t me…me no Alamo!”

My favorite “Me no Alamo” story is one that a friend – in sharing our most embarrassing moments, told me years ago.  As a young administrative law judge, she was presiding at a hearing in which an older and distinguished  member of the Bar was in the midst of a cross-examination.  The lawyer asked the witness, “So, what you are saying, basically, is “me no Alamo,” am I correct?”  At that point, the young judge politely interrupted, “Counselor, if you are going to use Latin, please spell the words for the court reporter.” Without blinking an eye, the attorney said, “Yes, mam,” and continued the examination.  She did not realize her error until reading the transcript two or three months later.  “I had just never heard it in that context!” Although many years have transpired, she still cringes with the shame only a born and bred Texan could fathom.

Maybe we just need to use it more often.

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When Mad Men Mooed

Posted on April 19, 2010 by nowandthenadays

“Language is among the most durable links we have with the people of earlier times, despite the fact that words continue to disappear for any number of reasons,” says Jeffrey Kacirk in his introduction to Forgotten English. Hence, a love of language and love of history find themselves so comfortably intertwined.

I found one of the words that have disappeared in Jeffrey’s book that isn’t just a word that has disappeared from common parlance, but an entire malady that no longer afflicts our populace.  This, I assume most of you would agree, is a good thing, since on any given 21st century day we wake up to a new syndrome or disease to take up any slack in the human discomfort and abject misery department.

So, I bring to you (through Jeffrey, of course) “boanthropy,” which was known as a rare form of insanity in which a man imagined himself to be an ox.  The heyday for boanthropic afflictions was in the 19th century, inspired by that ancient source of all things scientific:  the Bible (just ask the Texas Board of Education).  Specifically, it was the Book of Daniel in which King Nebuchadnezzar “was driven from men, and did eat grass as oxen, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven.”

But before I digress down the Biblical path of virgin births, we should consider that actual men of the 19th century suffered with boanthropy, according to Robert Chambers described several “ruminating men,” in his Book of Days.  Published in 1864, Chambers describes a man “who was obliged to retire from the dinner-table to ruminate undisturbed, and who declared that the second process of mastication ‘was sweeter than honey, and accompanied with a delightful relish.’” Chambers also reported that the man’s son was similarly afflicted but was able to control it better and could “defer its exercise till a more convenient opportunity.”

In case any of you non-farmers are unclear about the “second process of mastication,” unlike humans with a simple stomach, cattle are ruminants, having one stomach with four compartments:  the rumen, reticulum, omasum, and abomasum, with the rumen being the largest compartment. This digestive system allows the bovine body to digest the undigestible by allowing them to regurgitate and rechew the difficult food as “cud.” The cud is then reswallowed and further digested by specialized microorganisms in the rumen.

As a non-farmer myself, I have to wonder if having four compartments multiplies the possibility of indigestion by four?  If I had to spend much more than I do now with a simple stomach, would I have to quadruple my intake?  I mean, rechewing might not actually neutralize the hot chili peppers that haunt me long after I’ve left the restaurant.  My antacid budget could conceivably cut down my hoof – I mean foot and hand – care expenditure.

My mirthful udderances to the contrary, the fear of boanthropy was no laughing matter back in 1792 when smallpox was rampaging through European populations, killing one in three people who were infected.  Edward Jenner successfully developed a vaccine for smallpox by injecting a boy with closely-related cowpox germs.  And yet, in the some-things-never-change category, he had critics who tried to scuttle his project.  The big fear was boanthropy!  The critics alleged that those who received the vaccine would develop bovine appetites, make cow-like sounds, and go about on four legs butting people with their horns—either real or imagined.

Maybe the virgin birth wasn’t so far-fetched after all.

[Quotes taken from Forgotten English by Jeffrey Kacirk and information regarding bovine digestion from Wikipedia.]

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My Love Affair with Fitzgerald

Posted on April 12, 2010 by nowandthenadays

My last post ended with a quote from Faulkner’s Requiem for a Nun and a few people told me, as if it were responsive to that entry, that they really didn’t like Faulkner.  That’s fine with me. I’ve enjoyed two or three of his books, but the truth is that I will probably never mention Faulkner again here and won’t waste time defending him now.

But, thinking of notable American writers whose last name starts with an F, I might as well confess here that I’ve been involved in a love affair with F. Scott Fitzgerald since I was a senior in high school.  The affair’s origins came back to mind recently when a friend returned a book she had borrowed from me many years ago.  It was The Great Gatsby and, I’m ashamed to say, it was a school library book I never returned.  I hated the high school so my taking the book from the library might be considered an act of passive aggression against the school.  But I’d say it was more a crime of passion.

I was fascinated by the book.  The main reason, I believe, was that I had heard that it was the most perfect novel ever written.  After that I was smitten.  Think about it.  How many times in our lives do we get to taste, touch, absorb, and actually possess the most perfect of anything?

I studied Gatsby, reading and rereading, picking out the symbols involving eggs, rebirth, a wasteland between east and west, Dr. T. J. Eckleburg’s eyes, which like God’s,  “see everything,” and the light at the end of Daisy’s dock, green like the American dollar?  There was the genius of the unreliable narrator, Nick Carraway.  And how many readers know that the original book title was Trimalchio in West Egg and that Trimalchio was a character in the Roman novel Satyricon —  a freedman who through hard work and perseverance attained power and wealth.  Knowing this seemed like a personal secret between me, Fitzgerald, and maybe his editor.

Then my passion for the book turned into interest for all things Fitzgerald, including his three other books (alas, no more!), his short stories, poems, reviews by and about him, letters, magazine articles, and miscellaneous writings. I loved the self-deprecating and sardonic humor reflected in his magazine articles, particularly one about his growing vulnerability to the fates and disease.  With several hilarious examples, he describes that he originally had about ten square feet of skin vulnerable to chills and fevers, but once he acquired a wife and a daughter, that area had enlarged to about twenty feet.  What humor, what wit!

Speaking of wife Zelda, I read her biography and became convinced that she had been all  wrong for him.  On the other hand, he and I seemed to be real soul-mates.  But eventually, I began to wonder about a cosmic soul-mate  who doesn’t bother to channel some of his literary talent in my direction.  Try as I might, I could never write lines such as these from the story “O Russet Witch:”

. . . Words seemed for the first time in his life to run at him shrieking to be used, gathering themselves into carefully arranged squads and platoons, and being presented to him by punctilious adjutants of paragraphs.

And then there’s that beautiful ending to Gatsby, describing Jay Gatsby’s obsession with a dream that he can never achieve because of the futility of escaping his past:

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us.  It eluded us then, but that’s no matter — tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . And one fine morning —

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

So, say what you will about Faulkner.  But whatever you do, don’t mess with Fitzgerald.

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My Word!!!

Posted on April 6, 2010 by nowandthenadays

Yes, “thenadays” sounds a bit odd.  It struck my eye among a list of words for “past” at thesaurus.com.  I probably visit the thesaurus website as much as I do Chicos (a woman’s clothing store), since I spend a lot of time writing, drafting legal briefs, playing at poetry, or jazzing up song lyrics when asked to tweak the work of my songwriter son.  I love words and cobbling them together in a way that breathes life into a blank page.   I respect words for the way they matter, for the life they have that none of us will ever enjoy …. although many of us will live on through our words.  But words have dynamic lifetimes, expressing the experiences of people of different colors, religions, ethnic origins, and geographical locations.  Not too long ago, the words of the English language were spoken in discrete parts of the world…..now they are used virtually everywhere.   Many words live on and on, but others get dropped by the wayside, like natural selection.  “Thenadays” appears to be one of those words slated for extinction, but nevertheless deserved a last hurrah.  This is its hurrah.

So, if you aren’t turned off yet and continue to read my entries, I plan to muse about lost words and expressions, and words and expressions that should get lost.  Unfortunately, there are probably equal numbers of both.  I tend to rant about those I really dislike, so don’t expect all fun and games.

But, this is not a niche blog on words and writing.  I am also a frustrated historian, particularly Texas history.  My love for Texas history (and many things Texan) dates back to when I began a part-time secretarial job at the State Capitol as a senior in high school.    As a 17-year-old, I still remember walking through the Capitol’s granite halls, among the columns, through the rotunda, up and down the mammoth staircases, with a sense of “deja vu,” as if ghosts of the past were whispering to me everywhere I turned.

I liked to think that I had been there before – not just as a first grader on a field trip – but that I had been someone who had some kind of connection to the building in the long ago past.  Maybe I kept the building clean, helped build it, or even passed laws.  In retrospect, maybe it was a little crazy, since I generally don’t believe in reincarnation (although I’m open to considering it).   Maybe I just had a particularly strong sense of that awe that monumental buildings tend to inspire in us ordinary mortal beings.  Or maybe it was just pride in being Texan that was spirited through me as I walked over the terrazzo floor with the marble chips spelling out the names of the twelve battles fought on Texas soil for our Independence from Mexico.  I often bid a reverential “good evening” to the life-sized marble statutes of Sam Houston and Stephen F. Austin – both larger-than-life figures in Texas lore –  in the foyer before I left for the day.

Maybe that’s also why I’ve worked for the State, in one capacity or another ever since then.  I continued working at the Capitol for about eight or nine years during several interesting events in the state’s history and then another nine years in the office of the Comptroller of Public Accounts, during the administration of the increasingly larger-than-life Bob Bullock.  In subsequent years, I’ve found myself lawyering in defense of Texas and her agencies at the Attorney General’s office.  I’ve had the opportunity to research and learn bits and pieces about Texas history, its Constitution, and its lands that might be of interest to readers.  So, give me a chance – it’s possible that I’m much less boring than you might think on such topics.

Finally, I love travel.  Show and tell about trips may come up in these pages.  Most recently, I found pieces of my soul in the geysers of Yellowstone and the majesty of the Grand Tetons.  These national treasures brought out the geologist, botanist, bird-watcher, spiritualist, wildlife conservationist, and nature lover in me.  I’ve spent many hours contemplating the awe that the first occupants of this continent must have felt to behold a land that spewed and bubbled and am grateful for the opportunity to capture for my own mind a sense of that pre-historical, unscientific experience.  I sincerely thank the individuals who had the foresight and perseverance to save these wilderness areas for us, our children, and our children’s children.

Nowadays, I find so much meaning and significance in thenadays.    The reason could be as William Faulkner said: “The past is never dead.  It’s not even passed.”  As I get older, that becomes increasingly clear to me.

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