Mayonnaise is the condiment to be used on a turkey sandwich. In fact, the entire arrangement consists of white bread, mayonnaise, salt, and pepper. That’s it. Nothing else. Attempts to subvert this sandwich with healthy grains, a mayonnaise substitute, a “little bit of that leftover stuffing”, lettuce, tomato, or (God forbid!) mustard, must be repelled immediately.
The dining hall staff at Christchurch School served sliced turkey at every meal. It was on the breakfast bar, the salad bar at lunch, and the deli bar at supper. Christchurch is a boarding school on the banks of the Rappahannock River near the Chesapeake Bay. As a boarding school the dining hall staff made box lunches and box suppers every day for the boys (and the few girls that attended) as they traveled to distant schools for athletic events. The boxes always contained turkey sandwiches, a cookie, and a packet of mustard.
Mustard? It came to pass that students eventually believed that mustard was an appropriate condiment for turkey. I was never able to dissuade them of this belief. For all I know my daughters are now putting mustard on their turkey.
This is clearly wrong-headed. Now listen to this: before air-conditioning was invented it was possible to stick a pipe deep into the sand on Miami Beach and produce a flow of fresh water. This fountain was produced in view of the salty Atlantic. No wonder Ponce de Leon thought a fountain of youth might be found in La Florida!
But when a doctor trying to produce rarefied air for consumptives accidentally made air conditioning popular in the swamps, people moved to South Florida in droves. One cannot find fresh water in the Biscayne aquifer any longer. All of the fresh water must be pumped in from fifty miles away to the west, in the middle of the Everglades.
I have come to understand that we will not save the Everglades with any high-minded moral purpose adequately explained. Americans don’t like high-minded moral purposes. That’s why Jimmy Carter only served one term. If the Everglades can be saved it will be by hitting people in their wallets. And I want it to be saved, not preserved. I don’t want it “put up” like jams and jellies and pickles.
By the time Hank is my age, we are told, there will no longer be any “wild” seafood for harvest. I myself witnessed the wholesale collapse in only one year of the oyster industry in the Chesapeake. Joe Podger said that the “ . . . Everglades is a test. If we pass it we get to keep the planet.”
My love for this river (for river it is) is deep and wide. The Everglades is not deep; it is shallow. Like the tuberculosis doctor who accidentally found compressors to be a homeowner’s dream, I accidentally found the Everglades during a weekend in 1982. Every year since I have wandered the swamps with students, family, and friends preaching salvation.
I have never taken my children to Disney World. I am sorry for this in a way, and certainly would never forbid them to go, but I will not go with them. I am largely repulsed by “theme parks.” My children have never wanted for adventures, however. They’ve navigated the pristine waters of Florida Bay, hunted prehistoric sharks’ teeth on the Potomac, snorkeled reefs off Key West, stargazed during meteor showers, hiked, boldered, and camped in the Blue Ridge, explored subterranean caverns, sailed on the Chesapeake, and kayaked here and there on rivers in the East. To attend Disney World, to stare at a fake mountain, to boat on fake streams, and to walk on paved, green firmament while greater and lesser lights explode above, all the while being assaulted by hydrocephalic cartoon characters, gives me the willies.
The Everglades is a river only a few inches deep but about a hundred miles long and eighty miles wide. We have effectively dammed the river with two highways running east-west, and channelized the remainder with canals crisscrossing the lower part of the state. Imagine, for a moment, how shallow a canal would have to be to drain a river that’s only inches deep. It’s a horror. When I first started visiting the Everglades in 1982 there were about 50 panthers still roaming the area. When I first took my children in 1995 there were none left. I used to love camping in the Everglades, for each night I’d dream of the Florida panther. The only Florida panther (Felis concolor coryii) that I’ve ever seen was in a roadside zoo.
I confess that I am not above stopping at a roadside attraction. Driving across the Cumberlands from Kentucky to Tennessee as a child we used to cross Clinch Mountain. Sometimes our car would overheat and we’d have to stop for an hour while it cooled down. At the very top was a restaurant with a bear in a cage and a few boxes of copperheads and rattlesnakes to see. For ten cents one could use a sort of pay-per-view telescope and allegedly see seven states. The gift shop sold honey in jars shaped like bears.
Several years ago on a trip with my family I insisted that we “take the old road” across Clinch. It was a three hour detour on an already lengthy car trip. At the top we found the restaurant, but it was closed. The bear cage revealed nothing but a tuft of fur to display. There were no snakes. The gift shop only had a variety of porcelain objects with Jesus on them.
The girls were at the “snort and eye-roll” stage of teenagedom on that trip. You can only imagine how well my presentation was received. Getting back into the car Lillian fell asleep immediately while Caroline lost herself in a book. These were heady days for a father.
It is conflicting for me to know that roadside zoos were horribly inhumane. It is good that they have largely disappeared from our culture. I still remember them fondly, though.
I am not conflicted about the disappearance of the Everglades. When the fisheries of the Northeast, and indeed the entire gulf and eastern seaboard, realize that the Everglades is their nursery, maybe something will be done. When the people of Miami Beach realize that salt water intrusion of their aquifer is the result of the rape of the Everglades, then perhaps something will happen. Maybe folks in Peoria or Billings will start questioning what “popcorn shrimp” really is, and get on board. I don’t care if the morality is in the form of economy, this is sacred swamp and it must be held holy. Amen.
Fortunately for me, I’ve got my bride Cindy. She keeps me balanced during all these tirades. It’s time to write about her.
Cindy
Monday, January 14, 2008
Cindy
In 1971 we were at the Harry S Truman airport on St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands. My father spotted an Orange Julius stand in the airport and bought one of the frothy drinks for each of us.
This event is notable for several reasons. The first is that my father was NEVER given to buying treats for the kids. A big event for us, for example, was for Mama to hand out a peppermint lifesaver to each of us at the halfway point of, say, a 2,000 mile car trip. We were grateful. He knew, at a cellular level, the difference between “wants” and “needs”.
The second reason is that I remember the look of joy in his eyes as he drank his Orange Julius and watched us do the same. I have never asked him about his motivation for such largesse. I don’t want to know. The memory must be treasured as it is.
A sidebar reason is that I learned that Harry S Truman’s middle name was “S”. It can be spelled out (“S”) or abbreviated (“S.”). He was the thirty-third president of the United States.
Recently I had a hankering for an Orange Julius. I didn’t know that Orange Julius is a franchise operation that has been in existence for about 80 years. Some Dairy Queens are licensed to sell them. It’s not unlike the Starlight Drive-In of my childhood in Lexington, Kentucky. They were licensed to sell Kentucky Fried Chicken back in the day. We would occasionally run into Colonel Harlan Sanders at the restaurant. Once he was eating alone and I asked him to join us. Years later, as a junior in high school, I became fairly well acquainted with him and even got to ride in his all white Lincoln Continental. He told me that I had “a fine countenance”.
Now I have learned about the Orange Julius franchise, thanks to the internet. I have also learned that a person named Robbie makes it her business to deconstruct famous recipes and publish them. Thus, if one has a hankering for Ruby Tuesday’s hot wings or an Egg McMuffin or Applebee’s ribs or an Orange Julius, one has merely to log on and follow the directions.
Here’s what she says to do: Put six ounces of frozen orange juice concentrate, ¼ cup of sugar, 1 cup of water, and one cup of milk in a blender along with 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract. With the blender running at medium speed add eight ice cubes, one at a time, until smooth.
Every time I see or think or write “teaspoon” I hear “cucharadita” in my head. When I served as the druggist in the jungles of Honduras for my father, most of my directions to the patients involved cucharaditas.
So last night I made Orange Juliuses (according to Robbie’s recipe) for Cindy, Hank, and me. They were a big hit, especially with Cindy.
Cindy is my biggest fan. She cheers, she looks encouraging, she does “the wave” all by herself. She gives me standing ovations most of the time. Those rare times when she doesn’t, je suis vraiment très désolée. When she realizes that she has not adequately prostrated herself while facing East, she tells me that I’m being silly.
Cindy and I met in 1973 at Sewanee, The University of the South. She was a pretty little freshman from Murfreesboro, Tennessee. I was a long-haired, pony-tailed, goofy-but-enthusiastic freshman from Lexington, Kentucky. In those days I wore glasses with remarkably large, black frames. I was trying to sprout a beard. With my hair pulled back and with the dirtiness of an under-chin beard, I looked like an ugly nun peering out from an even uglier wimple. Photographs prove that I was unattractive.
Except to her.
Do you remember the story of the woman who rushes from her house and lifts the car off her child? Alternatively, she carries a steamer trunk or grand piano from a burning building. I am married to that woman. If you are a student of the enneagram, she is a type six.
Sixes are fearful. They make lists in order that they’ll know precisely what is going to happen. They are manifestly uncomfortable with the unknown. They hate change. On the other side of the coin, however, they are capable of astonishing feats of momentary courage.
If we had married back then we would have just celebrated our thirty-fourth anniversary. As it turns out, we just marked number eleven. Sometimes I like to think it was our thirty-fourth.
Cindy quit her job, sold her house, and moved to Virginia with her twelve year old daughter Lillian. She wanted to “try out” dating me again after all those years. Imagine that.
My little girl Caroline got a mama. Lillian got a daddy. Cindy and I got each other, at last. Lillian’s biological father and Caroline’s biological mother have not been in the picture very much. Maybe that’s why the blending of our family has such a fairy-tale feel. After two years of marriage we produced Hank. He’s nine now.
Back at Sewanee Cindy knew me as Hank. Now she only calls me by that name when she’s mad at me. At times like those she often calls Hank “Chuck”. Chuck is her younger brother.
Fortunately she is not angry very often. On the contrary, most of the time she is a dispassionate, well-balanced, and serene being. On those rare occasions when she does impersonate a surface-to-air missile, the result is highly dramatic. Our elder golden retriever is deeply disturbed by these events and waddles to and fro urging everyone to calm down.
Literally and figuratively, Cindy wiggles the mouse. You have met people like this, I am sure. While studying a computer screen they will jiggle the cursor all about in what appears to be a frantic attempt to find an icon upon which to click. If one comes up behind such a person and, say, asks, “What’s up?”, the mouse wiggler will close every window and shut down the computer without answering. Some inner-voice taunts these people: “You are about to make a big mistake” the voice says.
Cindy has been known to order things from telephone solicitors just to get them off the phone. We once got a two year subscription to “deal a meal” cards in such a way. When taken by surprise her reactions are unpredictable.
That’s why it’s fun to sneak up behind her and simply stand still. This little episode can be played out when she’s getting clothes out of the dryer, putting dishes in the cabinet, or any other time when she’s standing. It doesn’t work if she’s sitting down.
Her great grandmother, Lillian Carter, crossed the Cumberland Gap in a covered wagon. As such she comes from strong pioneer stock. She is a strong woman. When I stand quietly behind her, the discovery of my being results in a rapid series of mini-scenes. If you imagine the strobe lights of Stone Mountain, Georgia, causing the saints of the Confederacy to appear to be riding across the granite, then you’ll get the picture.
First she balls up a fist or brandishes the laundry measuring cup in a menacing posture. Next she’ll curse like sailor. Finally she will actually and physically attempt to harm me.
I never tire of this event.
Cindy likes me because. She loves me although. She is the only person I have ever met who can take repeated teasing with grace. On the other hand, she is hard of hearing, so maybe she just doesn’t hear the teasing. We would never have had our daughters if we had married way back then. And what would we do without them now? Their little brother adores them; they return the favor. What a mystery life is! Cindy sets the tone.
The other night we were lying in bed. She said, “I just can’t believe I’m married to Hank Selby.” She wasn’t mad at me then. I think she was remembering our college years and celebrating our thirty-fourth anniversary.
This event is notable for several reasons. The first is that my father was NEVER given to buying treats for the kids. A big event for us, for example, was for Mama to hand out a peppermint lifesaver to each of us at the halfway point of, say, a 2,000 mile car trip. We were grateful. He knew, at a cellular level, the difference between “wants” and “needs”.
The second reason is that I remember the look of joy in his eyes as he drank his Orange Julius and watched us do the same. I have never asked him about his motivation for such largesse. I don’t want to know. The memory must be treasured as it is.
A sidebar reason is that I learned that Harry S Truman’s middle name was “S”. It can be spelled out (“S”) or abbreviated (“S.”). He was the thirty-third president of the United States.
Recently I had a hankering for an Orange Julius. I didn’t know that Orange Julius is a franchise operation that has been in existence for about 80 years. Some Dairy Queens are licensed to sell them. It’s not unlike the Starlight Drive-In of my childhood in Lexington, Kentucky. They were licensed to sell Kentucky Fried Chicken back in the day. We would occasionally run into Colonel Harlan Sanders at the restaurant. Once he was eating alone and I asked him to join us. Years later, as a junior in high school, I became fairly well acquainted with him and even got to ride in his all white Lincoln Continental. He told me that I had “a fine countenance”.
Now I have learned about the Orange Julius franchise, thanks to the internet. I have also learned that a person named Robbie makes it her business to deconstruct famous recipes and publish them. Thus, if one has a hankering for Ruby Tuesday’s hot wings or an Egg McMuffin or Applebee’s ribs or an Orange Julius, one has merely to log on and follow the directions.
Here’s what she says to do: Put six ounces of frozen orange juice concentrate, ¼ cup of sugar, 1 cup of water, and one cup of milk in a blender along with 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract. With the blender running at medium speed add eight ice cubes, one at a time, until smooth.
Every time I see or think or write “teaspoon” I hear “cucharadita” in my head. When I served as the druggist in the jungles of Honduras for my father, most of my directions to the patients involved cucharaditas.
So last night I made Orange Juliuses (according to Robbie’s recipe) for Cindy, Hank, and me. They were a big hit, especially with Cindy.
Cindy is my biggest fan. She cheers, she looks encouraging, she does “the wave” all by herself. She gives me standing ovations most of the time. Those rare times when she doesn’t, je suis vraiment très désolée. When she realizes that she has not adequately prostrated herself while facing East, she tells me that I’m being silly.
Cindy and I met in 1973 at Sewanee, The University of the South. She was a pretty little freshman from Murfreesboro, Tennessee. I was a long-haired, pony-tailed, goofy-but-enthusiastic freshman from Lexington, Kentucky. In those days I wore glasses with remarkably large, black frames. I was trying to sprout a beard. With my hair pulled back and with the dirtiness of an under-chin beard, I looked like an ugly nun peering out from an even uglier wimple. Photographs prove that I was unattractive.
Except to her.
Do you remember the story of the woman who rushes from her house and lifts the car off her child? Alternatively, she carries a steamer trunk or grand piano from a burning building. I am married to that woman. If you are a student of the enneagram, she is a type six.
Sixes are fearful. They make lists in order that they’ll know precisely what is going to happen. They are manifestly uncomfortable with the unknown. They hate change. On the other side of the coin, however, they are capable of astonishing feats of momentary courage.
If we had married back then we would have just celebrated our thirty-fourth anniversary. As it turns out, we just marked number eleven. Sometimes I like to think it was our thirty-fourth.
Cindy quit her job, sold her house, and moved to Virginia with her twelve year old daughter Lillian. She wanted to “try out” dating me again after all those years. Imagine that.
My little girl Caroline got a mama. Lillian got a daddy. Cindy and I got each other, at last. Lillian’s biological father and Caroline’s biological mother have not been in the picture very much. Maybe that’s why the blending of our family has such a fairy-tale feel. After two years of marriage we produced Hank. He’s nine now.
Back at Sewanee Cindy knew me as Hank. Now she only calls me by that name when she’s mad at me. At times like those she often calls Hank “Chuck”. Chuck is her younger brother.
Fortunately she is not angry very often. On the contrary, most of the time she is a dispassionate, well-balanced, and serene being. On those rare occasions when she does impersonate a surface-to-air missile, the result is highly dramatic. Our elder golden retriever is deeply disturbed by these events and waddles to and fro urging everyone to calm down.
Literally and figuratively, Cindy wiggles the mouse. You have met people like this, I am sure. While studying a computer screen they will jiggle the cursor all about in what appears to be a frantic attempt to find an icon upon which to click. If one comes up behind such a person and, say, asks, “What’s up?”, the mouse wiggler will close every window and shut down the computer without answering. Some inner-voice taunts these people: “You are about to make a big mistake” the voice says.
Cindy has been known to order things from telephone solicitors just to get them off the phone. We once got a two year subscription to “deal a meal” cards in such a way. When taken by surprise her reactions are unpredictable.
That’s why it’s fun to sneak up behind her and simply stand still. This little episode can be played out when she’s getting clothes out of the dryer, putting dishes in the cabinet, or any other time when she’s standing. It doesn’t work if she’s sitting down.
Her great grandmother, Lillian Carter, crossed the Cumberland Gap in a covered wagon. As such she comes from strong pioneer stock. She is a strong woman. When I stand quietly behind her, the discovery of my being results in a rapid series of mini-scenes. If you imagine the strobe lights of Stone Mountain, Georgia, causing the saints of the Confederacy to appear to be riding across the granite, then you’ll get the picture.
First she balls up a fist or brandishes the laundry measuring cup in a menacing posture. Next she’ll curse like sailor. Finally she will actually and physically attempt to harm me.
I never tire of this event.
Cindy likes me because. She loves me although. She is the only person I have ever met who can take repeated teasing with grace. On the other hand, she is hard of hearing, so maybe she just doesn’t hear the teasing. We would never have had our daughters if we had married way back then. And what would we do without them now? Their little brother adores them; they return the favor. What a mystery life is! Cindy sets the tone.
The other night we were lying in bed. She said, “I just can’t believe I’m married to Hank Selby.” She wasn’t mad at me then. I think she was remembering our college years and celebrating our thirty-fourth anniversary.
Thursday, September 20, 2007
Economy
Geoff Campbell, the headmaster of prestigious Phoenix Country Day, and I used to go camping and hunting. We did this in the winter, usually just after Christmas, and would wander around the Blue Ridge or Cumberlands until we got too cold. One year we took a canned ham with us and ate from it for two days. By the second day it had acquired what I believe to be Staphylococcus aureus. This bacteria produces a toxin that causes cramping, nausea and diarrhea, usually in fewer than five hours. You can’t get rid of S. areus by cooking since the toxin is heat stable. It’s probably living in your nose right now, by the way, but let that pass. We both were ill, but Geoff was in agony.
My children think that I’m a cheapskate. This is unfair. I may be economical, but I’m neither stingy nor miserly. I look for value wherever it can be found. And I really don’t want to grow old and become one of those who hoards money and belongings.
I can always get one more use out of anything. Toothpaste tubes gives me more trouble in this department than they used to. They used to be made of metal and one could really squeeze the last molecule on to the sparsely bristled brush. The brush is sparsely bristled now; it was not that way when new. I can make both last for over a year.
A tube of original Pepsodent is 66% less expensive than most of the other brands. It is much cheaper than the $4-$7 you’ll pay for your ferret’s toothpaste, according to the non profit group “Massachusetts Ferret Friends”. Visit them on the web.
I collected tubes of Ultra Brite toothpaste (the toothpaste with sex appeal) once during a six week jaunt through the middle east and Europe. In Italy it was “Ultra Brait” (denti bianchissimi), in Austria it was “Ultra Weiss” (die zahncreme mit dem wildengeschmack) and in French it was just “Ultra Brite” (le dentrifice au gout sauvage).
I got a huge kick out of that packaging. Most people bring really cool souvenirs home from their trips. I brought toothpaste . . . and used it.
My economy is somewhat compulsive. It’s not as bad as other compulsive behaviors I have such as knowing precisely what time it is even if I awaken in the middle of the night.
To greater and lesser degrees all members of my family of origin suffer from obsessive-compulsive disorder. My sister’s manifestations of this disorder involve irresistible urges to make a fresh pot whenever a Mr. Coffee is sighted. For reasons known only to her she will then allow it to become cold, serving others from a dented metal thermos with yesterday’s brew therein. Another of her compulsions is to wash any clothing not safely closeted. She does this in blistering hot water. Most of my parents clothing is too small for them nowadays. It is all very white. Beka also will locate a partly emptied container (oh, let’s say a shampoo bottle) and fill it with another liquid located nearby. It need not be any form of soap or shampoo. She discards the newly emptied container with something approaching Buddhist serenity, and returns to her television (always channel five).
This is why I’m used to our housekeeper, a possibly legal Mexican from Monterrey, who will unpack anything in our house and store it where she believes it belongs. Consuelo (whose real name is Linda, by the way) abhors packaging. Egg cartons? Never! The bag of potatoes? Forget about it! A multi-pack of go-gurt? Let’s let it out! “Libertad” is her battle cry. She has numerous other quirks. Rearranging the furniture is one. Once she cut the grass. Another time she washed the front of our house. I call her Consuelo only because I always wanted a maid named Consuelo. She is a treasure for us even though she speaks no English and apparently doesn’t want to learn. I am reasonably fluent in Spanish, but when she hides my son’s Nintendo DS and its stylus, I am as mute as a swan. How does one even begin to inquire?
As a child my brother used to “double click” his milk glass against his teeth before drinking. He would “double tap” a doorjamb on this way through. He would “double touch” just about anything for a number of years. My parents harbor deep suspicions of psychiatrists and, even worse, psychologists. Their manner of handling such aberrant behaviors was to shout them out. “Stop that!” they would cry. Eventually Bayne subordinated his compulsions. He mastered them. Unhappily, as everyone in the world except my family knows, these compulsions are still with him. They are not really mastered at all. They ooze out in his adult life, like the alien Sigourney Weaver had to kill. He is tremendously uncomfortable with peace and quiet, for example, and will turn on rock music in his fully wired house while he shouts for me to come listen to one of his children perform a song or instrumental selection. One of their dogs is usually barking, several dozen of their phones will be ringing, and he’ll suddenly rush to his computer to play “EverQuest” while eating a jalapeño popper. If Beka’s serenity is achieved by fulfilling the demands of her inner voice, Bayne’s is achieved through sensory overload.
Can you imagine a full family gathering with these people? Wait, it gets better. My mother is hard of hearing. Dad shouts. Mama believes he shouts because he, too, is hard of hearing, not because he has lived with her hearing loss for decades. Dad will begin his part of the conversation from a distant room in order to be well into his declamation upon entry. He is oblivious to other conversations taking place and is usually waving a newspaper or magazine article when he enters. All of his conversations end like this: “Read this and when you’re through, throw it away.”
Mama hasn’t needed to hear for many years due to the fact that she’s usually telling a story. That’s her compulsion. The last known listening event for her occurred back on August 7, 1978, when President Jimmy Carter declared a federal emergency regarding the Love Canal. The special report on channel 5 pre-empted Charlie Hall’s weather forecast and that made her “damn mad.”
The Love Canal was located in a neighborhood of Niagra Falls, New York. It was flooded with toxic chemicals, backfilled, and a school was built on it. Epilepsy, asthma, and miscarriages were some of the problems. 56% of children born in the neighborhood had birth defects. It’s still a mess. I am so glad that young people today are interested in saving the planet. I hope it’s not too late.
I’m certainly not immune to this compulsive problem. On the contrary, I’ve got it worse than all the rest of them. In schools today we are actively investigating why so many students have trouble with their “executive function.” The executive function is knowing how to put first things first. We learned it by hearing my father intone “first things first” on a daily basis while growing up.
My executive function is my only function. When I realize, for example, that the car’s oil needs to be changed, I cannot think of anything else. Late on a Sunday night I will be seeking a grease monkey who can provide relief. My executive function says, “This is your sole reason for existing. Get the oil changed.” It is not unlike Beka’s coffee-making.
I count when I’m toweling off after a shower and while getting dressed. I count when I’m filling a glass with water. Once I watched the glass overflow, and I let it overflow, until I reached 10. Ten was the number I had to reach before shutting off the water.
Usually these things are funny. They are not deeply inconvenient. Moreover, they are the quirks that provide the color to our lives.
During the nineties everyone was fond of claiming “dysfunctional families”. It was sort of a fraternity of right-thinking-young adults whose brotherhood revolved around rejecting their families of origin. A former student of mine pointed out once that if you had a roof over your head, a bed, clothes, and were made to go to school, your family was not dysfunctional. Quirky, perhaps, but not dysfunctional. I like his definition. And I definitely like quirky families.
I don’t see much compulsive behavior in my children, yet. I can identify traits in them, however. Lillian has almost no conception of minutes or hours. It is clear to me that if she is supposed to be at a 6:30 appointment she will leave the house precisely at 6:30. In her mind, evidently, space and time will bend; a worm-hole will appear; she will arrive at the same moment she left. Caroline will, out of the blue, make peculiar statements that immediately stifle subsequent conversation. Once she quieted an entire roomful of people by proclaiming that she didn’t like to get wet. No one knew what to say in response to this odd announcement. She’s also in a “justice” phase. She still has some vague memory of the Garden of Eden and believes that life is fair.
I believe that children are in the Garden. Sometime around the end of third grade or the beginning of fourth they leave the Garden. Banished. There’s no where to go now but across the desert, finding an oasis from time to time.
For me those oases come from nature. That’s why things like the Love Canal are so immoral. And don’t even get me started on the Everglades.
My children think that I’m a cheapskate. This is unfair. I may be economical, but I’m neither stingy nor miserly. I look for value wherever it can be found. And I really don’t want to grow old and become one of those who hoards money and belongings.
I can always get one more use out of anything. Toothpaste tubes gives me more trouble in this department than they used to. They used to be made of metal and one could really squeeze the last molecule on to the sparsely bristled brush. The brush is sparsely bristled now; it was not that way when new. I can make both last for over a year.
A tube of original Pepsodent is 66% less expensive than most of the other brands. It is much cheaper than the $4-$7 you’ll pay for your ferret’s toothpaste, according to the non profit group “Massachusetts Ferret Friends”. Visit them on the web.
I collected tubes of Ultra Brite toothpaste (the toothpaste with sex appeal) once during a six week jaunt through the middle east and Europe. In Italy it was “Ultra Brait” (denti bianchissimi), in Austria it was “Ultra Weiss” (die zahncreme mit dem wildengeschmack) and in French it was just “Ultra Brite” (le dentrifice au gout sauvage).
I got a huge kick out of that packaging. Most people bring really cool souvenirs home from their trips. I brought toothpaste . . . and used it.
My economy is somewhat compulsive. It’s not as bad as other compulsive behaviors I have such as knowing precisely what time it is even if I awaken in the middle of the night.
To greater and lesser degrees all members of my family of origin suffer from obsessive-compulsive disorder. My sister’s manifestations of this disorder involve irresistible urges to make a fresh pot whenever a Mr. Coffee is sighted. For reasons known only to her she will then allow it to become cold, serving others from a dented metal thermos with yesterday’s brew therein. Another of her compulsions is to wash any clothing not safely closeted. She does this in blistering hot water. Most of my parents clothing is too small for them nowadays. It is all very white. Beka also will locate a partly emptied container (oh, let’s say a shampoo bottle) and fill it with another liquid located nearby. It need not be any form of soap or shampoo. She discards the newly emptied container with something approaching Buddhist serenity, and returns to her television (always channel five).
This is why I’m used to our housekeeper, a possibly legal Mexican from Monterrey, who will unpack anything in our house and store it where she believes it belongs. Consuelo (whose real name is Linda, by the way) abhors packaging. Egg cartons? Never! The bag of potatoes? Forget about it! A multi-pack of go-gurt? Let’s let it out! “Libertad” is her battle cry. She has numerous other quirks. Rearranging the furniture is one. Once she cut the grass. Another time she washed the front of our house. I call her Consuelo only because I always wanted a maid named Consuelo. She is a treasure for us even though she speaks no English and apparently doesn’t want to learn. I am reasonably fluent in Spanish, but when she hides my son’s Nintendo DS and its stylus, I am as mute as a swan. How does one even begin to inquire?
As a child my brother used to “double click” his milk glass against his teeth before drinking. He would “double tap” a doorjamb on this way through. He would “double touch” just about anything for a number of years. My parents harbor deep suspicions of psychiatrists and, even worse, psychologists. Their manner of handling such aberrant behaviors was to shout them out. “Stop that!” they would cry. Eventually Bayne subordinated his compulsions. He mastered them. Unhappily, as everyone in the world except my family knows, these compulsions are still with him. They are not really mastered at all. They ooze out in his adult life, like the alien Sigourney Weaver had to kill. He is tremendously uncomfortable with peace and quiet, for example, and will turn on rock music in his fully wired house while he shouts for me to come listen to one of his children perform a song or instrumental selection. One of their dogs is usually barking, several dozen of their phones will be ringing, and he’ll suddenly rush to his computer to play “EverQuest” while eating a jalapeño popper. If Beka’s serenity is achieved by fulfilling the demands of her inner voice, Bayne’s is achieved through sensory overload.
Can you imagine a full family gathering with these people? Wait, it gets better. My mother is hard of hearing. Dad shouts. Mama believes he shouts because he, too, is hard of hearing, not because he has lived with her hearing loss for decades. Dad will begin his part of the conversation from a distant room in order to be well into his declamation upon entry. He is oblivious to other conversations taking place and is usually waving a newspaper or magazine article when he enters. All of his conversations end like this: “Read this and when you’re through, throw it away.”
Mama hasn’t needed to hear for many years due to the fact that she’s usually telling a story. That’s her compulsion. The last known listening event for her occurred back on August 7, 1978, when President Jimmy Carter declared a federal emergency regarding the Love Canal. The special report on channel 5 pre-empted Charlie Hall’s weather forecast and that made her “damn mad.”
The Love Canal was located in a neighborhood of Niagra Falls, New York. It was flooded with toxic chemicals, backfilled, and a school was built on it. Epilepsy, asthma, and miscarriages were some of the problems. 56% of children born in the neighborhood had birth defects. It’s still a mess. I am so glad that young people today are interested in saving the planet. I hope it’s not too late.
I’m certainly not immune to this compulsive problem. On the contrary, I’ve got it worse than all the rest of them. In schools today we are actively investigating why so many students have trouble with their “executive function.” The executive function is knowing how to put first things first. We learned it by hearing my father intone “first things first” on a daily basis while growing up.
My executive function is my only function. When I realize, for example, that the car’s oil needs to be changed, I cannot think of anything else. Late on a Sunday night I will be seeking a grease monkey who can provide relief. My executive function says, “This is your sole reason for existing. Get the oil changed.” It is not unlike Beka’s coffee-making.
I count when I’m toweling off after a shower and while getting dressed. I count when I’m filling a glass with water. Once I watched the glass overflow, and I let it overflow, until I reached 10. Ten was the number I had to reach before shutting off the water.
Usually these things are funny. They are not deeply inconvenient. Moreover, they are the quirks that provide the color to our lives.
During the nineties everyone was fond of claiming “dysfunctional families”. It was sort of a fraternity of right-thinking-young adults whose brotherhood revolved around rejecting their families of origin. A former student of mine pointed out once that if you had a roof over your head, a bed, clothes, and were made to go to school, your family was not dysfunctional. Quirky, perhaps, but not dysfunctional. I like his definition. And I definitely like quirky families.
I don’t see much compulsive behavior in my children, yet. I can identify traits in them, however. Lillian has almost no conception of minutes or hours. It is clear to me that if she is supposed to be at a 6:30 appointment she will leave the house precisely at 6:30. In her mind, evidently, space and time will bend; a worm-hole will appear; she will arrive at the same moment she left. Caroline will, out of the blue, make peculiar statements that immediately stifle subsequent conversation. Once she quieted an entire roomful of people by proclaiming that she didn’t like to get wet. No one knew what to say in response to this odd announcement. She’s also in a “justice” phase. She still has some vague memory of the Garden of Eden and believes that life is fair.
I believe that children are in the Garden. Sometime around the end of third grade or the beginning of fourth they leave the Garden. Banished. There’s no where to go now but across the desert, finding an oasis from time to time.
For me those oases come from nature. That’s why things like the Love Canal are so immoral. And don’t even get me started on the Everglades.
Monday, September 17, 2007
Introduction to the Writing I am Forced to Undertake
Have you ever noticed that all medical doctors in North America adopt no more than three basic facial expressions? These expressions bring to mind the automatic transmission of an early Pontiac. The most common, seen round the clock in hospitals and offices across the continent is when their faces shift to neutral. It brings peace to patients, and indeed in many cases, submission. In neutral, we are assured that millions of synapses are not only collecting data, but processing it in such a way that a salutary result is guaranteed. Next one may observe the forward gear: intent on a course of physick that will bring a “hail fellow, well met” from all acquaintances in no time. It is a terror for nurses, orderlies, and first year residents, but a great comfort to the afflicted. Finally there is reverse. It is rare, and almost always accompanied by something akin to a somatic expression of guilt. It is fleeting. None is an expression of joy; none of agony, though surely they must feel these emotions from time to time.
Sir William Osler, that great physician and philosopher, will soon take his place with the rest of those forgotten. Not chief among his works, but salient nonetheless, is a commencement address he gave to his students (and colleagues!) entitled “Aequanimitas”. The great irony is that a portion of this wonderful speech (including the title misspelled!) that points to the importance of library research, is routinely and mistakenly attributed to the author Samuel Butler.
It’s not tabloids making this mistake. It’s not People magazine, or Psychology Today, or even the Times-Picayune. Readers may make a quick search of medical college websites from Brooklyn to Montana and find that Osler’s exhortations are given away with this false citation as introductions by medical scholastics on topics ranging from evidenced-based medicine to medical informatics.
This makes me very, very angry.
The souls who should be protecting the ideas of the most important western medical thinker of our times ignore the truth with abandon. It was Osler who got the students out of the lecture halls and into the wards! He painted the perfect portrait of medical decorum and intellect. But who can blame them?
When I was a student at The University of the South (and much more on this later!) studying under the tutelage of a white-haired and gowned savant who perpetually clenched a pipe in his teeth while lecturing, I read these words: “Truth in history is not necessarily what happened, but what men believed happened.” I learned that this concept was penned by someone named Professor William A. Dunning, quoted in a history book by John Samuel Ezell. I have never forgotten this lesson.
It also makes me very, very angry.
But I’m glad of that. What would happen if it didn’t make me angry? If it didn’t, then I wouldn’t write. I would, like the famous inventor in Thoreau’s Mosquito Coast, “go back to bed.”
Now it has come to pass that my family insists that I write something. They have cajoled, begged, and otherwise used well-placed guilt to stimulate this work. Thus, with anger as the fuel, I will begin a long piece. Much of it will probably be a rant. Some of it will be funny. It will all be humorous in the real sense of humor, and it will be true. Professor Dunning’s assertion might cause one to believe that, if everything is not outright fiction, then it is at least idiosyncratic fallacy. I refute him. Begone! Vade retro Satanas!
Here, then, is the truth. It is the truth of my family. But to find the truth about Sir William Osler, don’t bother looking anywhere other than the deposit of faith at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. It is perhaps only there that you can read Aequanimitas properly cited. Within, you will discover that among his other great legacies the doctor carefully, beautifully, and elegantly explains to young doctors how to keep their faces in neutral.
Henry G. Selby
Bluffton, South Carolina
September, 2007
Sir William Osler, that great physician and philosopher, will soon take his place with the rest of those forgotten. Not chief among his works, but salient nonetheless, is a commencement address he gave to his students (and colleagues!) entitled “Aequanimitas”. The great irony is that a portion of this wonderful speech (including the title misspelled!) that points to the importance of library research, is routinely and mistakenly attributed to the author Samuel Butler.
It’s not tabloids making this mistake. It’s not People magazine, or Psychology Today, or even the Times-Picayune. Readers may make a quick search of medical college websites from Brooklyn to Montana and find that Osler’s exhortations are given away with this false citation as introductions by medical scholastics on topics ranging from evidenced-based medicine to medical informatics.
This makes me very, very angry.
The souls who should be protecting the ideas of the most important western medical thinker of our times ignore the truth with abandon. It was Osler who got the students out of the lecture halls and into the wards! He painted the perfect portrait of medical decorum and intellect. But who can blame them?
When I was a student at The University of the South (and much more on this later!) studying under the tutelage of a white-haired and gowned savant who perpetually clenched a pipe in his teeth while lecturing, I read these words: “Truth in history is not necessarily what happened, but what men believed happened.” I learned that this concept was penned by someone named Professor William A. Dunning, quoted in a history book by John Samuel Ezell. I have never forgotten this lesson.
It also makes me very, very angry.
But I’m glad of that. What would happen if it didn’t make me angry? If it didn’t, then I wouldn’t write. I would, like the famous inventor in Thoreau’s Mosquito Coast, “go back to bed.”
Now it has come to pass that my family insists that I write something. They have cajoled, begged, and otherwise used well-placed guilt to stimulate this work. Thus, with anger as the fuel, I will begin a long piece. Much of it will probably be a rant. Some of it will be funny. It will all be humorous in the real sense of humor, and it will be true. Professor Dunning’s assertion might cause one to believe that, if everything is not outright fiction, then it is at least idiosyncratic fallacy. I refute him. Begone! Vade retro Satanas!
Here, then, is the truth. It is the truth of my family. But to find the truth about Sir William Osler, don’t bother looking anywhere other than the deposit of faith at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. It is perhaps only there that you can read Aequanimitas properly cited. Within, you will discover that among his other great legacies the doctor carefully, beautifully, and elegantly explains to young doctors how to keep their faces in neutral.
Henry G. Selby
Bluffton, South Carolina
September, 2007
Preface
The real reason time machines will never be invented is because there is no such thing as time. Mr. Paul Shaw taught me that in a ninth grade civics class at Southern Junior High School in Lexington, Kentucky. I don’t know why he pontificated about time in a civics class, I only know that he pointed at his watch and shouted, “Do know what time is? It’s this watch! That’s what time is!”
In one of Kurt Vonnegut’s books he observes that the world could do with a lot less love and a little more common decency.
Once as a teenager, after conferring with the rector of my church about a difficult situation, I proposed that we should pray about it. He said for me to go ahead and pray; he would instead think.
When passing a field of cows I can name the breeds: Holstein, Angus, Hereford, Brahmas, San Gertrudis. My mother taught me to identify them. We have never farmed.
I was paid fifty cents for memorizing the twenty-third psalm. I learned it by listening to Dinah Shore sing it on a 78 rpm recording. My father was big on having us memorize things he thought were important. I wasn’t paid to memorize the creation story of Genesis, but I can still mimic Charles Laughton’s voice booming out “Who told thee that thou wert naked?” That, too, came from a record played on the Magnavox.
It wouldn’t take me five minutes to produce a hundred more vignettes of how I was formed. You could do the same thing if you’d stop reading this and start remembering. If you do, you’ll intuitively know why my children can identify cattle breeds, recite the love chapter from Corinthians, and love each other very much. Everyone has a story to tell. They are all really good stories, too. Here’s mine.
In one of Kurt Vonnegut’s books he observes that the world could do with a lot less love and a little more common decency.
Once as a teenager, after conferring with the rector of my church about a difficult situation, I proposed that we should pray about it. He said for me to go ahead and pray; he would instead think.
When passing a field of cows I can name the breeds: Holstein, Angus, Hereford, Brahmas, San Gertrudis. My mother taught me to identify them. We have never farmed.
I was paid fifty cents for memorizing the twenty-third psalm. I learned it by listening to Dinah Shore sing it on a 78 rpm recording. My father was big on having us memorize things he thought were important. I wasn’t paid to memorize the creation story of Genesis, but I can still mimic Charles Laughton’s voice booming out “Who told thee that thou wert naked?” That, too, came from a record played on the Magnavox.
It wouldn’t take me five minutes to produce a hundred more vignettes of how I was formed. You could do the same thing if you’d stop reading this and start remembering. If you do, you’ll intuitively know why my children can identify cattle breeds, recite the love chapter from Corinthians, and love each other very much. Everyone has a story to tell. They are all really good stories, too. Here’s mine.
Chapter 1: Dramatis Personae
John Bayne Selby, a cavalry brat from either Cheyenne or Roswell (depending on the needs of the story involved), formed a duet with Jane Claire Dentry of Baltimore, got her with child, and went to Korea where he served the army honorably as the only doctor who could operate the newly invented artificial kidney. The child was named Bayne. Upon his return the trio set up housekeeping in a Quonset hut near the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. The climate being cold, and the parents young and vigorous, led to the production of another son, Henry, two and a half years later. For reasons lost to history, the quartet then moved to Lexington, Kentucky where Dr. Selby busily helped to found the Lexington Clinic. There they produced the third and final fruit of their loins, Rebecca, and the quintet was complete. The children were given nicknames of Buzz, Hank, and Beka.
I am Henry. My wife Cindy and I have three children. My older brother is Bayne. He and his wife Lynda have three children. Our younger sister is Rebecca. She lives with our parents on Sullivans Island, South Carolina. If she had married, she also would have three children. This is what we do. I know this because our mother and father each came from three-children families. It’s genetic.
Our eldest is Lillian, a driven and hard working graphic designer with a deep longing for beauty. Next is Caroline, a quixotic crusader, majoring in music, who will march into hell for a heavenly cause. Son Hank is only nine, but already showing the danger signs of art. His singing voice is celestial. My children are all artists of one sort or another, God forbid. I am surrounded by them and many others like them. They are moths to my flame: they come at me, surround me, choke the reality of workaday life from my every breath and extinguish the taper of pragmatism that my American schooling so carefully tried to dip in the tallow of capitalism.
My brother’s children are also artists. How can this be? Claire, the firstborn, is off to Europe again to study metallurgy so her jewelry designs will achieve Germanic precision. Isabelle floats between New York and Charleston museums on the winds of violin concertos that have been her sustenance since early childhood. John, at least, seems to eschew “fine” art by wailing away on an electric guitar, though he is not safely indemnified. He has a fine voice and plays a remarkable number of instruments.
Our wives may be at fault, for they are gifted both musically and with those tools commonly associated with artists such as charcoal, brushes and canvas. Cindy, however, has been a paralegal, medical assistant, and is a Stephen Minister. Lynda, likewise, is a nurse who among other billets, operated a treatment center and served on a vestry. I am a headmaster. Bayne is a medical doctor. These are down-to-earth occupations. What is the root of this art problem?
These are the major players, the principals, in my story. You will meet others. It is all true.
I am Henry. My wife Cindy and I have three children. My older brother is Bayne. He and his wife Lynda have three children. Our younger sister is Rebecca. She lives with our parents on Sullivans Island, South Carolina. If she had married, she also would have three children. This is what we do. I know this because our mother and father each came from three-children families. It’s genetic.
Our eldest is Lillian, a driven and hard working graphic designer with a deep longing for beauty. Next is Caroline, a quixotic crusader, majoring in music, who will march into hell for a heavenly cause. Son Hank is only nine, but already showing the danger signs of art. His singing voice is celestial. My children are all artists of one sort or another, God forbid. I am surrounded by them and many others like them. They are moths to my flame: they come at me, surround me, choke the reality of workaday life from my every breath and extinguish the taper of pragmatism that my American schooling so carefully tried to dip in the tallow of capitalism.
My brother’s children are also artists. How can this be? Claire, the firstborn, is off to Europe again to study metallurgy so her jewelry designs will achieve Germanic precision. Isabelle floats between New York and Charleston museums on the winds of violin concertos that have been her sustenance since early childhood. John, at least, seems to eschew “fine” art by wailing away on an electric guitar, though he is not safely indemnified. He has a fine voice and plays a remarkable number of instruments.
Our wives may be at fault, for they are gifted both musically and with those tools commonly associated with artists such as charcoal, brushes and canvas. Cindy, however, has been a paralegal, medical assistant, and is a Stephen Minister. Lynda, likewise, is a nurse who among other billets, operated a treatment center and served on a vestry. I am a headmaster. Bayne is a medical doctor. These are down-to-earth occupations. What is the root of this art problem?
These are the major players, the principals, in my story. You will meet others. It is all true.
Chapter 2: The Problem of Art
The four fundamental forces in our universe are, as every schoolboy knows, electromagnetism, gravity, weak nuclear force and strong nuclear force. You may, due to being a mere human, recognize them as blood, black bile, yellow bile, and phlegm (sanguine, melancholic, choleric, phlegmatic). These four forces may be superunified, of course. When this happens in string theory, physicists tell us that the strings can “sing”. Kepler knew this back in the seventeenth century (Harmony of the Spheres) and he was merely building on Pythagoras a thousand years before (Armonia).
I am content to call this superunification by these four letters: YHWH. You can call it Yahweh, or you can call it Jehovah, or it can (if you are an observant Jew) remain unspoken. I happen to know, due to my brief jaunt in a Sulpician seminary, that this tetragrammaton is the verb “to be” in ancient Hebrew. Studying Hebrew was the second most difficult course I ever took. The first was calculus. I never did understand how to “do” the calculus, but I love its inherent beauty.
That’s why it’s amazing that physicists – and not biologists! – seem to be able to unify all creation. For them there is no pesky division of science and religion, spirituality and measurement, or those hateful Hegelian dialectics. Have you ever met a melancholy physicist? No. They are all happy. The universe is their playground, and they are profoundly delighted to be here. All of my preschoolers are physicists. I watch them run and fall and climb and invent and laugh. When they do cry, a hug restores all order to the cosmos.
The problem with all of this, obviously, is art. Paula Hovey, an art major at The University of the South, had a nervous breakdown the night before her comprehensive exam. This school, usually called Sewanee, requires a four-year final exam of its majors. If you flunk it, you have six months to study and re-take it. If you flunk it a second time, well, there are plenty of good jobs out there in real estate I suppose.
Paula, the night before her comprehensive, realized that she didn’t know what art is. She could not define it. She began to cry and to repeat the question, “what is art?” several hundred times. I was more than a bit nervous. She spelled it slowly: A-R-T. She shouted it. She rearranged the letters to spell “tar” and “rat”. Much of this histrionic display helped me to achieve a similar mental state before my own English exam the following year. Paula passed the test, by the way.
English majors are artists of a sort. Some are critics, some are historians, some curators, and some practice the craft and actually produce it. I never rearranged the letters of “English” the night before my exam (“hgnesli?”), but I was indeed frightened. It took a week before I received my passing grade, during which time I briefly considered suicide. Jean Paul Sartre maintained that the only real question is that of suicide.
David Breslin, a young man I hired to be a coach while I was headmaster of Chesapeake Academy once observed that “suicide is not an option.” I like this statement. I have often repeated it to others. It is simple, concise, and rings true. Like physics equations that explain a universal theory of relativity, it has a faith dimension. Physicists like to look at their equations as faith statements. The expressions on their faces are very similar to visitors at the gallery studying a Gauguin.
Good doctors are artists, too. We used to refer to the medical arts instead of medical science. David Breslin is not a doctor; rather, he captained Ohio State’s lacrosse team to a national championship the year before I hired him. The creation of an interdependent group of athletes who form into a new thing seems to look like art, doesn’t it? It’s really not so very different from extemporaneous speaking or improvisational acting.
I have read the creation accounts of Genesis hundreds of times. So have you. But when Miss Stiles, my mean English teacher at Tates Creek Senior High showed me these lines, it changed everything:
Then God sat down
On the side of a hill where He could think;
By a deep, wide river He sat down;
With His head in His hands,
God thought and thought,
Till He thought, "I'll make me a man!"
Up from the bed of the river
God scooped the clay;
And by the bank of the river
He kneeled Him down;
And there the great God Almighty
Who lit the sun and fixed it in the sky,
Who flung the stars to the most far corner of the night,
Who rounded the earth in the middle of His hand;
This Great God,
Like a mammy bending over her baby,
Kneeled down in the dust
Toiling over a lump of clay
Till He shaped it in His own image;
Then into it He blew the breath of life,
And man became a living soul.
Amen. Amen.
James Weldon Johnson wrote these lines. It’s the latter half of a poem called “The Creation” that he wrote around 1927. He was a school principal. He also wrote “Lift Every Voice and Sing” that you can find in The Hymnal 1982. I can’t read the poem aloud because I start crying. Poetry does this to me. It’s my mother’s fault.
I am content to call this superunification by these four letters: YHWH. You can call it Yahweh, or you can call it Jehovah, or it can (if you are an observant Jew) remain unspoken. I happen to know, due to my brief jaunt in a Sulpician seminary, that this tetragrammaton is the verb “to be” in ancient Hebrew. Studying Hebrew was the second most difficult course I ever took. The first was calculus. I never did understand how to “do” the calculus, but I love its inherent beauty.
That’s why it’s amazing that physicists – and not biologists! – seem to be able to unify all creation. For them there is no pesky division of science and religion, spirituality and measurement, or those hateful Hegelian dialectics. Have you ever met a melancholy physicist? No. They are all happy. The universe is their playground, and they are profoundly delighted to be here. All of my preschoolers are physicists. I watch them run and fall and climb and invent and laugh. When they do cry, a hug restores all order to the cosmos.
The problem with all of this, obviously, is art. Paula Hovey, an art major at The University of the South, had a nervous breakdown the night before her comprehensive exam. This school, usually called Sewanee, requires a four-year final exam of its majors. If you flunk it, you have six months to study and re-take it. If you flunk it a second time, well, there are plenty of good jobs out there in real estate I suppose.
Paula, the night before her comprehensive, realized that she didn’t know what art is. She could not define it. She began to cry and to repeat the question, “what is art?” several hundred times. I was more than a bit nervous. She spelled it slowly: A-R-T. She shouted it. She rearranged the letters to spell “tar” and “rat”. Much of this histrionic display helped me to achieve a similar mental state before my own English exam the following year. Paula passed the test, by the way.
English majors are artists of a sort. Some are critics, some are historians, some curators, and some practice the craft and actually produce it. I never rearranged the letters of “English” the night before my exam (“hgnesli?”), but I was indeed frightened. It took a week before I received my passing grade, during which time I briefly considered suicide. Jean Paul Sartre maintained that the only real question is that of suicide.
David Breslin, a young man I hired to be a coach while I was headmaster of Chesapeake Academy once observed that “suicide is not an option.” I like this statement. I have often repeated it to others. It is simple, concise, and rings true. Like physics equations that explain a universal theory of relativity, it has a faith dimension. Physicists like to look at their equations as faith statements. The expressions on their faces are very similar to visitors at the gallery studying a Gauguin.
Good doctors are artists, too. We used to refer to the medical arts instead of medical science. David Breslin is not a doctor; rather, he captained Ohio State’s lacrosse team to a national championship the year before I hired him. The creation of an interdependent group of athletes who form into a new thing seems to look like art, doesn’t it? It’s really not so very different from extemporaneous speaking or improvisational acting.
I have read the creation accounts of Genesis hundreds of times. So have you. But when Miss Stiles, my mean English teacher at Tates Creek Senior High showed me these lines, it changed everything:
Then God sat down
On the side of a hill where He could think;
By a deep, wide river He sat down;
With His head in His hands,
God thought and thought,
Till He thought, "I'll make me a man!"
Up from the bed of the river
God scooped the clay;
And by the bank of the river
He kneeled Him down;
And there the great God Almighty
Who lit the sun and fixed it in the sky,
Who flung the stars to the most far corner of the night,
Who rounded the earth in the middle of His hand;
This Great God,
Like a mammy bending over her baby,
Kneeled down in the dust
Toiling over a lump of clay
Till He shaped it in His own image;
Then into it He blew the breath of life,
And man became a living soul.
Amen. Amen.
James Weldon Johnson wrote these lines. It’s the latter half of a poem called “The Creation” that he wrote around 1927. He was a school principal. He also wrote “Lift Every Voice and Sing” that you can find in The Hymnal 1982. I can’t read the poem aloud because I start crying. Poetry does this to me. It’s my mother’s fault.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
