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Swept up in turbulent waters, attacked with killer tomatoes

Oh no, Scott Regan is playing John Prine’s “Lake Marie” on “Open Tunings,” his morning radio show on WRUR-FM (88.5). That song always makes me cry.

“We were standing, standing by peaceful waters….”

Damn. Sniff.

So yeah, I’ve been on blog sabbatical for a while. Reading, listening to music, walking the dog. But I’ve had absolutely nothing to add to the public discourse over the last month or two. That shouting, antagonistic, barbaric yawp of people sliding into the abyss that inevitably claims all of us. The Etruscans, the Greeks, the Romans, the Manson Family…

These are times that make my brain hurt. But I did continue to scribble notes on scraps of paper. Which I now unload, here, as an unreliable document of the past couple of months.

My respect for COVID over the past two years has led to a dramatically reduced social calendar. The biggest negative? I’ve been watching more television. That Applebee’s commercial with the cowboy swinging his Levis-clad butt in my face was forcing me to re-think my pledge to not throw heavy objects at the TV screen. Thankfully, over the last week, that commercial seems to have receded into whatever marketing hell it came from.

Not incidentally, the best show I’ve discovered during the COVID TV era is a low-fi Canadian faux-dramedy, “Trailer Park Boys.” Anything that depicts humans as irredeemably stupid gets my Emmy Awards vote.

When I heard about it the next morning, I didn’t know what to make of Will Smith slapping Chris Rock at the Academy Awards. Judging by the high degree of attention it was receiving in the media, this was big, big news. And two days afterward, a sports gambling company piled on, reporting that geotagged Twitter data showed 41 states supported Rock and nine states were behind Smith.

I have thought long and hard about this. Emerging from the fog with thoughts such as: With Russia invading Ukraine, do Will Smith and Chris Rock even matter?

I just keep repeating to myself…

“Peaceful waters. Standing by peaceful waters.”

I read a review of the recent release of the final book of Simon Gray’s four-volume “The Complete Smoking Diaries.” For true completists, those books are, “The Smoking Diaries,” “The Year of the Jouncer,” “The Last Cigarette” and now “Coda.” From the reviews I’ve read, Gray’s memoir quartet sounds a lot like Marcel Proust’s seven-volume “In Search of Lost Time,” which we used to call “Remembrance of Things Past.” Here’s a review from The Guardian of Gray’s first book in the series, when it was first published in 2004:

It’s perfectly possible to take Simon Gray’s diaries for just what they seem to be: a grouchy-hearted, grimly comic rant against the world by a playwright in his mid-60s who finds himself neglected by the modern theatre, unable on pain of death to drink a drop of his former daily three bottles of champagne, and obliged to confront the ineluctable mortality of his friends and therefore of himself. ‘The Smoking Diaries’ is a lament for the sorrows of growing old, of finding oneself stranded in a place from which there is already no return.

Ineluctable. Or, inescapable, inevitable. As a writer in his mid-60s who finds himself neglected, I am a moth ineluctably drawn to this flame.

Here’s a cocktail napkin on which I’ve scribbled “Food Insecurity,” “Underserved” and a third word that’s been blurred out by a crescent of red wine from the bottom edge of a wine glass. This looks like it came out of a conversation about feel-good euphemisms. Food insecurity is when people are starving, which should not happen in a nation of rich people. Underserved is when minorities can’t have access to decent schools or health care. Which, again, should not happen in a nation of rich people.

On another scrap I find this:

“The great artist of tomorrow will go underground.”

– Marcel Duchamp

Duchamp died in 1968. Was he predicting any artists living today must rid themselves of the artificial propellant of social media? Or did he mean today’s great artists might as well pick out an unoccupied piece of land and dig themselves a shallow grave?

Of course, I write down everything this guy says:

“I think inside every song there are other songs. But I also think, inside your voice, there are other voices that you have yet to discover and that’s kind of why you are here.”

– Tom Waits

And inside every comment is a lie. And other lies that we have yet to discover. And that’s kind of why I am here. My more-recent notes grow increasingly dark. There’s a list of names that basically asks: These people are transparently lying, how do they get away with it?

It’s like dialogue from a political satire. Marjorie Taylor Greene denying she had called for martial law to overturn Trump’s election defeat, despite the presence of an email in which she irrefutably suggests the answer might be in declaring “Marshall Law.”

Or The New York Times reporting that, in a private meeting, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California warned his Republican colleagues that their inflammatory comments might get people hurt or killed, and he was going to call Trump and suggest he resign. McCarthy insisted that story was “totally false and wrong.” And then, oops, here come the audio tapes of McCarthy, proving the Times story is totally true and correct.

Political satire isn’t always funny. Politi-tag this Twitter data and we’ll see it’s largely conservatives backing a notion borrowed from “Fahrenheit 451.” They’re calling for book burning, including high school math books.

Something’s not adding up here. Who are these nimrods, how did they get into positions of power? It’s the media as well, and voices like Laura Ingraham, attacking President Biden’s proposal of student loan forgiveness. She tweeted, “My mom worked as a waitress until she was 73 to help pay for our college.” It apparently escapes the Fox News Harpie that Dear Old Mom working way past retirement age to pay off her kids’ college tuitions might be a sign that something’s wrong with our system of higher education.

And what about the act of throwing a tomato at a presidential candidate? Asked about comments he made in 2016 about that possibility, Trump, the man who would go on to be the leader of the free world, raised this horror in a court deposition released just this week: “You can get killed with those things.”

Attack of the killer tomatoes.

I just keep repeating to myself…

“Peaceful waters. Standing by peaceful waters.”

BE THE FIRST in your neighborhood to know when a new Critical Mass has been turned loose. Go to the “Subscribe” button on the web site jeffspevak.com for an email alert. You can contact me at jeffspevakwriter@gmail.com.

Rocking out with Black Sabbath Bernie, and Erskine Caldwell’s bag of turnips

The country appears to have united behind the Bernie Sanders meme. Bernie sitting in a folding chair, in his dazzling mittens, huddled against the cold, waiting for the start of the Biden inauguration.

Perhaps the pearl-clutching narrative of an American divide is overblown. In its first few days, we’ve watched the Biden presidency take on COVID-19, send relief to Americans whose lives have been upended by the loss of jobs, sign executive orders to protect the environment and reverse climate change, open pathways to racial inequality and transgender rights. Build a humane immigration policy. And, perhaps most importantly, level with the American people about the challenges we face, both in what he says and through a press secretary who seems to not be lying.

No one should have a problem with any of that. Biden’s merely building on four years of Trump accomplishments that include…

Oh, dear…

…a virus that has killed nearly a half-million Americans, cities on fire, white nationalists among  the “very fine people on both sides,” tear-gassing those who dare assert that Black Lives Matter, conspiring to overturn election results, embracing murderous dictators, urging crowds at political rallies to beat up protestors, ignoring science, responding to a hurricane wiping out much of Puerto Rico by tossing paper towels to people who had lost their homes, referring to the porn star that he had an affair with as “horseface,” holding the country hostage through the longest government shutdown in history, hiding his tax returns, mocking the disabled, ignoring domestic terrorists bringing their automatic rifles to state capitol buildings and threatening to kidnap and perhaps kill the governor of Michigan, urging a mob to ransack the United States capitol and hang the vice president. And, at our southern border, turning back people fleeing poverty and unstable governments, and sending them back to Guatemala. And keeping their kids locked in cages.

And lying repeatedly about all of this.

And on and on and on. It will only get worse as we learn more of what the most corrupt presidential administration in American history has been up to over the last four years. Thanks for trying to lighten things up a little, Bernie. But seeing you on the cover of a Black Sabbath album sets the right tone.

As honest, responsible adults, people who care about others, and who are still the majority here, what’s the secret to dealing with an America that has become one of those “shithole countries,” as Trump once so delicately characterized African nations?

Crazy. Prove me wrong, but it’s a Republican thing. Most recently, Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, whose many batshit beliefs include her tweet in 2018 that it was Jewish lasers from space that ignited the worst California wildfires in memory.

Bernie! She’s talking Jewish lasers!

Crazy. Again, prove me wrong, but it’s mostly Republicans who adhere to the QAnon conspiracy that Hillary Clinton leads a cult of baby-eating pedophiles.

No sane person can survive in such an environment. There are times when I have to come up for air. Make it a practice to tune out the news for a while. Sometimes for a day or two, sometimes an entire week. I’m just now emerging from such a period.

I’m not alone in this practice of self preservation. Here’s something I read in cnn.com:

During a crisis and isolation, many take an inventory of their lives and dare to be themselves, and engage in weird, creative, and non-conforming patterns,” said Judith Zackson, a clinical psychologist based in Greenwich, Connecticut, via email.

Some of her clients are more outspoken than they were pre-pandemic, Zackson said. They have experienced changes in personal style, weird sleeping patterns and hobbies, and even sillier humor.

Of course, she also hears from people annoyed by their partners’ stranger tendencies, which include apocalyptically hoarding food and supplies, and hobbies like collecting stones or walking their cat.

Collecting stones, she says.

I’ve been doing that since I was a little kid, when my Uncle Joe gave me what’s called “A Golden Guide.” Profusely illustrated pocket books for kids, about things like fossils, the stars and zoology. This one was called “Rocks and Minerals” – Golden Guides get right to the point. They tell a kid how to identify a meteorite, although I never got that lucky. Most of my time was spent on pages 110 through 113. The igneous rocks. Granite. And pages 133 through 139. The metamorphic rocks. Gneiss and schist.

I still have the book. And I have never stopped picking up rocks and stones. It’s those years of walking my dogs. Following them on paths through the woods. Turning Point Park near my house is the usual place. Abbie will be trotting about 10 or 15 yards ahead of me when I spot an intriguing rock. She goes right on by it, intent on checking out something dead behind that tree. But I pick up the rock. There’s a lot of marble in Turning Point Park.

This weekend I was re-organizing some of the book shelves when I can across that old Golden Guide to rocks and minerals. And there, among those dusty books, rocks. Lots of them, tucked away behind Hemingway and Bukowski. Even a fossil of some kind of segmented marine creature that I found in the gravel parking lot at Darien Lake Performing Arts Center.

So I sorted out all of those rocks, representing years of wandering with the dogs. And rocks I purchased as well. Seems crazy, buying rocks. But that’s how I got my trilobite, about the size of a pet mouse. And a couple of red garnets that came from a vein deep in Idaho. The guy who sold them to me said they’re half as old as the planet itself.

About a dozen rusty railroad tie-dating spikes were in the book case as well. Spikes I pulled from the ties on the tracks that pass through Turning Point. The spikes have the date stamped on the head, so railway workers know how long that particular tie has been in place.

Well, I guess they would know, if those dating spikes weren’t sitting on my book shelf.

Taking inventory, Zackson said, dare to be myself. The books. I started sorting through them as well. There are a lot of them, downstairs and upstairs. I guess if I can lay any claim to being a Renaissance Man, it’s in my reading material. Throughout the coronavirus pandemic, friends have been giving me books. Like they’re afraid I’ll get bored. I have a half-dozen going at the moment. I read whichever one is closest at hand. My Friend Sue gave me the Richard Ford novel “Independence Day.” Ford’s like me, a former sportswriter, so I guess there’s always hope a guy can move on to something serious. And there’s “The Wild Trees,” gifted by My Friend Michele, A fabulous narrative on the biology of California redwoods. I’ve learned things such as, when climbing a tree, any fall of more than 60 feet is not survivable.

And how do you feel about omelets? From Robert MacFarlane’s “Underland,” which I finished a few weeks ago, I learned that in Oregon’s Malheur National Forest there is a fungus, mostly just below the surface of the planet, that is 3.7 miles in diameter. And it’s not an array of mushrooms. it’s one single organism. One. Humongous. Fungus.

Erskine Caldwell.

I’d be done with the job of organizing that shelf if I wasn’t uncovering miracles that I didn’t even know I had. On Saturday I found a copy of “Three By Caldwell.” Three novels by Erskine Caldwell, all in one book. I must have bought it at a used book store, because it has $4.50 written on the flyleaf. I started reading the first book in the collection, “Tobacco Road.” And couldn’t put it down. More than 100 pages in, and the only thing these Depression-beaten, broken, hopeless Georgians had gotten around to doing was fight over a bag of turnips.

So that’s one thing that’s come out of this quarantine, and my need to duck out of reality for a few days. Who knew a man could write 100 pages about a bag of turnips? But damn if Erskine Caldwell didn’t do it, and do it well.

BE THE FIRST in your neighborhood to know when a new Critical Mass has been turned loose. Go to the “Subscribe” button on the web site jeffspevak.com for an email alert. You can contact me at jeffspevakwriter@gmail.com.

Time enough at last

Burgess Meredith, and the isolation of a good library.

As far as I was concerned, Major League Baseball’s Opening Day got off to a good start this week. The Cleveland Indians beat the Detroit Tigers, 9-0.

Waitaminute… the Tigers beat the Indians, 9-1.

No, the Indians beat the Tigers, 15-4.

Fantasy baseball. If there’s no sports news, we can just make it up.

Is anything more media-irrelevant in these coronavirus days than the sports pages? On Saturday morning, I browsed through The New York Times sports section. The star player of the Oregon Ducks, Sabrina Ionescu, has been denied her opportunity to compete for the NCAA Women’s basketball championship, because the season’s been canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic. Sports announcers have gone to Facebook to post factious commentaries on their dogs eating dinner. A few dozen guys, connected through basketball, celebrated a birthday together; four have since tested positive for coronavirus, two others are dead of it. And the NFL draft of college players is still on for next month, so brace yourself for four weeks of sportswriters turning to the always-useless exercise of conducting mock drafts.

Disappointment. Dogs eating dinner. Death. The NFL draft. And mock drafts would be happening anyway, coronavirus or not.

We all have our ways of coping. Who am I to point a finger? For every chapter of For Whom the Bell Tolls that I will read today, I will just as likely sit through 90 minutes of They Saved Hitler’s Brain.

It did not help that just his morning, some web-site links arrived in the email, sent by My Friend Barbara. “For when you don’t want to read the news… or you run out of books, whichever comes first.”

The Voynich Manuscript.

She provided a link to The Internet Archive. Its goal is “universal access to all knowledge.” Digitized collections of websites, music, millions of books. Assembled by volunteers. It’s called Folkscanomy, “a system of classification derived from the practice and method of collaboratively creating and managing tags to annotate and categorize content.”

Once I had logged in, I found all of this… amazing stuff. A link to a site that shows every page of The Voynich Manuscript, a mysterious 15thcentury book written in an as-yet unbroken code, the pages filled with drawings of obscure herbs and cosmological references, and women taking baths.

Music, some of it relevant, as musicians post videos of their coronavirtual concerts. Hip-hop mix tapes. Religious sermons. Medieval Alien Jazz by Eat Rust, an atonal collection of electronic psychedelia with titles such as “Gather The Inner Organs Into A Neat Pile – It’s A Sign That You’re Still Alive.” And way more Grateful Dead concerts than I’ll ever need.

And there is The National Emergency Library, created especially for readers in our current pandemic. Here, I found the 1925 edition of Certain Mounds and Village Sites in Ohio, an exploration of some of the Native American burial mounds in the southeastern region of the state; I’ve visited a few of them. Here’s Orwell’s always relevant Nineteen Eighty-Four, not far from Rachel Carson’s prescient Silent Spring, 396 books and magazines about Dr. Who, and a photo magazine called The New Nude.

Anatole France.

Here’s a book I never would have known of, were it not for me being granted time enough at last: From 1925, Anatole France: The Man and His Work. The digital listing allows me to read the forward on the long-dead French writer:

“Had I been Nature,” said Anatole France, “I should have made men and women not to resemble the great apes, as they do, but on the model of the insects which, after a lifetime of caterpillars, change into butterflies, and for the brief final term of their existence have no thought but to love and be lovely.”

This morning has shed its skin and evolved into that classic episode of The Twilight Zone, “Time Enough at Last,” where the book-loving Burgess Meredith is the only survivor of a nuclear holocaust. He wanders up the steps of a public library, and finds books and books and books. Then stumbles and breaks his eyeglasses. “That’s not fair,” he wails. “That’s not fair at all. There was time now. There was – was all the time I needed…! It’s not fair! It’s not fair!”

Indeed. Under Feature Films, sub-head Sci-Fi / Horror…

Click …

Oh no. Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women. Zontar the Thing From Venus. Werewolf in a Girls Dormitory. Teenagers From Outer Space. Curse of the Swamp Creature. Roger Corman’s Dementia 13. The 1962 low-budget cult classic Carnival of Souls, which overcomes the zombie acing of its cast with eerie sets and foreboding organ music.

All this, and time enough at last!

BE THE FIRST in your neighborhood to know when a new Critical Mass has been turned loose. Go to the “Subscribe” button on the web site jeffspevak.com for an email alert. You can contact me at jeffspevakwriter@gmail.com.

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