Category Archives: Nostalgia reviews

On RABBIT – and “60 is the new 30″ – (Part I)

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I recently got a copy of A Sequel, “Rabbit Remembered.”

Which is another way of saying that Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom is dead. (Heck, I didn’t even know he was sick.) I first met Harry back in 1971, when I took a junior-college class in American literature. One of the books was Rabbit, Run, and it made a deep impression.

More Rabbit novels followed – one at the end of each decade – and I read them all. (One benefit was seeing how others got through the 1960s, interpreted at right. Also the 1970s and 1980s.) Then came Rabbit Remembered, the novella by John Updike published in 2000. That novella marked an end of an era – five books on Rabbit Angstrom. (Wikipedia.)

(But see also Still Wild About Harry: “Another decade has come and gone and here[‘s] the latest installment in the [‘Rabbit’] saga.” The reviewer added that one hesitates to declare it the final installment, then gave a pithy synopsis of the whole series.)

The saga began in 1960 with Rabbit, Run, the only one of the five to be made a movie, as seen in the poster at the top of the page. (It’s also very hard to find a copy. See ‘Rabbit,’ lost.)

As noted, a new Rabbit novel came at the end of each new decade, and so each became a time capsule, based on the density of Updike‘s writing. (His attention to detail.) Just to review, a time capsule is a “historic cache of goods or information, usually intended as a method of communication with future people,” and here’s what one obit said:

The detail of his writing was so rich that it inspired two schools of thought on Mr. Updike’s fiction: those who responded to his descriptive prose as to a kind of poetry, a sensuous engagement with the world, and those who argued that it was more style than content

See John Updike, Lyrical Writer of the Middle-Class, Dies at 76. But in this case, those “future people” include us aging Baby-boomers, as we look back and wonder how the heck we survived relatively intact. (Considering all the garbage we went through.)

The original Rabbit Run showed “three months in the life of a 26-year-old former high school basketball player named Harry ‘Rabbit’ Angstrom, and his attempts to escape the constraints of his life.” (Wikipedia.) But then escaping constraint was pretty much what the ’60s were about. (The ’70s – at left – were a whole ‘nuther story…)

We’ll get back to that, but first consider what the same obit said of Updike (who died in 2009):

His best-known protagonist, Harry Rabbit Angstrom, first appears as a former high-school basketball star trapped in a loveless marriage and a sales job he hates. Through the four novels whose titles bear his nickname — “Rabbit, Run,” “Rabbit Redux,” “Rabbit Is Rich” and “Rabbit at Rest” — the author traces the funny, restless and questing life of this middle-American against the background of the last half-century’s major events.

Which is another way of saying that the Rabbit novels are a great way to remember the major events of our formative years, from 1960 to 1999 – and then on to a New Millennium.

Again, in Rabbit Run Harry is a 26-year-old has-been whose life peaked in high school. (He was a star basketball player and quintessential BMOC.) Then one day at age 26 – trying to escape the “constraints of life” – he leaves his pregnant wife and infant son Nelson. He first plans to drive south to Florida – where he eventually gets, in a sequel – but ends up bedding and moving in with Ruth Byers, a woman with a shady past. (He gets her pregnant, and their daughter Annabelle ends up finally meeting her brother in Rabbit Remembered.)

In the midst of all this drama, Harry’s wife Janice accidentally drowns their new baby daughter, Rebecca. Also, Harry puts the move on the Lucy Eccles, wife of the Episcopal priest trying to get him to “do the right thing.” (It would have been nice to find out how the Eccles’ turned out – after all those years – and especially Lucy, whose “rump” Harry found so pleasant to pat…)

In Rabbit Redux, Harry gets a bit of comeuppance. While he couldn’t keep his hands off Janice in the first novel, here she’s the one at her sexual peak. It’s Harry who falls short in that department. So Janice runs off to live with her lover, Charlie Stavros. (Charlie later ends up as Harry’s only real friend – and fellow car-salesman at Springer Motors – in a sequel.)

Then Harry gets finagled into having a runaway named Jill – and her black lover Skeeter – move in with him and Nelson. But all this is set against the rich back drop of the summer of 1969, and Neal Armstrong’s setting foot on the moon.

There’s more on that in Part II. Meanwhile, in Rabbit is Rich, “Harry has reached a paunchy middle-age without relocating from Brewer, Pennsylvania, the poor, fictional city of his birth.” (Actually, Reading, PA.) The book was published in 1981, on the cusp of the decade that led to the end of the Berlin Wall… And Rabbit is indeed rich, thanks to Janice. (She inherited her dad’s Toyota dealership.) But he’s also restless. He covets the young wife of his golfing partner, while the wife of his former high-school teammate – Ronnie Harrison – has the hots for him.

Incidentally, Ronnie and Janice end up married in Rabbit Remembered. Nelson is living with them too, in the old house Janice grew up in. That’s until Ronnie calls Annabelle – visiting for Thanksgiving – “the bastard child of a whore and a bum.” (Referring to Ruth and Harry. That dramatic turn of events leads to the novella’s denouement… Also incidentally, Ronnie too knew Ruth in the Biblical sense back in the original, Rabbit Run. (Which may explain his hostility.)

For the rest of the story, see On RABBIT – and “60 is the new 30″ – (Part II).

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The original post included an upper image of a movie poster, courtesy of movieposter.com/poster … Rabbit_Run.html. See also Rabbit, Run (film) – Wikipedia, and Rabbit, Run – Wikipedia. Note also ‘Rabbit,’ lost – Reading Eagle, which said “finding a copy of Reading’s most famous feature-length film is just as hard as obtaining an interview with the novel’s elusive author.”

But for some reason this “platform for publishing” sometimes substitutes an actual image with a block stating – for example “image may contain sky, outdoor, nature,” which does me no good and is quite aggravating. When that happens I usually delete the useless “info box,” and note – as here – what used to be there. Like my addendum to the first note-graf, “(And you might want to check Symbolic Rabbit Meanings…)” And for more on the platform, see WordPress.com – Wikipedia.

I continued with notes on the rating system for such movies – and posters:

Re: the rating system. See Motion Picture Association of America film rating system: “The ratings used from 1968 to 1970 were: Rated G: General audiences, Rated M: Mature audiences – parental guidance advised, Rated R: Restricted – admission limited to persons older than 16, unless accompanied by parent or adult guardian, and Rated X: No one younger than 16 admitted.” In 1970 the ages for “R” and “X” were raised from 16 to 17, but regardless, the system “has had a number of high-profile critics. Film critic Roger Ebert argued that the system places too much emphasis on sex, while allowing the portrayal of massive amounts of gruesome violence. The uneven emphasis on sex versus violence is echoed by other critics, including David Ansen, as well as many filmmakers…”

Other sources used in writing this post included John Updike Facts, information, pictures | Encyclopedia.com, The 100 best novels: No 88 – Rabbit Redux by John Updike, In Reading, Pa., Memories and Monuments of Updike, and Rabbit at Rest – The New York Times.

The 1960’s poster-image is courtesy of www.cecil.ebranch.info/blog/?tag=1960s-series. See also Americans Have Changed in a Big Way Since the 1960s, for a different spin on today’s theme…

The 1970s poster-image is courtesy of www.retrowaste.com.

The lower (1980’s Berlin-wall) image is courtesy of 1980s – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The caption: “The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 marked the beginning of German reunification.”

On RABBIT – and “60 is the new 30” – (Part II)

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The last issue of the Saturday Evening Post, published on February 8, 1969…

Welcome back to the “Georgia Wasp…”

We were remembering the last decades of the 20 century, as memorialized by and through John Updike’s series of five “Rabbit” novels. (Or four novels and a novella…)

I’d noted that Janice Angstrom – by now Harry’s widow – ended up married to Ronnie Harrison in Rabbit Remembered, the last of the series. (Thelma Harrison – Ronnie’s wife – had also died, and was one of the women with whom Harry had “an affair.”) And not to put too fine a point on it, Harry and Ronnie had known – and hated – each other since high school, when they were teammates on the basketball squad. (They also “shared” Ruth Byers, at different times.)

So now that your up to speed – he wrote sarcastically – let’s get back to the Rabbit is Rich time frame. In mid-winter 1979 the Angstroms jet off to Jamaica, where they end up in an initial wife swap with two other couples. (That’s when Harry first learns that Ronnie’s wife Thelma has the hots for him.) But then they have to go back home before the second swap, where Harry would have “known” the wife he really wanted (Cindy Murkett). Son Nelson is causing no end of problems at the dealership, including smashing up two trade-in convertibles.

The next sequel, Rabbit at Rest, starts with Harry and Janice spending the winter of 1988-89 at their condo in Florida. They leave Nelson in charge of the dealership, which turns out to be a mistake. (He’s hooked on cocaine, which leads Toyota to “pull out,” Freudian slip intended.)

Other incidents include Harry having a heart attack – based on his crappy diet – and having a one-night stand with Nelson’s wife Pru while he recuperates. (Not to mention brief appearances by Annabelle, Harry’s daughter, who’s become a nurse’s aide.)

“Janice’s anger over this betrayal prompts Harry to escape to Florida.” (Wikipedia.) Which leads to one inescapable conclusion: Harry was a bit of a sleazeball, albeit loveable to some.

And finally came Rabbit Remembered, set in late 1999. (On the eve of the New Millennium noted above. ) Harry has died – of another heart attack – while living alone in the Florida condo he “ran” to at the end of Rabbit at Rest. Nelson is still living with his mother, and her new husband Ronnie Harrison, Harry’s old nemesis ever since high school. Nelson’s wife Pru has taken their two children Judy and Roy back to Akron Ohio. Then Annabelle shows up at Janice’s door; her mother Ruth has just died as well.

Aside from Ronnie calling Annabelle “the bastard child of a whore and a bum” at Thanksgiving, the saga includes a tale of childhood sexual abuse, and one of Nelson’s clients committing suicide. (After his bout with cocaine, Nelson became a certified mental-health counselor, thanks in part to a course of study at the “Hubert F. Farnsworth Community College.” Farnsworth was the surname of the same “Skeeter” who’d lived with Harry, Nelson and Jill in the summer of 1969. Skeeter later died in shootout with Philadelphia police.)

To cut to the chase, the final book ends with an uncharacteristic – for Updike – note of hope.

In the rush to make the Y2K celebration, Nelson drives recklessly through an intersection – the stoplights have all gone out – and faces death in the form of a “cocky brat in a baseball cap.” The cocky brat drives an SUV and goes out of turn at a four-way stop. Nelson – with decades of “wrongs, hurts, unjust deaths press[ing] behind his eyes” – faces death and comes out unscathed. (As Winston Churchill – seen at right – said, “There is nothing more exhilarating than to be shot at with no result.“) This act of bravery magically rekindles Pru’s love; “Oh honey, that was great…” Then too, riding in the back seat are Annabelle and Nelson’s childhood friend – and part-time nemesis – Billy Fosnacht. In the end these lost souls start “seeing each other.”

As noted, this happy ending was uncharacteristic of Updike, but aside from that the last novella was enjoyable. And as was characteristic of Updike’s writing, the detail is so thick that I found myself skipping much of it to get to the action. As Charles Portis might say, Updike’s writing lulls you into a sense of woolgathering, and then he socks it to you with an unexpected twist. The result was that I went through Rabbit Remembered the first time quickly, from a sense of impatience more than anything. But now I’ve gone back and started re-reading it, to get the full flavor of the aforementioned Updike attention to detail.

More than that, I pulled out my worn and battered copy of Rabbit Redux, now some 40 years old itself. (I bought the 1971 “Alfred A. Knopf” edition four or five years after it was first published.) And re-reading Rabbit Redux brought back some points I’d forgotten.

For example, on page 9 there’s a bit of foreshadowing, one of Updike’s lesser-known fortes.

It’s the summer of 1969. Harry and his father Earl have gotten off work “from the little printing plant at four sharp.” They have a drink at a neighborhood bar, before taking separate buses home, in opposite directions. Earl asks his son to visit “some evening before the weekend.” (Mary Angstrom “has had Parkinson’s Disease for years now.”) Harry responds:

“I don’t like to leave the kid alone in the house. In fact I better be getting back there now just in case.” In case it’s burned down. In case a madman has moved in.

Which is of course just what happens later in the book. A madman – in the form of “Skeeter,” later identified by the Brewer Vat as Hubert Farnsworth – does in fact move in with Harry. He does so at the invitation of Jill, a runaway from Connecticut. She in turn dies in the fire set by neighbors repelled by the “goings on” in the house, after Janice had moved in with Charlie…

But a more personal tidbit comes a bit later, when father and son are settling the bar bill. Earl Angstrom had a Schlitz beer, and tells his son, “Here’s my forty cents. Plus a dime for a tip.”

“Are you kidding me?”

Which is being interpreted: “Do you mean to say there once was a time when you could go into a bar, pay 40 cents for a beer and leave a dime for the tip? And not get thrown out or insulted?”

The answer? Rabbit Redux reminds us that, “Yes, Virginia, there was such a time.”

But the really interesting tidbit – so far – turns on Harry’s mother turning 65. Updike wrote of Earl Angstrom that he “looks merely old” once outside the bar, “liverish scoops below his eyes, broken veins along the sides of his nose.” When Harry asks about their finances Earl responds, “Believe it or not there’s some advantages to living so long in this day and age. This Sunday she’s going to be sixty-five and come under Medicare.”

On Sunday Harry goes to the house with Nelson. (Janice is at Charlie’s.) His mother greets him:

“I’m sixty-five,” she says, groping for phrases, so that her sentences end in the middle. “When I was twenty. I told my boyfriend I wanted to be shot. When I was thirty…” “You told Pop this?” “Not your dad. Another. I didn’t meet your dad til later. This other one, I’m glad. He’s not here to see me now.”

St Pete Florida Vintage Postcard So notwithstanding the fact that Mary has Parkinson’s, Updike’s overall image of 65-year-olds in 1969 is of people who really are over the hill. (“Living so long in this day and age?” Really?) Or as they used to say of St. Petersburg, they were in “God’s Waiting Room” (shown at left):

St. Pete became a mecca for retired people. They flocked to the sunshine and lived in the many residential hotels in the downtown area. The symbol of St. Pete became old people sitting on the many green benches that dotted the sidewalks of the city.

But just like 40-cent beer you could buy in 1969 (plus a dime for the tip), those days are long gone. See for example “60 is the new 30,” and also “Why 60 Is The New 30.” The latter post noted that the “55-64 age group has shown the largest increase in entrepreneurial ventures, now accounting for more than 20 percent of all start-ups.” (Thus literally “starting over when our grandparents would be strolling around golf communities in Florida.”)

I should note that there is some debate on whether 60 is the new 30, or the new 40. See Is 60 the New 40? – which noted that what elderly “meant to the Greatest Generation doesn’t hold for their offspring, the baby boomers.” There’s also 60, Not 50, Is The New Middle Age – Huffington Post, and New research shows 60 is the new 40 – KING5:

Increasingly, people over 60 feel more like 40, and now they have the science to back them up… The new research argues that since life expectancy continues to rise, age 60 should not be considered old. It’s more “middle age,” because for many, there’s a lot of living left to do after age 60, even embarking on second or third careers.

Or as you might say of the Christie Brinkley image below: “Now that’s turning 60!”

A good argument for “60 is the new 30…”

The upper image is courtesy of blog.modernmechanix.com/issue/?pubname=SaturdayEveningPost.

The Churchill image is courtesy of Winston Churchill – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

The Armstrong-on-the-moon photo is courtesy of 1969 – Wikipedia.

The lower image is courtesy of People magazine, www.people.com/people/article/0,,20780764,00.html.

“Great politicians sell hope”

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“Great politicians sell hope.”

June 12, 2015 – I heard that quote a few days ago, listening to a “book on CD” by Chris Matthews. And when I first heard it I thought, “What rock have you been living under?“

But then Chris went on to cite examples from American history, in his book, Life’s a Campaign.

He wrote that looking back, our best presidents – including JFK and Ronald Reagan – were able to “sell themselves.” They were able to sell themselves by giving Americans a sense of hope for the future. That led to a thought: “Maybe that’s what this blog should be about…“

But then I had another thought: “He could be right, but what happened?“

What happened to those politicos selling hope?

But let’s get back to how I happened to be listening to Chris Matthews’ book-on-CD in the first place.

It all started back in December 2014, when I attended a funeral back home in Florida. The funeral was for my step-mother, who’d married my father back in January 1986. (After my mother died the year before; it was the second time around for both of them.)

At the reception after the service – inside the parish hall – I saw a table of used books for sale. I found one that piqued my interest, The Presidents Club: Inside the World’s Most Exclusive Fraternity. I’ve been meaning to review it ever since I started this blog. (In March 2015.)

But one thing I’ve learned during these busy days of retirement: It’s a whole lot easier to listen to a book on CD – driving around town – than it is to actually read it. And that’s why I found it far easier to review Life’s a Campaign than The Presidents Club.

Again, that book-on-CD was Chris Matthew’s Life’s a Campaign “What Politics Has Taught Me about Friendship, Rivalry, Reputation, and Success.” (The quote on “great politicians” is from Disc 2, Track 6.) And while by now I’ve listened to most of Life’s a Campaign, I’ve only managed to read portions of The Presidents Club.

But the really strange things is – suffice it to say – that both books have given me an inkling of a sense of hope for the future. (For example, one thing The Presidents Club pointed out was that a funeral – and especially the funeral of former president – really puts things in perspective.)

Put another way, The Presidents Club gave me a sense that – generally speaking – the men who occupied the White House have been – overall – decent, honorable and capable. Then too, Life’s a Campaign gave me a sense that maybe the same applies to politicians in general. (Gasp!)

But then came a third thought: Maybe today’s politicians seem especially nasty because many voters they’re trying to woo are just that way. Maybe today’s politicians are simply a reflection of the nastiness that seems to have taken hold of a large part of our population.

On that note, see the Wikipedia article on dichotomy. That article included this paragraph, about two-thirds of the way down under “Usage and examples:”

C. P. Snow believes that Western society has become an argument culture (The Two Cultures). In The Argument Culture (1998), Deborah Tannen suggests that the dialogue of Western culture is characterized by a warlike atmosphere in which the winning side has truth (like a trophy). Such a dialogue virtually ignores the middle alternatives.

(Emphasis added.) In turn, if that is true, then we swing voters need to figure out what a politician really stands for, beyond those nasty things he has to say to get elected.

Take George Wallace… Please! Though he’s widely known as one of the most race-baiting politicians in American history, his “final term as Governor (1983–1987) saw a record number of black Alabamians appointed to government positions.” See Did George Wallace repent his racism? | Yahoo Answers, and The Redemption of George Wallace.

The gist of the Wallace story is that he changed his tune after his attempted assassination in 1972. But there are other examples of politicians using shady tactics during an election campaign, then going on to serve honorably. Think “George Bush the Elder” and his Willie Horton campaign in the 1988 election. (Though in hindsight Bush I comes to us now as a &^%$ genius!)

Then there’s the other side of the story. Take Tip O’Neill and Ronald Reagan. (Reviewing another Chris Matthews book.) Or for that matter Ronald Reagan and Ted Kennedy.

Even though the two men were politic arch-enemies, Kennedy admired the fact that Reagan “knew how to manipulate symbols for his causes yet could sup with his enemies:”

He’s absolutely professional. When the sun goes down, the battles of the day are really gone. He gave the Robert Kennedy Medal, which President Carter refused to do… He’s very sure of himself, and I think that people sense that he’s comfortable with himself… He had a philosophy and he’s fought for it. There’s a consistency and continuity at a time when many others are flopping back and forth. And that’s an important and instructive lesson for politicians, that people admire that.

(Bronner, 104) Which brings us back to Harry Golden and his Carolina Israelite. See also Great but Forgotten: “If Golden were writing today, The Carolina Israelite would be done as a blog.”

Golden – who inspired this blog – wrote from 1942 to 1968. Those years included McCarthyism, Vietnam War protests, and the Civil Rights Movement. Those years featured violence and political rhetoric of a harshness equal to or greater than that of today. Yet throughout it all, Golden kept a sense of hope and a sense of humor. (As in his satirical “Vertical Negro Plan,” which involved “removing the chairs from any to-be-integrated building, since Southern Whites didn’t mind standing with Blacks, only sitting with them.”)

Even the title of his best-selling Only in America conveyed a sense of hope and wonder:

The most outstanding ingredients of [Golden’s] personality are a built-in independent way of thinking, an infallible nose for sham and prejudice on any level (which he immediately exposes, lightly but decisively), a special Golden brand of wit and whimsy, and a love of people and learning… “It could happen only in America,” is his most apt comment.

Carl Sandburg wrote in his introduction to the 1959 edition that “whatever is human interests Harry Golden. Honest men, crooks, knuckleheads…” He added that Golden was the perfect antidote for “too much of conformity and complacency, particularly among the young.” (OIA, xv-xvi. Also on that note see Seinfeld takes on political correctness on college campuses.)

Sandurg further noted that it must have been someone like Golden who was “in the mind of the Yankee, Ralph Waldo Emerson, who wrote: ‘Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist.'”

Golden himself said he drew “heavily on history, literature, philosophy,” in addition to “stories of the Lower East Side of New York where I was born.” And he didn’t present a simplistic Pollyanna view of history, either his own or as it happened before his eyes. Aside from those turbulent times he lived in, Golden went through five years in prison on an “embezzlement rap” – wire fraud. Yet through it all he maintained a sense of hope and humor: “As I continue to write of the passing parade, I am as happy as a mouse in a cookie jar.” (OIA, xx.)

All of which brings us back to the old saying noted in the Peanuts cartoon above, that in “bad times or hopelessness, it is more worthwhile to do some good, however small, in response than to complain about the situation.” See also Better to light a single candle. And that great bloggers – like great politicians – should work harder on “selling hope.”

That’s what this blog will try to do. Harry Golden, “The torch has passed…”

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The “stupid darkness” cartoon is courtesy of You Stupid Darkness! | Kurtis Scaletta’s Site, which in turn links to comics.com/peanuts, “one of the most amazing but little-known Internet resources.” See also lightasinglecandle.wordpress.com, and The 5 Greatest (newspaper) Comic Strips Of All Time.

The Matthews image is courtesy of Chris Matthews – Wikipedia. For more on the audio version of his book, see Chris Matthews Audio & Video – LearnOutLoud.com, and/or Life’s a Campaign.

Re: Funerals and “perspective.” See Reminders death provides about what’s really important in life.

Re: “argument culture.” The full title of Deborah Tannen‘s book is The Argument Culture: Stopping America’s War of Words. Tannen wrote an earlier book, You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation (1990). According to Amazon, in that earlier book “Tannen showed why talking to someone of the opposite sex can be like talking to someone from another world.”

The George Wallace picture is courtesy What George Wallace Taught Me About Forgiveness | HuffPost. Written by “Trudy Bourgeois, Contributor,” the black lady standing over Wallace’s left shoulder in the picture. The gist of her article was about the need to forgive in order to move forward. As to the claim that Wallace “recanted his racist views and asked forgiveness from African-Americans,” Bourgeois said she believed he was sincere. “If you can forgive, then you will be able to avoid creating a worldview that is rooted in stereotypes.” See also The American Experience | George Wallace, a story about Wallace’s change of heart (and on “Wallace and his circle”):

In March, 1965, a violent confrontation between Alabama state troopers and peaceful civil rights marchers horrified the nation. The troops that beat and tear-gassed the demonstrators were under orders from Governor George Wallace… Thirty years later, George Wallace would sit next to the podium at a ceremony commemorating the Selma-to-Montgomery civil rights march, holding the hand of the president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

Re: “Take George Wallace… Please!” This refers to a classic Henny Youngman joke. Youngman (1906-1998) was known for his one-liners, and his best-known was ‘Take my wife… please.’” Henny Youngman – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. For more on the technique illustrated, see below.

Re: Willie Horton. See Willie Horton – Top 10 Campaign Ads – TIME and The legacy of the Willie Horton ad lives on, 25 years later. As to the legacy of that ad, the latter article noted a comment by activist Al Sharpton, “The bad news for our politics has been that the tactics of our Willie Horton ad live on.”

Re: Ted Kennedy on Ronald Reagan. See Battle for Justice: How the [Robert] Bork Nomination Shook America, by Ethan Bronner, Anchor Book edition (1989), at page 104. The Reagan-Kennedy image is courtesy of www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/08/senator_ted_kennedy.

Re: “the torch has passed.” See The elements of styling a great inaugural address: , noting that in 1961, President Kennedy gave “what is considered to be one of the greatest inaugural addresses.”

The lower image is courtesy of www.notable-quotes.com/h/hope_quotes_ii.

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Re: More on the Henny Youngman joke. The joke relied on the principle of dislocation, used in comedy as well as magic and the martial arts. See, Shinogi – Budotheory.ca, which noted three types of dislocation: positional, temporal, and functional. And a magician is also known as an illusionist. See the Wikipedia article, Magic (illusion) – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, and also Alex Davies – Dislocation. Finally, see The Internet Classics Archive | The Art of War by Sun Tzu, which noted the saying of Sun Tzu (q.v.), the ancient Chinese philosopher who said, “The fundamental principle of the Art of War is deception,” or in other words, dislocating your opponent.

So anyway, in the classic one-liner – told literally “a century ago” – the audience was led to expect Youngman to say “for example” when he began; as in, “Take my wife… for example.” But instead of saying “for example,” Youngman dislocated his audience by saying, “Take my wife… Please!”

See also On praying in public.

On canoeing 12 miles offshore

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May 23. 2015 – This post is on what you might call a pilgrimage that happened last November, 2014.

That’s when my brother and I did an 8-day canoe trip “12 miles offshore.” We started out on Lake Ponchartrain, then paddled through the Rigolets and on out into the Gulf of Mexico. We paddled 12 miles out into the Gulf, then “primitive camped” at night, on places like Half-moon Island and Ship Island. (And from time to time an occasional salt marsh.)

Which naturally brings up the question, Why? Why would two old geezers – 63 and 69 respectively – paddle so far out, into the realm of sharks and drownings?

For one answer we can turn to John Steinbeck. He began Part Two of Travels with Charley by noting that most men his age get told, “slow down.” And so they “pack their lives in cotton wool, smother their impulses, hood their passions, and gradually retire from their manhood.” (They “trade their violence for a small increase in life span.”) But that wasn’t his way:

I did not want to surrender fierceness for a small gain in yardage… If this projected journey should prove too much then it was time to go anyway. I see too many men delay their exits with a sickly, slow reluctance to leave the stage. It’s bad theater as well as bad living.

That brings up what Robert Louis Stevenson said – in a similar vein – in his Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes. (See also my other blog, to wit: On donkey travel – and sluts.)

Briefly, my feelings about such a challenge – eight days canoeing 12 miles offshore – are pretty much reflected in what Stevenson said in Travels with a Donkey, and what Steinbeck said in Travels with Charley. (See Wikipedia.)

Stevenson wrote of his “12-day, 120-mile solo hiking journey through the sparsely populated and impoverished areas of the Cévennes mountains in south-central France in 1878.” The book was considered a pioneering “classic of outdoor literature,” and is said to have been the basis for Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley.

Early on in his Travels, Stevenson found himself groping in the dark for a campsite. (A site “black as a pit.”) He ate a crude dinner – a “tin of bologna” and some cake, washed down with brandy – then settled in for the night. “The wind among the trees was my lullaby.”

He woke in the morning “surprised to find how easy and pleasant it had been,” sleeping in the open, “even in this tempestuous weather.” He then waxed poetic:

I had been after an adventure all my life, a pure dispassionate adventure, such as befell early and heroic voyagers; and thus to be found by morning in a random nook in Gevaudan – not knowing north from south, as strange to my surroundings as the first man upon the earth…

(Pages 50-56, “Upper Gevaudan.”) Stevenson seemed to be saying he’d experienced something that less-adventurous people – then and now – have no idea they’re missing. That is, something of the feelings that “the explorers back in the olden days had.” (Those “early and heroic voyagers…”) On page 64 he expanded on that thought:

Alas, as we get up in life, and are more preoccupied with our affairs, even a holiday is a thing that must be worked for. To hold a pack upon a pack-saddle against a gale out of the freezing north is no high industry, but it is one that serves to occupy and compose the mind. And when the present is so exacting, who can annoy himself about the future?

In the same way – as I found out last November – “who can annoy himself about the future” when he’s immersed in the exacting task of paddling for hours on end. When he’s 12 miles offshore, at the mercy of the elements. When day’s end promises naught but a lukewarm meal on a soggy beach, or salt marsh. (Which actually turned out to be quite rewarding. The wealth of bull rushes growing out of the sloshing water gave one of the softest “beds” of the journey).

But as it turns out, that’s the nature of pilgrimages. They give us a break from “real life,” from the rat race that consumes so many lives today. All of which I noted in St. James the Greater. That post from my other blog noted a description of such a journey as “ritual on the move.”

In turn, through the raw experience of hunger, cold and lack of sleep, “we can quite often find a sense of our fragility as mere human beings, especially when compared with ‘the majesty and permanence of God.’” In short, such a pilgrimage can be “‘one of the most chastening, but also one of the most liberating’ of personal experiences.”

There’s lot more to say about last November’s canoe trip. But for now it’s enough to say that – despite the discomfort that’s part of the process – there were moments of pure bliss…

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I gleaned the foregoing from posts in my other blog, including On achieving closure, On achieving closure – Part II, and “I pity the fool!”

The original post included an upper image, a photo I took near dawn on November 10, 2014. Captioned: “A siesta at sea, a skill you need if you want to paddle 17 miles in 11 hours.” That day we started at 3:00 in the morning, “12 miles offshore.” That’s also the day we did 17 miles in 11 hours. (Some six hours of actual canoeing.) Also, given the age of the intrepid canoeists it behooved us to learn – through “OJT“ – the technique of “siesta at sea.” Near dawn there was the calm water “that is a necessity for such a siesta when you’re 10 or 12 miles out in the Gulf.

Also a lower image, a photo I took near dawn on the morning of November 10. (Showing “clouds on the horizon, not land.”) That day we got up and broke camp at 3:00 in the morning. We hit the water at 5:00 a.m. and paddled the 17 miles in 11 hours, not counting an hour break on Cat Island, before proceeding to West Ship Island. Not bad for a couple old geezers!

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On “Johnny YUMA was a rebel…”

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Nick Adams The Rebel.JPG

“Nick Adams as Johnny Yuma from the television program The Rebel…”

Wikipedia: The first episode was set in early 1867, with Johnny “returning to his hometown nearly two years after the end of the war. His father, Ned Yuma … had been killed by a gang that took control of the town. Dan Blocker of ‘Bonanza’ fame plays the gang leader… ”

Which is being interpreted: Who knew? Hoss as a gang leader?

On that note, consider this from an old Seinfeld:

KRAMER: You go to Tor Eckman… He’s a herbalist, a healer… JERRY: Eckman? I thought he was doing time? KRAMER: No, no, he’s out. He got out. See, the medical establishment, see, they tried to frame him. It’s all politics. But he’s a rebel. JERRY: A rebel? No. Johnny Yuma was a rebel. Eckman is a nut…

See Seinfeld Scripts – The Heart Attack. Which brings up another note: The only connection between Johnny Yuma and Jerry Seinfeld is that the latter finally gave the former some long-overdue props; “due respect; proper recognition.” But that wasn’t the only Seinfeld homage:

In [another] episode of Seinfeld, Kramer absent-mindedly sings the theme on the phone after he’s put on hold. It might have … been a bit of improv by Michael Richards, an actor old enough to remember when the show starring Nick Adams originally aired.

(See Hell’s Unutterable Lament: Nick Adams was a rebel, which added that the star of the series – Adams – died at the age of 36, in 1968, a mere seven years after the series ended.)

Two points. One is that true rebels tend to die young. (Think James Dean.)

The second is that we’re fascinated by rebels, a term defined at least two ways. One way says a rebel is a person who “refuses allegiance to, resists, or rises in arms against the government or ruler of his or her country.” (Dictionary.com.) The alternate definition – and by far the more popular these days – is of a “person who stands up for their own personal opinions despite what anyone else says.” See Urban Dictionary, which added:

It’s all about being an individual and refusing to follow a crowd that forces you to think the same way they do even if it means becoming an outcast to society. True rebels know who they are and do not compromise their individuality…

You may think all this is something new under the sun, or just the province of beatniks and other weirdos. But consider Ralph Waldo Emerson (at left), and what he said some 174 years ago: “Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist…” (See also “I pity the fool!”)

But we digress. (Sort of.) We were talking about Johnny Yuma, as a rebel who finally got some due recognition from Seinfeld some 35 years after Nick Adams’ TV series ended. And as noted in Hell’s Unutterable, above: “It helps that the theme was sung by Johnny Cash, a bonafide music legend…”

(For a “live” performance see Johnny Cash “The Rebel” – YouTube.)

As the lyrics noted, Johnny Yuma roamed through the west, wandering alone. He had a dream he’d hold until “his dyin’ breath.” He would continue on, roaming, searching his soul and gambling with death, ever restless. He lived by his wits, and his speed handling a sidearm – he was “panther quick and leather tough.” And finally, the key phrase: he “figured that he’d been pushed enough.” (See JOHNNY CASH LYRICS – The Rebel-Johnny Yuma.)

Which brings up protest songs in general. (They’ve also been around for a long time):

The tradition of protest songs in the United States is a long one that dates back to the 18th century and colonial period, the American Revolutionary War and its aftermath. In the 19th century topical subjects for protest in song included abolition, slavery, poverty, and the Civil War amongst other subjects. In the 20th century civil liberties, civil rights, women’s rights, economic injustice, politics and war were among the popular subjects for protest in song. In the 21st century the long tradition continues…

See Protest songs in the United States. Which brings up the natural question: What’s all this protest about? “What’s all the hubbub, bub?” Don’t we live in the greatest country in the world? Shouldn’t we be happy with we have? Shouldn’t we respect “law and order?”

Well, yeah… But the problem seems to be that a desire for “law and order” tends to degenerate into a sense of complacence, if not arrogance. Or maybe it’s just a matter of “getting old…”

Then there’s the fact that some political candidates – for example – “exaggerate or even manufacture a problem with law and order … to generate public support.” And finally that law and order expression sometimes carries with it “the implication of arbitrary or unnecessary law enforcement, or excessive use of police powers.”

And speaking of arbitrary law enforcement, see The Rebel | Television Obscurities:

Yuma faced down intolerance, distrust, greed, confusion and revenge. Despite his rebellious nature, Yuma respected law and order and despised abuse of power. He stood up for the weak and downtrodden. He traveled alone and was often forced to work alone because he was the only one willing to stand up to the bad guys. (E.A.)

Which brings up The Establishment. Remember that? Also known as The Man? Either refers to a “dominant group or elite that holds power or authority in a nation.” And either can also be used to describe oppression, and that seemed to be what Johnny Yuma pledged to face down.

The problem is: We Baby-boomers who once protested the Establishment – and who so loved The Rebel TV series – are now the major portion of today’s “dominant group or elite.” And yet – somehow – there’s more than enough intolerance, greed and injustice to go around.

So what happened? Why are injustice, intolerance and greed still here?

Maybe the problem is that people get lazy when they get older. Or maybe they just get tired sooner than they used to. Or maybe – over the years – they lose the drive to correct injustice they had when they were young. Or maybe they just get afraid to push the envelope.

As John Steinbeck put it, many men his age – he was 58 when he wrote Travels with Charley – are constantly told to slow down. And so they “pack their lives in cotton wool, smother their impulses, hood their passions, and gradually retire from their manhood.” And since these older men have “retired,” they want more than anything else to maintain the status quo.

And maybe that’s why we need young people, pains-in-the-butt that they can generally be:

Although the character Adams plays, Johnny Yuma, fought for the South, the designation “reb” goes deeper than this. He is a symbol of rebellious youth – a loner, seeking something to hang his life on, wandering through the [] West of a century ago… I can find parallels for Johnny Yuma’s search for meaning in the slum kid heading out into the streets of the city, aimlessly walking, seeking, or in young David with his slingshot walking toward Goliath..

See The Rebel | Television Obscurities, emphasis added. And once upon a time, we aging Baby-boomers felt the same way, when we were the rebellious youth. See for example “Another brick in the wall,” in which Pink Floyd protested an “out-of-touch education system bent on producing compliant cogs in the societal wheel.”

And now people our age are running the educational system. (See also irony.)

But in the end, maybe it doesn’t have to be that way. Maybe you don’t have to lose your dreams when you get older. And maybe you can even start something totally new under the sun. Think of Abraham, the original patriarch. After all, he was “75 years young” when he left the homeland that he’d lived all his life, and set off for parts unknown.

But Abraham – you see – wasn’t an old geezer…

Abraham, leaving home and showing his “still-youthful vigor…”

The upper image and lead-in caption are courtesy of The Rebel (TV series) – Wikipedia.

The “Seinfeld” image is courtesy of The Heart Attack – WikiSein, the Seinfeld Encyclopedia.

Re: Emerson. See also Self-Reliance – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Re: “Hubbub, bub?” See the Falling Hare (Bugs Bunny cartoon) – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Re: “The Man.” Interestingly, the American use of that term with that connotation came first in the Southern U.S. states, where it “came to be applied to any man or any group in a position of authority.” It was only in the 1960’s that “use of this term was expanded to counterculture groups and their battles against authority, such as the Yippies.”

Re: Steinbeck on aging. See “I pity the fool!”

Re: “parts unknown.” The reference is to the Glossary of professional wrestling terms – Wikipedia. The phrase is found under “p,” and refers to a “vague, fictional location. Billing a wrestler as being from ‘Parts Unknown’ (rather than from his real hometown or another actual place) is intended to add to a wrestler’s mystique.”

The lower image is courtesy of Abraham – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, with the caption: “A painting of Abraham’s departure by József Molnár.”

The Georgia Wasp

A blog of life-reviews by an old guy who still gets a kick out of life.

Category Archives: Nostalgia reviews

On RABBIT – and “60 is the new 30″ – (Part I)

On RABBIT – and “60 is the new 30” – (Part II)

Welcome back to the “Georgia Wasp…”

“Are you kidding me?”

“Great politicians sell hope”

On canoeing 12 miles offshore

On “Johnny YUMA was a rebel…”