Alias

Lucy Byers, aka Goose, aka The Gosling, aka Minnow, aka Australopithecus, aka Chubs. And now, aka Bunny:

And just because I can't resist posting this one:

Sub-sub-custodian: The Hand

So I've got the whole bathroom to myself at work, and I'm sitting down in a stall, doing things that require you to sit down in a bathroom stall. Operations are in process. Stuff is happening.

I hear the door open and the distinct sound of a custodian cart rolling into the bathroom.

I am no longer alone. Fine.

I hear the door of the stall next to me open. Whatever. My business goes on.

And while I'm totally in medias res I see this latexed hand appear below me, jutting under the stall-wall, leaving a roll of toilet paper and disappearing before I can even compute what's happening...

Right under my left cheek. The guy delivered some toilet paper. Couldn't wait until I was done.

And I wasn't even low on paper in there...

Larry Shitsverse: Trees

I cannot identify a tree 

in the winter. The bark 

doesn't catch in the folds

of my brain the way 

an oak leaf does, or the 

blooms on a magnolia,

purple petals cupped tightly

in the April wind.

 

For all I know, on the first

winter night in the glow of

street lamp and chalk moon,

the dogwood trades places

with the Japanese maple,

roots creeping over the

pavement, dirt clods and

gravel trailing.

 

Yes, of course someone

might notice that a

crab apple is now a 

cherry tree, a myrtle 

is now a tulip. 

But maybe not.

 

Maybe they are transformed

by the soil.

 

Maybe all it takes for

a dogwood to try on

new skin is for it to sink

its feet into the loosened

earth and wiggle its toes

in the sandy mud where

a birch tree once stood.

_____________________ 

I like the way this poem reads. This is free verse, meaning it has no rhymes or meter. It isn't taking on any kind of traditional or pre-determined poetic form. Which isn't to say that free verse has no rhythm. Good free verse presents itself to be read at a certain pace with a certain emphasis on words that creates a rhythmic feeling. Like the way the stanzas are organized. I'm not sure how a poet goes about determining how long a line should be or how many lines should be in a stanza. They probably just try out different formats and see how it looks and reads. But my guess is that Larry just wrote these lines out and gave hardly any thought to rhythm or how it looks on the page. Probably...

Here come the Nazis

I recently read The Coming of the Third Reich by Richard Evans, which is the first of a three volume history on the Nazis.

Evans covers a lot of ground in this book, beginning with the Second Reich (1871--1919) and Bismarck, who was its Chancellor from 1871 to 1890. Bismarck was a dynamic political leader, whose legend loomed over the German psyche during and after WWI. The Germans were a bit upset about losing the war, and humiliated about the war reparations they had to pay after the Treaty of Versailles in 1919. The postwar government was democratic, weak, and chaotic. Many longed for a strong central government with a dynamic leader.

Enter the Nazis in the early 20s. They were just one among many small political groups in the country. The "National Socialist German Workers' Party" were actually on the right side of the political spectrum, although they criticized capitalism as well (hence the Socialist Workers part). They were basically a hate party--they hated capitalism, communism, foreigners, Slavs, Jews, homosexuals, and basically anyone who disagreed with them.

I had read in the past that the Nazis persecuted communists, but I had always assumed that that was because of the national face-off between Stalin and Hitler in the late 30s. But communism had always been a target of the Nazis. There was a real fear that there would be a communist revolution in Germany, like the one in Russia in 1917. The various communist groups all had their paramilitary units, as did most other political groups. The Nazi paramilitaries were called the Brown Shirts, and they would often get into brawls with communist groups. German politics in the 20s and early 30s was almost like gang warfare, where political speeches and rallies ended in fisticuffs, and small-time political assassinations were not uncommon.

The ascension of the Nazis and Hitler in the early 30s was only possible because of the Great Depression. Germans were unhappy with high unemployment and were ready for a change in government. Nazi representatives were voted into the Reichstag (German parliament) in 1932 in large numbers, and in what turned out to be a huge miscalculation, Hitler was appointed chancellor in 1933. It was understood by those who did the appointing that he would be kept in check by Vice Chancellor Franz von Papen, President Hindenburg, and the military. Obviously, that didn't work out so well.

The incident that sparked the Nazis takeover of government was the fire in the Reichstag. On February 27th, 1933 a crazed unemployed communist "insurrectionist" single handedly set fire to the German seat of parliament in the hopes that it was incite a communist revolution. He acted alone. But Hitler and the Nazis proclaimed this to be the planned action of a vast communist conspiracy, and took advantage of the opportunity to purge Germany of communists. This was the beginning of Hitler's dictatorship and the first step in a larger purging that would take on cultural and racial dimensions.

Leaven Life: Salt

For Christmas dinner, I baked these rolls:

I used this recipe at The Fresh Loaf, which looked promising enough. I wanted an even richer dough, so I added an egg. But I should have also followed my instincts and added more salt than it called for. I didn't, and the flavor of the bread was noticeably weak. Salt not only gives you that good old salty taste, it draws out the other flavors as well. As a rule of thumb, I usually use a teaspoon of salt for every 1/2 to 3/4 cup of liquid called for in the recipe.

Leaven Life: Baking Tip

Don't try to bake while taking care of a baby. Baking and baby do not mix. I've attempted to bake bread several times since becoming a parent, and I usually end up with dough in trash and flour on baby.

These are two loaves of Stollen bread I baked recently while Lucy was in the care of someone else:

  

And what do you get when you make Christmas goodies while watching a 4 month old? Chocolate on baby:

William James

I’m always comforted when I read a biography of someone famous, someone I respect, and find out that they were pretty much like most mortals: indecisive, insecure, and often depressed.

I just read a biography of William James by Robert Richardson. When James was younger, he couldn’t make up his mind on what he wanted to do. He was a talented painter and had a considerable amount of artistic training during his teens. He also wanted to be a scientist and accompanied one of the most famous biologists of the day, Louis Agassiz, on an expedition to South America to study the fish of the Amazon.

But he ended up settling for an MD from Harvard University. Now that sounds impressive to us, but in the mid 19th century it wasn’t impressive. At all. James was always insecure about the fact that he just had an MD, because at that time it wasn’t a graduate degree. You didn’t have to have a bachelor’s degree to get in. And Harvard wasn’t an elite school. The medical school in Cambridge was particularly easy to get into, and it was incredibly easy to obtain the degree. You just had to attend the lectures, pay 30 dollars, and there was no test until the very end. One oral comprehensive exam. It covered nine subjects, and if you passed five of them you got the degree (i.e., you could get a 55% and pass). The whole thing could be done in one year.

Once James got this medical degree, he decided he didn’t want to practice medicine. He would teach physiology instead. And over time he drifted into other fields, eventually making huge contributions to psychology and philosophy. But he often got depressed and questioned the value of his contributions to science and philosophy. He was never really content with the path that he was on. His direction was always changing.

He and his brother Henry were a bit competitive, as you can imagine. Especially considering the fact that Henry was younger than William, but Henry enjoyed literary success many years before William made a name for himself as the author of The Principles of Psychology. It’s often said that William wrote philosophy like a novelist and Henry wrote novels like a philosopher. William also thought of himself as a competent literary critic, and was quick to give Henry advise on how to write fiction. Henry, on the other hand, tended to accept William’s psychology and philosophy immediately and wholeheartedly. But he felt very comfortable criticising William’s family life. William was married for 32 years and had 5 children. Henry never married.

Another famous phrase about the James family is that they were “a nation unto themselves.” Their father, Henry James Sr., dragged his family all over Europe when the James boys were young. He thought they could only get a good education in Europe, but didn’t keep them in one spot for very long. They were constantly being uprooted and planted in the next supposedly excellent continental school. As a result, the James children felt rootless and resented their father’s wandering ways.

William ended up spending most of his career at Harvard, but was given to sudden departures across the Atlantic, usually without his family. His fame grew over the years, and he gave many lectures in Europe to large crowds. Henry ended up spending most of his life in England, and was something of a celebrity there. They both were among the first modern American cultural ambassadors to Europe (modern in the sense that they embodied the ideas and principles of what came to be called modernism). But in many ways, they hardly felt American themselves. William was vehemently and publicly critical of American imperialism and arrogance at the turn of the century. Henry eventually became a British citizen in 1915. To a large extent, they rejected nationalism and maintained the cosmopolitanism of their youth.

The James family was close, but that closeness was through the written word. Their correspondence was constant, playful, and honest. What the James gang lost in proximity they made up for in letters that revealed the true condition of their hearts and minds. Their doubts and fears and regrets. We read about their ideals and their views on how to live life, and observe them coming up short, doing their best to cope with disappointment and loss.

In the past, I’ve had the ambition to read the essays and novels of William and Henry James, based on their philosophical and literary reputation. But now I have a feeling that reading their correspondence would be just as rewarding. Maybe even more so.

Henry and William, left to right.