What's the Word?

Why is there no word for the feeling you get when you finish a good book?  Nothing that captures that feeling of accomplishment and loss.  Reading a book is like being in a relationship really, and finishing it can sometimes fell like a breakup.  You meet these characters and places early on and you’re not sure if you’re going to get along.  You experience their lives as if they were real people.  You grow to like, or maybe hate these characters.  You feel like you’ve been to these places; even those that are fictional.  Characters live and die, they commit great feats of kindness or unbelievable acts of evil and everything in between; they generally behave as real flesh and blood people do.  Then it's over.  Shouldn’t you feel “something” when, as you turn the final page of a book, they are simply…gone?

Years and years ago I read the book The Bastard by John Jakes.  It was about the American Revolution and came out right around the time of the Bicentennial.  Not Steinbeck to be sure, but not among the worst wastes of Canadian timber I’ve slogged through.  Somewhere in the middle of the book a man’s wife dies.  Just up and dies at a place where he’ll never know what happened.  I remember thinking through the rest of the book that he’ll eventually find out and heap vengeance upon the man who was responsible for her death.  He never did.  I finished that book realizing the husband would go to his grave not knowing what happened to her.  Unfair!  I didn’t lose any sleep over it but I remember it nearly 40 years later.  That seems somewhat powerful.

But what is the feeling?  Can you feel nostalgia about something that you just lost a minute ago?  Can you mourn for the death of someone who never existed?  Finishing a book, and I’m talking a good book here, a book that really engaged you and swallowed you into its world, that emotes a variety of feelings.  There’s sadness along with fulfillment.  There’s perhaps satisfaction at making it to the end tempered by the loneliness of losing all these new “friends” in a Band-Aid rip finality.  There can be a lot going on.

                There is a specific word for the action of throwing someone out a window.  There really is.  One word that means throwing someone out a window.  It’s defenestration, from the Latin for down or away (de), and window (fenestra).  I can see a couple of cops standing over a body in the street and one says to the other, "Cause of death?" and the reply is "defenestration."  The word was coined in Prague a couple few hundred years ago when it was, apparently, all the rage to toss civil servants with which you were unhappy out of windows.  That’s probably why there are few windows in legislative chambers.  Those Pragainians, Praguenosticators, Praguers?, what a bunch of kooks.  So it’s nice that throwing someone out of a window has its own word, which is probably used worldwide, outside of the Prague City limits, about once every hundred years or so.  But how often does someone, somewhere finish a book?  A lot more often.  We can’t take defenestration because of the Latin root words only makes sense when the local mayor is flung out into the rose bushes.  So we need to build our own.

                The Latin words for finish and book respectively are consumo and libri so the word could very easily be consumolibri.  Okay but that’s a sterile and emotionless creation.  The Latin words to describe the feeling one might experience when finishing a good book are sadness (tristitia), contentment (contenti), satisfaction (plenus), lonely (sola), and happy (felix).  (Felix, really?)  Anyway, cramming those words together gives you tristiacontentiplenussolafelix.  Sounds like the guy at the Vatican who sets up dates for the local cat population.  If I had to say that word I'd probably toss myself out a window.

                What about saying that you know there is a feeling but words can’t describe it.  You could always throw in the French phrase “je ne sais quoi” which I believe literally translates to “shrug.”  Brilliant if you think about it, but kind of like surrendering. 

                Or maybe…over in Hawaii they have something they say that means hello and goodbye.  But it also can mean affection, peace, compassion, and mercy.  Since it’s is already carrying half the Hawaiian dictionary, why not toss a few more words on the pile and have it also mean the feeling of finishing a good book.  So from now on, that feeling you get when you turn the final page of a really good book will be called, “Book ‘em Danno.”

Clubbed

“I don’t want to belong to any club that will accept people like me as a member.”

-Groucho Marx  

 

Her cheeks were rosy, her attitude was cheery, but her customer was wary.  "Would you like a bottle of wine for five cents?"
Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth* I said, "Yes," and grabbing a $30 bottle of zinfandel said, "I'll take this one."
The rosiness dropped from her cheeks and her attitude took a downturn too.  "No, you buy one bottle and get the second for five cents."
I grabbed a $6 bottle of Gallo something-or-other and setting it next to the zinfandel said, "I'll take these two for six dollars and five cents."
Again she said, "No.  The second bottle must be the same wine."  Then she hit me with, "You also have to be a member of Club Bev."  She held up a little red card.
 

                Everywhere I go I’m bombarded with offers to join this club or that just to get past the checkout.  There’s ExtraCare Rewards Program (It’s at CVS Pharmacy, as if to suggest if you’re not a member that you only get regular care), Club Orchard-Ace Rewards-True Value Rewards (all hardware stores), Balanced Rewards, Prescription Saving Club, Vons Club, and Save Mart Cares (I’m curious what Save Mart cares about.  Other than having little selection and higher prices that is), the aforementioned Club Bev, Frequent Car Wash Club, Customer Loyalty Club, Office Max Rewards (where I shop maybe once a year.  Maybe.), and Subway Club (for sandwiches not trains).  If I joined every one of these clubs, and was issued a card for each one, my wallet would look like the shoe at the two dollar blackjack table in Caesar’s Palace.  (Pictured above)

                Also, what makes them clubs?  Is there a clubhouse for Orchard Club meetings?  If there is then I wonder what it’s built out of since the Orchard “hardware” store doesn’t sell lumber anymore.  What are the bylaws of the Frequent Car Wash Club or Office Max Rewards club’s secret handshake?  If I only get club sandwiches from Subway would that make it the Subway Club Club?  Is there drinking allowed at Club Bev meetings?  Encouraged?

                So I finally broke down and joined Club Orchard at OSH, which stands for Orchard Supply Hardware.  The girl at the checkout counter said that if I joined I would get $5.00 off.  All she needed was my name, phone number, and e-mail address.  Since I was buying what added up to about $1.50 worth of PVC, which stands for polyvinyl chloride, I figured I’d join, get my discount, and not only walk out with my sprinkler parts, but an extra $3.50 in my pocket.  “No,” she said like the girl at the top of the page, “you get the discount on your next purchase.  You’ll get an e-mail where you register for the $5 coupon.”  So I gave her my real e-mail instead of a fake one, and left with my PVC from OSH, but as far as she knows that mailbox belongs to Jethro McHappymeal whose phone number is (123) 456-7890.  When the e-mail showed up there indeed was a $5 coupon, but only for purchases over $25.  Now, along with job offers for jobs that don’t exist and messages saying that I’ve won a cruise, my inbox is stuffed with weekly communications from OSH telling me what an awesome hardware store they are, sans lumber that it.

                I’m thinking of making my own club and printing up cards.  I’ll call it Club Friends of Mark Rewards Loyalty Club Cares Savings Club Club.  Then, the next time I’m asked at a store “Are you a member of our club?”

I’ll answer, “No I’m not.  Are you a member of mine?”

I could really use that wine. 

 

*I would never look any horse in the mouth, gift or otherwise.  Horses kind of creep me out and I find their mouths and teeth just this side of terrifying. I’m pretty sure that if it wanted to, a horse could bite my arm clean off.

Middle Man

                “Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right, here I am stuck in the middle with you.”

                                                                                                 -Stuck in the Middle by Stealer Wheel

 

When I attended middle school, middle schools didn’t exist.  There were schools between elementary school and high school but back then they were called junior high schools.  At least where I was they were.  Perhaps back East or down South things were different, but here in the Big Valley there was no middle.  My school between elementary and high was grades seven through nine.  When I finally entered high school I strode through the gates as a sophomore.  There were about as many freshmen in Fresno as there were Fremen outside of the Dune books.

                Recently my younger boy had some trouble at his “middle” school.  He was being picked on by a bigger kid in gym class, and also the target of verbal bullying in the classroom by others.  He told his mother and me about the former but we were ignorant about the latter.  We told him to stand his ground and let this kid know, in no uncertain terms, that he wasn’t going to take it anymore.  His mother and he notified the vice-principal, the counselor, and the gym teacher about the first bully and after that the kid left him alone.  But I guess the boy who was leading the teasing in the classroom didn’t get the memo, because when that started up again one day, our boy decided he’d reached his limit and punches were thrown.  Three punches to be precise, all by my boy and all in the face of the other boy.  The results of this episode were; he got suspended for three days, the other kid came by a week later and apologized, his mother and I while not happy violence had occurred were happy he stood up for himself, and most of the people I’ve talked to have come to the agreement that middle school sucks.

                Maybe therein lies the problem.  Maybe it’s the “middle” in middle school that makes it what it is.  The Middle Child Syndrome suggests that older children are given more freedom while younger children are fawned over more, and given more attention if you will.  This can create a middle kid who grows resentful of those kids who came before and after, causing him to act out negatively; like climbing on the roof of Cedar Lanes Bowling Alley or spending so much time playing around an old abandoned milk truck near Chestnut and Weldon in Fresno that his parents come this close to calling the police when they’ve become convinced he’s been kidnapped.  Just to name a couple of completely random and generic possibilities.

Could the same behavior be happening in our school system?  Do high school kids have less restrictions and do elementary school kids enjoy more protection and attention than middle school kids?  Seems so.  Is middle school where those kids start feeling their wings and testing what they can and can’t get away with?  Yup.  The name “middle,” to me anyway, comes across as more of a dumping ground or holding cell than a place to transition from one school to another. 

In the naval services, officers are ranked as follows; ensign, lieutenant junior grade, lieutenant, lieutenant commander, commander, captain, and then a smattering of admirals.  Notice how one rank leads to the next.  You have to be a lieutenant junior grade before a lieutenant and a lieutenant commander before a commander.  It’s almost as if each rank is and encouragement to gain the next.  I particularly like the “junior” in lieutenant junior grade, as if they are saying, “You’re not a lieutenant yet but you’re on the right path.”

Why don’t we take a cue from our find naval services and switch middle schools back to junior high schools?  Instead of making kids feel like they are “stuck in the middle” as Stealer Wheel sang above, we instead tell them, “Hey you’re not in high school yet, but you’re on the right path.”

An Open Letter To...

An Open Letter To…

…Auto Manufacturers. 

Dear Sirs,

Please go ahead and make the keyless remote open all the doors of my vehicle when I press one button, once.  I can’t seem to get the cadence of the double press.  Does the second press count as a second press, or does it count as a new single press, or is it the first press of a double press, or does the car think I’ve pressed it three times now and has somehow reset to no presses?  Pretty soon it’s like I’m out in my driveway clicking away on it like some kind of deranged flamenco dancer with his castanets.  I know the odds of a hook-handed ax murderer jumping in the other side of my car, because all the doors are unlocked, are slim.  So I can pledge right now that I will not sue you if by chance I get ax murdered. Even if it’s in a hook-handed way.

…On-air Radio Personalities

Dear Sirs and Madams,

Nobody, absolutely nobody, likes it when you talk over the first, instrumental, part of a song and only shut up one beat, or less, before the singer starts.  I think the guitar at the start of Ohio, by Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young is one of the best of the 70’s, or all time, so I’d like to hear it without your “We’ll take caller number seven for tickets to Wrestlemania” voice.  We don’t listen to a music station to hear the DJ, we listen to hear the music.  That would be like going to an airport to listen to the announcements of arrivals and departures and never getting on a plane.  Oh, and update your play lists.  I believe I’ve heard Ted Nugent’s Stranglehold at least twice a week on my daily commute over the last year, and that just on the way home.  Oh 2.0, traffic reports work in L.A or San Francisco, but in a town with three freeways, everyone knows ahead of time where and when the traffic is going to bunch up.  So drop the traffic report and perhaps, oh I don’t know, play a song.

…The Fresno Bee

Dear Editor,

Why is it that I can read the online versions of The San Francisco Chronicle, The San Jose Mercury News, and even the L.A. Times without having to login as a paying reader, but can’t do the same with The Fresno Bee?  I understand that you don’t make a lot of money when you give your product away, but all those sites, and The Bee’s, have banner ads across the top and other ads along the edges, and I’m pretty sure someone is paying you to put those there.  But The Bee adds a screen for paying customers to login when ever I try to go to any article.  Plus, to add insult to injury, you have more pop ups than a Whack-A-Mole game.

…M&M/MARS, Maker of M&Ms

Dear Sirs,

You’re doing God’s work.  That is all.

…Baseball Writers of America

Dear Sirs,

First of all, understand that the Baseball Hall of Fame is a museum, not a cathedral.  The cathedrals are AT&T Park, Fenway Park, Wrigley Field, and all the other ballparks hallowed by their congregations… um fans.  You created the Frankenstein’s Monster that is the steroids era when you ignored the obvious enhancements to Mark McGuire and Sammy Sosa when they were “saving baseball” from the ’94 strike during their homerun race, likely to also save your jobs, so drop those pitch forks and torches and let that monster out of the windmill.  Museums should have everything related to their subject in them, good and bad.   By your criteria you’d have an American History museum that makes no mention of slavery, a European History museum and leaves out Hitler, and a Rock and Roll museum that has absolutely nothing related to Madonna.  I mean seriously, have you heard her rendition of Don Maclean’s American Pie?  It’s really awful stuff. 

…My Fellow Motorists

Dear Drivers,

You suck.  You’re not paying attention.  It’s not all about you.  There is a device on your car, and it’s been there since day one, that you can use to indicate a turn or lane change.  It’s called a “Turn Indicator.”  Freeway traffic has the right of way when you are merging, so you, yes you, have to adjust your speed to that traffic.  Anyone who slows down (dangerous) or changes lanes (equally dangerous) to allow you in is doing it as a courtesy, not because it’s the law.  By the way, I suck at driving too so watch out for me.

…Me.

Dear Mark,

Let it be.

Home By The Sea

    Have you ever sold a house?  Have you driven by the home where you grew up and mourned at the loss of the trees you climbed as a kid?  Or have you further looked up the old homestead on Google Maps and dropped yourself on “street view” to have a look at the new siding, the dual-pane windows, or the swing-set peeking over the backyard fence that the new owners installed?  Sure, probably.  But I bet you’ve never found out that a former home had been given to another country, and that that country repainted it, and moved it 7,700 miles away?

                My “home” from July 1981 to May 1983 was in Honolulu Harbor but it wasn’t a building.  It was a ship.  I spent the majority of my hours, both awake and asleep, on the cutter Jarvis.  And when it wasn’t in Hawaii, say in Alaska or the middle of the Pacific, I spent pretty much every hour there.  My bed, my meals, my work; it all took place in a metal box 378 feet long and 50 feet wide. 

                The Jarvis was named after David Jarvis of the Revenue Cutter Service, a forerunner of the Coast Guard.  Lieutenant Jarvis became a hero when he led an overland expedition 1,500 miles to deliver food, in the form of 382 reindeer, to stranded whalers in Point Barrow Alaska in 1898.  Why they weren’t eating whale remains a mystery.

                I’ve never returned to Hawaii to revisit her although I’ve thought that it would be pretty cool to show my two sons where I stood bridge watch and how we lowered boats over the side to take boarding parties to foreign fishing vessels.  Google Maps will not allow me to “stand” on the wharf where the Jarvis is usually moored.  I am restricted to the road outside the gate where trees and buildings block my view.  The terrorists win again.  But neither of those issues matter now because if I do return to the Aloha State or even if the Google car is allowed to drive on to military bases, I’ll never see my Hawaiian home again.

    Because…

                earlier this year the Jarvis was decommissioned and then “given” to the Bangladesh Navy.  Gone is the bright red stripe on the bow; which was actually international orange, the same color as the Golden Gate Bridge.  It’s been painted over white.  Gone are the large black COAST GUARD letters painted along her hull; like a black Hollywoodland sign.  A plain F28, which has some meaning to her new crew, has replaced it.  Gone are the American flags, the Coast Guard flags, and the Coast Guard personnel.  Replaced I suppose by Bangladeshi flags and people.  Gone is the “Jarvis” painted on her stern, replaced by the name Somundra Joy.

                I tried to find what Somundra Joy means but was unsuccessful.  I guess there are some questions even The Google can’t answer.

                There are basically two ways a ship ends her life; she is either cut up for scrap or finds the sea floor.  The Somudra Joy, now the largest ship in the Bangladesh Navy, will patrol the Bay of Bengal.  In fact she arrived in her new home port of Chittagong two weeks ago today.  She will live to fight another day (another decade?).

Maybe it’s a good thing.  While not a living thing, she is still “alive” and she is still doing what she did 30-plus years ago when a young man from Fresno who had never spent one minute at sea came aboard her.  On the way to Chittagong the Somudra Joy delivered 40 tons of relief supplies to Manila for the Philippine typhoon disaster victims, although I doubt any of it was reindeer. 

In other news; Bangladesh has a navy.

*The picture above is the former Jarvis leaving San Francisco Bay on a foggy morning.

Little Note / Long Remember

             

Seven score and ten years ago Abraham Lincoln gave what is arguably his most famous, arguably the United States most famous, and perhaps arguably the World’s most famous speech, providing you’re prepared to do a lot of arguing.  The Gettysburg Address was delivered those 150 years ago, in under two minutes after the first speaker of the day went on for two hours.

            Ken Burns, the documentarian who made an unequalled Civil War documentary along with an East Coast biased baseball documentary, has started a website called learntheaddress.org where anyone can upload of video of themselves reciting the famous speech.

            People are doing it from couches and classrooms, from the offices of politicians and the studios of pundits, from California to the New York Islands, on cell phone videos and classroom audio/video equipment to major network studio cameras, and from modest homes to the halls of power.

            There are literally hundreds of videos and no real search function so you have to either peruse by most recent, by state, or alphabetical.  I watched dozens of them and have compiled my list of those that I thought merited some attention.  Remember these are from the ones I actually watched.

Worst performance by a professional is actress Alyssa Milano who didn’t bother to memorize it.

Ken Burns himself delivers it like a lecture; ticking off each point as if he were going down a list.

President George Bush recites it like a student in an elementary school classroom, likely garnering him a solid B.

President Carter starts out strong but seems to tire near the end of his minute and a half rendition.  But he is pushing ninety.

Bill Clinton delivers it like most of his speeches while President, with practiced sincerity for something written by someone else.

Barry Obama sounds like he’s a preacher delivering it from a pulpit, like most of his speeches.

Although I wasn’t a fan, I would have liked to have seen Ronald Reagan’s take.  He could speechify. 

While I like most of Louis C. K.’s humor, his delivery of the speech comes across like a shadow of President Bush’s; classroom recital, but he’d likely be lucky to get a C.

TV news host Rachel Maddow gives a good reading.  Too bad it sounds like someone is announcing bus arrivals in the background.

Most mysterious video is Red Sox / World Series hero Shane Victorino who shows up in a compilation but not as an individual clip.

Best headgear goes to Jon Jarvis, Director of the National Park Service for his Smokey Bear hat.

Best amateur “performance” goes to Tip Scarry for his updated presentation and prolog.  He gets a second mention for coolest name.

Worst video is the one that just came up with some text that said “404 Error.  Content not found.”  Of course that might have more to do with my Internet connection.

Best Background goes to Lily Ward of Ohio who did it in front of a Lord of the Rings movie poster for some reason.  Maybe she thought it was originally a speech by Aragorn to rally troops before the gates of Mordor.

But the best and most professional performance, in my opinion, was Conan O’Brien.  His reading sounds like he knows exactly what each sentence, each word, means and he gives what feels like the correct emphasis on the correct word in each one of those sentences.  It’s such a quality reading, again in my opinion, that you can forgive him for mispronouncing the third “cannot.”

Consecrate.

Francis Lightening Up

“Lighten up Francis.”

Sergeant Hulka (Warren Oates) Stripes

           

            When Bishop Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst of Germany okayed $600,000 worth of art and over a million bucks in landscaping to his $42 million living quarters in Limburg, the current Pope decided that something stank other than the region’s cheese.  So Bishop Tebartz-van Elst Gonzalez Alonzo McDuck Trust-Fund Maria O’Mally Thurston Howell III got called on the carpet.  He walked in a bishop and walked out off the every day roster.  He’s taking an “unspecified leave” according to a Vatican statement.  Kind of like when a TV show goes on hiatus, usually never coming back.  I’m still bitter about Keen Eddie…where was I?

            My first reaction was that a man living in something called the Apostolic Palace telling another man that living in a palace is wrong is like the pot calling the kettle…a pot.  But then I read that Mr. Pope Francis doesn’t live in the A&P, which I can only assume is the nickname for that building, but instead lives in a building called Domus Sanctae Marthae (Saint Martha’s House) which is a sort of apartment building for visiting clergy and the cardinals during a conclave.  Its total cost was $20 million, less than half of Elst's digs, but that’s probably because unlike the German Bishop’s abode, it doesn’t include much landscaping or a pig to warm your feet while you sit on your throne.

            In fact, Pope Francis has been humble in both his living quarters and daily activities for while.  I remember reading that even as a Cardinal he lived in a simple apartment and took the bus to work. 

            But that’s not the only place where Pope Frank’s progressiveness shows.  He has recently called upon The Church to shift its focus to the poor and the sick, and suggested that Christian Right here in the good old U.S.A dial back their anti-gay and anti-abortion obsession down from eleven.

            So I guess that even though I’ve likely long ago been excommunicated from The Church and really have no say in the matter, I like the new Pope.  He’s defiantly got a lighter attitude that his predecessor.  Maybe it’s all show.  Maybe it’s a distraction from the many “indiscretions” that have dogged its steps lately, but either way you gotta like the message.