Tió De Nadal, or Nothing Says Christmas Like A Poop Log...If You Are In Spain

 

Tió de Nadal, a “pooping” Christmas log, is an obsession among the kids in Catalunya for a few weeks leading into the holidays.  It usually starts on December 8^th, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception.   Part of the ancient tradition of burning a Yule log in the hearth at Christmastime, these days it is a short trunk of wood propped up by two front legs, with a smile, pug nose, and floppy red felt Catalan hat called a Barretina.  Wrapped in a blanket and placed beside the fireplace.  Every night it is “fed” Clementine and potato peels until the evening of the 23^rd or 24^th of December.  Sometimes, the logs are hollowed out (via the face) and candies are put inside for future treats.  Tootsie rolls?

The tió does not drop larger objects, as those are considered to be brought by the Three Wise Men.  It does leave candies, nuts and torrons.  Depending on the region of Catalonia, it may also give out dried figs. When nothing is left to "shit", it drops a salt herring, a head of garlic, an onion, or it "urinates" by leaving a bowl of water. What comes out of the Tió is a communal rather than individual gift, shared by everyone there.

 

On that night, the family gathers around and the kids whack the log with a stick while chanting at the top of their voices, "Ca-ga-ti-o, Ca-ga-ti- o!" (Poop log!  Poop log!") and singing a short song about poopiing torro (almond and honey nougat called turron in Sapnish) and oranges instead of salted herring or charcoal.  They then reach under the blanket and find pieces of torro (and often a small present) that has been "pooped out."   

 Around Catalunya, homes resound with chanting versions of the song.  Schools have an enormous Tió that kids bring scraps from home to feed.  The offerings look like rich mounds of compost.  Sometimes Tió is whacked so vigorously that the sticks are broken and have to be replaced. 

 

To make the log defecate, one beats the tió with sticks, while singing various songs of Tió de Nadal.  There are many versions of the Tió song, but the standard one goes like this:

Cago tió   (Poop log)

Tió de Nadal   (Trunk of Christmas)

No caguis arengades   (Don’t poop herring)

Que són salades  (Which are salty)

Caga torrons   (Poop nougat)

Que són més bons   (Which are much tastier)

Caga taronges   (Poop oranges)

Que són Ben Dolces  (that are very sweet)

There are several versions of this ditty.  And if you’ve been around kids, you know how they love saying “poop.”  Another version goes:

Poop log, log of Christmas

We will put the pork in salt

The hen at the trough

And the chick on top of the pine tree

Play, play Valentine

Oxen and cows pass

Hens with shoes

And roosters with big shoes (*blink*)

Run, run children

Because the aunty is making nougat

The Vicar has tasted them

And he says they are a bit salty

Oh the donkey, oh the pig

Oh the face, face, face

Of the donkey, oh the pig

Oh the face of a pepper.

….and sometimes, for good measure they add:

Trunk of Christmas

Poop neules (a rolled wafer biscuit) and nougat

And piss champagne…”I pixa xampany!”  Don’t we all?

 

 

 

Inka Dinka Doo. I Like Ink. Do You?



 

Has anyone ever been unhappy shopping for art supplies?  I went to an art supply store the other day.  It's in an old enough building, the floors creak while you walk the aisles.  My goal was to find a new color of ink to use with a fountain pen that hadn't been active in a while.  So many art supplies shops that were present in my youth up until now are gone.  I truly mourn the loss of Pearl Art (still in New York) that we had for a while.  I could spend hours in there looking at paint and colored pencils and all of the beautiful handmade papers.

 

 

I studied the inks and decided I wanted to focus on the line made by Winsor & Newton, a company based in London, England, but the ink is made in France.  I also like using Pelikan ink which is made in Germany.  I've never settled on just one color of ink when I'm using a fountain pen.  My mother always used a navy that was then universally called "blue-black."   Even though I was writing thank you notes and letters as soon as I could write, I didn't begin with a fountain pen until I was about 11, and my first color choice was a turquoise then called "Peacock Blue."  I probably remained loyal to that color for two years, then played around a bit more, even using ink colors seasonally (red for Christmas, etc.) which I still do.

Sometime in my early 20's it was all about a mahogany brown that I used with a cream stationery, the envelopes lined with a reproduction of an antique browned map of the world.  My first time in London I went to Smythson's and fell in love with color bordered papers (they even made mourning paper--something I had first read about in "Brideshead Revisited," by Evelyn Waugh.  Sebastian Flyte writes to his friend Charles on his parent's Victorian mourning paper, because he's bored and wants company after breaking his foot in an alcohol fueled fall--and I've always been loyal to Crane paper, started by Stephen Crane in Boston in 1770.
 

 

I chose a sanguine red, called "Deep Red" that looks rather like dried blood, and I'm using it for my Moore fountain pen, Moore being a defunct pen company out of Boston.  I bought the pen several years ago from a fountain pen specialist in Somerville, just a short distance from Harvard.  It's nothing fancy, a real workhorse of a pen and it has sentimental value.  I tend to use one color of ink with each pen so that hues don't muddied and not reflect their true shade.  I photographed a recent pen I bought that has a silver and checkerboard effect that I use for emerald ink, and probably for the longest period of my fountain pen existence, I've been writing with green inks. 

You have to slow down and think when writing with ink.
 

Pomegranate Porno: Taste of Persia

 Taste of Persia:  A Cook's Travels Through Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Iran and Kurdistan by Naomi Duguid. 

 

Such an unusual cookbook covering the author's travels and recipes from the Persian regions.  Saffron water, mint oil, rhubarb syrup, tons of flat breads and meals using "greens" (herbs.) A real work of love in this book. I had to share the section where the author teaches you to eat a pomegranate "nomad style." The author was taught this technique by a Khamseh nomad man in the mountains east of Shiraz, Iran.  

 Here is his method:  Pomegranates are full of juicy seeds held in place by bitter pith.  When the fruits are ripe and fresh, sucking the juice is the easiest and best way to eat them.  Start by holding the pomegranate in your hands and squeezing it all over, pressing on it with your fingertips all over until it goes from being a tight-skinned fruit to feeling very soft.  Feel for any firm places and press on them.   

Poke a small hole in the fruit and immediately put your mouth over the hole and start swallowing the juice (it will spurt out if you're not careful.)  Suck and swallow some more.  Keep pressing on the fruit as you suck and keep rotating it around.  The pressing breaks up the seeds, releasing the juice.  As you continue to suck, the fruit will get more and more like a basketball that has host its air, with dents and hollows and softness.  Eventually, when it is very saggy, you can break the pomegranate open.  Inside, the seeds will be a pale pink, having had their juice pressed and sucked out of them.  There may be the odd renegade still red seed or two, those you can eat one by one.  At the end of the process, your pucker muscles will be a little tired, but you'll have had a delicious drink of fresh pomegranate juice without having had to deal with the messiness of the seeds and pits and membranes. 

HA!  I wonder, after writing this out, if I can market it as porn!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Little Demon In The City of Light: Guest Blogger Michael

 

Little Demon in the City of Light--Steven Levingston

 

On this day, 125 years ago in 1889, a well-heeled, silk-hatted boulevardier named Toussaint-Augustin Gouffé was murdered by Michel Eyraud and his accomplice, Gabriellle Bompard in Paris.  Gouffé was lured to his death by the beguiling young Gabrielle to the scene of the crime set like a theater piece, fully in keeping with the spirit of the Belle Epoque city. (I would add the month of his death, Gouffé had already slept with 20 different women. Il a obtenu environ.) 

 

This small murder mystery was to become a sensation in the City of Light.  It started with a lost, gamine girl of 21 who was a remarkable hypnotic subject and became an international man and woman hunt, ending at the Bois de Justice and Monsieur Guillotine.  This case evolved into an early tabloid fueled celebrity murder (concurrent with Jack the Ripper activity in London) and had bouche et des oreilles buzzing.  It was an early example of a "hypnotic" defense as well as the emerging sciences of forensics and neurology. 

 

Cube is currently reading Cesare Lombroso's The Female Offender from the late 1800's.  A text given serious use for it's time, and a huge piece of misogynist clap trap. According to Lombroso, men steal from basic need, women from the desire to gain material wealth.

 

As the Little Demon crime carousel revolves, it passes The International Exposition with it's gallery of machines to usher in The Industrial Age--the...um, erection of The Eiffel Tower.  Sigmund Freud, The Moulin Rouge, electric lights, telegraphs, while café society and Toulouse-Lautrec sipping absinthe...the green fairy.

 



Toussaint-Augustin Gouffé ...rich and a real lady killer until a lady killed him.

 

All of this and more in a new book called Little Demon in the City of Light by Washington Post journalist Steven Levingston, the story of murder and mesmerism in Belle Epoque Paris. This story would make a great movie or HBO series.  I've already fantasy casted Gerard Depardieu as Marie-Francois Goron, the mustachioed head of the Paris Sûreté.  A man who stubbornly refused to give up the chase until the suspects were in custody. 

Michel Eyraud

 The Little Demon

 
Gabrielle Bompard

 

 

 

 

The traveling coffin and infamous trunk

 

Apocalypse Now: Why We Really Love Zombies

Who's Your Stylist?

I have questions about zombies after watching World War Z last night:

 What happens when everybody becomes a zombie (an apparent zombie goal) or do they not even have a goal…are they just zombies?   They don't seem very organized.

What is worse: having a zombie on the plane, or snakes on the plane? If zombies are on the plane, can you ask for their peanuts since they won’t be eating them--just you?

This harkens back to the question, "What if everyone is now a zombie?"  It seems when people become zombies, they have a radical weight loss and are wearing rags. So if everyone is a zombie, THEN what do they do…just stagger around…or open Zombies R’ Us? Zombie toys. “The flesh tears away in a realistic manner.” Zombie boutiques. A zombie buying a McDonald’s franchise and calling it McDead?

The zombie glass where you will drink...what else...Zombie cocktails!

 Zombies are dead so they can’t die. So what happens if everyone is now a zombie and there is a lack of living flesh? Do they starve? They can’t die. They can’t reproduce and having tiny zombie babies. But. If there were zombie babies, the zombies could open milk bars and call them “First and Last Latch.”

Just what the heck are zombies so pissed off about anyway? Being undead? Get over it. 

 I remember reading that Brad Pitt had a difficult time with studio heads in selling the idea of this movie, and consequently, getting funded for it. A studio executive argues, “World wide domination of zombies? Think of what that would cost to cast, or the special effects?” Would Brad Pitt counter with, “Zombies are a growth industry.”

The new Thanksgiving Thursday and Black Friday

 How could Brad Pitt work at the United Nations with that hair and be taken seriously?  His boss, even though he was fighting a world war zombie epidemic, had on a suit and tie the entire time. What is Brad Pitt going to say? “I need time off for low lights?” (For zombies: that’s a hair highlighting technique.)

 One zombie survived the plane crash and was twisting and snarling held in by his seat belt. If he can’t open the seat belt, and Brad Pitt doesn’t help him, which he didn't,  does that mean he spends eternity stuck in seat 12A?

 Brad Pitt figures out we need an inoculation of viruses and bacteria to camouflage us from zombie interest, but don’t we carry those things around in our bodies anyway?   And…would this be a productive counter argument to those parents who are anti-innoculators. “Your child will become a zombie.” 

 Why don’t the zombies like Nova Scotia and Wales? What do they know that we don’t know.  At one point, looking for a safe destination, it was said, "India?  Forget it.  It's a black hole."  I thought, "Whoa. Calcutta, maybe." I heard the populace of India yelling "HEY!"

 In the book “The Last Myth,” by Matthew Barrett and Mile Gilles, the authors postulate that allowing the challenges of the 21st century to be high jacked by the apocalyptic story line, we find ourselves awaiting a moment of clarity when the problems we must confront will become apparent to all—or when those challenges will magically disappear, like other failed prophecies about the end of the world. 

The real challenges we must face are not future events that we imagine or dismiss through apocalyptic scenarios of collapse—they are existing trends. Collapse of the economy, the arrival of peak oil, global warming and resource wars. The evidence suggests much of what we fear in the future has already begun. We can wait forever while the world unravels before our eyes,  or we can wait for an apocalypse that won’t come.

You think this is bad?  Bring on the zombies!

Pope Francis I : First "To Do" List

The Beautification of Run-D.M.C. I'm putting this on the new Pope's "First To Do" list: Declare Sainthood on Run-D.M.C. 

 1) First, you have to die. Jam Master Jay died in 2002. 

 2) Once you have been dead at least 5 years a cause for sainthood can be opened. Done...and the cold case file on Jam Master Jay is still open 'cause they never solved his murder. 

 3) The local bishop or other religious leader will assign someone to collect all sorts of documents and conduct interviews about the life of the candidate. Joseph Simmons aka Rev. Run has got that covered. The Adidas, the chains, the snap brim fedoras. I offer as my own proof an English muffin bearing the image of Jam Master Jay holding aloft his gold record.

 4) Once they have all the information, the file will be sent to the Sacred Congregation for the causes of Saints in Rome. They will study the file and, if it seems the person exhibited some form of heroic virtue, that person will be declared a Servant of God and an official Cause for Sainthood will be opened. Reeling from their first taste of failure, personal problems began to surface for the trio. McDaniels, who had been a heavy drinker in recent years, was losing control to alcoholism. Jay was involved in a life-threatening car accident and survived two gunshot wounds after an incident in 1990. In 1991, Simmons was charged with raping a college student in Ohio, though the charges were later dropped. He was also battling depression and would frequently mix poison with Coca Cola—his signature drink—later coined "The Jimmy Simmons". They survived depression, car accidents, shootings, alcoholism. The early saints would starve for their faith? Run-D.M.C. drank POISON for theirs. 

 5) More investigations and interviews will be conducted and if the person passes all favorably, they will be named as Venerable. With so much personal chaos and professional uncertainty, the members turned to faith to try to steady their lives. Both Simmons and McDaniels joined the church, with Run becoming especially devoted following his legal troubles and the toll it took on his finances. There are no atheists in foxholes, Son. 

 6) Next, more investigations and at least one miracle must be confirmed and verified due to the intercession of the candidate. Again, I submit Exhibit A. Got that covered. I've already wrapped and gotten it ready to go to: "The Pope - Vatican City - Italy."

 7) If all goes well, the candidate will then be Beatified by the Pope and receive the title of "Blessed." "Blessed Rev. Run." "Blessed Run-D.M.C." Could chart...with a bullet.

 8) In the final stage, more investigations and at least one more miracle must be verified. Once all that has been done, the file is turned over to the pope who will make the final decision. It will be up to the pope to declare a person a saint and then arrangements are made for the official canonization ceremonies. This process can take many years, even centuries. Of course, the person became a saint the moment they entered heaven. The Church just needs to investigate to make sure the candidate is worthy of emulation and makes a good role model for future generations. The Pope is Francis I.  I wanted him to come out and sing "My Way."  Either that or "Don't Cry For Me, Argentina." Don't they make Adidas in Argentina? 

 I'll go to the Immaculate Shrine today and light a candle in petition. "We praise and bless you, Father, for having enlightened the mind of man to discover new musical techniques. Its mission is to uplift and educate men and society both materially and spiritually. Lead us not into temptation, oh Lord. Deliver us from the temptation toward ruining the gifts given to us by You with such wisdom and love. May they sing to your Glory. Through the intercession of Mary, Queen of the Apostles, grant this prayer.

You've Got To Fight For The Right To Party...Into Old Age

I am in the final stages of finishing My Life  by Sofia Tolstoy.  She continues to amaze me:  how much she accomplished, and how she remained so supportive of her husband and family which at times was a thankless task.  

She wrote of the celebration of a great poet, nearing the end of his life, and the community was going to hold a fete.  She arranged for garlands and wreaths to be sent in her family's name, and many of her family members (minus her husband) participated in the celebration.  She wrote, "As for me, I simply found it a pleasure to organize and take part in the event.  As a rule I am quite fond of celebrations, glamour, fun, beauty, the company of pleasant people, although apart from the latter, I do have the company of pleasant people.  I was destined to live my life completely outside of that whole (sphere.)  On this occasion, too, fate robbed me of the very celebration I had organized."  (She had to remain home nursing sick children.)

Later, she found in her husband's diary, his comments on that event: "Everybody's terribly silly, overeating, overdrinking, and singing.  Even gross!  Vainglory, luxury, poetry, it's all quite enchanting when one is filled with the energy of youth, but without youth or energy, with on the dullness of old age permeating everything, it's gross."

Sofia reports, "For some reason, however, I did not find it gross.  I was happy to bring what might have been a final pleasure to this celebrity poet.  Life is too hard, grey and complicated and that it's good when one sees flaring up from time to time, if not sunlight, then at least a tiny star!"  I agree with her.  This has been on my mind lately: the process of aging gracefully and not falling prey to the undertow of jadedness and negativity.  It's an easy way out.  You don't have to make much effort to be a curmudgeon.   I hope I can keep striving for that light, or at least a tiny star.

Postscript:  The photograph that I used was the last taken of the couple on their anniversary, September 23, 1909.

My Life...in 1,125 Pages. Suivez-Moi

Sofia Andreevna Tolstaya Wedding Portrait, 1862

In 2010 I learned that Sofia Tolstoy’s writings called My Life had finally been published.  I knew it existed in Russian archives, but it had never been translated and published.  What puzzled me  in 2010 was why it wasn’t turning up in any local libraries so that I could read it. …and that would be Sofia Andreevna Tolstaya for my Russian friends.

 My fascination with Russian culture began as a teen, and I still have most of the books I started gathering then. A copy of Anna Karenina that I probably read first at 16 or 17. Then, I strongly identified with the character of Kitty who was based strongly on Sofia Tolstoy when she was a teen. I would read the book at the start of any snowfall in subsequent years; always with Anna visiting her wayward brother Stefan, trying to make peace in his family with his wife. As I re-read, and matured, I grew to identify with all of the characters.  Multiple copies of War and Peace, books on history, on politics, my old Russian grammar books…

I should tuck in here that I don’t think there has ever been a successful version of Anna Karenina on either film on television. Keira Knightley, the latest, is grossly miscast as Anna. Anna is a sensualist. Keira is all teeth, jaw and angles. Too brittle.

This year I finally started tackling my 26 page reading list, most of the books having to be acquired by intralibrary loans. It was by this means I finally acquired a copy of My Life, and upon receiving it, I can see why most libraries wouldn’t have it.   It was published by the University of Ottawa.  It weighs a ton. Not the sort of volume you want propped on your chest for bedtime reading. It runs 1,125 pages. That would stop most in their tracks.

The writings reflect back to her childhood, living within the Kremlin walls, into her teen years and throughout her married life. Leo (Lev Nikolaevich) Tolstoy was a family friend, many years older than Sofia. Her older sister Liza had thought Leo would marry her, so there was a great deal of discord within the family when he proposed to Sofia. She writes with an honesty that is painful, including what she viewed as a rape in the marriage carriage on their way to Tolstroy’s country estate, Yasnaya Polyana.

 In those few years where she entered society, prior to her young marriage, she speaks of the freedom she feels within herself, that spreading of wings that most teens experience in some degree. She loved the city, she loved culture, she loved learning, and she loved her finery. That is what I wanted to focus on now.

The year before she was married, she was trying to remove her presence from Tolstoy by leaving the house before he was expected, trying to give her sister Liza a chance at winning his love. When Tolstoy would discover that Sofia wasn’t present, he would sometimes storm off, which, as you can imagine, created even greater familial problems.

 Sofia writes about one of Lev’s visits where she was wearing a white and purple barège dress. (Barege is defined as a “light silky gauze fabric made of wool.”) On the shoulders were “bright purple bows from which long ribbons hung down called Suivez moi. (Follow me.) From a book called Mode and Manners of the Nineteenth Century I learned that in 1853, a fashion was introduced where hats, chignons, or dresses were adorned with two long narrow ribbons (often velvet) that hung all the way down the back to the ground and were called “Flirtation ribbons” or in Paris “Suivez moi” or “Jeune homme.” (young men).

 The "Anna Karenina" ring that Tolstoy had made in Moscow for Sofia of diamonds and a ruby--for her sacrifice and multiple copyings of Anna Karenina

 Seeing her with her ribbons, Tolstoy said, “I’m disappointed that you didn’t dress up this fancy at Auntie’s."  He was smiling.  “And you’re not dancing?” I asked. “No, what’s the sense?” he replied. “I’m too old.” If only she had heeded that comment.  Sofia knew, from the time she was a teen, that she loved being in a large city, that she loved gorgeous clothes and she loved "sparkle."  When Tolstoy wrote his farewell letter to her in 1910 he stated “I can no longer stand living in these conditions of luxury.” Yet, he returned to those conditions after his pilgrimages and wheat cuttings with the peasants time and again.

She said about her husband, “Everyone asks: ‘But why should a worthless woman like you need an intellectual, artistic life?’ To this I can only reply: ‘I don’t know, but eternally suppressing it to serve a genius is a great misfortune.”

Suivez moi? I’m up to page 472, Sofia. There have been many births and several deaths of children. Ultimately you bore him 13 children, eight of whom survived to adulthood. You could write. You could paint. You could play music.  You sewed almost all of your family’s clothing.

And just in the past few pages, I learned your husband (feeling pressured) dumped the entire business of your family into your hands: the estate, the multiple properties, the hiring and firing of employees, his book deals and publishing rites. You would even travel to Moscow to choose the paper for the book while squeezing in pleas to the government for people your husband felt should be pardoned. I don’t know how you did it and kept your voice, or your mind.

Sofia's bedroom at Yasnaya Polyana.  Her writing desk is in the far right of the photograph.

Roses Are Blue. Orchids Are, Too

According to Home Depot, "...with a little bit of magic, we turn the white orchid, blue."


Didn't I do this with a rose in first grade and get punished?

Rocks And Stones Won't Hurt My Bones

I have no idea where I acquired this. Logically I would say "my mother" since she was always the one hauling rocks and driftwood and bionic pine cones home; my father complaining of the weight of boulders in his car trunk with Mom's argument being, "...but there are fossils in there." I have that boulder by my back gate now--the tiny animal indents collect pools of water.

. I know my parents found large deposits of amethyst when they were in Nova Scotia, so maybe there? Some day I'll pass it on, but for now, I like holding it. I've only been in Nova Scotia once. I was going to London on a Pan Am jet, and the windshield blew out over the Atlantic Ocean. We had to drop thousands of feet in altitude very quickly: some were calm, some were crying, some were praying. They tried landing us at Bangor, but the runway was too short, so we landed in Halifax on another short runway and I spent the night sleeping on molded plastic seats. We couldn't leave the airport, not knowing when the next plane was coming in. I was wearing an amethyst ring--that I had bought at a Bermondsey flea market in London.

As a child, I had to go to West Virginia where my parents spent their free time building a church camp. My brother and I felt like child labor, which we were. We had to clear the land, sleep in pup tents-- (until a building was constructed,) digging trenches to keep out the copperhead snakes out at night. One afternoon my mother showed up in a field where I was and said, "Let's go climb that mountain," (pointing above our heads,) and of course it was straight faced lichen covered granite with only the tiniest grasping points. No rappel and belay. No "North Face." I was wearing Keds.

We made it to the top, this jagged edge, and I looked down and found this bone. We never could figure out how an animal managed to get up there (the bone is about 4 1/2 inches long.) My father's running joke was that it was a cow. One more talisman in a home full of them.

The Man In The Moon White Suit

"Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody."

~~Mark Twain

I caught a blurb in Entertainment Weekly that said a memoir was coming out this November: "The University of California Press will publish Volume I of Mark Twain’s autobiography (volumes II and III are to come at later dates).Twain himself gave the university some 5,000 pages but stipulated that the work had to remain unpublished until the 100th anniversary of his death, so the manuscript has been languishing in the vault all this time — available to scholars (who have been able to use the work for their own Twain biographies) but no one else. On its' website, UCP says that “the strict instruction that these texts remain unpublished for 100 years meant that when they came out, he would be "dead, and unaware, and indifferent’ and therefore free to speak his ‘whole frank mind."

Oddly enough, I had been thinking of re-reading Tom Sawyer or Huckleberry Finn just in the past weeks: both books not read by me in quite some time. On my regular trip to the library I went into the children's section with it's reduced shelves and tiny tables and minute chairs and while there was no Tom Sawyer (off whitewashing a fence, I reckon,) they did have a recently published Huckleberry with some interesting illustrations, so I checked it out, thinking, "A lazy summer read meandering down the river on a raft." I settled into bed. In the introduction, there was what I would call a "disclaimer" about the dialect (Read: "Don't take offense that he has black people talking this way,") and another disclaimer about the use of the "N" word. Lawdy.

I begin. Chapter One. Wait. I have to ask. Have any of you returned to these books in oh...the past twenty years? Hep me Jebus. I was....floored. The dialogue? Not just Jim the runaway slave, but everyone. I suppose this regional dialect writing passed for humor in 1885. I read on Wikipedia that when the novel came out, there was controversy over the "coarse language," (that would be the swearing,) which is minor to what more modern eyes now see. I also Wiki read, "...it became even more controversial in the 20th century because of its perceived use of racial stereotypes and because of its frequent use of the racial slur _____." If I say "racial slur used every five words," I think I would be understating it.

When I was checking the library shelves for the book, and picked it up, I noted that it seemed remarkably "clean," as in "children haven't been chewing, doodling, or dripping their Creamsicles down the pages." I think a modern child would find it impossible to read what William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, Norman Mailer, and many other noted authors have labeled "The Great American Novel." Thematically? Perhaps. But the written word? I'm going to be honest. I have read some really dreadful stuff in my time and stuck with it to the bitter end. I couldn't finish Huckleberry Finn. Finn did me in. I swirled in the currents of the Mississippi and sank.

That same day in the library, I stumbled on a tiny book entitled Who is Mark Twain? by "Mark Twain Himself," Never Before Published. What this book consists of is a lot of essays that never saw the light of day, and I might add, Twain was a shrewd editor in leaving them unpublished. To his credit, I do believe that Twain, like many a writer, felt that if you had a calling for writing, then you did it, come what may and let it fall for posterity.

In an 1865 letter to his brother, Twain wrote, "You had better shove this in the stove, for I don't want any absurd "literary remains and unpublished letters of "Mark Twain" published after I am planted." Obviously his brother didn't obey him, nor did many others who received similar requests over the years. Considering that he wrote his brother those words before he had his first big publishing success, and two years before his first book, it was a remarkably prescient thing to say, even jokingly.

When Twain died in 1910, he left behind the largest cache (over half a million pages,) of personal papers of any 19th-century author. How did he really feel about posterity poking through his stuff? I think it is clear that, unlike many writers, Twain wasn't embarrassed by his "literary remains even if they were failures." It is very unusual for a writer to expose his efforts that might caste ill on his posterity, or even something as simple as an unwillingness to let the world see how he worked. Many a time I have read "The letters of...." or..."The journal of..." and it is obvious that every line was carefully written, or correspondence saved, which did not reflect poorly on the deceased.

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, a woman who had a heightened perception of her own role in history, and knowing she was dying, called her former school chum (and social secretary) and they sat in front of the fireplace, re-reading and laughing, but burning and destroying page after page of personal papers. Let the walls of Camelot remain sound.

When social commentator and judicial investigator Dominick Dunne died, in his last novel his protagonist (himself,) revealed that he was bi-sexual and had been involved with other men. Mr. Dunne said, just a short time before his death. "You have got to tell the truth at the end. No lies. You have got to tell the truth." I am also of the school, "Let the truth prevail. For better or worse." There's something profoundly sad in someone wanting to control what their life seemingly was--when it wasn't. I say there is more to be gained in telling the truth, because we are all part of this process. Another way of saying, "Be prideful of your scars with your successes," I suppose.

Referring back to these memoirs on Twain that will be coming out (and the delay in their release,) I want to mention that this subject crops up in this book of essays, quoting from Twain's autobiography of 1906 (four years before his death) that the full publication of his life would not occur until 100 years after his death. He makes this precondition explicit, and then explains why he thought he was taking no real risk in the matter:

"I can speak more frankly from the grave than most historians would be able to do, for the reason that whereas they would not be able to feel dead, however hard they might try, I myself am able to do that. They would be making believe to be dead. With me, it is not make-believe. They would all the time be feeling, in a tolerably definite way, that that things in the grave which represents them is a conscious entity; conscious of what was saying about people, an entity capable of feeling shame; an entity capable of shrinking from full and frank expression, for they believe in immortality. They believe that death is only a sleep, followed by an immediate waking, and that their spirits are conscious of what is going on here below and take a deep and continuous interest in the joys and sorrows of the survivors whom they love and don't."

"But I have long ago lost my belief in immortality--also my interest in it. I can say, now, what I could not say while alive--things which would shock people to hear; things which I could not say when alive because I should be aware of that shock and would certainly spare myself the personal pain of inflicting it."

...in other words, Twain was perfectly willing to let us read his most intimate manuscripts precisely because he knew that when we did so, he would no longer exist. Think for a moment, about "...things which would shock people to hear." A world and society where there were still checks and boundaries that prohibited laying it all out there. Is it silly to long for the day when we weren't blasted by the minute with every burp, blat and blather on Twitter? Gee. Should I really write that I have a wart on my labia? Oh...go ahead. Be honest. Tell us what you are really thinking. What would Mark Twain tweet? "My moustache is yellow from smoking these dang nabbit ceegars." The problem is, there are no qualifiers on what is worth reporting. Have you read Courtney Love's Facebook page? Be still my heart. Code blue.

The book wasn't a total waste of rejects. I found an amusing essay about standards Twain set "Whenever I Am About To Publish A Book." His means of jumping the critics by using the verdict of the general public. He states he always showed his manuscripts to a private group of friends composed as follows:

1. Man and woman with no sense of humor.
2. Man and woman with medium sense of humor.
3. Man and woman with prodigious sense of humor.
4. An intensely practical person.
5. A sentimental person.
6. Person who must have a moral in, and a purpose.
7. Hypercritical person--natural flaw-picker and fault-finder.
8. Enthusiast. Person who enjoys anything and everything, almost.
9. Person who watches the others, and applauds or condemns with the majority.
10. Half a dozen bright young girls and boys, unclassified.
11. Person who relishes slang and familiar flippancy.
12. Person who detests them.
13. Person of evenly balanced judicial mind.
14. Man who always goes to sleep.

...and for those who didn't agree with him on any of this?.....

Virginia Is For Lovers...Maybe

...Thanks, Drew.

Redefining "Going Postal"

I was out running errands today and my first stop was the post office. There was one Hispanic woman in there mopping the floor, and two workers behind the counter. I was the only customer. As I approached the counter I heard one of them commenting to the other about how they had gotten rid of a "crazy woman" by hitting her with a broom.

I said to the woman who made that comment, "And what if I was a crazy woman? Would you hit me? I was half teasing. She looked me dead in the eye and said, "I'd hit you." Then she said, "Lavita (not her real name.) Get that broom out of the closet. This woman doesn't think we wouldn't hit her for being crazy."

I knew her co-worker realized this could get them into trouble, and she was quickly back pedaling saying, "Oh. We don't really hit crazy people with a broom. She was just joking (I knew otherwise.) I shifted the topic to two little girls who had come in with elves hats on, and how the post office had closed early the day we had snow, but...that whole exhange really gave me pause about what's going on in there.

Later, I went into a Staples. There was a line. I was talking to the man behind me about calendars and other things, and I told him the above story. Somehow during the telling of the story the whole crowd went silent: the clerks, the people in line. I looked around at them and said, "Listen. You can't make this stuff up," but I could see their jaws had dropped. The man I had been talking with said, "Well, I guess this redefines "going postal." I said, "Usually don't they have a gun in the back and just go crazy themselves?"

I can't joke this off, I'm afraid. I know in my heart those women hit a person. I could hear it in their voices. It's been bothering me all day.

Brrrffday

I spent a lot of time outside yesterday taking snow pictures. Did you?

I opened my hall window that is over an exterior porch roof. It was a wall of snow.

What's he doing there? Childhood duck.

My neighbor's children at the end of their time sleighing down the hills. His twin was wisely in the house, cuddled up reading. I like how seasonal their jackets are. I like how he hugs his little sister and is kind to her. He had me take a lot of pictures using his camera.

A rose that doesn't know any better. I love late roses, and God bless Homestead Gardens in Davidsonville for selling such sturdy plants.

My squirrel wind chime from Harwichport, Massachusetts. He's used to snow.

.....and someone made me a snow birthday cake with pod candles made from the ornamental grasses in my yard. The bestest gift I could receive. This Winter Solstice baby, born during a blizzard and who loves snow, wishes you a good week. Enjoy the white cold. The days now grow longer.

Have An Ah Oooga Christmas

I spent this evening writing to two men (and I almost typed "boys,") that I have known since I was born. Yes. Born. One is five years older than me, and the other one or two. We grew up on the same street, and there are a lot of memories between us.

I was rather sad this season. Usually I am putting up three trees (one silver,) and making wreaths for myself and friends and sending out these funky cards I make using funny photographs and writing long letters and going over "Christmas Cheer" recipes (Memo to Self: Remember to ask Lee where that Christmas Cocktails Web Page is that we did.) Last weekend, with all that's going on, I spent the Saturday thinking it through and decided to put my big girl pants on and realize I couldn't "do" Christmas this year: Please...and I'm begging you...do NOT write me and say, "But you can do something!" If I'm not doing what I normally do, I'm doing none of it.

Earlier this fall, I went through last year's Christmas and Hannukah card list and really whacked away at it. I am the type who usually gives people a few years to come round, but this time, I thought, "I'm tired of being the one always trying." For some people, it was the end of the trail. I'm pushing them off the life raft. Sink or swim. Find me or not. I don't care anymore. The list is still too big, and I know it's only going to get smaller as each year passes. I did decide the one thing I would do. If someone wrote me a Christmas or birthday card with a message, I would write them back. That, I am honoring.

I had to run an errand recently that was going to take me near my old neighborhood, and I thought, "I know I'm going to write "the guys" this year, so let me swing by and take pictures of our childhood homes." In D.C. you get an odd mix of "JesusMaryand Joseph what happened here? to "Still the same. Norman Rockwell. Let's sing a carol." As I told the guys writing them today, "Our old street is a mix of "trashed out," and "Haitian Disneyland."

I wound up writing them a 13-page Christmas letter that had me laughing. At one point I wrote, "I jut realized that deaths, muggings, robberies, bodies in the road don't exactly scream "Merry Christmas,"and I told them that I was laughing as I wrote that: but I did write them honestly about the changes and things going on lately.

I also wrote them about some shared memories. One winter the older boys got very ambitious and decided to wage a snow war. This was back when Washington still had deep snows. That morning they gathered up empty cardboard boxes and shovels and things to "level" with and actually had a little snow "brick" factory going: filling the boxes with snow and levelling them off and dumping them; using the same techniques you would use to build an igloo, only they were making snow walls. The girls and little ones, myself included, were busy making snowballs and stacking them like cannonballs at either snow fort. I told them, "Nowadays kids would just play this on Wii and that "PlayStation snowballs don't hurt." One's dumped in a bucket of water to give them an ice veneer do.

I reminded the younger of the two men, too, how one summer when I was 14 or 15 and he was 16, we spent that summer on my front porch sucking on grape Kool Aid ice cubes, playing gin rummy. We had quite an addicted group, and I told him "I still have that same deck of cards!" It wasn't until I was getting reading to sign off with a hand written closing that I remembered something else. That gin rummy summer. There was a boy in the neighborhood restoring an old Model T Ford. Their horns were a distinctive klaxon "Ah Ooh Gah" sound. He would drive from his house and pass mine. I was teased that he had a crush on me, because he'd always honk driving by. And to the man I was writing today I said, "You used to constantly tease me that summer and say, "Here comes your boyfriend.....Ah Ooooog AH!"

I went to You Tube, and sure enough. There are tons of videos of young men with these horns in their cars, including one actually punching one in an old Model T. I only remember the horn the boy used in his car had a much more drawn out oooooohga. So I got to thinking. Some of those boys on You Tube? They are popping the hoods and showing you the horn. In one, there are a group of them with their cars in a semi circle having a "honk off" contest. I'm not making this up! Then they start revving their engines in competition.

This is why I love men. Men are so simple and easy to please. One reason, anyway. Buy your honey a horn that sounds like the Queen Mary coming into dock. Or plays the theme from The Godfather. Ladies? If you want your man or boyfriend to go into orgasmic bliss this holiday? Order him a J.C. Whitney automotive parts catalog. Yes, they are online, but you've got to get them the actually catalog. http://www.jcwhitney.com/ This is primo toilet reading. This is where men go to get dice gear shifts and those naked lady mud flaps and chromed skull speakers for the rear windows of their cars.

I turned some men onto the Whitney catalog when I was in my teens? To this day they are still talking about it. Call me Santa Cube, and I do this in memory of my own Ah Ooga boy. I never met him, but I hope he's still out there honking somewhere.

http://www.jcwhitney.com/ANTIQUE-STYLE_OOOGAH_HORN?ID=12;0;0;0;100005;ProductName;0;0;0;0;2009071;0;0

HO, HOO GAH!