Spring Approacheth, Part II

After the last snow a week ago, most of us went from ordinarily cranky to really bitchy.  On the assumption, that the white stuff would melt quickly, I didn't even think about starting up the snow blower, and as last week wore on, the snow did disappear, and our hopes for Spring renewed.

However, the cold and wind continued, so we were left to look out the window for Spring.  On our small lake, the geese walked on the ice and looked uncomfortable as they searched for open water.  Ditto for the ducks. Juncos appeared in the junipers, and  when we stuck our noses out the door, we could hear cardinals, robins, gulls, and the occasional red-wing blackbird.

Sunday began brightly without a cloud in the sky....not much traffic on the way to church, but on the way home after a stop for lunch, the roads were chock-a-block with traffic - no doubt others searching actively for Spring.  The sky continued to be cloudless, and so we stopped to pick up Islay The Scotty at the house and headed for a ramble on country roads to the north.  

It was the clarity of the light that made hope real.  Rounded clumps of snow-ice lay at the side of many roads - they would be gone by this morning, and the snow on the north sides of homes and trees and such looked very "thin."

We returned home not having seen the thin fingers of Spring creeping across the landscape, but in the next three days, oh, what possibilities will fill our hearts.

Spring Approacheth

The hold of winter is beginning to release, with one, maybe two snowy blasts yet to come.  We know that these final attempts of Father Winter to hold us in thrall will be short-lived, because all around us the spidery fingers of Spring are increasingly visible.

In late February it was the bird songs which suddenly proliferated, then the angle of the sun began to change, and with the arrival of so-called "daylight savings" morning began later but the afternoons  began to linger almost to dinner time - another hopeful sign.

We are still trying to explain to ourselves why this winter has been so trying.  Snow falls were not too burdensome, although ice underneath remained a constant threat (something to do with my, I expect).  We had some very cold spells which, when combined with wind, made being outdoors a legitimate threat, and that combined with gray day after gray day, was dispiriting.

Yet...and yet, the signs of Spring began to multiply:  Canada geese honking away   low in the afternoon sky, the snow receding between the house and the lake, and the day before yesterday, three snowy egrets flying right down the shore to the part of the lake where they nest.

There is an aerator on the other side of the lake which makes it possible for aquatic birds to remain optimistic no matter what else might be going on around them, but it is the egrets which lifted our hearts and minds...until the next palpable symbol of Spring is knitted into our seasonal pattern.

Paul Scofield

The news of the death of the English actor Paul Scofield came at breakfast.  He was one of the"next"  generation of great actors which arrived immediately after  Laurence Olivier,  John Gielgud, Edith Evans, Peggy Ashcroft, Emlyn Williams, and Alec Guinness among others.

His performance in the film "A Man For All Seasons," was riveting, but I have a clearer memory of a "Volpone,"directed by Peter Hall at the Royal National Theatre in 1972,  with Scofield in the title role, Ben Kingsley as Mosca, and John Gielgud as Sir Politic.

Gielgud "dried" during the performance, and either the prompt thrown or received was delayed -  we caught our collective breath, then things were righted, and off we went.

Scofield's performance might have overwhelmed everything on stage, but it did not.  The greatness of his performance was that it was not grandiose, scenery chewing, showy - you get the drift.  But you could not take your eyes off him (a characteristic which Ian McKellen carries on).

After the play, my American friend and I sat for some moments in silence, trying to process all that we had seen that evening.  Eventually I turned to her and said, "This is one of those nights when one understands the link between theatre and religion, as it was in ancient times."  She nodded, and we left in that companionable silence which allowed what we had seen to settle in memory.

Where it remains to this day.  Those who saw him on the screen or in a theatre will continue to find him very hard to forget, and that is a sufficient legacy.

Caucuses in Minnesota

We don't have a primary in Minnesota in presidential years; we have caucuses - we gather in schools and such to vote, to argue various proposals, to select delegates to party conventions, and so on.

Until last night, I had never been to one of these things, having heard tales about arguments going on until all hours of the night. This year, I learned that I could cast a vote for President and leave the building and the wrangling to others. Sounded good to me.

After dinner I set off for one of our high schools and found the parking lot filling up at a rapid rate. I found the right room, registered, and voted. Because I was tired, I decided to let democracy go forward without me and headed for the car and home.

When I got to the main road, I was startled, no, make that amazed, to see that the line of cars waiting to turn down the road to the school I had just left was about a mile long. Really!

I tuned in to the local public radio news station, and the hosts were marveling at the fact that in another Twin Cities suburb, people were tired of waiting in line, so they were abandoning their cars in the road and walking to the caucus site.

Turns out, four times as many of us went to the caucuses than have in the past. No matter what your political perspective, it's heartening to know that at times, we can make a difference. With the prologue approaching its end, we need to maintain vigilant attention to the conventions and campaign to come.

So, with apologies to Neal Postman, we need to clean and oil our crap detectors - they're going to get a lot of use between now and November.

Finding The Center

Women seem to have a unique capacity to find the middle of an aisle, a doorway, the space in front of an escalator, while men seem to focus on finding the path from point a to point b.

I first noticed this years ago in supermarkets. A cart is left in the aisle so that the, dare we call her, pusher can browse. In smaller buildings with narrow aisles, I have found that whether one wishes to pass on the left or right, it is not possible to do so. In larger markets with wider aisles, the pusher adopts the "strolling browse" technique: Standing to one side of the cart, the pusher moves to the side to contemplate the cans, boxes, or bags. This effectively blocks more than half of the aisle, and passing is impossible.

More recently, I have observed at parties that females tend to stand in the middle of a doorway, and as more acquaintances arrive, the doorway is now not much more than a human door.

Similarly, at the bottom of escalators, small groups of females will stand two strides in front of the escalators departure point while they discuss which part of the store they will assault next.

As I have thought about it, I have come to believe that men are logistical - always creating a plan to get from point to point as efficiently as possible. This may account for the lousy driving habits we males do tend to have.

Women, on the other hand, seem to place the interpersonal element higher on the scale of essential values. So rather than think about blocking the path to the bar, they focus on seeing Martha who hasn't been out much lately, greeting Phyllis who's been in New York seeing the grandkids, and hugging Jennifer who just tossed her spouse over the wall.

Now you may think I am just another male chauvinist, so let me leave you with this parting thought. Just watch the average woman when it comes time to pay for something - put the purse down on the counter, open the purse, open the smaller purse, pull out the check book, open it to the register page, ask what the date is, and what's the amount again, fill in the info, write the damn check, close the checkbook, put it in the small purse, put the small purse in the large purse, close the purse, and put it back on the shoulder.

Geez, George Balanchine couldn't choreograph a ballet any better than that performance. Unless he was standing behind our examplar in line.

I rest my case. Brickbats are available at any convenience store.

Depression & Recession

David Brooks wrote recently in the New York Times about the enormous gap between citizens' assessment of the quality of their own life and that of the state of the country. Never has the gap been so large, and I'm not surprised.

Most of the people I know are bummed out, depressed, frustrated, angry because the state of the country seems bleak and gray, and it's beginning to color our attitudes.

We are a country beset by misadventures, malodorous judgements, deceits and fabrications, despicable treatment of people whom we think to be against us, and beyond all this, our civil rights have never been in such a fragile state.

With fourteen months to go in this administration, I suppose we could look forward to the next one. But the parade of candidates suggests that they are insubstantial stylists, driven by polls and professional advisers and not, so far as I am able to discern, by a singular vision of what the country might achieve, or by a sense of hope, bordering on downright optimism, that he or she can make a significant difference in the lives of the average joes and janes who head off to a job, not knowing precisely when it will be outsourced to India or lost in a merger. This is no time for sissies.

But our President threatens and chides - and that's to us Americans. God knows how others around the world perceive him, but he and and his ilk do love to rattle their swords and stomp their little feet.

Yes, it is true that we shall probably not have to live through a great depression, although I'm less certain about our not living through a third world conflict, and we might have to fall back on what we learned from our parents who survived both of those cataclysmic events:

Live simply, work hard, pay cash, vote in every election, and pray that our government finds a way to work for more of us and not so much against us.

What concerns me is that we may not have the right stuff to manage the future, in our bleak house, divided.

The New York Times, Midget Edition

On August 6th, 2007, The New York Times, the grey lady, is reducing its page width to twelve inches, the so-called new national standard. It's a dark day for those of us who grew up with newspapers but a who cares day for the young who prefer their news in a gossipy, comedic, excerpted in short grainy videos taking by people of their own ilk.

Hey, with the Internet, what can't you learn?

Plenty, it turns out. Our educational system is leaving lots of young people behind, and the curriculum has become sufficiently pallid that not even great teachers can compensate for it.

Tomorrow will be a sad day for me...the Times takes one more giant step to a tabloid format, and next they will be encouraging us to subscribe to the new electronic version which offers an identical copy of each and every page, as well as all the adverts.

No more complaining about the ink coming off on our fingers as it did up until a few years ago, no more of that exhilirating feeling of spreading your hands wide apart when you snapped the middle crease to make the next page easy to handle. Not much satisfaction in folding it down twice to put under your arm or in your brief case - it's basically folded already.

O Brave New World of the Midget Newspaper! Another great advance we are told, which is, in truth, nothing but another retreat.

I wonder if you can fold the new size into a pair of cranky pants to send to the publisher...

6th August Update:

I pulled today's mini-Times out of the paper box and forgot to control for the usual weight of the paper. Almost threw myself into the road. Anyway, I waited until I'd had a cup of coffee before examining it, and I've still got my cranky pants on.

Everything seems too small, too light, for a publication as important as "the Times." Sounds odd, I know, but that's my first take on it, and given my advancing years, I doubt I'll change my mind on the matter.

What else makes me cranky....oh,yeah, product packaging which requires a hacksaw to open, but then we all agree on that, don't we?