Saturday

7 October 2017

— rain so fine you have to look twice to see it

Good Morning All,

So far, concerning my resurrected computer screen,  one of you has written to say she is most thankful she will now have—for another two and a half months, anyway—a reason  for getting out of bed mornings. (Well, that’s actually a paraphrase. What she actually said was, “It could do it again, you know”, but I knew what she meant.)

When Esther read the bit about me talking nice-nice to my computer, she opined that she hoped not too many of my readers worked in the psychiatric world with access to long-armed, canvas sports coats.

And Pele Pele wrote: "I feel like sending some kind of Hallmark card "Glad your computer is feeling better" or something.  Anyway - mazel tov.”

Today is James Whitcomb Riley’s birthday in 1849. He was known as the Hoosier Poet, which for most of my youth I thought meant he wrote poems about vacuum cleaners. Many of his poems, even by my sentimental standards, are stupendously and awesomely awful. He’s the fellow who lets us know what life is like “When the frost is on the pumpkin”. If you want to cringe and feel your toes curl, look him up on Poemhunter.com.

That said, his brief poem in today’s Day Book is pretty good. I have been where this poem happens. I have felt the expectation and the excitement it generates. Any bunch of words that can do that is fine with me.

Today is also the birthday of Henry Rutgers, in 1745. He was a Dutchman from New Amsterdam who gave a bell to a fledgling university, which turned around and named itself after him. Do not miss his quote in the Day Book; being an a former teacher, it is one of my favorites.

To this day, I do not know how I got into Rutgers. My grades were mediocre, especially in Latin, where kindly Miss Rounds took mercy on me and gave me C’s. I got a D in English one semester for suggesting to the teacher there might be more than one way to interpret a poem. My SAT scores in math were okay, but lousy for English, partially because one of the comprehension passages was so well crafted I read it two or three times just for the lilt of its language, and time ran out on me.

I think my senior English teacher must have been friends with one of the professors at Rutgers. The head of the Harvard English Department and at least a couple of other Harvard profs had—a couple of years before--transferred down to Rutgers to be nearer New York. Mr. Taylor must have decided I had some English talent even though I goofed around quite a bit.

The early September day in 1964 when my parents and little brother Norman and I arrived outside my dormitory remains indelibly imprinted in my mind. The dorm was an ugly pre-fab affair, not a whole lot more than a Quonset hut out in the middle of nowhere. Across the road was a chicken farm, as was most evident from the wind direction. Several young men were walking around, playing catch, or shooting baskets. Every single one of them looked smarter than I, better dressed, more athletic, and as if they knew they belonged there.

What on earth, I asked myself, was I doing there? There wasn’t even a maple tree in sight. Geeze, Beano, I added, you’ve really done it this time.

“Pop,” I said, “start the car again. Let’s head back to New England.”

Fortunately, most fortunately, he laughed. We hauled my steamer trunk and suitcase into my narrow dorm room, not yet occupied by my roommate, whoever he was going to be. We went back to the car. A few hugs and off they went, me standing there waving, just like the last time they’d pulled this trick when I was nine when they deserted my brother David and me at my dad’s old summer camp up on North Hero Island near the top of Lake Champlain.

I say fortunately because there I was to make life long friends who helped create me even as I helped create them. There I was going to get an excellent ride through English Literature. And there I was to weather an intensity of culture shock so severe it made going to a remote valley in Swaziland a piece of cake.

Go Well and Stay Well,

Bhekaron

P.S. Two Holly snaps: