Category: Culture

The annual spring poem


The bay window faces the south ridge and is the best-lit place in the house. The light makes it a poor place for a computer, but it’s perfect for a typewriter. This room is rarely needed as a bedroom now, so I’ve turned it into a little library and parlor, with a sleeper couch.

After a cold winter that froze the new gardenia bush, for which I had such high hopes for someday having gardenias, a blustery spring is blowing in. Has the weather been swinging wildly everywhere?

From Scotland Ken writes, “Our magnificent sunny and warm spell has come to an end. The temperature is now dipping below freezing and there’s an arctic chill in the air, even when it’s sunny. I need to determine whether to cancel our first spring training [softball] this evening.” From southern France, Lise writes: “Here it’s storming so much so I couldn’t close the car door — had to step outside going to the other side of the door — and push HARD to get it closed.” Two days ago, I wrote to Ken: “Winter has returned here, too, though today is warm with a windy, wet squall blowing over. The wind buffeting the house kept me awake last night because of my habit of worrying about the roof.”

The birds are delirious. There seem to be more of them this year than ever, particularly bluebirds. Apparently I don’t have enough bluebird housing. A pair of bluebirds keep trying to break into the house and the car. I put up a new bluebird house for them in the sycamore tree out front, but I’m afraid they’re not going to move in. I had worried that I wasn’t seeing many rabbits this spring, but recently, at dusk, I’ve seen a rabbit eating clover near the front steps. There are coyotes in the woods, so smart rabbits will stay close to the house, which the coyotes avoid.

There seems to be a worsening of the madness abroad in the world at present, from war to petty forms of violence such as the slap at the Oscars. If I were a poet I’d type up a poem asking who has opened Pandora’s Box. I feel luckier than ever to live here in the woods, compelled to go out only for necessities. I have not posted about the American political situation recently because it seems to me that things are mostly (though slowly) moving in the right direction, toward justice, accountability, and the defense of democracy, though the media are as usual determined to keep us in a state of demoralization and anger.

I have been afflicted with a kind of mania for finding just the right typewriter on eBay, a reliable everyday typewriter in perfect working condition that does not require a Ph.D. in typewriter repair if it ever needs fixing. For that reason, I use my IBM Selectric III lightly. I greatly prefer electric typewriters because they are fast, and I’m a fast typist. I’m also partial to IBM and Adler typewriters. Adlers are German typewriters, as well made as IBMs. I believe the Adler Satellite 2001 in the photo, made around 1975, will be my everyday typewriter now, though I also have a Facit (made in Sweden) typewriter that is in like-new condition but which isn’t as fast as the Adler.

A thought for the day: Why did we older folks abandon our typewriters so quickly and thoughtlessly after computers became affordable? I am extremely guilty, and I feel a certain shame for it. I can’t even remember what became of the last of several typewriters I owned. It was a massive old Underwood office machine made in the 1950s that worked perfectly for me for years. Why didn’t I keep it? What was I thinking?

The poem below was typed with the Adler Satellite 2001.

Free Guy, and The Adam Project

Few things go better with popcorn than a Ryan Reynolds movie. I have no objection to empty entertainment as long as it’s entertaining, but Ryan Reynolds movies are rarely entirely empty. Free Guy is, in part, a satire on contemporary confusion about what counts as real. And The Adam Project is a family story with some touching moments. Somehow there’s always something smart about the dumbness.

The Adam Project can be streamed on Netflix. Free Guy can be streamed on Disney+ and HBO Max.

West Side Story


The duet “One Hand, One Heart” was recorded live on camera at the Cloisters

I have seen four of the nominees for Best Picture at the 2022 Academy Awards — Don’t Look Up, Dune, The Power of the Dog, and West Side Story. I’m rooting for West Side Story.

Only people my age will have grown up hearing multiple versions of the songs — the original cast, the cast of the 1961 film, and the 1984 recording conducted by Leonard Bernstein and sung by opera stars including Kiri Te Kanawa. Given all those performances, it’s apparent how difficult it would be to surpass all those performances and set a new standard. In our time, who could have brought that off other than Steven Spielberg and Tony Kushner?

And it isn’t just the singing. It’s also the visuals, including the choreography and the vivid, constantly moving scenery (though there are a few quiet moments in scenes set at the Cloisters, “up above Harlem,” as Tony says). Even the drama — the parts that are not sung or danced — are compelling, though we know the story. Out on the streets, don’t miss out on the constant stream of 1950s cars! From the refrigerators to the ice cream sundae glasses, the retro visuals are beautiful (and accurate). Every member of the supporting cast is ridiculously talented, especially Mike Faist as Riff and Ariana DeBose as Anita. Rita Moreno, now age 90 and who portrayed Anita in the 1961 version, sings “Somewhere.” Some of the songs, including “Somewhere,” were recorded live, on camera. The Spanish accents and the untranslated Spanish make the story much more real. A trans character, Anybodys, played by the nonbinary Iris Menas, got West Side Story banned in such places as Saudi Arabia.

At 1:24 in the video, when “One Hand, One Heart” begins, watch Ansel Elgort’s throat, not only for the perfectly controlled and subtle vibrato but also for proof that the song was sung live on camera.

West Side Story can be streamed on Disney+ and HBO Max. The 2022 Academy Awards will be March 27.

For solidarity with Ukraine: Pierogi !


Pierogi with roasted Brussels sprouts and Impossible vegan chicken nuggets

Yesterday the Washington Post ran an article (with a recipe) on pierogi, written by an American with Ukrainian ancestry. I read the article and could hardly wait to make pierogi. The article is “Making Ukrainian pierogi roots me to my family tree.”

I reduced the recipe by more than half, and I still have pierogi for another day. They’re not hard to make. It’s just a long process. I used yellow potatoes, and for the cheese I used Gruyere — the perfect cheese for comfort food. The Impossible fake chicken nuggets are the best I’ve tried. It has been years since I’ve eaten chicken, but I don’t think I’d know the difference. I didn’t have any sour cream, darn it.

Vikings: Valhalla

Were the Vikings really this crude? Must a television series about the Vikings rely on such crude plots? I’ve watched only the first episode of this new season, but so far it’s all about revenge, jealousy, lust, and greed.

It begs the question, is there any continuous thread of human character from the medieval Vikings to the super-civilized Scandinavian peoples of today? I don’t know nearly enough to even try to answer that question, but somehow it seems likely. For example, consider Viking art, or this article on the Viking attitude toward animals. According to the article:

“‘The hierarchy we see today, where people dominate animals, did not exist,’ says Hanne Lovise Aannestad, an archaeologist and researcher at the Museum of Cultural History.”

The Vikings, it seems, saw animals as divine kindred. Whereas the Christians taught them that animals are feelingless and inferior beings to be used in any old way — dominion theology. Which idea is more primitive?

This crudeness of plot and dialogue is one of the mistakes that Game of Thrones did not make. In Vikings, where are the artists, the storytellers, the ship engineers, the ocean navigators, the people who learned and taught other languages? Must everyone swing a blade, including the women? And the hair! Scroungy hair at sea is one thing, but must we imagine that the Vikings couldn’t tame their hair, and make it beautiful, when they were indoors, feasting or debating?

I’ll probably watch an another episode or two before I bail. The best fun I get from Vikings, I confess, is cheering for the pagans against the obnoxious Christians.

Vikings: Valhalla can be streamed on Netflix.

Country comfort food

Biscuits are a misdemeanor. Fried biscuits are a felony.

The fact that it’s February is justification enough for comfort food. But the parlous condition of the world at the moment, with Putin (hopefully) knocked back onto his heels in Ukraine, is even more justification. Pinto beans, biscuits, and slaw are a Southern staple. Onions are always served with pinto beans. Danish Havarti is not exactly a Southern staple, but it’s a comfort food that goes ever so nicely with beans, slaw, and biscuits.

I was surprised to learn that not all Havarti comes from Denmark. I buy it at Trader Joe’s. I need to check on the source, but it’s possible that it comes from Wisconsin or Canada. According to the Wikipedia article, Havarti is a staple in Denmark, where 17,000 metric tons are produced each year. I can certainly testify that, in Danish hotels (which don’t necessarily reflect the kitchen tables of the Danish population), the breakfast buffets always include huge loaves of Havarti, mounted on a rotating-wire device for slicing.

Fry your biscuits in (what else) an iron skillet. I shortened the biscuits above with butter and fried them in olive oil.

The Urkainian national anthem

The historian Heather Cox Richardson, in her daily post on Facebook, writes this morning:

“The Ukrainian people have done far more than hold off Putin’s horrific attack on their country. Their refusal to permit a corrupt oligarch to take over their homeland and replace their democracy with authoritarianism has inspired the people of democracies around the world.

“The colors of the Ukrainian flag are lighting up buildings across North America and Europe and musical performances are beginning with the Ukrainian anthem. Protesters are marching and holding vigils for Ukraine. The answer of the soldier on Ukraine’s Snake Island to the Russian warship when it demanded that he and his 12 compatriots lay down their weapons became instantly iconic. He answered: ‘Russian warship: Go f**k yourself.’

“That defiance against what seemed initially to be an overwhelming military assault has given Ukraine a psychological edge over the Russians, some of whom seem bewildered at what they are doing in Ukraine. It has also offered hope that the rising authoritarianism in the world is not destined to destroy democracy, that authoritarians are not as strong as they have projected.”

Though the Ukrainian national anthem sounds as though it was written for this very moment in history, its origins are in the 19th Century, and it was banned during the Soviet years: Shche ne vmerla Ukrainy i slava, i volia.

Nay, thou art not dead, Ukraine, see, thy glory’s born again,
And the skies, O brethren, upon us smile once more!
As in Springtime melts the snow, so shall melt away the foe,
And we shall be masters in our own home.

The new LGBT numbers


Augustine of Hippo with his hair on fire. Philippe de Champaigne, circa 1645. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

A new Gallup poll includes a surprising new statistic. That is that 20.8 percent of Generation Z, defined as those born between 1997 and 2012, identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender. What’s surprising is that this change is happening so fast, not that the change is occurring. And no matter what religionists may think, this is a return to the pre-Christian normal, not some sort of breakdown in society.

It is a breakdown, though, in the iron grip of Augustinian religion. I am very happy for Generation Z, but this should multiply our sadness for so many millions of lives made miserable, for 2,000 years, by the church. It’s clearer now just how many millions of lives that was.

Alfred Kinsey shocked the world back in the 1940s with his study of male sexuality. Many said that Kinsey’s numbers, which were based on behavior rather than identity, must have been wrong. Now Kinsey’s numbers and contemporary polls are starting to align. Depending on which of Kinsey’s numbers one compares with contemporary polls, we may be even more surprised by the generation after Generation Z.

There is another sad element here. That is that the young people of Generation Z have little awareness of the history that brought them these gains. The short version is that they can thank the Boomers for it. It was the Boomers and their friends who rose up in great enough numbers not to put up with it anymore and to start society on its return to the norm.

You’re welcome, Generation Z.

‘Typewriters are haunted’


Tom Hanks in California Typewriter ⬆︎

Twenty years ago, typewriters were headed toward extinction. No new typewriters of any quality were being made. The surviving typewriters were deteriorating, unused and unloved, and many were being junked. Around 2010, typewriters started making a comeback, particularly among young people who were born after the Golden Age of typewriters who were intrigued by the typewriters’ elegance, magic, and retro quality. In 2017, Tom Hanks, who is a typewriter collector, made a beautiful documentary, California Typewriter. That documentary gave new energy to the movement to save, and use, old typewriters.

I acquired my first typewriter when I was eleven or twelve years old. My career was in newspaper newsrooms, so I have been around typewriters all my life. I confess that, around 1985, fascinated by computers, I stopped using typewriters. But around 1997 I salvaged an IBM Selectric III from the basement of the San Francisco Examiner and had it restored. A couple of weeks ago, while wasting time on eBay, I came across an Adler 21d electric — a huge office machine that weighs almost 45 pounds — and I bought it. It looked almost new, but it needed help. I’d collect typewriters if I could. But, unlike Tom Hanks, I don’t have anywhere to put 250 typewriters. Two or three well chosen, and well loved, typewriters will have to do for me.

California Typewriter interviews a good many people, but it focuses on a typewriter shop in Berkeley, California, across the bay from San Francisco. It’s horrifying, but the typewriter shop closed in 2017 not long after Tom Hanks made his documentary.

There is a line in the documentary, spoken by a poet or writer, “Typewriters are haunted.” That is it exactly. There is something about old typewriters that is alive, that has a clear personality, a kind of mechanical spirit that is made happy when someone uses them to write. One pushes words into a computer. But a typewriter’s magic is that it pulls the words out. I thought I must have been the only person in the world who sometimes writes on a typewriter, then scans the typewritten page to get the text into a computer. Thanks to California Typewriter, now I see that I’m not the only one.

The biggest problem with owning, using, or collecting typewriters these days is that the number of typewriter shops and typewriter mechanics continues to dwindle. With my IBM Selectric III, I was fortunate to get a full restoration done by a technician trained by IBM who was in his eighties at the time. That was ten years ago, and the Selectric continues to work perfectly. With my Adler 21d electric, I was able to get some help (and a diagnosis of the typewriter’s problems) from Ed at A.B.C. Office Systems near Asheville, North Carolina — the nearest remaining typewriter shop near me. Because I’m mechanically minded and have some pretty good tools, I was able to do much of the work myself to get the Adler typewriter back into working condition.

Manual typewriters are much easier to find and easier to restore. I have a fetish for electric typewriters, though. They’re faster, easier to use for hours at a time, and somehow they seem more alive to me. The electric typewriters made in the 1970s by Adler, in West Germany, particularly fascinate me. I regard those Adler electrics as the apex of typewriter engineering and manufacturing before the IBM Selectrics came out with the “golf ball” typewriters as opposed to the typewriters with little hammers.

As someone in the documentary points out, typewriters — good ones, anyway — will never be made again. The typewriters we have now, and the neglected typewriters that we can save, are the only typewriters we will ever have.

Often even typewriter lovers know very little about the long history of typewriters, or how the office machine industry, through the turn of the century and the world wars, led straight to the development of computers. Below I mention a book that discusses some of this history.


A writer writes, in California Typewriter ⬆︎

California Typewriter trailer, on YouTube ⬆︎


My recently acquired Adler 21d electric typewriter ⬆︎

My video on restoring my Adler 21d typewriter ⬆︎

Before the Computer: IBM, NCR, Burroughs & Remington Rand & the Industry They Created, 1865-1956. James W. Cortada. Princeton University Press, 1993. 350 pages.

Typewriters were an important part of the technologies that led to today’s computers. This book concludes, in fact, that because of the extraordinary demand for efficiently moving data to support the allied armies during World War II, “one could conclude that democracy could not be saved without the typewriter.”

The machines that saved democracy — including typewriters, calculators, and the earliest computers — are in museums now, if they were lucky. Less lucky examples of some very beautiful mechanical technology are waiting for us to find them, preserve them, and even use them. The luckiest old machines of all those that are still being used.

Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde: A Life. Matthew Sturgis. Alfred A. Knopf, 2021. 838 pages.

It’s an important question, and there probably are many answers: A hundred and twenty years after his death, why does the life of Oscar Wilde still matter, and why does Wilde interest us so much today? This is the second vast biography in 30 years. Richard Ellman’s biography (1988) still sells and was a fine piece of scholarship. Sturgis’s biography is even better.

Sturgis offers no opinions on why Wilde matters until the four-page epilogue. Wilde matters today, Sturgis says, because he was right about a lot of things.

The tragedy was that Wilde was born into the wrong place and time. Even at the time, France and Italy would not have destroyed Wilde the way England did. France and Italy were often refuges for Wilde, though they were not places where Wilde could have become famous.

At times while reading this book, I wanted to scold Wilde. Clearly he was vain, and much of his posings, posturings, and sayings were a show driven by the desire for fame. Again and again he made ridiculously bad decisions. He was clueless about how to handle money. If you add up what Wilde earned versus what he squandered (not just money), then the squanderings at the time of Wilde’s pathetic death (Nov. 30, 1900) surely exceeded the earnings — except for the fact that Wilde left a legacy that we continue to value today. I don’t recall that Ellman was clear about the fact that Wilde was born to enormous privilege. Sturgis tells us much more about Wilde’s aristocratic origins in Ireland and the open doors for Wilde at Oxford. Much should be expected out of so much privilege.

And yet foibles aside, Wilde comes across, always, as a kind, generous, and very decent human being. When he damaged others — as he certainly did with his family — it was always out of blindness for which he subsequently repented (and often relapsed), never wilful malice. There were many people of high achievement who saw Wilde as a fraud but who, after talking with him, had to concede that Wilde was a superb scholar and a more genuine person than they had supposed.

The villains in this story are the Victorians. The ogres are a few horrible people such as Lord Alfred Douglas and his father, John Douglas, the 9th marquess of Queensbury. The saints are people such as Constance, Wilde’s wife, who died a few months before Wilde died, probably from grief and shame. Another saint is Robbie Ross, who stuck with Wilde until the end and who, as Wilde’s literary executor, did much of the work than preserved the record of Wilde’s life and works.

In 2017, the Queen of England pardoned Wilde, along with 75,000 other Britons who had been convicted under the abolished laws that sent Wilde to prison and led to his death. That took almost 120 years. What a sorry race of human beings we white people are, even if we’re slowly getting better.

I’ll venture one other thought on why Oscar Wilde still matters. It’s that the Victorians are still among us, and that the work that Oscar Wilde bravely started remains incomplete. If Wilde’s life was a warning to other misfits about how to live in the wrong place at the wrong time, other lives in this story are models — Robbie Ross, for example, with his loyalty, integrity, and his talent for salvaging as much as possible from catastrophe.