Elinor Nauen

Guns freak me out. When we were little—I'm thinking 2nd or 3rd grade—kids could sign up for a gun safety class. I didn't have to ask: It wasn't something my family went in for & even then I was repulsed. I am still a little mad at Johnny for "holding" a gun for someone. It must be 20 years ago, & I'm relieved he didn't tell me till after, but creeped out that there was a gun in my house overnight. My cousin lost an eye to an errant shot on a city street, & of course I read the news, today's being about a 9-year-old who shot her instructor with an Uzi at a theme park called Bullets & Burgers.

Man, doesn't so much today sound like it came from the Onion.

I have tried (maybe not that hard) to understand the pro-gun folks & I'm just not buying it. I don't have any better arguments than the sensible ones already out there: no reason guns can't be regulated, the way liquor & cars are; protect kids; don't sell armor-piercing ammo, & so on.Why doesn't this get fixed??

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Today I salute my high school journalism teacher, Lorraine Norman, who died a few days ago at the age of 91. Washington High put out a weekly newspaper, rare then & probably unheard of now. To give you an idea, we typed on an electric typewriter & did corrections by cutting them out with an exacto knife & rubber cementing them into place. Come to think of it, Miss Norman was a human exacto knife—precise, fine-tuned, someone who insisted on accuracy.

I was shy (shyer) in high school & Miss Norman took me under her wing. The responsibility of editing The Orange & Black has been useful & illuminating to this day, & I would not be surprised if hundreds of others say the same thing, and say as well that she was more influential than any teacher they had.  Read More 

Today is the 94th anniversary of the 19th amendment, which gave women the vote. It's almost in my mother's lifetime—very, very close to us still. Is this another right that can or will be taken away? It seems that the minute there's some progressive (& anti-progressive?) change, someone tries to force it back.

It's going to take a lot of sorting & thinking before I can talk much about my weekend with some of the people I went to high school with. It's hard not to say "girls" even though it's been more than 40 years. But that's what we were, and I guess always will be to each other. With nuance.

I have to go get the eye test where they dilate, so probably not more today, unless I ace the test, but I haven't aced anything since high school.  Read More 

See you Monday

I never noticed this clock or the sign till yesterday, and I sit in the park across the street frequently. This is on Broadway and 24th, just west of Madison Square Park & north of the Flatiron Building. You can never see enough of New York City.

The text on the base reads:
This 1909 iconic street clock was designated a New York City landmark in 1981. Upon establishing its new headquarters at 200 Fifth Avenue in 2011, Tiffany & Co. restored the clock as a gift to the historic Flatiron district.  Read More 

Nonetheless, I'm going to Idaho in a day or two for the wedding of the daughter of someone I graduated from high school with; 4 or 5 of us from our class will be hanging out together. I don't want to relive high school but I do want to see if I can see (in their eyes) who I was then. If they're half as solipsistic as I was, they probably won't have a clue.  Read More 

The Cantor & I co-led a shofar-blowing workshop today in preparation for the High Holidays, when the sound of the shofar is central.

For a primitive, ancient instrument, it is remarkably evocative. People have heard its sound as a wake-up call ... a lamentation ... the cries of a woman in childbirth ... a way to confuse Satan ... a warning ... a call to war ... the sound of the human soul ....

The physical part of blowing a shofar is relatively easy. I run to ensure I have good wind, I practice a few minutes a day to build control and toughen my embouchure.

Studying the laws, getting my intentions in order is a little more challenging. There are as many ways to blow incorrectly as correctly.

The spiritual part is hardest. I find I need the help of everyone in the room to break through the roof & send our prayer to heaven.  Read More 

It's still summer, it's still summer, it's still summer.

Johnny & I sat in Stuyvesant Park on 17th & Second with the Man of Lawe's Tale.

I went to many recitals during the many years that Eddie studied guitar at the Third Street Music School. Every recital featured an uncharismatic, unskilled brother-and-sister act, two Korean kids named Mabel and Ringo. I always imagined that their immigrant parents chose Ringo out of the equivalent American options of John, Paul & George. In  Read More 

Leroy Carr (1905–35) only lived to be 30 but was “the most influential male blues singer and songwriter of the first half of the 20th century,” according to Elijah Wald in an article originally published in The New York Times in 2004. His songs include “How Long, How Long Blues,” “Blues Before Sunrise” “Midnight Hour Blues,” “Hurry Down Sunshine” and a lot more.

His music, most of it recorded with guitarist Scrapper Blackwell, has been covered by  Read More 

It bugs me when people say "my husband & best friend," meaning the same person. Even worse when it's a 50-year-old woman who's a 3rd wife & only married for a couple of years. Don't you have someone you've known since high school? an old roommate or colleague? For heaven's sake, who do you  Read More 

If I invite you to my birthday dinner, why should you pay? You are my guest.

I know people do this routinely, so that's not actually my pet peeve. (If I don't want to subsidize other people's shindigs, I don't eat, just stop in to say hi.)

But if you invite me  Read More 

Was it tripping to black light posters that gave me a permanent fascination with bioluminescence, the light emitted by organisms like bacteria, fireflies and jellyfish? Is it just cool to see creatures that do something I can't? Would it be awesome—or embarrassing—if you could shake your tush to light it up? Why doesn't my friend Evelyn, a graduate student in cell biology, realize she could win a Nobel, easy, if she would switch to human bioluminescence as her research topic?

Look how beautiful these critters are, & what great names: sea sparkle, ghost fungus, alarm jellyfish, sea feather, fire centipede, sea firefly, genji firefly.

There are interesting scientific aspects to bioluminescence, not just trippy ones. J. Woodland Hastings, a Harvard biochemist who died a few days ago, researched bioluminescence and was known for "recognizing overarching biological processes in the humblest of organisms. His discovery of how bacteria communicate became the foundation for groundbreaking research in the development of more effective antibiotics." (His NYT obit is at nytimes.com/2014/08/10/science/j-w-hastings-87-a-pioneer-in-bioluminescence-research-dies.html.)

I just ordered a book called The Winking, Blinking Sea. Why do publishers seem to think this is a subject of interest only or mainly to children?  Read More 

Broad gold spokes
sun drives
bright elm

The indefatigable (as someone called him) David Kirschenbaum has just polished off the 8th annual Boog City festival of poetry & performance. Not sure how many people were involved, but it was a lot. I always wish I made it to more of the events—such a friendly atmosphere, people digging each other's work, enjoying an art conversation that often gets lost in group readings. I admire that he brings in poets from farflung locations & practices. And clearly he does it for the love of the work: I don't think he gets glory, just the satisfaction of putting together a terrific event.

All that from a Mets fan!  Read More 

I finally went to get my eyes examined. Everyone saw me pick up one of my lenses off the floor & stick it in my eye at black belt promotion a couple of months ago & I bowed to the horrified demand that I make sure I hadn't given myself a hideous disease; it didn't help  Read More 

So much remarkable poetry came out of World War I, much of it still as modern as Schoenberg. Modern in language, modern in attitude.

When you see millions of the mouthless dead
Across your dreams in pale battalions go,
Say not soft things as other men have said,
That you'll remember. For you need not so.
Give them not praise. For, deaf, how should they know
It is not curses heaped on each gashed head?
Nor tears. Their blind eyes see not your tears flow.
Nor honour. It is easy to be dead.
Say only this, "They are dead." Then add thereto,
"Yet many a better one has died before."
Then, scanning all the o'ercrowded mass, should you
Perceive one face that you loved heretofore,
It is a spook. None wears the face you knew.
Great death has made all his for evermore.

—Charles Hamilton Sorley, 1895-1915, killed at Loos  Read More 

Just finished rereading Robert Graves' Good-bye to All That, his great autobiography (today it'd be called a memoir) about how WWI sent him onwards from his school days to the life of a writer and emigré. The book reminded me of how small England is—the intelligentsia were all related in some way and ran into each other, knew each other's work, feuded and loved. His (first) wife, Nancy Nicholson, was an ardent feminist who refused to be called Mrs. Graves. In a review of Graves biography, Louis Simpson wrote that "no work on poetry has been more influential than The White Goddess, Graves's study of mythology in its connections with poetry; dozens of poets and professors have gained a reputation for originality by stealing from it."

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It's strange that someone can be a kid when you're a grownup then totally catch up with you. Eddie might be older than me by now, for all I know.

I could do a month of posts of cakes. It's an unacknowledged family tradition to take pictures posing with cakes.

And naming them.

I have so many beautiful plates, that I've been buying 1 at a time at Crate & Barrell. This is an ugly plastic one that caught the light in a shiny way (which could be olive oil) I liked. I buy 1 new plate, cup, bowl & spoon every spring for Passover then introduce them into the general population. In 4 more years I'll be able to host a dinner for 6! Except that I only have 1 chair & no stove.  Read More 

I can't imagine a more perfect night. Sitting outside in 70° weather, in the 3rd row almost behind the backstop (we missed two foul balls by one row)—and for $15 no less. Leisurely conversations. No electronic distraction. Getting to Staten Island by ferry, the 1st Avenue bus waiting at the terminal on the way home. Explaining baseball to a Spanish newbie, and tangling ourselves into memory & history. How threadbare my life would be without baseball.  Read More 

"And if the weather pleases me, I'm happy every day."

Thanks, Ted, I wish you were here to be enjoying this rare streak of 70° unhumid July days.

And here, I'm lounging in the same little "park" on 1st street, sitting in an abandoned office chair.

I was so happy not to get cooties.

I took the "Urban delight" photo from this chair, & Mercè took this one of me.

In the city, ya takes yer nature where ya finds it.

The "benches" are discarded shelving.

There's no greenery.

But a nice view up & out.

Song

never a little boy
/ with a camera /
but I knew joy

never a grandmother
/ in a black hole hat: /
I’ve been of my times

never been to Paris
/ in 1903 /
driving the women hard
as the men

In an argument with Vera Brittain (whose Testament of Youth is the best account of WWI by a woman who was in it), Orwell writes:

"Why is it worse to kill civilians than soldiers? Obviously one must not kill children if it is in any way avoidable, but it is only in propaganda pamphlets that every bomb drops on a school or an orphanage. A bomb kills a cross-section of the population; but not quite a representative selection, because the children and expectant mothers are usually the first to be evacuated, and some of the young men will be away in the army. Probably a disproportionately large number of bomb victims will be middle-aged. On the other hand, 'normal' or 'legitimate' warfare picks out and slaughters all the healthiest and bravest of the young male population....

"Perhaps when the next great war comes we may see that sight unprecedented in all history, a jingo with a bullet hole in him. The immunity of the civilian, one of the things that have made war possible, has been shattered. ... I can't feel that war is 'humanized' by being confined to the slaughter of the young and becomes 'barbarous' when the old get killed as well."

from As I Please 25, his column in the British left-wing Tribune, 19 May 1944

I have nothing to add except—. No, I have nothing to add.

I knew I would hate myself if I didn't go to class, so I got on my bike & went to the dojo. Michelle looked at me & said, You look like you could use a hug. My day got better from that moment. All the sad-mean news of the week kind of washed away. A little.

Class was fun: Kaicho divided us into 3 groups of 7 to do synchronized kata. He told our group to do something unique, so we faced different directions—& didn't kick each other. I couldn't not laugh, though that's a no-no in karate: we're supposed to keep a straight face no matter what. Saw some folks I like who hadn't been around for a while.

I'm listening (streamed from the NY Public Library) to a terrific album called A Whiter Shade of Blue: White Country Blues 1926-38: think Jimmie Rodgers.

I finally made an appointment for an eye exam.

Johnny's on his way here to read Chaucer.

The weather is lovely, far more a perfect June day than the crawly heat we usually get in July.

And I got another hug from Michelle after class.

Today, I was told, was supposed to be the best day of the year, with the most energy & insight.

What I got was an invasion of waterbugs & 3 rush deadlines.

Maybe tonight will bring amazement.

I sat in her truck double-parked.
Drivers cursed.
She carried down stuff for a week
in Provincetown.

We drove around the block.

Then she carried it all back up
and stayed home.