Honeymoon for Three?

My wife and I are nearing our 30th anniversary, but out wedding day stays fresh in our minds, partly due to surprises. Surprises enacted by and for various members of the wedding party.

Even the rehearsal the night before had its share of surprises, mainly for the officiant, the pastor, my father-in-law to be. My brother and brother-in-law had a reputation for pranks at wedding ceremonies. But most of those pranks had been played with the aid of the officiant. For instance, when the pastor asked for a ring at one wedding, a telephone rang and was handed to the groom. (Understand this was pre-cell phones, so it was a bulky, black, office model phone.) Another time the pastor asked for the wedding band and a uniformed marching band entered the building.

But the father of the bride would have no such foolishness.

They promised to be on good behavior for the service. Not the rehearsal.

They came to the rehearsal dressed in their finest from the local Salvation Army and wore masks that frightened the flower girl (and some of the bridesmaids.) My bride and I asked the organist to play Nick Lowe’s “I Knew the Bride When She Used to Rock and Roll” for the rehearsal recessional, but she couldn’t find the music. So we were surprised when she played circus music, but the bride’s dad was more surprised.

The rehearsal was full of jokes and puns and much laughter. The father of the bride said in his decades of ministry, it was the most difficult wedding rehearsal he’d ever conducted. We felt a little bad, but more proud.

Promises were made for no silliness during the wedding ceremony and those promises were kept. But again, no such promises applied after the service.

We were at the bride’s father’s church and there was a policy that no rice was to be thrown, to limit clean-up and reduce waste. The bride and I decided that we didn’t want to be pelted with bird seed (the proscribed projectiles) so we had a friend pass around much more pelt friendly marshmallows. But these were not officially approved throwing supplies so the bride’s mother scurried around to collect them. She was unable to collect the marshmallows from the friend that had stationed himself on the roof above the exit.

The bride left the service looking lovely as ever in a new getaway dress. The groom looked a little better than usual wearing a gorilla mask.

We assumed our car would be decorated, so that didn’t surprise us. My bride and I were a tad surprised by the back seat being filled with crumpled newspaper. But soon we were on the road, on the way to our honeymoon hotel.
We were still hungry because the fun of talking with family and friends had kept us from eating at our reception. But we also wanted to get the car washed quickly, slightly embarrassed by the “Just Married” honks we were receiving.

I asked, “Where do you want to go first?”

She said, “I don’t know, where do you want to go first?”

From the back seat, from beneath the newspapers, we heard, “I don’t know, where do you want to go first?”

We drove back to the church and I with great mock indignation tossed one of my groomsmen out of the car onto the parking lot. There was a good crowd of people in the parking lot, evidently expecting our return.

Decades of marriage have given birth to a variety of surprises, most of them good. For us, the biggest surprise was that, after being told in premarital counseling and from some marriage veterans that a good marriage would be a lot of work, we haven’t found that to be the case for us. We’ve had a good deal of fun through the years. (Having a wonderful and gracious wife will do that, sometimes.)

A Review of Maureen Corrigan's So We Read On: How the Great Gatsby Came to Be and Why It Endures (Little, Brown and Company, 2014)

The best thing about Corrigan's writing (true also in her memoir Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading) is her expression of the joy of reading and books. Her love of The Great Gatsby is contagious, and certainly made me want to read it yet again.

And it's fun the varying paths that are taken in the study of the book; as a biography of F. Scott Fitzgeral, a tracking of the book's critical and commercial fall and rise (quite the opposite of how things usually happen), and the reaction to the book for a great variety of readers.

My one qualm with the book (similar to one I had with her reading memoir) is political.When she writes about the book's character Tom Buchanan's passion for the book "The Rise of Colored Empires" she writes, "Because Tom's tirade is played for laughs in the very first chapter of The Great Gatsby, it reassures us from the outset that the novel is inclusive, even progressive, in its politics" there seems to be an assumption that racism and a belief in eugenics is "conservative" and the opposite of the politics of the left. When, in fact, many leading progressives of the time were firm believers in eugenics (see Margaret Sanger) and inveterate racists (see Woodrow Wilson). But as with here memoir, Corrigan has a rather simplistic political view (pretty much "Conservatives, Republicans...BAD....Liberals, Democrats...GOOD!")

Corrigan's observations about the symbolism in the book are delightful, and her observation that these symbols and the book's tight structure can pass unnoticed because of the eloquence and charm of Fitzgerald's prose. Also interesting was her linking the novel to the PI noir tradition and her insight that the rise of the book's popularity might be linked to its being one of the books made available in mass quantities to GI's headed overseas.

I do have one other quibble. Corrigan says that The Great Gatsby is Fitzgerald's only great novel. Tender Is the Night is a great novel, about this she is just flat wrong.

How About "As the New Saying Goes?"

My grandmother (father's side) spent a number of her last years in a convalescent home. She was in southern California, we were in northern California, so though my aunt was there most days, we only saw her a couple of times a year.
Part of the adventure of these visits was seeing the other residents who weren't as together as my grandma. There was The Soldier who made his bed many times a day and would stand at attention by his bed. Another gentleman in a wheel chair would make race car sounds. There was an escape artist that made it to the streets more than a time or two (kind of like Steve McQueen with his motorcycle, but not really at all). My brother would often say on these trips, "I hope I have enough sense to shoot myself before I'm in a place like this."

But my grandma sure didn't feel that way. Though wheelchair bound, her mind was fine. And her smile was in very good shape. The staff loved her. She was cheery and always appreciative of the nurses and attendants. She wasn't demanding, but was treated well because she was loved.

And she loved to talk. She would tell about all the happenings in the home (that's how we heard about the escape attempts). She would tell old stories about family, her husband who was forced to travel the country to support the family during the Great Depression and about her six children (my dad was #4.)

At the conclusion of one of her stories, of one of her sons working in a Colorado coal mine or daughter serving in the Peace Corps, she would conclude the story with these words, "Well, as the old saying goes..." And then she'd go on and tell a different story.
We would never know if she actually had an adage in mind or if it was just a conversational tic. I'm sure sometimes it was one and sometimes it was the other.

But it sure would make you wonder. If she was telling a story about an impulsive action by one of her sons, was the "old saying" she was thinking of "Look before you leap" or "He who hesitates is lost"? If she was telling about dealing with want in difficult days was the "old saying" she was thinking of, "A penny saved is a penny earned" or "Penny wise and pound foolish"?
Or perhaps you could come up with your own saying. My favorite self-made adage is "Cleanliness is next to godliness; why settle for second best?"

"As the old saying goes..." could go in a lot of directions. Grandma has been gone a lot of years. And now I wouldn't care what old saying she was thinking of, if only I could hear her saying it.

My Drunk Hotel Guest Story of the Week

Night before last, most of the hotel was booked with one business group. Shortly after I arrived, I got a call complaining about loud people in the hallway on the 3rd floor. I went up and found a group of women in the hall way drinking wine and talking loudly so I told them they could carry on the party in the lobby or go to their rooms.
I went up ten minutes later to see if they had dispersed (they had) and while wandering the hall I noticed the door to room 3.11 was propped open with a shoe.

A while later, I got a call from room 3.03: "Hi, I left my key in my room." "Alright, I'll meet you at your room with a master key." "I'm not sure of my room number." "I'll meet you the room you're in with the master key and a room directory." "Thanks, you're the best."

Two women were in 3.03. One opened the door and the other woman was scanning the floor. I asked the woman's last name (Ms. Gingold) and then told her room number. "I told you, you were in 3.11."

"I can't find my shoe," Ms. Gingold said. "Oh, I think I can help you with that as well," I said. She was wearing one shoe, a three inch platform shoe. Therefore she was hobbling. "Could you give please give me a piggyback ride to my room?" Because we try to help guests in whatever way we can and she looked light, I said "Yes." Her friend from 3.03 took a picture of this, which I'm sure will get me fired someday.

But here's the fascinating part of the story. The shoe that propped open her door was a black flat. The matching platform shoe was about a foot in from of the door.

Quick review of "The Case of the Curious Bride" by Erle Stanley Gardner (1934)

I've often watched the Perry Mason television show, but this is only the second Perry Mason novel I've read. Both the character and the story structure of the two are quite different. The television show is a traditional whodunit. The emphasis is on finding out who committed the murder (always a murder) and seeing that justice is done. In the couple of books I've read, the emphasis is on Perry getting his client off, and he doesn't seem particularly interested in who committed the murder (always a murder.) In both books I've read, though we find out who committed the murder, it's unclear whether the murderer will ever face justice from the legal system. Even more different is the way the character of Mason in presented. As played by the large, imposing, yet also somehow soft Raymond Burr, Mason is rather tenderhearted toward many of his clients. He is quite obviously not a man of violence, preferring to depend on his wit and the law. He is wily, but upright and honest. Mason in the books...Is different than that. For instance, this is Mason in the book confronting police detectives: "Mason's jaw jutted forward. His eyes became steely. "Pipe down, gumshoe," he said, "or I'll button your lip with a set of knuckles."" Can't imagine Burr saying that. He also is much less interested in fair play than the TV character. In this book, he tampers with evidence, barely staying within the law. But hey, he gets paid and paid well at the end of the book, so he's got that going for him. (Trigger warning, if bothered by sexism or racism, these 1930's pulps might not be for you.)

A Review of "Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading" by Maureen Corrigan (Random House, 2005)

Looking at my Goodreads account, it lists over 1500 books I've read and there must be many books I've read in my life but I can't remember to post. We recently moved and gave away hundreds of books but still have hundreds more, some on shelves and some still in boxes. So it wasn't difficult for me to relate to and delight in Maureen Corrigan's love of books. Corrigan is most famous for her weekly book reviews on NPR's program about cultural trends, Fresh Air.
Especially since many of the books she loves, I love. When someone praises Raymond Chandler, I'm already well on the way to calling that person friend. But one thing made me wonder whether she would be hesitant to call me friend; because, I am, politically conservative.

You might not think a book about literature, about how books enrich us and occasionally deceive us would be a relatively nonpartisan affair. And much of the book is. But at times she puts her political leanings front and center such as in her account of a job interview at Columbia University where she says she "tried to pass myself off as a 'soft' Marxist (not exactly what Lenin had in mind." Whether she truly considers herself a Marxist or not isn't quite clear but she certainly considers herself part of the political left.

She can be quite dismissive of conservative lovers of books, such as in this passage, "Books are powerful. On that point, conservative culture cranks like William Bennett and Lynne Cheney and I agree. But, unlike those two purveyors of literary uplift, I think the influence of books is neither direct or predictable." (Yes, that's a point far too subtle for these conservative dunces to grasp.)

The worst thing Corrigan seems to be able to imagine is for a person to become coservative. She adores Kingsley Amis' satire of academia, Lucky Jim, but is distressed that Amis "transformed from an Angry Young Man to a club-going, Merrie Old England Tory bag of wind. How can such things be?" She notes other instances of awful transformation, "Similar invasion-of-the -body-snatchers-type conversions besmirch literary history: the defection of New York Intellectual Norman Podhoretz to the right, the mutation of progressive reporter Joe Klein, who had written a moving biography of Woody Guthrie, no less, into a centrist pundit and author of the anonymous Clinton parodic novel Primary Colors. Why? Why? Why? If reading good books doesn't necessarily make you a better person, apparently neither does writing them."

So, a progressive is a better person even than a centrist. And mocking the philandering and dishonest is over the line, I assume because it hurts "the cause".

But consider the moral behavior Corrigan give a pass. She laughingly refers to the fraudulence of the autobiographical writings of Lillian Hellman, but seems to find them delightful nonetheless. And she mentions when she teaches about Dashiell Hammett she speaks admirably about his deserting his wife and child to devote himself to writing. Apparently, their leftist leanings excuse such behavior.

One wonders how Corrigan survives at National Public Radio and teaching at Georgetown University where there is such a diversity of political thought. (She does have some conservatives, apparently, in her life. When she talks about the diverse group of people at her wedding she says that there were "even a few Republicans.")

I did appreciate a chapter wherein she praises some Catholic novels from her youth. Though now she considers herself at best a nominal Catholic, she still values many of the lessons learned from nuns in her youth (though she has distain for much of the Church's theology and practice.) But she notes that much current literary criticism writes of Western religion with dismissive condensation.

I've long enjoyed Corrigan's book reviews on Fresh Air and I enjoyed the book. I enjoyed her tales of growing up, going to a parochial school in the '60's before going to graduate school and a career in public radio and academia. It's just a little sad to read about how she has in her life traded one rather narrow view of the world for another.

My Favorite Books from Childhood

If I hadn’t loved reading books as a kid, I doubt very much I’d be writing children’s books now. I always loved TV and movies and video games didn’t come along until my adolescence. But books provided the best vicarious adventures and escapes.

Happily, I found a wonderful wife who also loved to read as a child. She still loves to read. She still loves to read children’s’ books as a matter of facts. No surprise that our kids were readers and it was a joy to pass on to them childhood favorites (though not all were appreciated.

10) Treasure Island by Robert Lewis Stevenson – Reading this to my kids as an adult, I was surprised by how violent and bloodthirsty this book. No wonder I loved it.

9) The Adventures of Homer Fink by Sidney Offit – What? You haven’t heard of it? Color me shocked. This story of a kid growing up obsessed with Greek and Roman mythology freed me to pursue quirky interests.

8) Yertle the Turtle and Other Stories by Dr. Seuss – I liked a lot of Seuss, but this was my favorite. As the fifth of five kids, I related to the power struggle to be the top turtle.

7) Swiss Family Robinson by Jonhann Wyss – Yes, I saw the movie first. And I was a little disappointed they didn’t fight pirates with coconut bombs. But it seemed so real, and I wanted an island of my own.

6) The Danny Dunn Series (such as Danny Dunn and the Anti-Gravity Paint) by Jay Williams and Raymond Abrashkin – This was kid level science fiction, all the gadgets Danny got a hold of were either real or presented with a scientific rational. I wanted my own laser.

5) How to Care for Your Monster by Norman Birdwell – Before he made his fortune with the Big Red Dog, Birdwell made his true classic, presenting the Universal Studios Monsters as pets.

4) The Encyclopedia Brown Series (starting with Encyclopedia Brown, Boy Detective) by Donald Sobol – I have stolen shamelessly from this series about a police chief’s son who solves crimes for my Bill the Warthog series of kid’s mystery books.

3) The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain – I came to love The Adventures of Huck later, but as I kid, I wanted to be Tom (and kiss Becky Thatcher.)

2) The Great Brain series (starting with The Great Brain) by John D. Fitzgerald – Stories about a little con artist. He always gets a bit of a comeuppance, but I enjoyed the parts before that happened. (The first five books of the series are great…Not so much for the rest.)

1) The Chronicles of Narnia (starting with The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe) by C. S. Lewis – As a kid I loved the adventure and loved the theology. I loved explaining who Aslan was to friends who hadn’t figured it out. Still books I reread more than any others.