2009, last sentences

My second post in 2009 followed a meme that I found at Robert Gable’s aworks: go through your 2008 blog entries and and collect the first sentence from each month. To end the year, I’ve collected the last sentence from each month of 2009. Doing so involves figuring out an answer to an odd question: what to do about December?

The first sentence below comes from a New York Times obituary for George Schneeman. The second, from David Frauenfelder at Breakfast with Pandora. The third, from a poster about the “r-word.” The others are mine.

He was known in an intimate New York circle for his long, fruitful collaborations with a flock of well-known poets, among them Peter Schjeldahl, Anne Waldman, Larry Fagin and Ted Berrigan. Though no one’s job is perfectly safe, if we all decide we must have two years’ of savings in the bank before we spend again, eventually no one will have a job except the security guard at the bank. Spread the word to end the word.

The group is called Canvas. Et cetera. As they say, “Developing.”

I’m happy to be part of a family in which everybody cooks. Supplies is my word, and has become my family’s word, for all manner of stationery items. Tickets are free. From the Life Photo Archive.

But how could he have left out “I’m Bugged at My Old Man”? But how could he have left out “I’m Bugged at My Old Man”?

Bagatelle, bag of shells

A few minutes in Google Books this morning let me know that the comic confusion of “bagatelle” and “bag of shells” long predates The Honeymooners. One example:

Matthew M. Colton, Frank Armstrong at College (New York: Hurst & Company, 1914).

Another:

James Madison, Madison’s Budget (Washington, D.C.: Department of Dramatic Activities Among the Soldiers, 1918).

Yes, Madison’s Budget is a minstrel show, and my guess is that this play on words has its origins in minstrelsy. Perhaps it went on to a later life in vaudeville. Perhaps Jackie Gleason heard it in childhood, or as a young man in show business.

Would a mid-1950s Honeymooners audience have recognized Ralph Kramden’s “a mere bag of shells” as an old, old joke on “bagatelle”? Or were the shells just shells by then?

A mere bag of poloponies

Tuesday's New York Times crossword taught me something. The clue for 15-Across: “A ____ bagatelle!” I had the answer, MERE, but the words together made no sense to me. And I was puzzled: isn’t the expression “a mere bag of shells”? I’ve known that expression forever, from the television series The Honeymooners. It’s one of Ralph Kramden’s favorites, along with “Baby, you’re the greatest” and “Bang, zoom.”

The Times Crossword Blog helps out:

Bagatelle is a great word (French from Italian) that can mean a trifle, a billiardslike game or a short, light piece of music. In 1827, Alessandro Manzoni used the phrase “una piccola bagattella,” translated to “a mere bagatelle,” in his widely read novel, The Betrothed.

Aha. Ralph’s catchphrase, like Ed Norton’s poloponies for polo ponies, is a mistake, meant, I assume, to be recognized as such. It’s Ralph trying to appear blasé and looking instead slightly ridiculous. Still, I like “a mere bag of shells.” Suggesting brown paper and peanuts and street vendors, it fits the Kramden world well.

Why, you may ask, was Norton talking about polo ponies? He was reading a script while rehearsing a play for the Raccoon Lodge: “I don’t possess a mansion, a villa in France, a yacht, or a string of poloponies.”

A related post
More on “bagatelle,” “bag of shells” (An old, old joke)

Orange timer art

Elaine gave me this timer. It’s solid, solid as a rock, and accurate, with a mellow tick and stately ring. And perfect for practicing the Pomodoro Arancia Technique.

Thank you, Elaine.

[With apologies to Ashford and Simpson.]

Robert Frost, taking attendance

The city of Methuen, Massachusetts, is seeking a $3,000 grant to preserve an 1893 attendance register. Robert Frost kept the register while teaching at Methuen’s Second Grammar School.

Three details I notice:

The students’ ages appear to be marked in years and months — 12-3, 13-11. Common practice?

Absences appear to be marked by the half-day.

“T” must stand for good old “tardy.”

Methuen seeking $3,000 to preserve Robert Frost document (Boston Globe)

Clifford Hicks’s new Alvin Fernald novel

Clifford B. Hicks. Alvin Fernald’s Incredible Buried Treasure. Cynthiana, KY: Purple House Press, 2009. $17.95.

Alvin Fernald, a brainy, excitable boy with a knack for adventure, is the hero of nine novels published between 1960 and 1986. The second, Alvin’s Secret Code (1963), was the formative book of my childhood. The news that Clifford Hicks, now eighty-nine, has written a tenth Alvin Fernald novel seems to me like news one gets in a dream, though the news came in an e-mail from Mr. Hicks to his many correspondents.

Alvin’s Secret Code seems to have helped inspire this new novel. Here as there, a visitor comes to Riverton, Indiana, with a story from the past. Here as there, a cryptic message points to the location of a Civil War treasure. In Alvin’s Secret Code though, the visitor’s story is contained within a chapter. Here, the past becomes the substance of the novel, in the form of a journal written by Caleb Getme, a (fictional) young man who escaped slavery and went on to live in the White House and later work as a printer. Caleb’s journal is a compelling invention, one that would bring many a young reader into contact with some of the brutality and bravery of the American past. The journal accounts for more than half the novel’s pages, which means that there’s less of Alvin, his family, and his friend Shoie here than a reader might have hoped for. I wondered whether Alvin’s father would still be smoking a pipe in 2009, but Mr. and Mrs. Fernald are nearly invisible. Alvin’s sister Daphne though is an especially bright and lively presence, doing yoga and displaying her knowledge as a dictionary reader. And the novel reveals how Alvin and Shoie met and became best friends, something I don’t recall reading about elsewhere.

What I like most about Alvin Fernald’s Incredible Buried Treasure is its author’s wise refusal to march his characters into the twenty-first century. Alvin’s room has an Inventing Bench, not a computer. No one owns a cellphone. Yet nothing seems to be missing. Mysteries are solved not online but with face-to-face interviews, visits to the local historical society, and kid power. Here's what Professor Liam O’Harra, whose visit sparks the story, says about Alvin, Shoie, and Daphne:

“Your father and several other residents of Riverton have told me you kids know more about the layout of the town and its surroundings than anyone else. You ride your bikes tirelessly around it from one end to the other, day after day.”

The heck with Google Earth. In Riverton, Indiana, kids on bikes still rule. Clifford Hicks thus reinvents both past and present in this novel. I hope that Alvin Fernald’s Incredible Buried Treasure finds its way to Alvin fans both young and nearly young.

Thanks, Rachel and Ben, for such a great gift.

Related posts
Clifford B. Hicks (1920–2010)
Out of the past (On reading Alvin’s Secret Code in adulthood)

Weekly World News in Google Books

I think of the Weekly World News as a contemporary Metamorphoses. (Sorry, Ovid.) In this newspaper, poodles turn into children; statues walk and talk. Can you prove that it didn’t happen?

Found by chance: many issues of the Weekly World News can be had at Google Books.

“Child Obeys Xmas Text.”

[New York Times, December 26, 1909.]

Brake-beam: “a horizontal beam or rod on a wagon or railroad car that operates the brake shoes” (Webster's Third New International). “Brake-beam tourists” were those riding the rails.

Rocking the home

Our family played music at a local nursing home this afternoon, as we have for many Christmases. I played guitar and soprano uke; Elaine, viola and sopranino recorder; Rachel, violin; Ben, cello. We use a book of Christmas music marked with Post-it Notes and play the songs we like, some sacred and some secular, ending late in the alphabet with “We Wish You a Merry Christmas.” As often as I've had this experience, I’m still always amazed to see nursing home residents grow more engaged and animated as they listen to music.

Today was an especially good day, and after playing what we thought was our last number, we had a request, for “Silver Bells.” We winged it (in D). And then we tried a number we had chickened out on earlier in the afternoon, “Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree,” which Elaine calls as the most persistent holiday earworm of all. We had a blast, in, yes, a new old-fashioned way: uke, viola, slap-cello, and Rachel and Ben’s voices. I can say in all modesty that we rocked the house, or home.

A related post
Music memory

Merry Christmas

[From Mister Magoo’s Christmas Carol (1962).]

Merry Christmas to all who celebrate it, from Ebenezer, the Cratchits, and me.

Related reading
A 166-Year-Old Manuscript Reveals Its Secrets (On the Christmas Carol manuscript, New York Times)