Behavior Modification CXXXI

In the photo of the Galt House restaurant, the tables are set with the heavy, white square plates, and the folded black rectangles, well, you probably guessed, those are the linen napkins, almost big enough to use as bath towels.  That was a "before I forget entry," before I forgot.  And there it is:

Association produces unexpected results.  4:30 a.m.  I started to make this morning's coffee 3 different times.  3 different times I didn't finish.  I cleaned the old grounds and rinsed the pot; I left the top of the maker up and did something else, I have forgotten what; later, I saw the top up, managed to get a filter down this time, found it later with the filter down and got the coffee measured and in; wandered off on another mission and, Of Course, was surprised to find the coffee in, the top up, and no water in the machine.  Four attempts.  Memory slog.  Association.

Before I started the dishes, I wanted to put some music on.  I opened my iPad and decided to check the Webshots photo of the day which arrives early.  The photo had beautiful horses apparently conversing at their fence rail.  I checked the email, got caught in a time loop there because I tapped the mail icon instead of mail menu.  Let's just say someone will be surprised to find me answering messages that I probably answered once or twice before.  Escaping the time loop, I went to the kitchen and started the dishes.  Of Course I forgot the music.

While doing the dishes, I started thinking about the photo.  The horses reminded me of the Houyhnhnms (Winums, two syllables), the race of rational horses that Gulliver encounters in the fourth book of his travels.  From the perspective of the sink, I also immediately thought of King Lear (1601), who wouldn't, Shakespeare's incredibly rich and profound tragedy about an old king who does not understand real love and who misuses his reason in an attempt to get what he wants, that is, his children to love him.

Gulliver (1730) epitomizes the radical change in human thinking and perspective that took place from the seventeenth century to the eighteenth century.  In the fourth book of the Travels, Gulliver encounters two races, the Houyhnhnms, the rational talking horses, and the Yahoos, a race of disgusting creatures who have human bodies but are driven only by their passions.  In a sense, these two races are an externalization of a conflict that has been present in Gulliver since book one, what T. S. Eliot once called a dissociation of sensibility.  

Actually, the same dilemma is present in Lear too, but Lear inhabits a tragedy; the tragic hero has the capacity to learn through the action in his world.  Gulliver inhabits a brilliant satire; unfortunately characters in satires tend to get stuck in their enormous flaws. 

Associative jump! 

A contemporary example.  Mary has been watching Frasier on Netflix.  She is on season 7, Heaven help us. I thought the writing in the first two seasons of Frasier was extremely good.  The problem for me is that the writers seem not to respect the intelligence of their character or of their actor, Kelsey Grammer, or they rely on him to do all the work.  In season one, Frasier would meet a lovely woman, and being incredibly full of himself (flawed humanity, pompous, egotistical, but invariably funny), by the end of the episode you could bet that the woman would discover the flaw through Frasier's own behavior, and banish him from her life forever.  In season seven the exact same plot action is still taking place.  This beautiful woman was a lawyer who had handled Nile's (Frasier's brother) divorce from his second wife, not the never seen but always felt, intolerably demanding Maris (as in horse?), but Mel, the demanding new wife of 3 days.  The lawyer's bill was very high; Frasier sent her an unpleasant email, unpleasantly demanding an accounting; Frasier, of course, regretted the email as that evening the circumstances of the bill became clearer and her clothes became fewer; never mind, he got to her computer having told her his email was a love letter; he pretended to be reading it to her, he accidentally deleted it, nudge nudge, all was well.  If you think so you have not been watching.  Frasier had bumbled it, not really deleted it; she read it.  Goodbye Frasier, out of her life forever!  Seven seasons: the same plot and Frasier is the same pompous blowhard who is also still funny, though much less frequently.  We are in the world of satire here too.  Mary still loves the show. I think the writers got lazy and that they did not really respect their character; I find most of the episodes too painful to watch.  The character is not the only one stuck in his flaws.

Associative jump!  (I had to complain to someone; water off a duck's back to someone here; she likes what she likes!) 

Returning to the worlds of the earlier literature,  the radical changes in thinking that took place between Shakespeare's time and Swift's time obviously involved numerous elements, among them the rise of science as we know it today, the discovery of new worlds, literally, the invention of the telescope and the microscope, new ways of thinking about the human predicament.  The forces at work were incredibly complex, and I cite the above three simply to suggest the symbolic way the turmoil at the center of human life entered its most brilliant literature.  Change was underway in 1600; change had been solidified in a significant way by 1730.  Tragedy became the dominant literary form in the age of Shakespeare when the changes, I would suggest, were first felt: Macbeth, Lear, Hamlet, Othello; Marlowe's Dr. Faustus, etc.  By the eighteenth century, the Age of Reason, the world had changed forever in a profound way.  If you think about the first two books of the Travels, and step back a bit, what you see is a very big man in the midst of very little people where his bigness is a cause for both exhilaration and humiliation; in the second book the perspective is reversed and you see a very little man in the midst of very big people who horribly abuse his sensibilities.  In another words  as they like to say in our age, "Everything is relative."  Not true.  Not true then and not true now, and that is at the heart of the Travels brilliance.  Some things are relative, obviously; however, something isn't and the text, by the fourth book, reveals exactly what that absolute is, though, of course, Gulliver being a hero of sorts in a satire never sees it which is why, back in England, he is out sleeping with his horses in the stable (Ha!) rather in bed sleeping with his wife in the end.  

Perspectives from the sink.  As I said else where, having a head full of literature lets me think about it even when the texts are not before me.  Tragedy/satire sort of jumped into my head this morning (I crawled into bed at 7), Lear and Gulliver.  In Lear you can see what is danger of being lost and exactly how, the two wicked daughters.  Is their wickedness really relative?  With Gulliver the absolute seems to have vanished out of his world; no one sees it, almost.  Or there is a new absolute.  Logicians to the rescue!  Yet it is the nature of the absolute that it is eternal and unchanging, no matter how many say it ain't so.  Check Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling, among other things.

One last thought: if you want to see what the universe looked like for one moment when the world was perfectly centered, read the Divine Comedy (1300).  Lear (1601) reflects the danger of losing that fixed and profound perspective; Milton's Paradise Lost (1660) for an in some ways unsuccessful attempt to hold on to it, Gulliver (1730), a world where it has vanished almost completely.  For a modern perspective on that loss, Eliot's Wasteland (1920) or The Four Quartets.  (All the dates are approximate, depending upon my increasingly faulty memory.  Lear may have been a bit later.  Well, I know the centuries are accurate!)

They let me teach these things for over 50 years!  I started in graduate school (I apologize to those students, though I always did the best I knew, which wasn't really very much, actually then or now, even that morning when I went to my Freshman Comp class terribly hung over, I was probably 24, I can still remember the headache) when I was just 23.  Well, once in 51 years can't be that bad, can it?   Or was it twice?  Hmm.  

Amazing!  When I went to the sink very early this morning, 3a.m. perhaps, I had no idea that this essay of sorts would eventually pour out.   Associative dissonance?

Behavior Modification CXXX

Odds and Ends, or Beginnings

I stood at the dining room window yesterday morning watching the white-throated sparrows scratching and digging and hopping madly down the boardwalk.  They seem to be single minded in their pursuit of food, little fluffs of feathers flitting to and fro. Then one took off, flew across the rose garden and through the fence gap on the far side, an opening of no more than 2 to 2 and a half inches.  Just flew right through the fence.   He was, at least, a certainly sober sparrow, unless he was a certainly sober wren.

The Carolina wren, you see, was also busy among the bushes and on the feeders yesterday morning.  Unlike the sparrows there is never more than one or two wrens around the deck, but there is always at least one.  I think of them as clues now, though I can't say that I am getting very far.  Still, they are delightful to watch in their flitting from bush to bush to feeder and sometimes onto the deck itself, sitting on tables, pots and jugs. The thing about the Carolina wren is that it seems so economically designed, every part distinct, starting with the white eyebrow streak, the angled tail feathers, and especially the soft, reddish-brown down on the underside of the bird.

One hard winter many years ago we had flocks of purple finches and evening grosbeaks.  Mary was putting food on the balcony just out side the sliding glass door in the dining room, where we could stand off to the side and watch.  The birds would flock to the seed, and since there were so many of them, and our presence did not seem to spook them, Mary tried sliding the glass door open a bit and putting her hand out filled with seed.  Of course at first they flew off but there were so many that they soon came back, and eventually they took the seed from her hand.  And from my hand too.  We took turns for a bit.  We still have some purple finches but we haven't seen evening grosbeaks in a long time.  Upon reflection you might say that we had a Saint Francis moment once in our lives.

Behavior Modification CXXIX

My first year in graduate school my enthusiasm knew no bounds.  Every course I took was a literature course; all the requirements were in the world of literature; all the students in the classes we took loved the texts we were studying, and some of them even loved playing murder on the weekends.  Across from the Ohio University campus was a bookstore, Logan's, where I had an account for the first time in my life and I could charge books.  The manager knew my name.  There were two movie theaters, numerous restaurants, and, of course, bars.  It seemed like Paradise in some respects.  I was 22.

I not only loved literature, I also loved literary criticism.  One text in particular I found that first year was Northrup Frye's Anatomy of Criticism.  Frye was an archetypal critic who, it seemed had not only read every work ever written but understood how to think about them.  It was an exciting text that provided the inspiration for a number of the many papers I wrote that first year, including my master's paper on Shakespeare's The Tempest. The passage that inspired me, seemed to suggest that literature had some kind of spiritual center that might actually be discovered:

"As a result of expressing the inner forms of drama with increasing force and intensity, Shakespeare arrived in his last period at the bedrock of drama, the romantic spectacle out of which all the more specialized forms of drama, such as tragedy and social comedy, have come, and to which they recurrently return.  In the greatest moments of Dante and Shakespeare, in, say The Tempest or the climax of the Purgatorio, we have a feeling of converging significance, the feeling that here we are close to seeing what our whole literary experience has been about, the feeling that we have moved into the still center of the order of words.  Criticism as knowledge, the criticism which is compelled to keep on talking about the subject, recognizes the fact that there is a center of the order of words."  (117-118) 

As I have recently said, there are no accidents.  At the time I hadn't read the Purgatorio and now it too is one of my favorite works of literature.  While I have come to reject the archetypal way of looking at texts, nevertheless, Frye was, for a time, an important teacher and influence, and as Charles Williams said somewhere, one should always acknowledge his or her derivations.

From this passage I was inspired to choose The Tempest as the topic for my Proseminar paper for my master's degree.  At the time, 1963, a student could chose one of two route's for the master's: write a thesis or do the two semester Proseminar.  The author for the course was Shakespeare.  The first semester we studied 6 or 7 plays.    Every two weeks we read a different play wherein the professor would pose a problem for us and we students would attempt to solve it in a paper.  One such problem had us analyzing the differing stage directions in, I think, the first quarto edition of Richard 2 and the first folio edition. We thought we had been killed.  Then the professor introduced us to the Arden editions of Shakespeare's texts (I, of course, now own all of them) where such information might be gleaned.  I can't remember what I discovered at the time, but I know it didn't rock the world of academe.  In fact I may even have received one of the lowest grades I ever got in grad school, a B+.  It turned out that the teacher was singularly unimpressed with all our papers; it should be noted that we had all been in grad school for two weeks now; one young man immediately dropped out.  These teachers meant business, we noted.  Stage directions?  

This professor, Dr. Robert McDonnell, was a really good person and an excellent teacher.  The problems he presented for the other 5 plays were interesting; the only one I more or less remember was on The Tempest and had to do with the storm imagery in the play.  I think the sixth or seventh play was Macbeth wherein we were to define a problem and answer it in 15 pages, more or less.  It turned out that the purpose of the first semester study was to lead us to the second semester's work: a thesis length paper on one of the plays.   We were to meet as a class for the first two or three weeks, then individually with the teacher the rest of the semester.  I felt like Br'er Rabbit flying toward the briar patch!

I chose The Tempest and went at it from the perspective of Frye's archetypal criticism; I was going to discover what that quote really meant: "the still center of the order of words."   Having read both Frye and The Tempest carefully, I saw immediately that The Tempest contained Frye's four literary types: romance, comedy, irony or satire, and tragedy.  The problem was to understand how Shakespeare, at the end of his career, had applied his incredible imagination to the romance genre to achieve this magnificent play.  The professor approved, we met various times, I wrote a truly magnificent paper (okay, a little irony of my own there, perhaps; tell the truth but tell it slant after all).  At this point I hear a literary voice in my head saying that here is where the story turns sad, but I don't think it is too sad.  (Ah, I know whose voice it is: Sammy in Updike's short story, "A & P").  I did write an excellent paper; this was the precomputer era; we typed our papers (pounded them out, so to speak, on hard to correct typewriters).  We xeroxed a copy.  I did.  The teacher truly praised my paper.  In fact he told me to let him have the xeroxed copy, as well as the one for the archives so that he could comment and return it for possible publication.  My idea about Prospero was that good and new.  I was elated.  The teacher whom we all loved and trusted at this point was also offered a superior position at a graduate school elsewhere.  He left that summer.  I never got the paper back, edited or unedited.

So, I wrote a brilliant paper, no doubt in my mind; 51 years later it exists only in my mind and the mind of God.  I would have given anything for a while to be able to read its fifty some pages again, primarily just to see how I understood what Shakespeare's mighty accomplishment was then.  There are no accidents.  The next year in grad school I met a marvellous teacher who transformed the way I looked at and understood literature, Eric Thompson.  In a sense I ditched Frye for Thompson and archetypal criticism for an ontological criticism that puts us inside the text to see the text from its own perspective, so to speak. Remember Frost's "Stopping by woods"?  What does it mean to see the text through the eyes of the man in the sleigh?  How is the "betweenness" in the poem an expression of the  narrator's ontological dilemma?  How is the storm at the beginning of The Tempest an expression of the dilemma operating throughout the play until the action of the play transforms it?  Last year I thought I had finally understood that, but I didn't take notes and once again I do not know, which makes every reading or viewing an exciting challenge and experience.

As for Professor McDonnell, I have come to understand that he was actually an angel sent by God to direct us (all of us in the class, even the one who ran for the hills of southern Ohio) into a proper delight for the study of literature, Shakespeare in particular; I see him as a literary John the Baptist preparing the way for Professor Thompson (dead at 72!), everything matters, or nothing.   My best friend in that course, and in graduate school, Bill Elkins, is also dead (age 62).  

Behavior Modification CXXVIII

Mary and I went on an outing yesterday.  Our in-laws, Erin's parents, kindly invited us to attend a meal with them at the Galt House, a hotel with revolving restaurant on the top floor (25th) in Louisville, Kentucky (see image).  We had done this adventure successfully once before and thus readily agreed.  We were also driven to it, so to speak, by our son, J-D and his wife Erin.  I do not eat much any more for various reasons, but that was about to change for this meal, an all you can eat feast.

One reason why I no longer eat much is the neuropathy.  I can't feel the silver ware; I tend to drop them and generally make a mess.  I drop knives, forks, spoons, napkins, oh yes, and, of course, food.  I try to be very careful, but the gods do not smile kindly on me at table; actually, I think that is because they are too busy laughing hysterically.  "There goes his fork!"  "Hahaha!"  "Watch him try to pick it up!"  "Oops!"  "Now he's banged his head on the table, trying to get out from under!"  "Hohoho!"  Saints in Heaven.  I even suspect my guardian angel of having the day off to participate in the festivities at my expense.  Of course there's laughter in Heaven, I just hope it is not always at my expense.  

I suspect they have a great time when I take a shower.  "How many times has he dropped the soap today?"  Why must they make it so slippery?  I remember that when I was young, some relative gave me a bar of soap on a rope.  I thought it was funny!  Why would soap makers do such a thing?  Well, where is a Dove on a rope when you need one?  And it would have to be Dove, for I have delicate skin, of course, ready to turn red and itch at any inopportune moment.   

Well, let the gods and angels do their best, I was determined to enjoy the feast, and the first item on the menu was an omelet; we had passed the waffle and omelet station on the way to our table, where "they" even let me eat with the adults.  Our personal waiter, Steven Jr., took our drink order, coffee for me, since I could only have one cup before we left home for the long drive to Louisville; anything over twenty minutes is long for me and Louisville is at least ten hours or less; maybe under two hours in all fairness.  It always just seems like ten about twenty minutes into it.  "Are we there yet, Erin?"

Drink order in, I struggled out of my chair to go for a plate.   I do mean struggled, for I have to push up from the chair with one hand and steady myself on the table with the other, all while trying to move the chair back.  Fortunately J-D who had just come over from the other table rescued me and pulled the chair back.  Together we went to the plate table, where he handed me the heaviest plate I had ever felt.  Good grief!  It felt as though it was made of lead.  Fortunately, J-D rescued me again, took my plate as well as his (I didn't notice him struggling; he must be working out again), and we made our way to the Omelet Station.  I chose onions, tomatoes and both cheeses.  The onions and tomatoes were sautéed immediately, the prepared egg mixture was put into another pan and cooked; then it was all dumped expertly onto the egg, folded over and dumped again onto my plate.  J-D carried my plate to the table while his was cooking, and I was ready to lay into the first course, mostly.  At this point the damn fork turned rebellious and absolutely would not turn over so that I could use it.  So I grappled with the knife (no problem there), then grabbed the fork while it was looking elsewhere, I guess.  Not taking any more chances with the silverware, I mumbled my thanks to the Almighty and I tucked in to the food while I had the silverware in my grasp!  The omelet was delicious; the onion was sweet and sautéed perfectly.  I love cheese.

Meanwhile I had no sooner started on the omelet than Mary showed up with a smaller plate of fruit and blu cheese.  I love fruit, and blu cheese.  What a woman.  She, like Eve, or maybe not, had given me ripe pineapple, fresh raspberries, and melon slices of several varieties.  While I usually eat one food item at a time, this time I mixed them up.  A bite of omelet, a taste of pineapple, a chunk of blu cheese, a raspberry or two, and soon everything was gone.  

Now I needed more coffee and the plates cleared, but Steven Jr. was nowhere to be seen. Meanwhile Mary had left her fruit and whatever plate (there was something dark there down under everything else that looked as though it had crawled up out of the bowels of the earth, or out of an H. P. Lovecraft story at least.  And on top of her plate but just under her cantaloupe slices was a piece of ripe pineapple.  Oh my.  Sarah, Erin's mother was sitting past Mary to my right; Ann, her husband's sister, was sitting to my left.  They acted like two angels, one good and one a little better.  Take it Gene, Mary won't remember; well, she will probably remember since there is only one.  I listened to Sarah and took it.  How sweet it was.  Mary returned.  Sarah tried to cover for me, but Ann of course gave it away. I just confessed and told her I was off to get more fruit and that I would pay her back.  You see, I had noticed the smaller plate and thought to my self, I can handle that.

I ventured off on my own amidst this ocean of people and tables and food.  First, of course, the gods were giggling again.  "Hide the small plates!"  They hid the small plates.  I could not find a stack of them anywhere, until I came to the waffle/omelet station.  Ah Ha!  Not so smart after all.  I grabbed a small plate and noticed the waffles I had slighted the first time.  They looked good.  I picked a waffle up (with my fingers) and found the fruit sauce, a blueberry, strawberry, and blackberry sauce.  I sloshed it on my waffle, and more powered suger than I am ever allowed at home.  Oh joy!  Take that table gods.

That left the fruit table.  There was enough room on my small plate for more pineapple and raspberries.  I picked up the metal tongs and immediately heard distant laughter; I ignored it.  I shouldn't have.  If forks turn in my hands, you should see what happens to metal tongs that you need to grasp intelligently and squeeze.  I missed the first piece of succulent pineapple; I tried again.  The tongs turned.  I missed.  There was a row of pineapple sitting like dominoes turned sideways.  I had the tongs, I slipped them into the pineapple and squeezed just enough to pick them up and drop them on my plate.  Not knowing when to quit, I went back for more.  The tongs slipped again, again I missed.  To hell with it I thought, I'll just pick the piece up; no one else was there.  I tried.  Fingers didn't work either.  I was beginning to sweat.  I slid the piece of pineapple across the tray and off the edge onto my plate.  That worked so well, I tried it again, Mary's piece.  Hers fell on the table.  I tried to pick it up but it squirted out of my hand onto the floor.  OMG!  I kicked it under the table and slid another one onto my plate, which worked, and I quickly hurried away and back to the safety of our table.  "Where's my piece?"  Right there, sweetheart.

This first waffle with fruit sauce was so good that I quickly devoured it, and went back for two more.  We hunter gatherers stay busy, work up appetites.  I had already had more than I usually eat in three days.  Never mind that.  I tried to tong a waffle (everyone makes up verbs nowadays); that didn't work, the cook wasn't looking, I snatched one from the freshly cooked group with my hand, then a second.  Plenty of room for sauce.  I attacked the sauce.  I suddenly had a vision of everyone standing over the bowl and spooning the fruit sauce onto their waffles.  I'll probably end up with Ebola, I thought, and spooned on another helping, then went for the powdered suger.  I considered stealing the large bowl of sugar, but there was no way I could carry it and my loaded plate.  Besides greed was sending me back to the pineapple.  I heaped up the powdered sugar, went to the fruit, didn't waste time with the tongs, just grabbed four pieces and layered them on top of the fruit soup.  If it were heated to a high enough temperature a new form of life might emerge.

When I returned to the table, people were gobsmacked by the sheer quantity I had managed to get onto my small plate.  I think they cheered but I might have misheard the acclamation.  In any case, I ate once again.  The pineapple had turned brown from the sugar and sauce, the waffles had soaked up enough of the sauce to turn them purple.  I made magic with my knife and spoon this time and shoveled in the food.  What a time I was having!  

The gods were hysterical, the angels were dancing, and I, for once, was full. 

Behavior Modification CXXVII

I spend more time sitting at the table thinking about things than I do writing.  Our dog walk today (yesterday now) was nearly disastrous for Dexter and Frollie, for example.  There was the perspective offered in an email I received, "stats to note."  Tonight and tomorrow night the Geminid meteor shower is taking place.  I remember that Annie Dillard had an interesting perspective on meteor showers in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, though I read that a long time ago too.  After I read it I never failed to pick up any penny I found.  Well, I picked them up before I read her book, but it was more fun after.  The observed behavior of white-throated sparrows on our board walk is worth noting.  Dexter takes thyroid pills every morning, with cheese; remember Wallace and Gromit?  Everyone likes cheese, especially Kraft's American cheese slices, into which I fold his pills.  Of course everyone shows up for cheese.  The list grows.  But my neck hurts and it is 4:39 am.  Still, there is one more thing to say about The Tempest too (and my inability to deal effectively with italics for titles; see?).  Ah, later note: I have learned the double tap on the words I need to italicize.  Technology, ain't it grand?

More later, whenever later is. 

We have a lot of bird feeders just outside the back of our house, beside the enclosed deck, and nicely placed on the other side of an L-shaped boardwalk, and visible from our dining room window.  We feed birds and watch them.   Always in the back of my mind is the idea (from C. S. Lewis) that everything is a clue and that if properly followed will lead back to its source.  I'm not sure where I read that, which of his many works, but I will try to find it as I liked it well enough to copy and stick on the wall next to my desk downstairs.  Though I do not use that desk anymore I suspect the quote is still there.  Later: it isn't there.  I sort of remember (Ha, everything, sort of) taking it down to use somewhere.  It is probably stuck in a book now.

In any case, this particular day I was watching white-throated sparrows whose numbers were significant.  They are ground feeders: scratch scratch nibble nibble run.  The running takes place on the boardwalk, the scratching on the ground around it.  Their behavior was funny.  These little fluffy brown balls of feathers would scratch and eat and suddenly hop up on the boardwalk and race down it for three to five feet before hopping off and digging some more.  Their behavior was such that they looked like windup toys, and they were that fast. Their running was actually hopping at something approaching light speed, for they were so fast that their little legs and feet seemed to disappear in a blur.  Quick little dashes, and not just one of the sparrows, but all of them, sooner or later dashing, and at different angles to one another.  White-throated sparrows.

Growing up in Ohio, all I remember are English sparrows and lots of them.  Nuisance birds along with starlings, my parents called them.  When I got married and moved to Athens, Ohio, I now had a wife who liked birds too, and a bird book.  And we had six or seven varieties of sparrows, all distinct, just as the white-throated sparrow is distinct from the English sparrow, the song sparrow, and the fox sparrow.  I seem to remember that there is also a sparrow with a red head.  Here I cannot reconcile intellect and emotion.  Intellect says variation accounts for the separate species; I counted fish scales in a workshop on evolution one summer for a general studies course I taught during the school year.  Variation occurs: 41 scales on this fish, 46 on the next one.  However, the different kinds of sparrows are distinct, to say nothing of the fish, and each mates with its own kind, presumably.  Emotionally, the idea of variation does not feel right as a way to account for (I have forgotten the correct terms for species, etc. though I had to memorize them in college long ago) the different kinds of sparrows, and wrens, and finches, purple and gold, and hawks, red-tailed and otherwise.  On one end of my spectrum I have variation within the species, leading to a new species; on the other end I see distinct species without any apparent connecting links.  I am not trying to prove or disprove anything here, simply present what seems to me to be a fascinating and complex mystery.  Oh, and if I were to follow one of the winged wonders as clue, it would be the Carolina wren; they are lovely in so many ways.

Ah, I just read Wordsmith for today, well Sunday, and truly there are no accidents.  There is an interesting "thought for the day" quote from physicist Freeman Dyson; he is using all the terms: species, genus, class, phylum.  Apparently, it takes a million years to evolve a new species, if he is correct.  That is what the nineteenth-century scientists gained from the fossil record for evolution to be a viable theory: time.  

For another perspective on the importance of time here (again?) is the quote from Dante's Purgatory in the circle of Sloth: "Quick, quick!  Let not the precious time be lost for lack of Love."  

Behavior Modification CXXVI

I seem to be caught in some kind of time loop.  Instead of writing here I simply reread the last entry, make tiny changes here and there, save them, look at this blank white space, close it and go back to Schuster, Mary, and the half-eaten mouse.  Once again, I have made the coffee, cleaned the kitchen, and here I am.  I have knocked down my late night mug of cran-grape, eaten 3 treats from our neighbor Gin's Christmas gift (thank you; some of them are individually wrapped and oh so good, not that all of them are not oh so good, but those are special; I haven't mentioned them to Mary for obvious reasons), and two small bags of Welch's fruit snacks from the box of 40 my daughter gave me several days ago (thank you).  

At this point in the entry I am beginning to feel like Tristram Shandy, out of an eighteenth century novel of the same name.  I read it three times one year in graduate school.  Stream of consciousness was a technique newly discovered in fiction (Sterne may have gotten the idea from Locke).  Tristram is trying to write his autobiography; I can't remember why, but the novel is very funny.  Since the last time I read it was in 1963 or 4, many of the details have disappeared.  I remember that he has an Uncle Toby who is trying to woo the widow next door.  I also remember that it takes Tristram about 300 pages to get to the moment of his birth.  I remember that Uncle Toby is making a huge topographical map of a battle in which he received a groin wound.  

There's a lovely scene between the passionate widow and Uncle Toby wherein he offers to show the widow the place where he was wounded, he meaning his huge map, she thinking his body.  I remember too that Uncle Toby had taken the metal weights out of the window cords for controlling the windows so that they would stay up when raised.  Tristram's circumcision occurred when as a little child he was peeing out of one of the same windows and of course it came crashing down, apparently removing the unsuspecting flesh.  Well, I have convinced myself that I need to reread this novel at least once more before I depart this vale of tears.  I have a list of such things: the Renaissance translation of Ariosto's Orlando Furioso.  (There is a ring of invisibility in the story and a moon voyage on a hippogriff, I think.  There are also knights and battles and lovers etc.). Spenser's Faerie Queene is another, especially books 2 through 6.  Book 3 is the story of Britomart, a female knight (this is 1593-99) with a magic lance.  In Spenser's allegory she represents, among other things, Chastity.  People then were certainly not any more chaste than now, as far as I can tell, but they understood that Chastity was a real virtue.  Look how often it plays a role in Shakespeare's plays, especially the comedies.  One of the central plays in that regard is Measure for Measure; for the purest vision of the virtue and it's significance though, read The Tempest, look what is at stake in the love between Ferdinand and Miranda if they give in to their love and their desire for each other before they return to Naples and can be properly married.  Look what Milton did with the idea of Chastity in Comus.

Another digression and then I'll go to bed.  I discovered The Tempest in high school English, thanks to Miss Ruthie Dietsel (I am sure the spelling is wrong).  We were doing reports on plays (snooze, eh?).  She said, if we did contemporary plays we must do two of them; however, if we chose a Shakespeare play we need do only one.  Hey, I could count!  I looked through a volume of Shakespeare and came upon The Tempest, and my imagination was transformed for ever.  Are our lives governed simply by accident and chance or is there an underlying pattern, purpose and reality at work?  I could not even have understood the question then or taken it seriously, but when I look back I see pattern, thanks to Miss D and 3 English teachers at Heidelberg along the way who shifted my goal and changed my direction to graduate school in English (and Ohio University) and all that happened as a consequence of that choice.

And The Tempest?  I wrote my Master's thesis on it, and it is still my favorite Shakespeare play, and the most meaningful, though I am sure I always just miss the real meaning.   

Well, my left eye just slammed shut, so I guess I truly must go to bed.  I'll edit it later, so to speak. 

Behavior Modification CXXV

Speaking of Schuster, I shall again.  Continuing.  I went to bed at 3, then was rudely awakened at 4:20, the red digital light on my radio said.  Mary was hysterical.  When Mary is hysterical, I know not to rush into things since her notion of a crisis is different from mine, and, I suppose, most everyone else's.  I did not understand what she was saying, but I could tell it had to do with Schuster.  What doesn't these days?  

Well, I stumbled out of bed, tried to stand up, started to slide down to the floor, caught myself on the side of the bed and focused.  She was still hysterical, screeching excitedly about Schuster eating something.  Apparently he had been eating a dead mouse, at least it was dead now from what I could gather. Mary is a carnivore from way back, but there is a significant gap in her mind and imagination between what the meat on her plate was, where it came from, and how it looks on her plate now.   Schuster eats his mice like steak tartare, raw.  When she settled down a bit, I gathered that whatever Schuster had was in our hall bath; Mary was holding Schuster on our bed, trying to keep him from licking her since his tongue had recently, she shuddered, touched the creature.  He licked her anyway and crawled over to me.  I let him lick my hand, and when he rolled over I gave him a super belly rub and told him he was a good boy.

Then I tried to get off the bed again, managed that without too much trouble, and walked down the hall to the bathroom.  And there it was, fully displayed on the floor, with a paper towel under it.  It was impossible to tell what it had been, though mouse was probably the best guess, for it was now red and raw and stringy and thoroughly disgusting.  I got two more paper towels and a plastic bag, wrapped the remains in the towels, put those in the plastic bag, stuffed the plastic bag inside an empty coffee bag, and stuffed the whole business down in the trash to be dealt with later.

When I returned to the bedroom, Mary was now under the covers, Schuster was on top of the covers looking pleased with himself, if not slightly bewildered.  I gave him another short belly rub, crawled under the covers on my side of the bed and immediately fell back asleep.  End of story, crisis averted, mischief managed. 

It occurred to me as I was about to lose consciousness, however, that we were fortunate that Simon had not bestirred himself and found the remains while we were all in the bedroom, for we would have been up the rest of the night trying to catch him and pry it out of his mouth.  I was also rather proud of Mary for having managed to get the thing away from Schuey.  One risks serious finger damage or loss trying to remove meat from cute, savage dachshunds.  I still haven't asked her how she did it.  And, she will be asleep again tonight by the time I do the dishes and get back there.  By morning I will have forgotten again.  Alas. 

Behavior Modification CXXIV

I buy Schwan's raspberry/white chocolate scones; they are delicious.  For a while I would bake 2 of them at 350 for 25 minutes before I went to bed, then bag and refrigerate them so that I could have one for breakfast in the next two mornings.  That's the kind of food that gets me out of bed in the morning.  

Two nights ago I put two in the oven, set the timer on the oven, set the timer on the microwave and went back to a PBS documentary on 3 Italian cities: Florence, Rome, and Venice.  Fascinating, so fascinating, in fact, that I did not hear either timer, which is really bad since the one on the oven never shuts off.  Since the PBS show was part of their fund raising campaign, I had to fast-forward the show, which meant there was late night silence in the house, which meant I could hear the timer!  I rose up off my chair like Neptune from the sea and hustled to the kitchen.  The scones looked dark, very dark.  I put on my large red oven mitts and hauled them out.  Whoa!  The Israelites could have used those things as bricks when building the Egyptian pyramids.  Hard, very hard.  I wrapped them in the aluminum foil I had on the baking tray and dumped them in the trash, once their temperature had dropped below that of the surface of the sun.  Rats, as Snoopy might say.

Not to be foiled (nudge nudge), once the tray had truly cooled, I put another piece of foil down, sprayed it with Pam or something, put two more frozen scones on the tray and placed them into the oven.  This time I turned off the TV and sat at the dining room table where I could look into the kitchen and hear the timers, both of them.  They, the scones, not the timers, came out perfect, and the one I ate 5 hours later was delicious.  I know there is a lesson in this mishap, but at the moment I am too tired to think about what it might be.   

And I just noticed that 30 minutes have passed since the last time I glanced at the wall clock in the kitchen.  Since the coffee is made and I also did the dishes before I sat down, I think I shall close the iPad and go to bed.  Actually, upon further reflection I remember that I had glanced at the digital clock at the top of the page, not the kitchen clock.  I think someone's messing with me.  Schuster, the little dickens!  It has to be!

Behavior Modification CXXIII

I had three different things I was going to mention early this morning as I was getting ready for bed.  Of course I didn't write them down then, and now I have forgotten them.

Following one theme, and dangling a modifier for a bit, my lovely purple stylus is damaged.  Its color matches the color of the case on my kindle.  A lovely line. The color of the case on my kindle matches the color of the stylus I've broken.   I lead a rich and colorful life among the many details of those things I use and have around me.  For example, when I walk into my bathroom now with its three shades of turquoise--hand towels (2), bath towel set (3), and rugs (2), I feel as though I am lifted up and walking on clouds on a bright sunny day.  My new shower curtain is a gentle cream color hanging in front of a transparent liner and it obviously adds to the airy sensation of sky and sea beneath me.  

The wallpaper (now that's a metaphor for the times) on my iPad is the photo of Simon peering through the gate, outside looking in, I think.  The photo puts me nose to nose with the little guy, so to speak.   

As I was walking through the house to my airy bathroom in the back, I passed Schuster on top of the love seat.  Of course I stopped to bend down slightly and give his furry head a little kiss.  I immediately saw the similarity between Schuster and myself with the photo of Simon: being up there, right next to the main thoroughfare through the house puts him nose to nose with the rest of us. 

On my way back to The Table, I stopped in the kitchen and warmed up a piece of Schwan's very tasty pepperoni pizza that I had fixed for supper two nights ag.  I do not like leftovers, but I needed to eat something; thus I fired up the microwave.  It is difficult to get it heated just right, not too hot, not too cold.  I failed on the second try and made it too hot.  I love pepperoni pizza.

I poured a mug of Ocean Spray Cran-Grape to go with the slice of pizza.  I drink a lot of OSCG.  In fact, the last I was at Meijers, several days ago, I bought 10 3 liter bottles to replenish my hoard.  I like to keep 24 bottles on hand at all times, so I won't run out if I should get terribly thirsty.  Anyway, Ocean Spray has a winner with its cran grape, yet they are trying to switch to something called 100% Juice.  I bought one once just to see if the quality was there; it wasn't, so I of course called OS immediately and was told, assured, that there was no switcheroo going on.  OS sent me coupons for two free 3 liter bottles, primarily, I suspect, because I had so delighted the young lady on the phone by telling her, truthfully, that I had just purchased 14 3 liter bottles in case they were closing it out.  She said she had never heard of anyone buying that much juice before and we both had a good laugh about it.

Okay Ocean Spray, another point.  The cran-grape label reads, "grape cranberry juice drink blended with another juice from concentrate (mezclado con otro jugo de concentrado; I like to work in my Spanish whenever I can!).  What on earth is that third juice that they keep so well hidden and that they may have omitted altogether from their new wretched 100% Juice because we probably would not drink the stuff if we knew.  Carrot juice!  It is carrot juice!  "Carrot Juice from Concentrate"!  (¡Jugo de Zanahoria de Concentrado!).  Mind you, as long as it tastes exactly as it tastes now, I would continue to drink it if the label said the third juice was Buffalo Urine!  (¡Jugo de orina de búfalo!).  It's that good!

Behavior Modification CXXII

St. Augustine, Confessions, Book X, Section 27:  Augustine is reflecting on the process that led to the moment of his conversion in the garden, the role of Beauty, the nature of Beauty.

"I have learnt to love you late, Beauty at once so ancient and so new!  I have learnt to love you late!  You were within me, and I was in the world outside myself.  I searched for you outside myself and, disfigured as I was, I fell upon the lovely things of your creation.  You were with me, but I was not with you.  The beautiful things of this world kept me far from you and yet, if they had not been in you, they would have had no being at all.  You called me; you cried aloud to me; you broke my barrier of deafness.  You shone upon me; your radiance enveloped me; you put my blindness to flight.  You shed your fragrance about me; I drew breath and now I gasp for your sweet odour.  I tasted you.  And now I hunger and thirst for you.  You touched me, and I am inflamed with love of your peace." 

 (Penguin edition, translated by R. S. Pine-Coffin, 1961)

Augustine begins his Confessions  in Book 1 with this well-known and often quoted passage:  "Man is one of your creatures, Lord, and his instinct is to praise you.  He bears about him the mark of death, the sign of his own sin, to remind him that you thwart the proud.   But still, since he is a part of your creation, he wishes to praise you.  The thought of you stirs him so deeply that he cannot be content unless he praises you, because you made us for yourself and our hearts find no peace until they rest in you."

According to the many notes in my text, John Macquarie in Mystery of Truth writes that the phrase "you made us for yourself" should or could be translated "you have made us toward yourself."  Thus, as far as our lives in time are concerned, we are always moving toward death, you might say, horizontally speaking, and time in that sense is inexorable, as we all know.  We are never not facing death. Yet what Augustine knows is that there is such a thing as God's time, and in God's time we are made such that we are always "toward Him" as well.  Our lives are defined by both the horizontal and the vertical, facing death, facing God.  To put it another way, Death can find us anywhere at any time; the interesting thing is to see that so can God, though there is no Facebook "timeline" for that movement or meeting.  We live in an age that celebrates the self, the social, the chronological and denies even the possibility of the mysterious and the hidden.  In the social and chronological we are always connected, always talking, always available; in God's time we are also, ironically, always connected, though no one seems to know that, since it is not ours to control, though It (He) may break in at any moment.

After the passage on Beauty, Augustine starts a new section, 28, and begins it thusly: 

"When at last I cling to you with all my being, for me there will be no more sorrow, no more toil.  Then at last I shall be alive with true life, for my life will be wholly filled by you." 

Behavior Modification CXXI

The beautiful colors have long delighted me.  Men's shirts, for example, can be exquisite;  in my much younger days, when Mary went to J. C. Penney's in Lexington to "shop!" I would go to the men's department for a few minutes to check out the shirts.  Invariably I would find at least one that was so lovely I would have to purchase it.  Not plain colors, usually, but mixed, patterned, button down collared.  I have a number of old shirts hanging in my closet that reflect various passions; they are still beautiful, but for the most part I no longer wear them, nor buy them, for two reasons: not only has the passion diminished, but there is no point to acquiring them since I can no longer button them.  Sometimes I stop and admire them, sometimes I wear one and Mary buttons it for me, but the passion for lovely dress and sport shirts has diminished.  In my heyday, as they say, when I found a shirt of exceptional beauty, I would buy two of them.

Actually, the passion has not completely gone, for L. L. Bean has a selection of long sleeve T-shirts with pockets (there must be pockets) of exceptional color and beauty.  Recently L.L. Bean introduced a new color into that line called "black cherry."  Oh my goodness.   I bought one just to check it out since I had a ten dollar credit with them, but the color was so delightful I immediately ordered another one at full price.  Trying to exercise discipline, I tried to stop buying the Tees when I had 12.  But then there was a luscious lavender; I bought two; when I got them, they were so delicious that I went back to order two more, but those colors were already sold out.  I was not alone.  And I now have about 18, wash them as a laundry load when I've worn 12 to 15.  

This morning I passed up the lavender (purple plum, perhaps?) and the black cherry for the Turquoise Sea, which whispered to me as my gaze lingered on the rack, "choose me."  I did.  I have a doctor's appointment at two.  Once I take my shower in a bit, the turquoise sea is on my bed awaiting, and will soon be on my back.

I mention my fascination with color because it is part of my desire for beauty.  That is what we (I) want, I think, to acquire the beauty, hold on to it, become one with it.  Colorful shirts are there to delight in and remind me of what this life is really all about.  And they do, though now my attention has shifted to towels, sort of.  Colors are like moods.  One day I am sad, a day later happy.  Why the shift?  I have no idea.  Moods change.  I thought my love of dark red would be permanent.  My bathroom floor rugs are (were) dark red; the bath towels are (were) dark red, a gorgeous shade, the hand towels, the shower curtain, etc.,  but now the rugs have worn out.  I am not fickle.  The rugs wore out, and I almost broke my neck because the rubber coating had crumbled.  Who knew.  That's how the coating crumbles, apparently.

Walmart has colors too.  There was a turquoise set of rugs that was absolutely lovely.  I needed rugs; I bought them. Thus, my bathroom scheme has changed to blue, or greenish blue, and my bath towels are now "aqua frost" and "aqua frost stripe."  The new rugs do not slip, the new color scheme is delightful.  The towels are super absorbant, and go up tomorrow.

While my celebration of color this way is a bit silly, yet there is a truth lurking there.  Beauty can draw us out of ourselves and toward the Divine Other.  We live in a universe wherein beauty is real.  Three men (men!) passed me in the parking lot at the hiking trail.  I of course had Simon. "That's a beautiful dog, one of them said."  I smiled and thanked him.  All of us smiled.  Simon is beautiful.  So is Schuster.  All this attention to beautiful things reminds me of Psalms 148-150 where you can see the entire creation singing the praises of God the Father.  "Let everything that breathes praise The Lord."  Colors breathe and are in that chorus too, shirts and towels, dachshunds, Simon and Schuster.

We are moving toward St. Augustine.

Behavior Modification CXX

Into the Woods: people who read fairy tales and other forms of literature know that going into the woods is an action fraught with danger.  Today Simon and I went into the woods.

Interestingly the new hiking trail runs through the woods.  In fact if you move quickly you will be through the woods and out in several minutes. Today though that was not to be.  As usual Mary was ahead when we entered the woods, and if I were writing a story, I would make the character she met there an evil witch.  Frollie, who likes to mind everyone's business, first saw the witch who had two small dogs, and tried to make friends.  The woman was not having any friendship from Frollie.  I got close enough to hear her cast a spell: "If that dog comes near me and my dogs again I will spray her!"  Whoa!  Frollie was off lead but she quickly retreated too, having sense enough not to mess with a spell-casting tone of voice.

Our walk was pretty much brought to a halt.  We couldn't follow after the threat-issuing woman and her companion, for Frollie and Dexter were, unfortunately, off lead.  Mary called them, but they chose this moment to disappear into the woods, ominous phrase, and were soon out of sight though not out of hearing.  We couldn't simply turn around and go back with them running loose and a witch around. We too had to go deeper into the woods, following a bramble-filled trail along the side of Silver Creek.  Simon and I had been down the trail a short distance before, but this time we were trying to catch up with the bellowing beagle and his adventurious buddy.  

Simon loves going into the woods, and the trail starts just over the bridge, goes down a little bank and then straightens out.  My first hint of danger came when Simon pulled me down the bank; I was running.  I do not run.  I tripped but managed to keep my balance.  We hurried into the dark interior of the continent, well, maybe not.  We hurried along the leaf-strewn path, until we were farther into the woods than we had ever been before.  There were no dogs, the bad news, but there were no witches either, the good news.  At one point Simon and I went down to the edge of the creek; Simon had a long drink.  I thought it time to go back, and that is one of the problems with woods.  Frequently there are no clearly marked paths; frequently you have to search for a way out, that is, find your own way.  Mary and Schuster had disappeared; Simon and I were on our own. 

We had, I thought, found the path going back to the paved trail, and we followed it.  Unfortunately it was not the trail we took to get there.  This trail led us to a creek runoff that we had to cross: down two feet and over.  Another thing about woods: terrain changes.  Simon had already gone down into the dry bed; I stood on the edge of the two foot drop and looked down.  I could not get Simon back up, and I could not walk or climb down this bank.  The drop may have been only two feet, but it looked like twenty.  It looked as though the only real choice was to jump down.  I imagined a broken ankle or leg at the worst, bumps and bruises in either case.  Looking down was not going to lessen the depth.  I jumped.    Bravely.  Foolishly.  

I jumped, did not break an ankle or leg, but I did jar every muscle and bone in my body.  And then I fell down.  My head and neck and body still hurt from the impact!  And then I fell down.  Simon was solicitous.  He came hurrying back to see what happened, and why I was rolling around on the ground, muttering.  We all have heard the commercial: "I've fallen and I can't get up!"  I remember the woman being in a nice bright kitchen.  I was down in the middle of a dry runoff with leaves and rocks and a somewhat muddy bottom, two muddy bottoms.  I had fallen and could not get up!  Simon got bored with my cursing and flopping around trying to stand and decided to explore.  That was when his lead slipped out of my hand and he disappeared.  I called.  He didn't come.  I could imagine him hung up on some bush or stump and slowly choking.  I still could not get up.  But then, blessed sight, he reappeared, apparently having found the creek again, and he came running to me, up the dry bed, trailing the lead, and apparently as delighted to see me as I was to see him.  He jumped up onto my leg and licked my cheek.  I should say that going into the woods can have positive consequences as well as negative ones.  The tide was turning.

In fact, if you think for a moment about Dante who awakens in a dark woods (in his case signifying sin and death), those woods lead finally to a vision of God.  No such luck this time though.  Now it was just a matter of standing and getting out.

Sticking out of the side of the steep bank, the one I flew down (well, when you are down on your hands and knees, anything might look steep!), was a sturdy tree root.  Not too dignified, I crawled to it, and if I was whimpering a bit by then, perhaps I might be forgiven.  My knees kept finding the rocks hidden under the leaves.  Nevertheless, holding the root in my left hand and the cane and Simon's lead in my right, I pulled myself up.  Gravity managed!    I hobbled to the other side of the dry bed, which was not steep, and we were up and out.

Not only up and out but there were Dexter and Frollie waiting on the road when Simon and I got there.  I delivered my most withering command to them, "STAY!"   and they did.  I yelled for Mary, who answered from a distance.  Turns out she and Schuster had wandered into a distant bramble patch, from which she emerged eventually.  Into the woods is always a private journey in the end.  She still does not know about my mishap.  I do not know why I did not tell her.  Perhaps I am waiting to see if she ever reads about it here.

In any case she put the leads on Dexter and Frollie and we all went home.  We never saw the witch and her two dogs again.  Perhaps she is sitting snugly in her gingerbread house somewhere else in the woods. 

As for me when we got home I fed the dogs, giving them each an extra portion of Alpo, especially Simon; I showered, put my very dirty trousers in the laundry, put Schuster in his crate and we went to Saturday night Mass, celebrating the first Sunday of Advent.  Thus, stretching the meaning a bit, the true adventure does end with a vision of God, a new beginning, and a very sore body.

Behavior Modification CXVIIII

Today Schuster had his own special veterinarian's appointment, for a shot he was not able to get when we had all four dogs and the cat there in September or October.  Everyone thought we were going for a walk; everyone got excited; everyone was wrong.

Schuey, alone in the backseat, whined all the way there, but he stood patiently on the scales after we arrived, while the young lady and Mary weighed him.  The little porker weighed 13 plus pounds; turns out that to get him slimed down to a proper healthy weight, 11 pounds, he is allowed to have only 371 calories per meal.  And he so loves his supper, bouncing up and down and crying till I get it mixed and on the floor for him.

Now I have to add a giant MW Canine Skin Care Soft Gel capsule to his food because he has very dry skin.  I did and apparently Schuster swallowed it without discovering it was there, or he discovered it an didn't care.

In addition to a belly rash and dry coat, the only other problem was an elevated temperature of 103.6.  Stress can cause the temperature to rise, the vet said, and given that strangers were inserting the thermometer into the little guy's butt, as well as holding him, stress may have caused it.  Or, he knew about the shot and raised his own temperature to put off the shot.  Can't give a feverish dog a vaccination, after all.  In any case the temperature went down, and Schuster got his shot.

One delightful modification during the visit was that I got to hold him for a while, something that really does not happen at home.  All the way home he was also quiet in the backseat.  I had to turn around once to make sure he was there and all right.  And now it is 4 am and time for bed, Thanksgiving, you know,  has begun.

Behavior Modification CXVIII

Mary had gone to our daughter-in-law Katie's house one street over to help with remodeling or yard work or something.  She said she would be back by 4:30 so that we could take the critters for a walk.  Knowing Mary, I said fine, but if you aren't back by 4:30, Simon and I are out of here.  Of course she wasn't and so we left, though not without some grief.

First, I had trouble clipping Simon's lead to his collar, primarily because my hands do not work well.  It's an oxymoron; they are numb, yet they burn like fire.  I was sitting at the bottom of our stairs near our front door.  I had trouble pulling the clip mechanism down.  What compounded the problem was that Schuster kept running around us and sticking his nose into the situation.

I finally managed to get Simon attached and out the front door.  Schuster came out with us.  Not good.  No lead on and a wild little dachshund loose in the subdivision and I not able to run.  Simon was at the end of the sixteen foot lead; Schuster was next to him looking back at me.  I called him.  Miracle of miracles, he came.  I opened the door again, and wonderful, safe little Schuster went back into the house.

The day had been lovely, but now the sun was beginning to slide toward the horizon in the low south-western part of the sky.  The sun in that position depresses me, but I screwed my courage to the sticking place (nudge nudge) and off we went, lickety split.  Simon was in his cross-country mode, pulling me down our steep driveway and out into the street.  Where he usually stops to pee and sniff, today he ran.  "Easy Simon," I yelled.  "Easy little guy."    "Simon! " I yelled.  He hurried on.  I tugged on the lead, a bit.  "Gronk gronk gronk," he choked.  And so the walk continued, with me (weighing in at 179) being pulled along the sidewalk by a sixteen pound low-slung dog, while continually appealing to dog's better nature and respect for the elderly, urging him to slow down to slow down to please slow down.

Suffice it to say we made it: to the end of Fairway, left on Forest, up the steep hill to Center, across Forest and down Center, all the way to the Log House, Berea College's large gift shop; around the Log House to Estill street, and all the way down, or is it up, Estill to, ta dum, Forest again.  Then down the Forest street hill to Fairway and home to number three, exactly a mile, according to my car's odometer, when I last measured it, 10 or so years ago.

Well, almost home.  When we got to number three, Simon, it turned out, was not done with me yet.  I was tired and cold and he was still wound up.  He zipped past our drive and on around the curve in the road; he wanted to go up our neighbor Gin's driveway and off into the golf course beyond.  I talked him out of that this time, though Gin kindly let's us exit and enter the subdivision through her yard (#6 Fairway); since that way always leads to adventures, he loves to take that route and knows it well.

In any case, not today and he was gentle about my refusal.  (He too, remember, had already walked over a mile in increasingly cold weather.)  From Gin's driveway to the cul-de-sac at the end of the street, around the circle, back up the hill and home.  This time he was content to go up the driveway and into the house.

But wait.  My numb hands were now really cold and I could not get my keys out of my deep Docker's pants pocket.  Simon was patient; he sat down, while I danced and fiddled with the deep pocket.  I could not tell whether I had the keys in my hand.  Three, four times, no keys.  Finally I got them up and out, tried to put the house key in the lock, dropped them, tried again, dropped them again, got the key in, turned it too far, the door didn't open.  Since I had pulled the key out and immediately dropped them again, I asked Simon to help me, but he simply ignored me, still sitting patiently.

Suffice it to say at this point that I finally managed to get the key in the lock and the security system disarmed.  Since we were not greeted by three barking, hysterical dogs, I assumed Mary had managed to get home before dark and take them down to the hiking trail.  With all the critters walked, we were all good for the evening.  I was knackered, so when I got to the top of the stairs, I made for our sofa where Simon had already secreted himself under the blanket, I dropped down, and dropped off, to sleep till Mary and the rest of the creatures should return.  Which, of course, they did, and a fine evening was had by all.

Behavior Modification CXVII

Having finished my yogurt in the kitchen (I have a truly great urge to dangle a participle this morning; as I have said before, I like to live on the edge), I was sitting alone at the table, looking out the dining room window at the bird feeders, when I heard this high-pitched whine from under the table.  Curious, I looked under the table.  Simon and Schuster, I might have known.

Simon was stretched out on the far side of the table with my empty yogurt container between his front paws; Schuster was on my side of the table facing Simon and the empty yogurt container.  The high-pitched whining was Schuster, of course, trying to convince Simon to give up the container, which had obviously been licked clean, but which still had its bottom.  (I now have a great urge to add "on"; dangle a participle, end a sentence with a preposition: what rule might I think of breaking next?  There's no holding me back some days!)  

Simon apparently did not want to remove the bottom then, nor did he want to let Schuster have it.  It was his container, his bottom!  I understood Simon's psychological predicament exactly, and I enjoyed the drama being played out under the table and at my feet.

Schuster from his position continued to whine and inch toward the can; he got his nose above it.  I thought he might grab it and run; perhaps he would have (perhaps I should drop a semicolon), but Simon growled (or miss a tense change, growls), softly, very softly; Schuster slid a little to the right with his nose still over the can.  Finally, having had enough, Simon grabbed the can and started to go to work on the bottom.  

Holding it firmly between his paws (oh, the urge!), Simon tore it off, having to remove only two pieces (four, I discovered later, no record today) and swiftly licked it clean.  The moment Simon grabbed the can, Schuster lost interest and left.  What impressed me most about the little drama was Simon's restraint; just two very soft little growls letting Schuey know that he could not have the can.  No ferocious displays of dachshund machismo, just a little brotherly nudging, and that was all it took.

Earlier this morning I was giving them milk bones, "Scooby Snacks"; I would call out the name of the next recipient, and while the other three would lean in a little, all respected the order I had chosen, unless someone dropped his or her biscuit; then the rule, apparently, is like that of the elephant going after food in the chicken coop: "Every man for himself!" he shouts.  

However, should anyone drop his or her biscuit, apparently that biscuit becomes fair game for anyone.  Simon dropped one and quickly recovered it, but everyone moved; Frollie, who is usually quite agile, dropped hers, but the only dog to lunge for it was (did you guess correctly?) brave (or foolish?) little Schuster.  I was astonished.  She takes away his toys; the other night she  growled ferociously and attacked him for daring to bark with her at a dog on TV; she bullies him every day, yet he was the only one to lunge and challenge her; more interesting still, she ignored his lunge and simply ate the recovered biscuit.  

Last night Simon was sitting with me as usual; we were eating a delicious Schwan's pizza (commercial!), and I was of course giving Simon pieces from time to time.  He was watching me.  The delightful element in his watching was the way it focused on the food, not really on me.  His fixed gaze reminded me of a John Donne tortured image or conceit of a lover exchanging looks with his beloved; Simon's eyes never left the piece of food I was holding.  I could move it anywhere around me (I did) and his gaze remained fixed.  I tried to fake him out with a sudden downward thrust, but no luck; he was truly locked on, like one of those fighter pilots we see on the news about to destroy a moving Isis vehicle.  I gave him the piece, whoosh, it was gone without even fire or a puff of smoke.  Little Simon, not only a decider but a devourer, he of the all-consuming stare!

Behavior Modification CXVI

Ah Ha!  It just occurred to me that if you do not live in Berea, and if you haven't a clue about the Log House, you can use your "Maps" app (that is what mine is called, "Maps") to start from 3 Fairway Drive in Berea Ky to end at the Log House on Estill.  When I did that the map big-blue-lined the route exactly as Simon and I walk it.  The interesting thing for me was that the motel, where we went "off sidewalk," so to speak, is still visible.  "Maps" hasn't caught up with the changes.  One year, when they remodeled Draper, the building where I had my office and all my classes for 40 plus years, our classrooms and offices were moved to that ex-motel.  When I came to Berea in 1967 to scout out housing or something, after I had been hired, I stayed in a room in that motel.  A different room became my office for one year (2000 or thereabouts), which meant I had a sink and toilet in my office.  Ah, the glory days!  Such luxury!

You can trace our usual route across the street from the Log House, through the parking lot, follow it to Boone Tavern Hotel where they now serve alcohol in this almost dry city ("The horror, the horror!") and even see the tiny formal flower beds where Simon likes to sniff and explore or explore and sniff along side the hotel.  Well, it's nice to see we are dealing with map places, though I seem to remember that Ishmael in Moby Dick says that real places are not found on maps.  I'll have to look that up.

Found it; what Ishmael really said:  "It is not down on any map; true places never are."  That is the third quote on "Goodreads" list of quotes from Moby Dick, number 3 of 493.

The Map app also does not show the Stevenson Memorial Trail, where we all walk our dogs now.  You can find the Berea Municipal parking lot and across from that, a gravel road that leads back to a lot where utility trucks are parked and electrical, creosote-soaked posts are stored, but the paved trail does not exist yet, though the gravel road will become the first part of that blacktopped trail.   The trail not on the map now curves around the backside of the golf course, crosses Brushy Fork/Silver Creek, then goes south (I think) along the creek till it swings east straight out to Short Line Pike, making the trail about a mile from beginning to end.  Ishmael was right.  True places are not down on maps.  Check with Simon.

As for Ishmael, how can you not want to know him when his attitude is this: "I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I'll go to it laughing."   (Quote #1 of 493!). An admirable attitude, I think!   I taught American literature for a long time when I came to Berea (1967), and I almost always assigned all of Moby Dick; it is another text I am proud to say I worked hard to own (metaphor!).  

Behavior Modification CXV (more or less)

Top of the batting order (I love a good sports metaphor):  well, I knew a while ago what I was thinking! Ah, I was thinking how good to have John Milton's Paradise Lost in my mind still, because the works I read now do not stick.  Frustrating!  I could pick up PL and open it to any book and know where I was and what the story was doing.  Moreover, to have PL in my mind means I can think toward understanding the Idea of it, that which Milton saw or discovered when he wrote the poem and which is inherent in every line of it, beginning to end.  At Berea College the Administration or English department got rid of the Milton course once I retired.  Though the work stands at a crucial juncture in the history of western civilization (c. 1660), though PL recounts a fundamental story of our civilization's mythic origins in the Garden of Eden, though it contains beautiful, stirring lines of iambic pentameter poetry, its beauty is not really useful in a utilitarian, tech degree oriented (STEM), secular culture.

Today, reading the journal First Things, I came upon a description of "liberal learning" that stands firmly opposed to the current notions of higher education as "skills training": "Liberal learning is out of step with our times because it offers us not vocational skills but the shaping of habits of thought and practice.  It forms our souls through exposure to beauty, to truth, and to the power of the sublime that we can only glimpse through the mediation of rare artistic genius."  (Yuval  Levin, FT, October 2014, 25-31). That was the clean-up batter who also reminded me of Milton's Paradise Lost, Shakespeare's The Tempest, Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene, and, of course, Dante's Divine Comedy, all works of "rare artistic genius," and delightful to own (metaphor).

Illustration by William Blake. 

Behavior Modification CXIV

I was editing and revising the last entry and thinking about relationships and knowledge.  First, the universe, I believe, is hiererarchical; the hierarchy is built in, so to speak.  In other words, much as I value Simon and the other creatures here, I recognize that people are inherently more valuable than animals; some animals are inherently more valuable than others.  We make pets out of Guinea pigs and gerbils; I would affirm that they too are valuable and deserve to be treated with love and care; however, they are not as inherently valuable as dogs.  For one thing their capacity for understanding and affection is severely limited compared to a dog.  

For a better grasp of my idea of hierarchy, think about the difference between Mary's spring-blooming, colorful azalea (in photo) and Simon.  The azalea is valuable, economically and inherently.  So is Simon, economically and inherently, though Simon is a rescue dog, if you can believe that.  Apparently his former owner moved out of her apartment and left him there, without food or water!  (Her landlord rescued him first; no wonder Simon has issues!). Still, Simon has economic value; we could sell him, though the very thought makes my stomach turn.  Schuster, however, we paid for, though at a reduced price because he was already eight months old. (At least that was the lady's reason for the reduced price; we bought him in the Cracker Barrel parking lot, out of a trunk!  No returns possible!  Ha!)  Economic value is determined by "the market," what a thing can be bought and sold for.  Inherent value requires intelligence, right reason, intuition, the capacity to see and understand the nature of reality.  There's the rub!

Right reason is not simply the capacity to think from one idea to the next; it is also the capacity to perceive the truth from which to think.  Children learn those principles and either affirm them or reject them as they mature.  If you tell a child that she should honor her father and mother, and she says "why?"  You have to choose: do you believe in a universe where value is inherent? Then the answer might be, because it is the right thing to do.  If you are a relativist or naturalist, or a thoroughly modern parent, you try to give reasons and "explain," and hope the child buys it.  Of course, right reason also acknowledges that children are, first of all, to be loved and cared for too.

If you would like a glimpse into an "inhuman" human mind where the reasoner does not perceive the inherent value of children, read Jonathan Swift's very reasonable A Modest Proposal.  Really.  It is a brilliant work, written just at the time when our western culture's idea of Reason was undergoing a crucial change; we probably do not teach it or read it anymore.  I readily admit that my views on the nature of truth, beauty, and goodness are counter to most of the views inherent in our cultural climate of opinion.  Yet, I hold them.  I am a Catholic Christian.

Well, the day is slipping away and I cannot remember why I started this essay, but people ought to know where a writer takes his stand, even though that ground should come through in everything he writes.  Dante makes personal betrayal the ninth circle of Hell.  Sometimes I have trouble leaving home for a while without the creatures, for I seem to see their perception of our "betrayal" in leaving them behind in their eyes.  After all, we could be going for a walk. It is even worse as Schuster goes willingly into his crate (we used to have to chase him down), Simon pokes his head slightly out from under the blanket, and Frollie and Dexter refuse to look at us.  However, we love the dogs, but the human world, while it includes their world, is considerably more complex, and valuable.  They know that too, somehow, for their enthusiasm when we return is exuberant and unbounded.  All is immediately forgiven.

I am curious what Wikipedia or the "internet" might have to say about "right reason"; C.S. Lewis's The Discarded Image has a good short section, written with his usual clarity, on right reason in the Middle Ages.  He refers to St. Thomas Aquinas; how could one do better?  

I also remember a paragraph I encountered in the 10 November Meditation by Pope John Paul II; note the key words in the final part of this very precise, essentially periodic sentence--"discoveries" and "values enclosed in everything created":

"This fundamental truth is written very profoundly in the Word of divine Revelation: Man, created in God's image, participates in the Creator's work through his labor and, to the degree of his possibilities, continues in a certain sense to develop and complete it by advancing more and more in discovery of the resources and values enclosed in every thing created."  (Prayers and Devotions: 365 Daily Meditations) 

The Pope, as one would expect, simply assumes the idea of inherent value, value that can be discovered and learned, value that is inherent in the creation because God made the creation that way.

Behavior Modification CXIII

I thought I would start with the photo tonight of Simon and me in the big dad chair.  I thought it might inspire me; instead it just depresses me.  I look like a possum caught in headlights, waiting to be hit.

Actually, it feels like a "creature features" night, though suddenly I am not certain what that means.  Two days ago when Simon and I did our long walk, we actually did two walks.  Just as we arrived home, Mary was loading up the other 3 dogs to take them for a bit of a walk.  Simon and I decided to join them, even though it was getting dark, and we had been walking for a long while.  Not the wisest decision I have ever made.  I could hardly get out of bed the next day.  I don't know about Simon, but he seemed rather knackered all day too.  

During the first walk, down Center to the Log House, I let Simon choose the direction once we got down there, or at least I let him think he was.  When Simon is directing things, we always cross the street at the Log House and meander down the sidewalk on the far side and through the college parking lot.  There are various trash recepticals along the way, a mailbox, a fire hydrant, and a number of formal flower beds that he loves to sniff and explore.  His principle for choosing the direction almost certainly involves his nose.

For example, when I stopped to pick up the second pile of poo, we were back along the main highway across from the hospital, Estill St., I think.  There used to be a motel there, but it was torn down a year or so ago.  Some of the parking lot remains, but the rest of the area is fairly large and green.  While Simon was waiting, he must have smelled good smells coming from that area, for he immediately went for the tires on several of the parked cars and then on past them to the green field or large yard behind the parking area.  I followed, curious to see where we would end up.  We made it down to the shrub line which must be heaven for a dog; Simon sniffed the whole line, though we had to turn right for a while to get to the back yards behind the field.  It was high adventure, especially when we found ourselves in someone's back yard with children's toys scattered about.  Fearing we would be either yelled at or arrested for trespassing, I hurried us through the yard and back out on to Center street.  Simon seemed to have a great time leading, and the weather was still delightful.  He didn't even fuss when we turned toward home.

The thing is, I have recently discovered, Simon and I know one another and almost always cooperate with one another.  What makes me so aware of the nature of our relationship is the presence of Schuster, who does not know me, even after all this time and is unsure in his "cooperations."  He follows me into the kitchen, presumably to see if I will give him a treat, but he is not comfortable with me.  Simon is.  In the photo, Simon is on my right side.  Earlier this evening he moved to the left side when I went to fix a bowl of cereal.  Since there is a tray attached to the arm on the left side of the chair, I needed Simon to move back to the right so I could set down the bowl.  I patted the right arm twice; Simon knew what I wanted and quickly changed sides.

Later in the evening he jumped down to get a drink.  When he was finished he went to the kitchen door and barked.  But I know Simon.  He didn't want out, he wanted me to get up so that he could come back, jump up on the chair, and settle down on the left side.  I got up, he trotted in to the room from the kitchen, jumped up on the chair and settled down on the left side.  I am an ambidextrous dog petter; I can stroke his back with either hand, right side or left side.  It is all good to me!

Sometimes, late at night, he will, apparently, get tired of the chair and go to the sofa where his blankets are.  Mary's regular evening place is the sofa, just as mine is the chair. Sometimes she's asleep there, sometimes Dexter is also there, stretched out asleep.  What's a little needy dachshund to do when all the space is taken? He will put his feet on the sofa at the far end where Mary is, look over at me and spear me with "the look," and bark loudly, once, just like at the kitchen door.  I oblige.  I get up, go over to the sofa, pick him up and put him down in the middle behind Mary and against the back where he can burrow under a blanket.   Oh, "the look" is the one that says, "You know what I want, so get over here and do it!"  He knows that I do know.

I think it is true to say that I know him to the extent that he has become part of me, an extension of myself.  Should he die before me, there will be a part of myself that dies too, or at least that is empty.  I love the other three dogs, but with Simon the bond is deeper, and the best word to describe it at this late hour is that we know one another.  Knowing in that sense, for me, means love.  I love the little dog; thus, I know who he is and what he means.   That knowledge is always open to surprise and development and continued understanding on both sides.

Unfortunately, I also know that the little stinker would rather sleep on the sofa under his blanket than in bed with us, though he will often come back to the bedroom in the early morning and bark once to be put in bed.  Mary has to attend to that bark for I hardly ever wake up.

Behavior Modification CXII

Today, a lovely day, perhaps the last for a while, and Mary and I did a thing we had never ever done before; we had our heating system vents cleaned by a company somewhat suggestively called Coit.  Yesterday evening (5:30) we drove to the Cinemark theater in Richmond; there we met our son Michael, coming home from work; together we saw Interstellar, a long but fascinating movie, a distant descendant of Kubrick's 2001, which in the distant long ago, we had to drive to a theater in Louisville just to see.  How our opportunities have changed, and not necessarily for the better.  Simon and I went for a walk today; at one point in space and time, our path intersected with three other separate individuals.  Each one was talking on a cell phone.  

I do not own a cell phone, though I see the lure, the world at my finger tips.  I never need be really alone again; I could be constantly connected.  If you think I'm feeling smug about not owning one, I am just a bit, but not much.  In the first place I really dislike talking on the phone, especially having a conversation with someone I see regularly.  Second, and perhaps most importantly, my disability makes talking on the phone extremely difficult.  When I talk to my friend Martie who now lives somewhere way up north in the frozen tundra, I have to put the phone on the table and turn on the speaker.  We could Skype, I suppose, but neither of us knows how to do that.

There is a fascinating idea at work in Interstellar having to do with space and time, Einstein's relativity, and the nature of a black hole.  In a 10 November Time Magazine cover story on the movie, Jeffrey Kluger, the author, quotes Brian Greene, a cosmologist from Columbia University:  "One of the defining features of a black hole is that it imprints a gravitational field around it....And gravity doesn't just pull on matter--it pulls on time itself."  Kruger elaborates: "You can think of space and you can think of time, but if you think of them together as the horizontal and vertical threads in a weave, you realize that you can't stretch one without stretching the other."  Nothing like a good image or analogy to present a concept with clarity, mostly.   

Mary had a note posted next to my daily medicine container which I saw when I awoke this morning: "Don't take the diuretic today!"  I didn't; the movie is long, very long, but not too long, almost three hours, 169 minutes to be precise.  Even then I barely made it.

As I said somewhere above, Simon and I went for a walk.  Mary was working in her garden, and knowing somewhat the way her mind works, I knew that if I waited for her to finish, I would miss the best part of the surrounding loveliness that made up this day.  We thus departed the house at 4, leaving the distant cries of howling dogs, Frollie, Dexter, and Schuster, behind us.  (I had put them in the backyard with Mary, so that I could slip out the front door with Simon.)   They, of course, had heard us leave, what with Simon barking at squirrels and the neighbor's dog.  Simon didn't seem to notice, or care, that they weren't coming.  I think I can truly say that Schuster is the only dog in our pack that would care if either Frollie or Dexter were not present.  

Simon's behavior on an in-town walk is interesting.  At the top of Forest Street hill and its intersection with Center Street, he and I have almost always turned right to go down Center St.  On our last walk I tried to get him to turn left, so that we could meet Mary with the other dogs.  He stopped, planted himself, and would not move.  He wanted to go right down Center St. and was determined to do so.  The mystery is in why?  My guess is that in some way, going right down Center St. is much more pleasurable than going any other way; no pun intended, but it strongly feels right to him.   He knows what is down there, we have turned right often, and I don't see anything simply mechanical about his desire. 

We turned right this time, hurried safely across the street, started down the sidewalk upon which he immediately pooped.  Usually he finds a spot away from the sidewalk.  Not today.  I too always walk loaded: wet ones, paper towels, 4 gallon plastic bags.  Picking it up is necessary but hazardous for me given my balance problems: I have to put the handle of his lead over my cane, once I have secured the line so he can't pull it out.  Then I put the cane and lead on the sidewalk and put my foot on that, crazily waving back and forth, trying to get my balance secured without falling.  I must look like a drunk looking for a drink.  So it goes.  I long ago quit worrying about what I looked like.

Well, once I and Simon are secured, I try to dig out a plastic bag from my pocket loaded with various things, bags, paper towels, pocket knife, chewing gum, etc.  Finding the bag, I have to open it, perform an act that requires the skills of a circus acrobat, turn the bag inside out, bend down to the socially offensive matter, grasp all of it with the bag, pull the bag up over the poop and hope that it disappears in there forever.  If I regain my upright posture without falling, I then twist the bag and put a tight knot in it, so that I can carry the stuff with my cane hand, leaving the other one for controlling the lead.  Given that we had just crossed Forest, I had to carry the stuff, swinging beside my cane until we reached the first public trash receptical at the college's Log House, a long way away.  Suffice it to say we made it, I got rid of it, the walk continued.  He did poop once more on the walk after we had passed the last trash receptical available so that I had to carry the second bag all the way home.  

Simon does wait very patiently while I pick the stuff up, which is good, very good.  I have lost my balance from time to time, but, thank Goodness, I have never fallen. 

As we were coming home, an exhausting hour later, we were back at Forest and Center.  A car was coming up the hill.  I keep Simon on a short leash in such situations; we stood and waited.  The car rolled to a stop, but back from the stop sign.  Since the road was clear all around the intersection, Simon and I hurried across.  I waved to thank the driver.  She pulled up a bit to be even with us, then rolled down her window, smiled sweetly at us and said, "I always break for dachshunds."  She added that Simon was a very handsome fellow.  Simon and I thought so too, I told her thank you, and we went merrily down the hill, swinging our little white plastic bag all the way home.