January 30: The World's Going to End, Armageddon, Dumbledore

The huge yellow machines are still advancing to destroy the Earth.  Ford Prefect is still drinking beer in the pub.  And Arthur Dent is freaking out because bulldozers have just demolished his house . . .

"Stop, you vandals!  You home wreckers!" bawled Arthur.  "You half-crazed Visigoths, stop, will you!"

Ford would have to go after him.  Turning quickly to the barman he asked for four packets of peanuts.

"There you are, sir," said the barman, slapping the packets on the bar, "twenty-eight pence if you'd be so kind."

Ford was very kind--he gave the barman another five-pound note and told him to keep the change.  The barman looked at it and then looked at Ford.  He suddenly shivered:  he experienced a momentary sensation that he didn't understand because no one on Earth had ever experienced it before.  In moments of great stress, every life form that exists gives out a tiny subliminal signal.  This signal simply communicates an exact and almost pathetic sense of how far that being is from the place of his birth.  On Earth it is never possible to be farther than sixteen thousand miles from your birthplace, which really isn't very far, so such signals are too minute to be noticed.  Ford Prefect was at this moment under great stress, and he was born six hundred light-years away in the near vicinity of Betelgeuse.  

The barman reeled for a moment, hit by a shocking incomprehensible sense of distance.  He didn't know what it meant, but he looked at Ford Prefect with a new sense of respect, almost awe.

"Are you serious, sir?" he said in a small whisper which had the effect of silencing the pub.  "You think the world's going to end?"

"Yes," said Ford.

"But, this afternoon."

Ford had recovered himself.  He was at his flippest.

"Yes," he said gaily," in less than two minutes I would estimate."

The barman couldn't believe this conversation he was having, but he couldn't believe the sensation he had just had either.

"Isn't there anything we can do about it then?" he said.

"No, nothing," said Ford, stuffing the peanuts into his picket.

Someone in the hushed bar suddenly laughed raucously at how stupid everyone had become.  

It is sort of like Armageddon outside right now.  Like my little part of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan is being wiped out by spaceships from the ice planet Hoth (that's for all the Star Wars geeks reading this post).  All the schools are closed.  The U. S. Post Office didn't deliver mail.  The governor declared a state of emergency for the ENTIRE state.  I didn't have to teach today, so now I'm blogging.  Then, it's on to my annual evaluation narrative for the English Department.  That will take me right up to bedtime, I'd bet, with a side trip for dinner.

Tomorrow is supposed to get better in the afternoon.  Tonight, however, is supposed to have -45 degree wind chills.  That's colder than last night.  Schools have already started to announce closures for tomorrow.  My kids have not started thinking about another day off.  Yet.  I'm sure that will start at around 7:00 or 7:30 this evening.

Of course, the excitement of snow days is different for them than it was for me.  When I was their ages, I would have to get up in the morning, turn on the radio, and wait for the announcer to go through the entire list of school closings, praying, hoping, despairing, then celebrating when I heard the name of my school.  When I was younger, it was my mom coming into the bedroom in the morning, saying, "No school today," like Professor Dumbledore waving his wand and changing me into a unicorn.

These days, the news is delivered directly to their cell phones.  Or on Facebook.  My daughter knew school was cancelled last night before I did, thereby stealing one of the pleasures of being a parent:  delivering the news of a snow day to your child and seeing the pleasure spread across his/her face like a ray of sunshine.  Another thing that technology has ruined.

My goal this evening is to be first.  To make my kids' night by telling them that they can sleep in tomorrow (not that my son will sleep in--he was up at 6:45 this morning).  To beat Facebook and Google and Apple.

Saint Marty wants to be Dumbledore.  Or at least Dobby the house elf:  "Master has a snow day tomorrow!"  (Apologies to non-Harry Potter fans.)

ADDENDUM:  School is cancelled.  My daughter just texted me with the news.  For those keeping score:  Technology 1-Daddy 0.

January 6: Better or Worse, Margaret Avison, "New Year's Poem"

On this sixth day of January in the year of our Lord 2017, the members of the Congress of the United States of America certified the results of last November's presidential election.  Donald John Trump will be the next President of the United States, for better or worse.  Not that there was any doubt.

Now, you are probably expecting me to go on some rant, being a dyed-in-the-wool liberal.  I am not going to do that.  That does not mean I am defeated or resigned.  That does not mean that I accept any of the tenets of a Donald Trump presidency.  I can't do that.  For the next four years, I will have to watch the lunacy unfold and hope against Armageddon.

I am an American.  I have a daughter who will face inequality in the work place.  I have a son who needs expensive ADHD medication from an unchecked pharmaceutical industry.  Ditto my wife with bipolar meds.  My sister has Down's syndrome and survives on Social Security disability.  I don't think that all Syrian refugees are Muslim terrorists, and I don't think that all illegal Mexican immigrants are rapists and murderers.  I believe Black lives matter, and I believe that law enforcement lives matter, too.

I believe that you don't have to agree with me, and I will still love and respect and accept you.  I hope you will do the same.

That is Saint Marty's New Year's hope for everyone.

New Year's Poem

by:  Margaret Avison

The Christmas twigs crispen and needles rattle

Along the window-ledge.

             A solitary pearl

Shed from the necklace spilled at last week’s party

Lies in the suety, snow-luminous plainness

Of morning, on the window-ledge beside them.   

And all the furniture that circled stately

And hospitable when these rooms were brimmed

With perfumes, furs, and black-and-silver

Crisscross of seasonal conversation, lapses

Into its previous largeness.

             I remember   

Anne’s rose-sweet gravity, and the stiff grave

Where cold so little can contain;

I mark the queer delightful skull and crossbones

Starlings and sparrows left, taking the crust,

And the long loop of winter wind

Smoothing its arc from dark Arcturus down

To the bricked corner of the drifted courtyard,

And the still window-ledge.

             Gentle and just pleasure

It is, being human, to have won from space

This unchill, habitable interior

Which mirrors quietly the light

Of the snow, and the new year.

May 2: Saint Marty on the Road

For the next four days, I will be abandoning the usual format of Saint Marty.  I will be taking a road trip, Friday through Monday.  Therefore, I will be posting only once each day.  I will also be leaving Holden and company behind, as well.  Basically, I will be writing a travelogue.  Expect descriptions of snow and flooding and pestilence, although we are avoiding Flint this time.

The reason for the trip is dance.  We are traveling to Howell, Michigan. for the Cathy Roe Dance Competition.  No, I'm not breaking out my Village People headgear to Y-M-C-A downstate.  My daughter is competing.  I will simply be driving and spending way too much money.

Tomorrow will be one of the highlights of the weekend.  I will be meeting my best friend in Roscommon for lunch.  When I called him this evening to confirm, he told me it was 78 degrees today in his neck of the woods (to quote Al Roker).  After I got off the phone with my friend, I added a pair of shorts to my suitcase.  At the moment in my little section of the Upper Peninsula, we are experiencing ice and snow and freezing rain.  To the west, a winter storm warning is in place.  Flood warnings pretty much cover the entire U.P., too.  Pretty much, it's Armageddon above the Mackinac Bridge at the moment.

My daughter just got back from a school trip to Appleton, Wisconsin.  She's tired and cranky.  She just screamed something like, "Stop it!  Stop talking to me!  I'm not going to do this anymore!"  I'm ready to strangle her.

Saint Marty doesn't want to spend nine hours trapped in a car with this creature.

Anybody know the number of a good exorcist?