December 29, 2024: "A Word About Transitions," President Jimmy Carter, Moral and Ethical

Some transitions are easy:  the Darrens on Bewitched.  Some transitions are difficult:  President Biden to President-elect Musk . . . I mean Trump.  

Billy Collins says a few things about transitions . . . 

A Word About Transitions

by: Billy Collins

Moreover is not a good way to begin a poem

though many start somewhere in the middle.

Secondly should not be placed

at the opening of your second stanza.

Furthermore should be regarded

as a word to avoid.

Aforementioned is rarely found

in poems at all and for good reason.

Most steer clear of notwithstanding

and the same goes for

nevertheless, however, 

as a consequence, in any event,

subsequently,

and as we have seen in the previous chapters.

Finally's appearance at the top

of the final stanza is not going to help.

All of which suggests (another no-no)

that poems don't need to tell us where we are

or what is soon to come.

For Example, the white bowl of lemons

on a table by a window

is fine all by itself

and, in conclusion, so are

seven elephants standing in the rain.

Today was a difficult transition day.  Earlier this afternoon, I learned the President Jimmy Carter died at the age of 100.  So, we are now transitioning to a post-Jimmy Carter world.  

Jimmy Carter was the first President of the United States I remember.  I was too young for Nixon or Ford to have made any kind of impression on me.  But I remember clearly the Jimmy Carter years, which were marked by long lines at the gasoline pump and the Camp David Peace Accords (for which he won the Nobel Peace Prize), among other things.  

Jimmy Carter was by no means a perfect man or president, and he would have been the first person to admit that.  Humility was a huge part of who he was.  He recognized his mistakes, owned them, and learned from them.  In his post-presidential years, he did remarkable things.  Habitat for Humanity.  The Carter Center.  Books of memoir, religion, and poetry.  He was faithfully married to his wife for 77 years.  

In short, Jimmy Carter was moral, ethical, and honest in his personal life and as President of the United States.  Some people criticize his progressive values and label his four years in the Oval Office as a failure.  My response to such criticisms:  we should be so lucky to have a failure like him as President-elect right now.

I'm not kidding when I say that I hope I can be half the man that James Earl Carter was.  It feels like the Grand Canyon has been filled in or the Mississippi River has dried up.  I know, I know.  People die.  Death and taxes, blah blah blah.

I just wish this particular transition had been gentler, like the shift of light from afternoon to evening,  Or the last minor chord in Irving Berlin's "White Christmas," when we're all reminded of things we used to know.  

So, finally and in conclusion, Saint Marty gives thanks for the life and work of Jimmy Carter, who once said, "The measure of a society is found in how they treat their weakest and most helpless citizens."

Amen, Mr. President.  Amen.

December 18, 2024: "The Deep," Hope and Joy, Window

Well, I'm semi-recovered from the start of the week. Still feeling a little . . . hungover from end-of-semester stress, among other things. When my mind is engaged for such an extended period of time, without breaks or rest, it takes me a while to recover. Plus, with the headspace I've been in recently (still am), I'm floating in a world that doesn't make a whole lot of sense. The holidays are supposed to be filled with hope and joy.

Billy Collins studies a map . . .

The Deep

by: Billy Collins

Here on this map of the oceans everything is reversed—
the land all black except for the names of the continents
whereas the watery parts, colored blue,
have topographical features and even place names

like the Bermuda Rise, which sounds harmless enough
as does the Cocos Ridge, but how about exploring
The Guafo Fracture Zone when you're all alone?
And from the many plateaus and seamounts—

the Falkland, the Manning, the Azores—
all you could see is water and if you're lucky
a big fish swallowing a school of smaller ones
through the bars of your deep-sea diver's helmet.

And talk about depth: at 4,000 feet below the surface,
where you love to float on your back all summer,
we enter the Midnight Zone where the monkfish
quietly says his prayers in order to attract fresh prey,

and drop another couple of miles and you
have reached The Abyss where the sea cucumber
is said to undulate minding its own business
unless it's deceiving an attacker with its luminescence

before disappearing into the blackness.
What attacker, I can hear you asking,
would be down there messing with the sea cucumber?
And that is exactly why I crumpled the map into a ball

and stuffed it in a metal wastebasket

before heading out for a long walk along a sunny trail

in the thin, high-desert air, accompanied

by juniper trees, wildflowers, and that gorgeous hawk.

I think everyone harbors a certain fear of deep things--water, caverns, tunnels, conversations, therapy.  It's very human to avoid places or circumstances that force you to confront the sea cucumbers or monkfish of your life.  Not to mention those large, dark shapes so far away that you can't even identify them.

Most people retreat to the familiar and comfortable.  A sunny trail lined with juniper trees and wildflowers.  I just finished teaching a Good Books class at the university.  All of the memoirs, novels, and graphic memoirs we read this semester dealt in some way with forms of mental illness.  In several of the works, when the authors are dealing with deep depressions, they begin reading books they loved as a child, which makes complete sense to me.

Think about it.  You feel yourself floating in an abyss of darkness, where you can't seem to find any light whatsoever.  Then you start reading Charlotte's Web or Charlie and the Chocolate Factory or Island of the Blue Dolphins--stories that are so familiar you can almost recite them from memory.  It's like draping yourself in a warm quilt.  For a short while, you gain a miniscule sense of control over your life.  

I've been swimming in the deep for a while now.  What have I been doing for comfort?  Reading poets I love.  Mary Oliver, in particular.  Watching movies I've seen a hundred times.  White Christmas starring Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye is my current jam.  I still cry, but the tears are familiar to me.  I expect to get choked up when I read "Wild Geese" by Oliver or watch the final scene in White Christmas when it starts to snow on Christmas Eve.  I guess that's my version of crumpling up my map of the deep, scary oceans, throwing it out, and going for a sunny walk.  

Sometimes, even looking out a window you've looked out thousands of times can be a form of therapy.  From my office at the library, I can see the church across the street, a tree that's still retaining fragments of autumn in its branches, and falling snow.  Three small, lit Christmas trees line the windowsill.  On the tree are Bigfoot ornaments, adorned with the word "Believe."

Saint Marty needs that reminder on a daily basis right now.

November 27: Billy Collins, "Winter," Irving Berlin

Winter

by:  Billy Collins

A little heat in the iron radiator,
the dog breathing at the foot of the bed,

and the windows shut tight,
encrusted with hexagons of frost.

I can barely hear the geese
complaining in the vast sky,

flying over the living and the dead,
schools and prisons, and the whitened fields.

_________________________

A cold winter night.

After I'm done typing this post, I'm going to make myself something warm.  Hot chocolate.  Bailey's Irish Cream.  White Christmas on the TV.  Bing Crosby.  Danny Kaye.  Irving Berlin.

Saint Marty is dreaming of . . . alcohol.

December 8: Barrage of Grasshoppers, Gallons of Water, Being a Grownup

I stood in the Lucas Meadow in the middle of a barrage of grasshoppers.  There must have been something about the rising heat, the falling night, the ripeness of grasses--something that mustered this army in the meadow where they have never been in such legion before.  I must have seen a thousand grasshoppers, alarums and excursions clicking over the clover, knee-high to me.

It's hot and summer.  Dillard in standing in the middle of a field, and that field is boiling with grasshoppers.  I know those kind of summer days.  The air, thick as a milkshake.  The sky, so blue it hurts to look at it.  Insects buzz the day in half.  Just breathing raises a sweat.

Today was nothing like that.  When I got home from work, I spent two hours shoveling snow.  It was cold, dry work.  When I was done, I drank about two gallons of water.  Tomorrow morning, the plows are going to blow by my house around four o'clock in the morning.  Then I will have to spend another hour shoveling again.

Winter used to be my favorite season of the year.  I loved the early sunsets.  The cold.  The dark.  The first snow of the season was a big deal.  Of course, I've always loved Christmas, so that probably had a lot to do with it.  I still love the holidays, but it wouldn't break my heart if I'm singing "Green Christmas" instead of "White Christmas" on December 25.

I'm too tired to come up with anything deep and meaningful tonight.  If I didn't have to move the snow, I would probably still be a fan of winter.  However, I'm a grownup now.  Grownups have to do things that suck--pay bills, hold down a job, get cars fixed, eat vegetables.  It's all part of the deal.

Saint Marty is tired of being a grownup.

December 26: Literary Ambience, Ghosts of the Past, Joseph Brodsky, "Christmas 1963," Confessions of Saint Marty

Surprising himself--surprising everybody--Ives had, as he promised, booked the tickets.  All arranged, it seemed a dream, their journey to begin and end in London, and taking them to Ireland, Scotland, and other parts.  They went by rail and by car in September, when the weather was mild.  Interested in the literary ambience, she planned to soak up the atmosphere and allow it to influence her readings of Fielding, Smollett, and Dickens, whose books she brought along.  And she had been working on a children's biography of Dickens, which she hoped Ives might illustrate, so part of their plan was to make like tourists, and the other to go about with sketchbooks and diary, and to absorb the spirit of those places like young students.  They were happy, buoyant--"ghosts," as it were, finally, it seemed, to be left behind them.

Ives, near the end of his life, finally tries to move forward, to break away from his haunted past.  The spirit of Charles Dickens guides the trip, as they visit museums and stores, gawk at architecture and art.  For lovers of literary and art, it's a perfect trip, filled with the ghosts of Ebenezer Scrooge and Samuel Pickwick.  It makes them feel young again.  Passionate for each other and for life again.

Last night, my daughter's friend who's a boy arrived at our home.  After a relaxing day of presents and food and cookies, we settled into our couch and watched It's A Wonderful Life, which neither my daughter or her friend had ever seen completely.  It was a lovely way to end Christmas, with one of my favorite movies on the television and two young people sitting next to me, texting and laughing.  After the kind of haunted year I've had, yesterday felt normal.  Grounded and joyful.

I'm sitting at McDonald's right now, staring out the windows.  There's supposed to be snow coming our way.  From the different reports I've read, my little corner of the Upper Peninsula might be receiving anywhere from one to six inches of white Christmas.  In a couple of hours, I'm going to head to the local Target to buy Christmas cards for next year.  I used to do that every year with my sister who recently passed.  She would load up on Christmas wrapping paper and cards and holiday candy.  Then we'd sometimes go to Red Lobster for lunch.

It's difficult shaking off the ghosts of the past.  Every corner I turn, every song I hear, every cookie I eat calls to mind memories of Christmases past.  It's inevitable this time of year.  Impossible to avoid.  I find some comfort in these memories.  But they also make me a little sad.  Like the lyrics to Irving Berlin's "White Christmas," when the snow starts falling, I dream of ones I used to know.  That melancholy is as much a part of the holiday experience as Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer and Frosty the Snowman.

Over the next week, I will be thinking a lot about ghosts.  Come December 31, when the balloons and crepe paper are hanging, they will be all around me, waving their arms, blowing their horns.

On New Year's Eve, Saint Marty will raise a glass to these phantoms.  Drink a little with them.  Thank them for the happy times of the past.  And look forward to the happy times of the future.

Christmas 1963

by:  Joseph Brodsky

The magi had come. The infant soundly slept.
The star shone brightly from the vaulted sky.
A cold wind swept the snow up into drifts.
The sand rustled. A bonfire crackled nearby.
Smoke plumed skyward. Flames hooked and writhed.
The shadows cast by the fire grew now shorter,
now suddenly longer. No one there yet realized
that on that very night life’s count had started.
The magi had come. The infant soundly slept.
Steep arches loomed above the manger.
Snow swirled about. White steam rose in wisps.
With gifts piled near him, the child slept like an angel.

Confessions of Saint Marty

December 16: Nice Watch, Christmas Presents, Annie Dillard, A Martha Christmas

Later, because it was Christmas, Ives had somehow felt compelled to leave the nice watch he'd bought his son in the room, instead of returning it to the store.  He put it in his top drawer, as if his boy would come in anytime now to claim it.  That drawer was stuffed with school paraphernalia, prayer cards, baseball cards, playing cards, a Felix the Cat comic that Ives had illustrated himself, years before...

Since Ives' son is killed a few days before Christmas, Ives has already purchased presents for his Robert.  In particular, Ives bought a beautiful wristwatch for him, something suitable for a young man about to enter the seminary.  In addition, at the scene of Robert's murder, a police officer hands Ives a Sam Goody's bag, filled with the gifts Robert had purchased for his father, mother, and sister.  Record albums by the Beatles, Thelonius Monk, and Rosemary Clooney.

Presents are not the reason for Christmas.  Not even close.  We all know that.  I love getting gifts as much as anybody else, but the moment I love the most during the holidays occurs on Christmas Eve, around 11 p.m., at my wife's church.  It's a candlelight communion service, full of quiet music and contemplation.  All the crazy holiday preparation is done, for better or worse.  Christmas has arrived.

My sister, Sally, loved Christmas.  She loved buying presents, seeing the joy on people's faces when they opened them.  She especially loved spoiling her nieces and nephews.  In the weeks leading up to December 25th, she would spend hours baking cookies, wrapping gifts, addressing cards.  Sure, she got overwhelmed sometimes, but she never, ever wanted her family to feel unloved or forgotten at Christmas.

It's going to be a very difficult Christmas this year.  There's going to be emptiness, maybe tears.  It's unavoidable.  This morning, my daughter was so upset about last night's commitment service at the cemetery that she couldn't stop crying.  She stayed home from school today.  There is little I can do to assuage her pain.  Only time will do that.

Christmas is a season of light and giving.  I have to keep reminding myself of that these days.  As I drive home every night, I see trees glowing and blinking in living rooms.  A few nights ago, I watched Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye in White Christmas.  After I'm done typing this post, I will write my annual Christmas letter.  Tonight or tomorrow, I will shop for a few things online.

Christmas is going to come next week, whether I'm ready for it or not.  I know what my sister, Sally, would want me to do, though.  She would want me to make this coming yuletide as holly and jolly as I can.  And that's what I plan to do.  There will be eggnog.  There will be baked ham and pecan pie.  There will be Jimmy Stewart running through the streets of Bedford Falls.  There will be presents.  And there will be Santa Claus.

Saint Marty would never stand in the way of Santa.

from Teaching a Stone to Talk

by:  Annie Dillard

Like everyone in his right mind, I feared Santa Claus, thinking he was God.  I was still thoughtless and brute, reactive.  I knew right from wrong, but had barely tested the possibility of shaping my own behavior, and then only from fear, and not yet from love.  Santa Claus was an old man whom you never saw, but who nevertheless saw you; he knew when you'd been bad or good.  He knew when you'd been bad or good!  And I had been bad...

A Martha Christmas...

December 1: Agitated Hive, Peter Thabit Jones, "Morning Mist"

When they stepped outside together, the snow was already more than six inches high and rising.  A beautiful night, the streets in every direction impassable to traffic.  Hardly anything moved save for the occasional snow plow on the avenue, bus engines whirring, strained, somewhere in the distance, little else.  To the west, over the rooftops, through the immense, agitated hive of falling snow, a kind of violet light puzzled them...

This snowy scene is the first in the book.  It's a beautiful, Norman Rockwellish moment, straight out of an Irving Berlin song.  A little later in the above paragraph, a group of kids show up, having a snowball fight.  It's one child with leukemia away from a Hallmark Hall of Fame TV special.

It rained today in my hometown.  Then it snowed.  A lot.  I was 20 miles away, and those 20 miles, in the Upper Peninsula, are like the difference between Aruba and Anchorage.  In the town where I work and teach, there were puddles and slush at the end of the day.  When I got home this evening, there were several inches of wet, heavy snow in my driveway.  The kind of snow that causes heart attacks.  Not the kind of snow that makes you dream of hearing sleigh bells with every Christmas card you write.

I spent almost 40 minutes shoveling, pushing, and stacking cold, wet, heavy precipitation.  It was like moving cement.  I swore, grunted, muttered.  At one point--as I was saying (loudly) "I hate snow!  I hate winter!"--somebody walked by, staring at me.  I didn't care.  I was d-o-n-e.

By the time I finally got inside, I was drenched in sweat and in a foul mood.  Now, after about an hour, I have calmed down.  A little.  I love Christmas.  Love Christmas stories and Christmas decorations.  One of my favorite Christmas carols is "White Christmas."  I've written an essay about that song.  When I was a kid, I prayed for snow storms.  Snow days were like gifts from God.

Now, I don't get snow days.  A snow storm means that I have to get up an hour early, to shovel my driveway.  It means treacherous driving.  It means back aches and cars in the ditch.  I have turned into an old man when it comes to snow.  I might as well hike my pants up to my armpits and start saying things like "Dag blammit!"

I am going to end this post with another Peter Thabit Jones' poem about Big Sur.  Something full of sun and summer.

Saint Marty isn't ready for winter, dag blammit.

Morning Mist

by:  Peter Thabit Jones

Big Sur smokes in a mist,
The ocean has gone
For a few strange hours,
Until the ancient shroud
Drift, magically lifts,
And the bay glistens
And boils in the sun.

(Sorry--no cartoon tonight.  Blogger is not cooperating.  Please lodge any complaints with the staff of Blogger.  Dag blammit.)

November 28: All the Rest of His Days, Phone Call, Fairy Tale Failure

Mr. Zuckerman took fine care of Wilbur all the rest of his days, and the pig was often visited by friends and admirers, for nobody ever forgot the year of his triumph and miracle of the web.  Life in the barn was very good--night and day, winter and summer, spring and fall, dull days and bright days.  It was the best place to be, thought Wilbur, this warm delicious cellar, with the garrulous geese, the changing seasons, the heat of the sun, the passage of swallows, the nearness of rats, the sameness of sheep, the love of spiders, the smell of manure, and the glory of everything.

There's a sense of both incredible happiness and melancholy is this paragraph.  It starts out with the statement that Mr. Zuckerman cared for Wilbur "all the rest of his days"--which gives the impression that Wilbur has already gone to that big pigpen in the sky.  The rest of the paragraph has the tone and feel of To Kill a Mockingbird or the film Stand By Me.  Reflective.  Nostalgic.  Tinged with sadness.

That pretty much describes my day.  Last night, after I wrote my posts about the passing of my friend and colleague Ray, I was climbing into bed for the night when the phone rang.  It was for my wife.  Her friend, Vickie, who has been battling cancer for the past few months, passed away last night.  After my wife hung up the phone, I looked at her and said, "This night really sucks."

I spent the day recording Christmas music with my band.  It was a pleasant, happy distraction.  We played "White Christmas" and "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear."  We laughed and ate homemade oatmeal cookies.  It was a hopeful couple of hours, planning the musical arrangements and imagining the final results.  I was able to get out of my head for a little while.

Of course, now, sitting in my living room, listening to Eydie Gorme sing "White Christmas," I'm right back to my darker reflections.  Christmas music sort of enhances my mood.  Most of the great Christmas songs, sacred and secular, have elements of both happiness and sadness.  Think about it.  "I'm dreaming of a white Christmas, just like the ones I used to know."  Or "O come, o come, Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel."  So much longing and want.

That's where I am right now.  Full of all of these complex feelings.  I'm going to try to write a happy fairy tale, but I think I'm going to fail.

Once upon a time, a kindly king lived in a land of perpetual winter.  The king was beloved by all of his subjects.  The peasants.  Knights.  Friars at the monastery.  Nuns at the convent.  Cooks and farmers.  Fisherman and blacksmiths.  Everyone loved the king.

One evening, the king died unexpectedly, and the whole kingdom went into mourning.  Everything was draped in black.  Houses.  Churches.  Schools.  Cottages.  All the clocks in the land were stopped.  Church bells tolled and tolled day and night.

From heaven, the king looked down on his kingdom, shook his head, and said to Saint Peter, "Jesus, they need to lighten up."

And Saint Marty lived happily ever after.

Words to live by

February 21: Undecking the Halls

My wife and I took down our Christmas tree this afternoon.  Yeah, yeah, I know what you're thinking.  We should have left it up until Easter.  However, it was time, even though the snow's still flying and it's colder than the North Pole tonight. 

It's actually really early for us to take down our Christmas tree.  We usually don't undeck our halls until March or April.  It's not laziness.  It's a love of everything yuletide.  I listen to Christmas music all year long.  Bing Crosby singing "White Christmas" makes me feel...happy, warm, calm.  My five loyal readers know that very few things calm me down.

Christmas music.  Bailey's Irish Cream mixed with hot chocolate.  A Robert Frost poem.

A perfect night for Saint Marty:  "Do You Hear What I Hear?" on his radio.  A mug of spiked hot cocoa in his hands.  And miles to go before he sleeps.  Miles to go before he sleeps...

Fa la la la la

December 15: It's A Wonderful Movie

Nothing can beat George Bailey

I'd like to conduct an informal survey about Christmas movies.  This time of year, I am usually watching yuletide films nightly with my wife and kids.  So far, we've watched Elf twice, A Christmas Story once, a few movie adaptations of A Christmas Carol, and various TV specials like Frosty the Snowman and A Charlie Brown Christmas.

The final movie I watched with my Intro to Film class at the university is, in my opinion, the best Christmas movie ever made.  It's inspiring.  It makes me cry.  It stars Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed.  That's right.  I'm talking about Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life.  My students loved it.

My informal survey is simple.  If you read this post, leave a message for me, telling me what you think the best Christmas movie ever made is.  You may be a White Christmas fan.  You may have a soft spot for National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation.  I myself could make a case for the French movie Joyeux Noel.  The title is up for grabs.  There may be a movie I haven't even considered.  For instance, the film Gremlins is set during the Christmas season.

Drop Saint Marty a line.  Let him know what Christmas movie warms your chestnuts.

December 13: Christmas Carol, Musical Blessing, Spirits

“What is the matter?” asked the Spirit.

“Nothing,” said Scrooge.  “Nothing.  There was a boy singing a Christmas Carol at my door last night.  I should like to have given him something:  that’s all.”

The Spirit in question is the Ghost of Christmas Past, and Scrooge has just seen himself as a lonely schoolboy on Christmas, abandoned by his family, spending the day with his only companions:  Ali Baba, Robin Crusoe, the Sultan’s Groom, and Friday.  The characters from the books he reads.  Scrooge has been moved by his younger self.  He’s feeling pity and remorse, probably for the first time in the entire book.

I think it’s significant that one of the first people for which Scrooge feels empathy is a boy singing a Christmas carol.  There’s something powerful about Christmas music.  It has the ability to raise spirits, lift people out of their tiny universes of problems and worries.  Scrooge experiences that power in the passage above.  He wants to help the boy who was singing at his office door on Christmas Eve.

At my office, I have my computer tuned to an online radio station that plays Christmas music.  It’s been serenading me for a few weeks now.  When I found out my wife had lost her job a couple weeks ago, I sat at my desk the next work day and listened to Jackie Evancho sing “Pie Jesu.”  It was gorgeous, moving, transcendent.  It parted the dark clouds hanging over my head at that moment.  My throat got thick, my eyes got soggy, and my spirits lifted.

For me, Bing Crosby crooning “White Christmas” or Judy Garland singing “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” reminds me of simpler times.  Easier times.  Times when happiness was watching The Wizard of Oz on TV with my brothers and sisters, eating bowls and bowls of popcorn.  My mother baking a ham on Christmas Eve, and the whole house smelling of citrus and clove.  I didn’t need a Kindle Fire HD or an iPod touch to experience Christmas joy.  I needed Burl Ives telling me to “have a holly, jolly Christmas…”

I am blessed at work by that Christmas music, because it reminds me to think like a child.

It is Saint Marty’s Ghost of Christmas Past.

Sing with me, "I'm dreaming of a white Christmas..."