January 27, 2012
Strange Men and Sideshows
Google Street View fascinates me. It's the combination of perusing a map, wandering to some odd corner of the country, and then opening Street View and seeing what it reveals. I came across this image today.
Have an idea where it might be? The answer is here.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:21 PM
Oh, the things we do...
.. for fun
GIF made with the NYPL Labs Stereogranimator
Posted by Bill Trippe at 4:27 PM
January 13, 2012
Cramden is to Norton
As Flintstone is to...
Posted by Bill Trippe at 8:39 PM
July 24, 2011
Camping
Camping is so not my thing, truly. First you have to haul everything with you. Tent and gear and bedding and food, tools for the odd inconvenience or need. If we were driving two hours and checking into a room, we would need our bags, period. But no, this is a year we have to be frugal, and we missed Ferry Beach last year for all kinds of good reasons, so we are going to camp.
For my wife, this is a little slice of heaven. She gets to be Dan Boone for a week. We get to be frugal, which she loves, and she gets to be outdoors for every moment of each day we are here. For each hour we are settled and camping and the good weather holds, she will be more refreshed, energized, and happy.
But now it is 9:00 and dark and 85 degrees and 100 percent humidity, and the tent is up, but nothing is inside it and we have no lamp or lantern. I am getting eaten alive. The chief of mosquitoes sent an All Points Bulletin out that a sweaty Sicilian is in camp site 3C, and they have arrived en masse. Each time I stupidly forget to breathe through my nose I swallow another bug, and I think only my moustache is preventing them from flying up my nose. I bend over to drive the final stake in the ground, get up too fast and nearly pass out. I have a moment of clarity and grab the water bottle I had bought en route, open it, and drink the entire 20 ounces without pausing.
My wife, ever the more practical one, is reading the directions to every new thing we bought to save money. The mattress. The mattress pump. A younger me would have had 100 screaming tantrums by now, but since cresting 50, I have finally learned to shut my mouth. She knows I am not happy, but she also appreciates my patience. I offer to make the remaining 37 trips to the van to unload everything, and we finally have the rhythm I want. I have always been a good pack animal. It makes sense to me. It requires no thought. And I am left just a moving, slogging, sweating beast. After perhaps a half hour of this, we are set up. The mattress is filled, the bedding is in place, I know I will have a place to sleep. And, lord, do I sleep. I lie on the mattress in just my boxers, a breeze makes its way through the tent, my body returns to a normal temperature and my heart stops racing, and I drift into a long, deep, uninterrupted sleep.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 7:51 PM
December 12, 2009
A Gentler Time
Great voices, and a lovely rendition of this song.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 4:53 PM
November 2, 2009
Currently Reading...
...The Dude Abides: The Gospel According to the Coen Brothers.
This is a surprisingly good book, once I got past the jarring title (the Coen brothers are Jewish after all and likely have few notions they are creating a gospel or anything to do with Jesus through their work). But the book has a charming introduction by a rabbi who puts the Coens' work in a larger religious perspective, and the author, Cathleen Falsani, is thoughtful, provocative, and as broad-minded as one would need to be to pull off such a book. So far, she has been cementing many of my own loosely organized thoughts about what makes the Coens' movies so deeply moving and, dare I say, moral. I am only a couple of chapters in, but would definitely recommend it to serious fans of the Coens.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 2:51 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Like Coins, November
American Life in Poetry: Column 241
By Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate, 2004-2006
I love poems in which the central metaphors are fresh and original, and here’s a marvelous, coiny description of autumn by Elizabeth Klise von Zerneck, who lives in Illinois.
Like Coins, November
We drove past late fall fields as flat and cold
as sheets of tin and, in the distance, trees
were tossed like coins against the sky. Stunned gold
and bronze, oaks, maples stood in twos and threes:
some copper bright, a few dull brown and, now
and then, the shock of one so steeled with frost
it glittered like a dime. The autumn boughs
and blackened branches wore a somber gloss
that whispered tails to me, not heads. I read
memorial columns in their trunks; their leaves
spelled UNUM, cent; and yours, the only head . . .
in penny profile, Lincoln-like (one sleeve,
one eye) but even it was turning tails
as russet leaves lay spent across the trails.
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2008 by Elizabeth Klise von Zerneck. Reprinted from The Spoon River Poetry Review, Vol. XXXIII, no. 1, 2008, by permission of Elizabeth Klise von Zerneck and the publisher. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 2:33 PM
September 7, 2009
Indian Summer
American Life in Poetry: Column 233
By Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate, 2004-2006
Diane Glancy is one of our country's Native American poets, and I recently judged her latest book, Asylum in the Grasslands, the winner of a regional competition. Here is a good example of her clear and steady writing.
Indian Summer
There’s a farm auction up the road.
Wind has its bid in for the leaves.
Already bugs flurry the headlights
between cornfields at night.
If this world were permanent,
I could dance full as the squaw dress
on the clothesline.
I would not see winter
in the square of white yard-light on the wall.
But something tugs at me.
The world is at a loss and I am part of it
migrating daily.
Everything is up for grabs
like a box of farm tools broken open.
I hear the spirits often in the garden
and along the shore of corn.
I know this place is not mine.
I hear them up the road again.
This world is a horizon, an open sea.
Behind the house, the white iceberg of the barn.
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Copyright ©2007 by Diane Glancy, whose novel The Reason for Crows: A Story of Kateri Tekakwitha (Excelsior Editions)
Posted by Bill Trippe at 3:05 PM
August 8, 2009
Back from Ferry Beach...
... where I was able to write a few short things, including this tanka and this extended haiku. I hope you enjoy.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 2:39 PM
April 13, 2009
Compare and Contrast
With this one taken about five weeks ago from the same spot.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 4:57 PM
March 11, 2009
Spring Will Come
It has to, right?
We've had every kind of weather so far this week. Monday it was snow and sleet, yesterday was sunny and chilly, and today was rainy, warm (well, 50F), and blustery. When we had the sun yesterday morning I paused outside the front door of Old South and snapped this picture of some daffodils and some other bulbs bravely pushing their way up through the soil. I am not sure what the green leafy things are at the bottom of the picture.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 8:53 PM
February 27, 2009
February 27
Today would have been my Mom's 79th birthday. I inherited this picture and a few dozen more when she passed away. This is in the backyard that she (and later I) grew up in. I am guessing she is about 4 years old. I don't remember her saying much about her dancing as a child, but obviously she did, and she was having some fun with it here.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 3:51 PM
February 25, 2009
Well, I Guess Amazon Really Does Want to Sell Everything
Posted by Bill Trippe at 8:51 PM
February 14, 2009
Some Nights
“Some nights stay up till dawn,
as the moon sometimes does for the sun.
Be a full bucket pulled up the dark way of a well,
Then lifted out into light.”
Rumi, from the book, Essential Rumi
Posted by Bill Trippe at 12:41 PM
February 13, 2009
It is Valentine's Day...
So treat her (or him) to a classic song...
Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:29 AM
January 10, 2009
Self-Portrait
American Life in Poetry: Column 198
By Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate, 2004-2006
This column has had the privilege of publishing a number of poems by young people, but this is the first we've published by a young person who is also a political refugee. The poet, Zozan Hawez, is from Iraq, and goes to Foster High School in Tukwila, Washington. Seattle Arts & Lectures sponsors a Writers in the Schools program, and Zozan's poem was encouraged by that initiative.
Self-Portrait
Born in a safe family
But a dangerous area, Iraq,
I heard guns at a young age, so young
They made a decision to raise us safe
So packed our things
And went far away.
Now, in the city of rain,
I try to forget my past,
But memories never fade.
This is my life,
It happened for a reason,
I happened for a reason.
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright (c) 2007 by Seattle Arts & Lectures. Reprinted from "We Will Carry Ourselves As Long As We Gaze Into The Sun," Seattle Arts & Lectures, 2007, by permission of Zozan Hawez and the publisher. Introduction copyright (c) 2009 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:47 PM
January 2, 2009
Richard Yates
Every young writer wants to create The Great American Novel. With Revolutionary Road, Richard Yates did, and the upcoming movie will bring much-deserved attention to Yates, whose work has not received the general acclaim it should. Along with Revolutionary Road, Yates also wrote an absolutely brilliant and heartbreaking collection of stories, Eleven Kinds of Loneliness. You can read an excellent primer of Yates' life and work here. There's also a modest but nicely assembled tribute site to Yates here.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 12:34 PM
December 31, 2008
A Small Moment
American Life in Poetry: Column 197
By Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate, 2004-2006
I suspect that one thing some people have against reading poems is that they are so often so serious, so devoid of joy, as if we poets spend all our time brooding about mutability and death and never having any fun. Here Cornelius Eady, who lives and teaches in Indiana, offers us a poem of pure pleasure.
A Small Moment
I walk into the bakery next door
To my apartment. They are about
To pull some sort of toast with cheese
From the oven. When I ask:
What's that smell? I am being
A poet, I am asking
What everyone else in the shop
Wanted to ask, but somehow couldn't;
I am speaking on behalf of two other
Customers who wanted to buy the
Name of it. I ask the woman
Behind the counter for a percentage
Of her sale. Am I flirting?
Am I happy because the days
Are longer? Here's what
She does: She takes her time
Choosing the slices. "I am picking
Out the good ones," she tells me. It's
April 14th. Spring, with five to ten
Degrees to go. Some days, I feel my duty;
Some days, I love my work.
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright (c) 1997 by Cornelius Eady, from his most recent book of poetry, "Hardheaded Weather: New and Selected Poems," A Marian Wood Book, Putnam, 2008. Reprinted by permission of Cornelius Eady. Introduction copyright (c) 2008 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 2:00 PM
December 25, 2008
Under the Christmas Tree
Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:25 PM
December 23, 2008
Gloves
American Life in Poetry: Column 196
By Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate, 2004-2006
One of the most effective means for conveying strong emotion is to invest some real object with one's feelings, and then to let the object carry those feelings to the reader. Notice how the gloves in this short poem by Jose Angel Araguz of Oregon carry the heavy weight of the speaker's loss.
Gloves
I made up a story for myself once,
That each glove I lost
Was sent to my father in prison
That's all it would take for him
To chart my growth without pictures
Without words or visits,
Only colors and design,
Texture; it was ok then
For skin to chafe and ash,
To imagine him
Trying on a glove,
Stretching it out
My open palm closing
And disappearing
In his fist.
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright (c) 2007 by Jose Angel Araguz. Poem reprinted from "Rattle," Vol. 13, no. 2, Winter 2007, by permission of Jose Angel Araguz. Introduction copyright (c) 2008 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.
******************************
American Life in Poetry provides newspapers and online publications with a free weekly column featuring contemporary American poems. The sole mission of this project is to promote poetry: American Life in Poetry seeks to create a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. There are no costs for reprinting the columns; we do require that you register your publication here and that the text of the column be reproduced without alteration.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 12:46 PM
December 19, 2008
Christmas Night
American Life in Poetry: Column 195
By Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate, 2004-2006
Here is a poem, much like a prayer, in which the Michigan poet Conrad Hilberry asks for no more than a little flare of light, an affirmation, at the end of a long, cold Christmas day.
Christmas Night
Let midnight gather up the wind
and the cry of tires on bitter snow.
Let midnight call the cold dogs home,
sleet in their fur--last one can blow
the streetlights out. If children sleep
after the day's unfoldings, the wheel
of gifts and griefs, may their breathing
ease the strange hollowness we feel.
Let midnight draw whoever's left
to the grate where a burnt-out log unrolls
low mutterings of smoke until
a small fire wakes in its crib of coals.
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright (c) 2008 by Conrad Hilberry, whose most recent book of poetry is After Music (Made in Michigan Writers)
******************************
American Life in Poetry provides newspapers and online publications with a free weekly column featuring contemporary American poems. The sole mission of this project is to promote poetry: American Life in Poetry seeks to create a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. There are no costs for reprinting the columns; we do require that you register your publication here and that the text of the column be reproduced without alteration.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 8:40 PM
December 11, 2008
Applied Geometry
American Life in Poetry: Column 194
By Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate, 2004-2006
Father and child doing a little math homework together; it's an everyday occurrence, but here, Russell Libby, a poet who writes from Three Sisters Farm in central Maine, presents it in a way that makes it feel deep and magical.
Applied Geometry
Applied geometry,
measuring the height
of a pine from
like triangles,
Rosa's shadow stretches
seven paces in
low-slanting light of
late Christmas afternoon.
One hundred thirty nine steps
up the hill until the sun is
finally caught at the top of the tree,
let's see,
twenty to one,
one hundred feet plus a few to adjust
for climbing uphill,
and her hands barely reach mine
as we encircle the trunk,
almost eleven feet around.
Back to the lumber tables.
That one tree might make
three thousand feet of boards
if our hearts could stand
the sound of its fall.
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright (c) 2007 by Russell Libby, whose most recent book is Balance - A Late Pastoral
******************************
American Life in Poetry provides newspapers and online publications with a free weekly column featuring contemporary American poems. The sole mission of this project is to promote poetry: American Life in Poetry seeks to create a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. There are no costs for reprinting the columns; we do require that you register your publication here and that the text of the column be reproduced without alteration.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 12:33 PM
December 9, 2008
Now Twittering
Here.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 8:32 PM
December 8, 2008
Sad Day at a Magnificent Place
So I left work here Friday, surprised to see a phalanx of TV trucks outside. I'm the opposite of a rubbernecker at such times--I just kept walking. But reading the paper Saturday morning I learned out why there were here--an astonishing 70-foot long crack had developed in the church's most prominent wall, the result of the heavy work being done to make the Copley Square T station handicapped accessible. You can read a good story in the Globe here, and the church's website has a nice letter from the senior minister with additional links here.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 12:10 PM
December 6, 2008
Those Celtics
They are on another amazing roll lately, after starting the season just a little bit slowly. Their defense is just overwhelming. Last night they held the offensively talented Blazers to 15 points in both the second and third quarters, though the subs then gave some of that lead back in the fourth quarter, leading the intense Kevin Garnett to chastise them.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 12:05 PM
December 5, 2008
How Is It That the Snow
American Life in Poetry: Column 193
By Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate, 2004-2006
The first two lines of this poem pose a question many of us may have thought about: how does snow make silence even more silent? And notice Robert Haight's deft use of color, only those few flecks of red, and the rest of the poem pure white. And silent, so silent. Haight lives in Michigan, where people know about snow.
How Is It That the Snow
How is it that the snow
amplifies the silence,
slathers the black bark on limbs,
heaps along the brush rows?
Some deer have stood on their hind legs
to pull the berries down.
Now they are ghosts along the path,
snow flecked with red wine stains.
This silence in the timbers.
A woodpecker on one of the trees
taps out its story,
stopping now and then in the lapse
of one white moment into another.
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright (c) 2002 by Robert Haight from his most recent book of poetry, Emergences and Spinner Falls, New Issues Poetry and Prose, 2002. Reprinted by permission of Robert Haight. Introduction copyright (c) 2008 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.
******************************
American Life in Poetry provides newspapers and online publications with a free weekly column featuring contemporary American poems. The sole mission of this project is to promote poetry: American Life in Poetry seeks to create a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. There are no costs for reprinting the columns; we do require that you register your publication here and that the text of the column be reproduced without alteration.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 3:33 PM
December 1, 2008
Desk for Sale
Details here. Feel free to email me if you are interested.
UPDATE: Lowered the price. Believe it.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 12:27 PM
November 30, 2008
The Rites of Autumn
One giant oak...
.. plus three sturdy maples...
... plus one rake and one pair of work gloves...
... equals 23 bags jammed with leaves.
Can I nap now?
Posted by Bill Trippe at 2:39 PM
November 27, 2008
OK
If you must shop, please start here.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:59 PM
November 25, 2008
Fences
American Life in Poetry: Column 192
By Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate, 2004-2006
Class, status, privilege; despite all our talk about equality, they're with us wherever we go. In this poem, Pat Mora, who grew up in a Spanish speaking home in El Paso, Texas, contrasts the lives of rich tourists with the less fortunate people who serve them. The titles of poems are often among the most important elements, and this one is loaded with implication.
Fences
Mouths full of laughter,
the turistas come to the tall hotel
with suitcases full of dollars.
Every morning my brother makes
the cool beach new for them.
With a wooden board he smooths
away all footprints.
I peek through the cactus fence
and watch the women rub oil
sweeter than honey into their arms and legs
while their children jump waves
or sip drinks from long straws,
coconut white, mango yellow.
Once my little sister
ran barefoot across the hot sand
for a taste.
My mother roared like the ocean,
"No. No. It's their beach.
It's their beach."
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright (c) 1991 by Pat Mora, whose most recent book of poetry is Adobe Odes, University of Arizona Press, 2007. Poem reprinted from Communion, Arte Publico Press, University of Houston, 1991, by permission of the writer and publisher. Introduction copyright (c) 2008 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 1:46 PM
November 19, 2008
Farewell, Coco
Sox trade Crisp for a bag of balls, er, a middle reliever. The online poll at that link suggests I am in the minority on the wisdom of the trade.
I like Crisp as a player. He brought speed and outfield defense to the Red Sox at a time they had little of either. Now they have Jacoby, Bay, and Drew for the outfield, all "plus" outfielders defensively, each with decent speed and Jacoby with exceptional speed. I also like Crisp as a person; he just always struck me as thoughtful and articulate. He also is still one of the leading sources of traffic for this website.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 1:44 PM
November 18, 2008
I've Said it Before
But if Ned Martin were still alive, he would have one word for today's news about Dustin Pedroia winning the AL MVP: Mercy!
People were certainly thinking about it, but I figured one of the Twins, Morneau or Mauer, would win it. But maybe the Twins falling short of the playoffs hurt their chances. As it turned out, the two Twins players got second and fourth while Pedroia and Youk got first and third.
The thing that jumped out at me was that Petey is the first AL MVP at second base since 1959, when Nellie Fox of the White Sox won it.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 2:44 PM
November 17, 2008
The Word of the Day is...
... Mochi.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:46 PM
September 29, 2008
No Complaints
So this is my view when I walk to the office in the morning. That's the Boston Public Library to the left, Old South Church straight ahead.
Oh, and I won my fantasy baseball league, despite making a bonehead trade at the beginning of the season and having David Ortiz hurt for a long stretch.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:24 PM
Mr. Pesky
The Sox retired Johnny Pesky's number yesterday, a great tribute to a great man. I am too young to remember Pesky playing, but I remember him as both a full-time coach and an announcer, and more recently as the fungo-hitting special-assistant-ambassador-baseball-lifer and mentor to Red Sox stars such as Nomar Garciaparra and Jim Rice.
I have two memories of Pesky, both from to Red Sox Spring training in Fort Myers. In one, Pesky has parked himself in a shady spot where he sits and signs autographs all day. I take my sons through the line and he signs baseballs for both of them. He is warm, sunny, avuncular. He talks to everyone, asks my boys if they play baseball, and wishes us well, tells us to enjoy the day and the season.
In the other, Pesky is on a far field hitting ground balls to a minor leaguer. Jim Rice is standing not far from us. Seeing Pesky walk around the field collecting stray balls in a bucket, Rice grabs his own bucket and a bat and begins lofting fly ball after fly ball onto the field, behind and around Pesky. Rice--a giant of a man known for his surly disposition as a player--is giggling in delight as Pesky starts to grouse loudly about the balls, not sure yet that he is being pranked. When Pesky finally sees one of Rice's fly balls land near him he turns and yells goodnaturedly at Rice, and the two share a long laugh from a few hundred feet apart.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:18 AM
September 27, 2008
I was Really Rooting for You, Butch
I think we all were. More here.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 2:12 PM
When Fall Comes to New England
Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:15 AM
September 11, 2008
More Cormac McCarthy
Currently reading, er, re-reading, All the Pretty Horses. This was a delightful little senior moment. I knew I had the book when I bought the second and third book in the Border Trilogy this weekend, knowing I already had Horses. I had just forgotten I read it until I got about 20 pages into it on the subway this morning. But it's so darn good, I kept reading.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 8:23 PM
Prayer for the Dead
American Life in Poetry: Column 181
By Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate, 2004-2006
Stuart Kestenbaum, the author of this week's poem, lost his brother Howard in the destruction of the twin towers of the World Trade Center. We thought it appropriate to commemorate the events of September 11, 2001, by sharing this poem. The poet is the director of the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts on Deer Isle, Maine.
Prayer for the Dead
The light snow started late last night and continued
all night long while I slept and could hear it occasionally
enter my sleep, where I dreamed my brother
was alive again and possessing the beauty of youth, aware
that he would be leaving again shortly and that is the lesson
of the snow falling and of the seeds of death that are in everything
that is born: we are here for a moment
of a story that is longer than all of us and few of us
remember, the wind is blowing out of someplace
we don't know, and each moment contains rhythms
within rhythms, and if you discover some old piece
of your own writing, or an old photograph,
you may not remember that it was you and even if it was once you,
it's not you now, not this moment that the synapses fire
and your hands move to cover your face in a gesture
of grief and remembrance.
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright © 2007 by Stuart Kestenbaum. Reprinted from Prayers & Run-on Sentences, Deerbook Editions, 2007, by permission of Stuart Kestenbaum. Introduction copyright © 2008 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 4:32 PM
September 8, 2008
Stan Grossfeld and the Art of Storytelling
I've mentioned before that when I was growing up, the Boston Globe had unquestionably one of the best sports sections in America. Well, the newspaper world is changing dramatically. Newsrooms, including sports sections, are shrinking, but the Globe still has some of my favorite columnists, including Bob Ryan. And they still have Stan Grossfeld, who early on in his career won two Pulitzers for his photography, but now creates wonderful human-interest stories such as this one. You can see a slide show of related pictures here.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 6:20 PM
Massachusetts Poetry Festival
Well, this sounds great:
The Massachusetts Poetry Festival is a three-day celebration of the poets, poetry, and literary heritage of a state whose contribution to American poetry is unsurpassed in the nation. Join us as we pay tribute to the poets and writers of the past while experiencing the creative energy of today’s literary artists. This first-ever, state-wide event will include readings by renowned and emerging poets, teacher workshops, performance poetry, films & music, programs for children and young writers, literary heritage tours, a small press fair, poetry in the streets, and much more.
It's on Columbus Day weekend, October 10-12, and is being held at the Lowell National Historical Park, which is a great venue. Featured poets include Andre Dubus III
Most of the events on the schedule are free, but the featured readings require tickets that you can buy here.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 8:38 AM
September 5, 2008
My name came from. . .
American Life in Poetry: Column 180
By Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate, 2004-2006
What's in a name? All of us have thought at one time or another about our names, perhaps asking why they were given to us, or finding meanings within them. Here Emmett Tenorio Melendez, an eleven-year-old poet from San Antonio, Texas, proudly presents us with his name and its meaning.
My name came from. . .
My name came from my great-great-great-grandfather.
He was an Indian from the Choctaw tribe.
His name was Dark Ant.
When he went to get a job out in a city
he changed it to Emmett.
And his whole name was Emmett Perez Tenorio.
And my name means: Ant; Strong; Carry twice
its size.
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. 2000 by Emmett Tenorio Melendez. Reprinted from Salting The Ocean: 100 Poems By Young Poets, Greenwillow Books, 2000, by permission of the editor. Introduction copyright © 2008 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 4:55 PM
Second Life Scripting
I see from LinkedIn that a friend of mine, Michael Thome, has co-written Scripting Your World: The Official Guide to Second Life Scripting. Congratulations, Mike! And all you Second Life users, click here and buy one now.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 4:42 PM
The View...
...from my new office, five floors above the sanctuary at Old South Church.
Coordinates here. The Boston Public Library is right across the street, and the restaurant scene is great around here.
Copley Square is the first Boston neighborhood I considered "mine." Even though I grew up just outside the city, we always came into Boston--for shopping, movies, a special meal out. I had a Boston Public Library card as a kid. My trip to the orthodontist took me through Copley Square by trolley and bus. I can't remember the name of it now, but a record store on Boylston Street near Fairlfield (above Copy Cop!) became my first regular place to buy albums. My first job in Boston, toward the end of high school, was in the Prudential Center down the street. Later, I would go to grad school at Emerson, which is downtown now but then inhabited a loosely grouped set of brownstones centered at Beacon and Berkeley streets. After I joined Houghton Mifflin in the 1990s, they soon after moved their headquarters to Berkeley and Boylston. They remain a client to this day, and I can see the building from my new window.
And, as I type this, someone is on the organ. On that "note," time to grab some lunch and get back to work.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:51 AM
September 3, 2008
'Twine
I have been playing fantasy baseball for years (long enough to pause before typing "fantasy" and almost typing "rotisserie"), but I am pretty new to its football equivalent. However, my boys love it, especially my younger son, so I like to do it to have another thing to talk with them about it. I drafted my team last night, and named it after one of my favorite Boston Patriots players, Houston Antwine.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 1:16 PM
August 30, 2008
More Fun with Tag Clouds
Courtesy of Amazon.com.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 4:50 PM
August 28, 2008
A Joyce Wordle
Inspired by Marianne Calilhanna over at the Really Strategies blog, I created a word cloud of the first chapter of Joyce's Ulysses.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 8:25 PM
Bushwick: Latex Flat
American Life in Poetry: Column 179
By Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate, 2004-2006
I've always loved shop talk, with its wonderful language of tools and techniques. This poem by D. Nurkse of Brooklyn, New York, is a perfect example. I especially like the use of the verb, lap, in line seven, because that's exactly the sound a four-inch wall brush makes.
Bushwick: Latex Flat
2001
Sadness of just-painted rooms.
We clean our tools
meticulously, as if currying horses:
the little nervous sash brush
to be combed and primped,
the fat old four-inchers
that lap up space
to be wrapped and groomed,
the ceiling rollers,
the little pencils
that cover nailheads
with oak gloss,
to be counted and packed:
camped on our dropsheets
we stare across gleaming floors
at the door and beyond it
the old city full of old rumors
of conspiracies, gunshots, market crashes:
with a little mallet
we tap our lids closed,
holding our breath, holding our lives
in suspension for a moment:
an extra drop will ruin everything.
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright © 2007 by D. Nurkse, whose newest book of poetry The Border Kingdom, is forthcoming from Alfred A. Knopf, 2008. Poem reprinted from Broken Land: Poems of Brooklyn, ed., Julia Spicher Kasdorf & Michael Tyrrell, New York University Press, 2007, by permission of D. Nurkse. Introduction copyright © 2008 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:48 AM
August 22, 2008
Books by Andre Dubus
I happened to check on the Amazon aStore I created for Dubus books and realized it had somehow lost the listing of primary books. I restored it and republished it here. Shop early and often!
Posted by Bill Trippe at 5:31 PM
August 21, 2008
Father, Child, Water
American Life in Poetry: Column 178
By Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate, 2004-2006
We mammals are ferociously protective of our young, and we all know not to wander in between a sow bear and her cubs. Here Minnesota poet Gary Dop, without a moment's hesitation, throws himself into the water to save a frightened child.
Father, Child, Water
I lift your body to the boat
before you drown or choke or slip too far
beneath. I didn't think—just jumped, just did
what I did like the physics
that flung you in. My hands clutch under
year-old arms, between your life
jacket and your bobbing frame, pushing you,
like a fountain cherub, up and out.
I'm fooled by the warmth pulsing from
the gash on my thigh, sliced wide and clean
by an errant screw on the stern.
No pain. My legs kick out blood below.
My arms strain
against our deaths to hold you up
as I lift you, crying, reaching, to the boat.
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright © 2008 by Gary Dop. Reprinted from New Letters, Vol. 74, No. 3, Spring 2008, by permission of Gary Dop. Introduction copyright © 2008 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:51 AM
August 19, 2008
Here's Hoping...
... Yaz gets well soon. Some other thoughts on Yaz here.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:14 PM
August 14, 2008
Rain at the Zoo
American Life in Poetry: Column 177
By Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate, 2004-2006
Kristen Tracy is a poet from San Francisco who here captures a moment at a zoo. It's the falling rain, don't you think, that makes the experience of observing the animals seem so perfectly truthful and vivid?
Rain at the Zoo
A giraffe presented its head to me, tilting it
sideways, reaching out its long gray tongue.
I gave it my wheat cracker while small drops
of rain pounded us both. Lightning cracked open
the sky. Zebras zipped across the field.
It was springtime in Michigan. I watched
the giraffe shuffle itself backwards, toward
the herd, its bone- and rust-colored fur beading
with water. The entire mix of animals stood
away from the trees. A lone emu shook
its round body hard and squawked. It ran
along the fence line, jerking open its wings.
Perhaps it was trying to shake away the burden
of water or indulging an urge to fly. I can't know.
I have no idea what about their lives these animals
love or abhor. They are captured or born here for us,
and we come. It's true. This is my favorite field.
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright © Kristen Tracy, whose most recent teen novel is Crimes of the Sarahs, Simon & Schuster, 2008. Poem reprinted from AGNI Online, 9/2007, by permission of Kristen Tracy. Introduction copyright © 2008 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 12:19 PM
August 11, 2008
Welcome to the Show...
... Charlie Zink!
And a knuckleballer no less.
His last name makes me wonder if I need a new category of baseball names. Besides names that are also the names of Massachusetts cities and towns and food names, should I add a category of chemical elements? A quick search of baseballreference.com suggests the pickings are a little slim...
Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:00 PM
August 10, 2008
Six Degrees of Manny
One of the pleasures of the Sunday Boston Globe is reading the baseball notes, a long collection of short essays, stats, random facts, and other baseball detail. The format is a staple in major metropolitan newspapers, usually for the four major team sports (baseball, football, basketball, and hockey), but my memory tells me it was invented by Peter Gammons when he was the Globe's baseball beat writer.
Today's notes has a terrific graphic detailing the "six degrees of separation" from Manny Ramirez to each of the sluggers ahead of him on the all-time home run list. Unfortunately, they only shoveled into a GIF format, not even bothering to add links. They could have created something that was fun and instructive. Still, the details are cool--who knew, for instance, that Dave Winfield and Willie McCovey were once teammates?
Posted by Bill Trippe at 2:44 PM
July 31, 2008
Adios, Mi Amigo
For Boston, no more Manny being Manny. I will miss him. After Jim Rice, Manny was the best right-handed hitter I saw in a Sox uniform. Overall, Manny has/will have a greater career, but we didn't actually see Manny's best statistical seasons while he was here in Boston. Rice, on the other hand, had the greatest single offensive season I ever saw in 1978.
Still, I will miss Manny. He is an amazing hitter. Remy has made the point about how Manny is "quiet" at the plate. He really does not have extraneous movements, and when he swings he is always prepared to put the best swing on the ball. I also came to like his fielding, though this is where a lot of people would disagree. But he fielded well in Fenway, even with some style.
And, of course, there was Manny being Manny. I think far more fans will miss that in Boston than won't. I'm sure Jason Bay is a fine young man, but he's no Manny.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 8:51 PM
July 18, 2008
It's All in the Numbers...
And it's one of the reasons I have always loved baseball. How many other sports would be featured in Science Daily?
Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:41 AM
June 30, 2008
Moving Day
Moving day. And it's 79 degrees out and muggy.
So I haven't found a new office yet. I will be storing some stuff at home and using the Gilbane offices for a bit while I find the right place. As I've mentioned before, if you have a nice and reasonably priced office in the Boston/Brookline/Cambridge area, do let me know.
And happy birthday to my big brother. He's six years older, but somehow looks 10 years younger.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:55 AM
June 29, 2008
Whitman's Brooklyn
Another website that shows the potential of the web for providing a rich view of literary material.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:29 PM
June 16, 2008
New Office
So am I looking for a new office, and apparently this building has a good-sized office. It's a very good location. The building is modest, but there's something about this building I like. I can't quite put my finger on it though...
Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:20 AM | Comments (2)
May 24, 2008
Looking for a New Office
So I am looking for a new office. I have been in Waltham for the past couple of years, but want to move back into the city, Boston, Brookline, or Cambridge, probably in that order. I am not terribly picky about space, but it needs to be an office and not a cubicle and I want it to be all-inclusive--rent, utilities, and Internet included. And it must be on the T. If you are a broker and represent one of those expensive "executive office" spaces like Regus, don't bother--I am not interested and don't have the budget.
I would be coming in from Melrose (Oak Grove), so another option might be Medford or Somerville, but again I would like it be on the T.
If you know of something, have something, or are looking to sublet from a bigger space you already have, please do get in touch.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:39 AM
May 22, 2008
A No-No
Back in the day, I would get to 6-8 Red Sox games a year, but the tickets are just incredibly expensive now, and with the boys so busy and expensive, we go less. I think each of the last two years, we have only gone once. But we got to go as a family on Monday, and we saw an incredible game--a no-hitter by Jon Lester, a young man who is only a year away from battling an aggressive form of cancer.
I've been to a lot of Red Sox games over the years, and I have enjoyed them all, and seen many great games and many great individual plays. I saw Mark McGwire hit three home runs in a game. I saw the great Sox-Yankees playoff game when Pedro beat Roger and we serenaded Roger off the field. I saw Bo Jackson hit maybe the hardest home run ever in Fenway Park. I've seen great pitching from the likes of Pedro, Roger, Bruce Hurst, Oil Can Boyd, Tom Seaver, Frank Viola. But I had never seen a no-hitter before Monday night, and it was something to see.
I noticed there were no hits after the fourth inning, but I didn't really start thinking about it until an inning or two later. I figured a hit would come. But then all of a sudden it was the eighth inning and people were really into it. Lester seemed to be both taking energy from the crowd but also not getting too swept away by it. When he walked someone to start the ninth, the crowd reacted more than Lester. He spent a minute behind the mound. Our seats are close enough that we could see he was trying to compose himself--a deep breath or two. But then he was back on the mound and finished strong, striking out a completely overmatched someone-or-other for the final out.
It was great. I was thrilled for my boys. They have missed coming to the games, and the one game we got to last year was a loss to the Yankees (boo!) and in really terrible, obstructed view seats. This game we were back in our old seats, the weather was great, and the game was one for the ages.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 3:28 PM
May 7, 2008
Baseball and Breakfast
Since I was eight years old, I have had my breakfast every morning during baseball season while reading the box scores. It's always more fun when the Red Sox win of course, but even when they lose, the box scores still never disappoint. Not familiar with a box score? Wikipedia can explain.
But even in baseball, all good things must come to an end. Julio Franco retired, and this article is a nice tribute to a fine career. I had watched Franco closely the past few years. After Rickey Henderson left the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2004, Franco was the only active player in major league baseball who was older than me. Alas, now I am older than every single one of them. I guess I won't ever be center fielder for the Red Sox after all.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:22 AM
April 11, 2008
Off to Maine...
...to plan this summer's conference at Ferry Beach. As always, I will be bringing some work with me, but I will be bringing my eBookWise reader with Heart of Darkness to finish.
Sunday I return early in the day and, weather providing, coach my younger son's U16 travel soccer team.
So I ask you, kind reader, which is harder--herding cats or getting 18 boys, 16 and under, to listen to you for more than 20 seconds? I know the answer! Especially during last night's practice when I was trying to go over something with them as they prepared to scrimmage the U18 girls' team. But they are great kids, really, and I fully expect their exuberance to be an asset on the field.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 3:16 PM
April 10, 2008
The Inevitable
American Life in Poetry: Column 159
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
Bad news all too often arrives with a ringing telephone, all too early in the morning. But sometimes it comes with less emphasis, by regular mail. Here Allan Peterson of Florida gets at the feelings of receiving bad news by letter, not by directly stating how he feels but by suddenly noticing the world that surrounds the moment when that news arrives.
The Inevitable
To have that letter arrive
was like the mist that took a meadow
and revealed hundreds
of small webs once invisible
The inevitable often
stands by plainly but unnoticed
till it hands you a letter
that says death and you notice
the weed field had been
readying its many damp handkerchiefs
all along
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright (c) 2007 by Allan Peterson, whose most recent book of poetry is All the Lavish in Common, University of Massachusetts Press, 2005, winner of the Juniper Prize. Reprinted from The Chattahoochee Review, Winter 2007, V. 27, no. 2, by permission of the author. Introduction copyright (c) 2008 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:31 PM
April 8, 2008
All is Forgiven
Bill Buckner is throwing out the first ball. I guess enough time has passed since you-know-when.
UPDATE: The Globe's Amalie Benjamin has a nice article about the emotions of the day.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 1:30 PM | Comments (1)
April 7, 2008
Sports Illustrated Opens the Vault...
... and produces gems like this, a 1988 article that relates a story about how Larry Bird viewed an earlier Boston legend, and one of the heroes of my youth, Bobby Orr.
At the Boston Garden when the national anthem is played, Bird gazes to the heavens. Everyone assumes that he's looking at the Celtics banners, but ironically, he began to fix his eyes on only one banner—the retired No. 4. But not retired by the Celtics. The No. 4 belonged to the Bruins' Bobby Orr. Bird has stared at the black and gold banner so many times, he can see it in his mind's eye. He knows every stitch, how many lines pierce the circle around the capital B. "Eight. Don't bet me," he says.
Bird had met Orr only once and had never seen him play, but he had heard how great he was as a player and had learned how much Boston admired Orr as a person. Bird had been too bashful ever to tell Orr this, though, and revealed it only last month in his speech at the Sports Museum dinner, where Orr was on hand for the unveiling of Bird's statue. When Orr heard Bird speak of him, the breath went out of him in a whoosh, and there were tears in his eyes.
"My god," Orr whispered in the dark. "My god."
Posted by Bill Trippe at 6:55 PM
March 27, 2008
In Your Absence
American Life in Poetry: Column 157
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
From your school days you may remember A. E. Housman's poem that begins, "Loveliest of trees, the cherry now/ Is hung with bloom along the bough." Here's a look at a blossoming cherry, done 120 years later, on site among the famous cherry trees of Washington, by D.C. poet Judith Harris.
In Your Absence
Not yet summer,
but unseasonable heat
pries open the cherry tree.
It stands there stupefied,
in its sham, pink frills,
dense with early blooming.
Then, as afternoon cools
into more furtive winds,
I look up to see
a blizzard of petals
rushing the sky.
It is only April.
I can't stop my own life
from hurrying by.
The moon, already pacing.
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright (c) 2007 by Judith Harris, whose most recent collection of poems is The Bad Secret, Louisiana State University Press, 2006. Reprinted by permission of Judith Harris. Introduction copyright (c) 2008 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 5:10 PM
March 26, 2008
"And this also," said Marlow suddenly...
... , "has been one of the dark places of the earth."
I am reviewing an eBook device and decided to see what it would like to re-read Heart of Darkness on it. The verdict? I think I am sold on eBook devices, and Conrad is still brilliant.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:19 PM
March 25, 2008
Quirky Signs of Spring
- My clock radio waking me at 6:30 AM to the sounds of a Red Sox baseball game
- Even stranger--being in bumper-to-bumper traffic when the Red Sox tied it in the top of the 9th on Brandon Moss's first-ever major league home run
- Three guys ogling a new driver in the parking lot when I got to the office.
- We just had Easter, which is about as early as you can have it, and I don't see much green yet. I am still waiting for more traditional signs of Spring, like buttercups!
Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:35 AM
March 23, 2008
Pint and Pen
My friend Paul Evenson writes with the happy news that he won second prize in the Pint and Pen writing contest sponsored by Bukowski's tavern in Cambridge. His story, "Vincenco's Mistake," is very clever.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:07 AM
William Butler Yeats
It's Easter, and somehow I woke up thinking of Yeats and his poem Easter, 1916. There was a period in my life when Yeats was a cornerstone poet for me. I think, among other things, I was fascinated with how his life and work bridged the Victorian and Modern eras--he lived from the end of the U.S. civil war (1865) to the outbreak of the second World War (1939). But I also was attracted to his melancholy in poems like "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" and "Sailing to Byzantium" (and yes, that opening line of Byzantium, "That is no country for old men" is indeed the source of the title of the book and the movie).
Not surprisingly, the Web is full of terrific Yeats resources. The Wikipedia article is excellent and chock full of citations and outbound links. I also found a voice recording of Yeats reading Innisfree, and you can find a wonderful short video about the genesis of "Byzantium."
Posted by Bill Trippe at 8:31 AM | Comments (1)
March 22, 2008
Fantasy Baseball
So I drafted my fantasy baseball team this morning. It's a traditional rotisserie league team, so the stats are runs, home runs, average, RBIs, and stolen bases for hitters, and innings pitched, wins, saves, strikeouts and WHIP for pitchers. I think I did OK. I ended up with:
- C--Kenji Johjima
- 1B--David Ortiz
- 2B--Plácido Polanco
- 3B--Kevin Youkilis
- SS--Derek Jeter
- OF--Vernon Wells
- OF--Jacoby Ellsbury
- OF--Raúl Ibañez
- Util--Frank Thomas
- Bench--Evan Longoria, Melky Cabrera, Casey Blake, Bengie Molina, Mark DeRosa
- Starting Pitchers--Jake Peavy, Roy Halladay, Dontrelle Willis
- Relief Pitchers--Jonathan Papelbon, Takashi Saito, Todd Jones, George Sherrill
I don't feel like I have enough pitchers. (You never have enough pitching in baseball, right?)
Let the games begin! The Sox open in Japan this coming Wednesday. I hope it's warmer here than it is here, though I believe the games are going to be held indoor.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 5:35 PM
March 21, 2008
Today's News
American Life in Poetry: Column 156
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
We greatly appreciate your newspaper’s use of this column, and today we want to recognize newspaper employees by including a poem from the inside of a newsroom. David Tucker is deputy managing editor of the New Jersey “Star-Ledger” and has been a reporter and editor at the “Toronto Star” and the “Philadelphia Inquirer.” He was on the “Star-Ledger” team that won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for breaking news. Mr. Tucker was awarded a Witter-Bynner fellowship for poetry in 2007 by former U. S. Poet Laureate, Donald Hall.
Today’s News
A slow news day, but I did like the obit about the butcher
who kept the same store for fifty years. People remembered
when his street was sweetly roaring, aproned
with flower stalls and fish stands.
The stock market wandered, spooked by presidential winks,
by micro-winds and the shadows of earnings. News was stationed
around the horizon, ready as summer clouds to thunder--
but it moved off and we covered the committee meeting
at the back of the statehouse, sat around on our desks,
then went home early. The birds were still singing,
the sun just going down. Working these long hours,
you forget how beautiful the early evening can be,
the big houses like ships turning into the night,
their rooms piled high with silence.
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. Poem copyright © 2006 by David Tucker. Reprinted from Late for Work by David Tucker, Mariner Books, 2006, by permission of the author. First printed in Montana Journalism Review. Introduction copyright © 2008 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 12:41 PM
March 13, 2008
Oh, The Places You'll Go!
From my high school newspaper, junior year.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 12:44 PM | Comments (3)
March 1, 2008
We Interrupt this Miserable Winter Day to Bring You
A moment of summer bliss, foreshadowed.
Brought to you by the great Joel Meyerowitz and Cape Light.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 5:48 PM
February 28, 2008
Spare Parts
American Life in Poetry: Column 153
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
In this endearing short poem by Californian Trish Dugger, we can imagine "what if?" What if we had been given "a baker's dozen of hearts?" I imagine many more and various love poems would be written. Here Ms. Dugger, Poet Laureate of the City of Encinitas, makes fine use of the one patched but good heart she has.
Spare Parts
We barge out of the womb
with two of them: eyes, ears,
arms, hands, legs, feet.
Only one heart. Not a good
plan. God should know we
need at least a dozen,
a baker's dozen of hearts.
They break like Easter eggs
hidden in the grass,
stepped on and smashed.
My own heart is patched,
bandaged, taped, barely
the same shape it once was
when it beat fast for you.
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright (c) 2006 by Trish Dugger. Reprinted from "Magee Park Poets: Anthology 2007," No. 18, Friends of the Carlsbad City Library, 2006, by permission of Trish Dugger. Introduction copyright (c) 2008 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:49 AM
February 25, 2008
Happy Birthday...
But more important than that, happy birthday to my nephew, Jake!
Posted by Bill Trippe at 12:03 PM | Comments (1)
February 24, 2008
Medical History
American Life in Poetry: Column 152
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
A child with a sense of the dramatic, well, many of us have been that child. Here's Carrie Shipers of Missouri reminiscing about how she once wished for a dramatic rescue by screaming ambulance, only to find she was really longing for the comfort of her mother's hands.
Medical History
I wanted it: arc of red and blue
strobing my skin, sirens singing
my praises, the cinching embrace
of the cot as the ambulance
slammed shut and steered away.
More than needle-pierce
or dragging blade, I wanted the swab
of alcohol and cotton, the promise
of gauze-covered cure.
My mother saved anyone
who asked, but never me,
never the way I wanted:
her palms skimming my limbs
for injury, her fingers finding
what hurt, her lips whispering,
I got here just in time.
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright (c) 2007 by Carrie Shipers. Reprinted from Mid-American Review, Vol. 27, no. 2, 2007, by permission of the author. Introduction copyright (c) 2008 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 8:26 PM
Penne Puttanesca
I don't cook much, but I went out for dinner with my older son the other night and discovered the restaurant had dropped my favorite dish from there, Penne Puttanesca, from the menu. I had to go with something else, but that left me thinking of the dish since. So this morning I woke up with the idea to make it myself. Those of you who cook a lot know the Internet is a treasure trove for recipes, so I searched and found a bewildering array of choices. But I read a bunch, and found one I liked, at a sight whose name, MassRecipes.com, seems to indicated it is built for volume and not necessarily for quality.
But it worked out great. I fretted some in choosing the ingredients at the market, but then the cooking was fun. I made some pasta with a simpler sauce too in case my boys didn't like the spicy sauce. Turns out my older son and I liked the Puttanesca, and my wife and younger son tried some and went with the simpler sauce. My older son ended up eating even more than I did, so I count it as a success!
Posted by Bill Trippe at 8:04 PM
February 23, 2008
Today's Spring Training Weather
Meanwhile, back in Boston, I wake up to about 9 inches of snow on the ground and 27 degrees.
And people wonder why we get so excited about "Truck Day."
UPDATE: I was getting my hair cut this morning and a friend walked in. Knocking the snow off his boots, he announces to no one in particular, "83 degrees and sunny in Fort Myers this morning!"
Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:57 AM
Frank O'Connor
One of the great things about the Internet is that, very often, if you just happen to think of something, you can then go out and find it. The other day I was thinking about the great Irish short story writer Frank O'Connor, and, sure and begorrah, there was one of my favorite stories of his, "First Confession", and a Paris Review interview (PDF file). (Note that the typesetting on the short story is a little off, but it still reads well.)
Somehow, I didn't discover O'Connor until graduate school. By then I considered myself a pretty serious student of the short story, and I soon realized that O'Connor had created many of the best ones, including "First Confession," but also including "My Oedipus Complex." Then my advisor recommended O'Connor's book on the craft of short stories, The Lonely Voice, and I was hooked. By that point in graduate school I was overwhelmed with books on the craft of writing. Along with maybe two or three others, I still pick up and read The Lonely Voice when I need a little wisdom.
Wikipedia has an article about O'Connor, but it is pretty thin. There's a reprint of a book chapter here--a nice introduction to the 1998 book, Frank O'Connor: New Perspectives. If you like these stories, I recommend his Collected Stories.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:12 AM
February 16, 2008
Is Valentine's Day for Poets?
Ted Kooser thinks so.
Around this time of year, for more than 20 years, women around the country have checked their mail and found a postcard bearing a red heart in the corner and a poem: a valentine from Ted Kooser, who was U.S. poet laureate from 2004 to 2006.
Now, he has collected those poems in a book called Valentines.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:51 AM
February 14, 2008
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!
Pitchers and catchers report today!
With apologies to Lewis Carroll.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:13 AM
February 13, 2008
We're Moving!
Well, sort of.
What I am actually doing is launching a new blog and practice as part of the Gilbane Group (press release here and the new blog, XML Technologies and Content Strategies, here). The new blog and practice are collaborations with my long-time Gilbane colleagues Mary Laplante and Leonor Ciarlone.
As we launch the new blog at Gilbane, I am transitioning this one to a personal blog, much like the one I had before, A Thousand Furnished Rooms. I will be discussing writing, literature, baseball, and life, not necessarily in that order.
I have been at this blog thing for more than four years, and it has always been an evolution. I started with a technology blog, Ideas in Technology and Publishing, then started A Thousand Furnished Rooms. Somewhere in there I briefly had a politics blog (an ugly undertaking in a nasty little world). Also somewhere in there, I began blogging at Gilbane's primary blog, folded the politics blog (oh, happy day!) and combined Ideas in Technology and Publishing and A Thousand Furnished Rooms into this blog.
So now I evolve again. If you want to read about content management, XML, and publishing technologies and strategies, check out the new Gilbane blog (Atom feed here). If you want to hear about more nebulous topics, stick around here. You are more than welcome.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 12:37 PM
Currently Reading
Another Bullshit Night in Suck City. The book is even better than the title, and it will soon be on the big screen. A nice review of the book is here. The author has a terrific website with a lot of original material, though it's a little heavy on the pop-ups.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:32 AM
January 8, 2008
They're Watching
Another Christmas gift--figurines of great writers. I arranged them on my desk, facing me as I work. Twain, Joyce, Woolf, Shakespeare, Poe. I think they are bored to tears already
Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:28 AM | Comments (1)
December 25, 2007
Petey Says...
.... Merry Christmas too!
Posted by Bill Trippe at 7:57 PM
Merry Christmas
To friends near and far!
Posted by Bill Trippe at 7:51 PM
December 18, 2007
I'm Working, Really I Am
But someone is coming to town, and I am all excited!
Posted by Bill Trippe at 12:49 PM
Some Christmas Tunes
From Finetune
Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:48 AM
December 15, 2007
Already Stuck for Holiday Shopping Ideas?
Amazon Gift Certificates are always welcome
Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:37 AM
November 25, 2007
icanhascheezburger
If you like cats, and have never visited the site, you owe it to yourself. When I hear about Web 2.0, I can think of no better example. ;)
Posted by Bill Trippe at 1:35 PM
November 19, 2007
Mikey Lowell
Looks like Lowell is going to re-sign with the Sox. Fingers crossed, as it is not a done deal apparently, but I would love to see him stay on. As a friend of mine quipped, someone should name a town after that man.
It's official.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 8:17 PM
November 11, 2007
Lest I Forget
My granddad, Wilbur Halliday. He was born in 1900, but was not in World War I, which would have ended a few months after his 18th birthday.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:16 PM
Oh, What the Heck
A second pic for Veteran's Day. My Dad and Grandmom. I don't have a date for this one, but I like to think this is after the war, and my dad is home. That would explain his big smile.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 8:54 PM
Veteran's Day
My dad, Sgt. Charles M. Trippe, Army Air Corps, a wing gunner on a bomber in the Pacific Theater from 1943-1945. The picture is inscribed, "As ever, Charles, 5-7-44." His squadron was making their way across the Pacific as the Japanese retreated. I will have to look at the records I have to figure out whereabouts he was in May 1944. It looks like a studio picture, and was either colorized from black and white or the color was enhanced. Maybe they were in Hawaii on some R&R? Maybe, though my recollection is that his unit took a much more southerly route, down near Australia and of New Guinea.
My father would have been just over 18 in this picture, but he already looks older, doesn't see? He saw a lot of action in the war, and it didn't sit well with him. I wonder how much he had seen by this point. Like a lot of veterans, he rarely spoke about it. I only remember two stories, both quick and offbeat and funny and a little scary. One was when his bomber hit what he described as an air pocket and he found himself plastered to the roof of the plane. Only as I write this does it occur to me that maybe the air pocket was enemy flak or an evasive maneuver. The other story was about having to eat bugs for food in the Phillipines. Kind of a cool story when you are a kid, but not so cool thinking about it as an adult.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 8:30 PM
October 29, 2007
Baseball
I've used this before, but what the heck. It is a good one, and it is fitting for today if you are a Red Sox fan.
I see great things in baseball. It’s our game — the American game. It will take our people out of doors, fill them with oxygen, give them a larger physical stoicism. Tend to relieve us from being a nervous, dyspeptic set. Repair those losses, and be a blessing to us.
—Walt Whitman
Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:48 AM
October 28, 2007
A Story That Never Gets Old
In more ways than one.
Some stats on tonight's game, for those so inclined.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 2:29 PM
October 27, 2007
Leading Off, Playing Center Field
Jacoby Ellsbury. The picture is from a game this year when Jacoby scored from second base on a passed ball, something I have never seen before in 40 years of watching baseball.
Of course, now he is much better known because of the taco thing.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:19 AM
October 26, 2007
Pledge Your Allegiance
At the United Countries of Baseball. A cool app.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 1:33 PM
October 25, 2007
Even the Lion in Winter...
... was once a cub.
No, not that kind of cub.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 3:45 PM
The Crossing
American Life in Poetry: Column 135
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
What motivates us to keep moving forward through our lives, despite all the effort required to do so? Here, North Carolina poet Ruth Moose attributes human characteristics to an animal to speculate upon what that force might be.
The Crossing
The snail at the edge of the road
inches forward, a trim gray finger
of a fellow in pinstripe suit.
He's burdened by his house
that has to follow
where he goes. Every inch,
he pulls together
all he is,
all he owns,
all he was given.
The road is wide
but he is called
by something
that knows him
on the other side.
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright (c) 2004 by Ruth Moose, whose most recent book of poetry is The Sleepwalker, Main Street Rag, 2007. Reprinted from 75 Poems on Retirement, edited by Robin Chapman and Judith Strasser, published by University of Iowa Press, 2007, by permission of the author and publisher. Introduction copyright (c) 2007 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:08 AM
October 24, 2007
The Impossible Dream
I became a Red Sox fan in 1967. I was 8 years old, grew up 8.2 miles from Fenway Park, and had a Dad, Mom, and two older brothers who loved the Sox. My allegiance was foreordained. By dumb luck, that was also the year the hapless Red Sox turned it all around to become The Cardiac Kids, the Impossible Dream Team that won the AL pennant on the last day of the season and went on to take the mighty St. Louis Cardinals to a full seven-game World Series before they lost. To this day, I consider Bob Gibson to be the greatest picture of all time and the name Julian Javier makes me want to curl up into a ball. The seventh-game loss broke my 8-year-old heart, but I was hooked, and have lived and died with the Red Sox ever since.
Nothing is more astonishing than the passage of time, and this year marks the 40th anniversary of that Red Sox season. At opening day this year, the Red Sox staged a nice tribute to that team. They're old men now--how on earth did that happen?--and some of them have even passed on, but many of them were there. Yaz, Rico, Gentleman Jim, even the Hawk. The Boston Herald put together a nice photo montage.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:28 AM
October 21, 2007
Dice-K
First pitch at about 8:20 EST tonight, all happening right here.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 5:13 PM
October 20, 2007
Boston's Tenth Man Could Not be Wrong
Posted by Bill Trippe at 2:22 PM
October 13, 2007
Afterwards
American Life in Poetry: Column 133
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
It may be that we are most alone when attending funerals, at least that's how it seems to me. By alone I mean that even among throngs of mourners we pull back within ourselves and peer out at life as if through a window. David Baker, an Ohio poet, offers us a picture of a funeral that could be anybody's.
Afterwards
A short ride in the van, then the eight of us
there in the heat—white shirtsleeves sticking,
the women's gloves off—fanning our faces.
The workers had set up a big blue tent
to help us at graveside tolerate the sun,
which was brutal all afternoon as if
stationed above us, though it moved limb
to limb through two huge, covering elms.
The long processional of neighbors, friends,
the town's elderly, her beauty-shop patrons,
her club's notables. . . The world is full of
prayers arrived at from afterwards, he said.
Look up through the trees—the hands, the leaves
curled as in self-control or quietly hurting,
or now open, flat-palmed, many-fine-veined,
and whether from heat or sadness, waving.
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright © 2004 by David Baker, whose most recent book of poetry is Midwest Eclogue, W. W. Norton, 2006. Reprinted from "Virginia Quarterly Review," Winter, 2004, by permission of David Baker. Introduction copyright © 2007 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:00 PM
October 6, 2007
Harmony
One of the marvels of singing. Two voices with absolutely nothing in common, except perhaps sharing a little twang, blend, to my ear, into near perfection.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 3:03 PM
October 5, 2007
Bugged
I've watched a lot of baseball over the years, and I have to say the plague of mayflies that rattled the Yankees into a loss against the Indians last night was maybe the strangest thing I have seen. It did bring to mind another Cleveland baseball oddity though. Back in 1986, the Red Sox and Indians once had a game postponed due to fog, which led Dennis "Oil Can" Boyd to famously observe, "That's what you get for building a ballpark on the ocean."
Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:20 PM
October 3, 2007
Back, I Think
I had some problems with my Movable Type installation which led me to upgrade to MT 4, but only after I had migrated to a new server at my hosting company.
Fun, fun, fun!
Posted by Bill Trippe at 2:53 PM
September 1, 2007
As Ned Martin Would Have Said
For those of you who have no idea what I am talking about, see this.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:57 PM
August 23, 2007
My bad...
Someone had a birthday yesterday and I forgot!
Posted by Bill Trippe at 6:51 PM
August 17, 2007
The Times are Never So Bad
This is cool. A new documentary about my man, Andre Dubus, debuted this month. It looks like I will have a few chances to see it this fall. I took a minute to update my Dubus aStore to include two Hollywood films that have been made, based upon his work.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:40 AM
August 9, 2007
Matinee
American Life in Poetry: Column 124
By Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate, 2004-2006
Here is a lovely poem about survival by Patrick Phillips of New York. People sometimes ask me "What are poems for?" and "Matinee" is an example of the kind of writing that serves its readers, that shows us a way of carrying on.
Matinee
After the biopsy,
after the bone scan,
after the consult and the crying,
for a few hours no one could find them,
not even my sister,
because it turns out
they'd gone to the movies.
Something tragic was playing,
something epic,
and so they went to the comedy
with their popcorn
and their cokes,
the old wife whispering everything twice,
the old husband
cupping a palm to his ear,
as the late sun lit up an orchard
behind the strip mall,
and they sat in the dark holding hands.
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright (c) 2006 by Patrick Phillips, whose latest book is Chattahoochee, University of Arkansas Press, 2004. Reprinted from the "Greensboro Review," Fall 2006, No. 80, with permission of the author. Introduction copyright (c) 2006 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.
******************************
American Life in Poetry provides newspapers and online publications with a free weekly column featuring contemporary American poems. The sole mission of this project is to promote poetry: American Life in Poetry seeks to create a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. There are no costs for reprinting the columns; we do require that you register your publication here and that the text of the column be reproduced without alteration.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:18 AM
July 15, 2007
London
"Why, Sir, you find no man, at all intellectual, who is willing to leave London. No, Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford."
— Samuel Johnson
Posted by Bill Trippe at 1:02 PM
June 24, 2007
Geometry
Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.
American Life in Poetry: Column 117
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
The subdivision; it's all around us. Here Nancy Botkin of Indiana presents a telling picture of life in such a neighborhood, the parents downstairs in their stultifying dailiness, the children enjoying their youth under the eaves before the passing years force them to join the adults.
Geometry
All the roofs sloped at the same angle.
The distance between the houses was the same.
There were so many feet from each front door
to the curb. My father mowed the lawn
straight up and down and then diagonally.
And then he lined up beer bottles on the kitchen table.
We knew them only in summer when the air
passed through the screens. The neighbor girls
talked to us across the great divide: attic window
to attic window. We started with our names.
Our whispers wobbled along a tightrope,
and below was the rest of our lives.
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright (c) 2006 by Nancy Botkin. Reprinted from "Poetry East," Spring, 2006, by permission of the author, whose full-length book of poems, Parts That Were Once Whole, is available from Mayapple Press, 2007. Introduction copyright (c) 2006 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.
******************************
American Life in Poetry provides newspapers and online publications with a free weekly column featuring contemporary American poems. The sole mission of this project is to promote poetry: American Life in Poetry seeks to create a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. There are no costs for reprinting the columns; we do require that you register your publication here and that the text of the column be reproduced without alteration.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 1:41 PM
June 7, 2007
Echo
Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.
American Life in Poetry: Column 114
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
Poetry can be thought of as an act of persuasion: a poem attempts to bring about some kind of change in its reader, perhaps no more than a moment of clarity amidst the disorder of everyday life. And successful poems not only make use of the meanings and sounds of words, as well as the images those words conjure up, but may also take advantage of the arrangement of type on a page. Notice how this little poem by Mississippi poet Robert West makes the very best use of the empty space around it to help convey the nature of its subject.
Echo
A lone
voice
in the
right
empty space
makes
its own
best
company.
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright (c) 2005 by Robert West. Reprinted from Best Company, Blink Chapbooks, Chapel Hill, NC, 2005, with permission of the author. Introduction copyright (c) 2006 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.
******************************
American Life in Poetry provides newspapers and online publications with a free weekly column featuring contemporary American poems. The sole mission of this project is to promote poetry: American Life in Poetry seeks to create a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. There are no costs for reprinting the columns; we do require that you register your publication here and that the text of the column be reproduced without alteration.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 12:37 PM
May 8, 2007
Number Four
Bobby Orr.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 1:50 PM | Comments (2)
May 5, 2007
Hopper
Few painters move me. Renoir. Van Gogh. And, yes, Hopper.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:31 AM
May 1, 2007
Wallpapering
Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.
American Life in Poetry: Column 109
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
One big test of the endurance of any relationship is taking on a joint improvement project. Here Sue Ellen Thompson offers an account of one such trial by fire.
Wallpapering
My parents argued over wallpaper. Would stripes
make the room look larger? He
would measure, cut, and paste; she'd swipe
the flaws out with her brush. Once it was properly
hung, doubt would set in. Would the floral
have been a better choice? Then it would grow
until she was certain: it had to go. Divorce
terrified me as a child. I didn't know
what led to it, but I had my suspicions.
The stripes came down. Up went
the flowers. Eventually it became my definition
of marriage: bad choices, arguments
whose victors time refused to tell,
but everything done together and done well.
Reprinted by permission of the author. Copyright (c) 2006 by Sue Ellen Thompson, from her book, The Golden Hour, published by Autumn House Press. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.
******************************
American Life in Poetry provides newspapers and online publications with a free weekly column featuring contemporary American poems. The sole mission of this project is to promote poetry: American Life in Poetry seeks to create a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. There are no costs for reprinting the columns; we do require that you register your publication here and that the text of the column be reproduced without alteration.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 7:27 PM
April 12, 2007
Supple Cord
Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.
American Life in Poetry: Column 107
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
Naomi Shihab Nye is one of my favorite poets. She lives in San Antonio, Texas, and travels widely, an ambassador for poetry. Here she captures a lovely moment from her childhood.
Supple Cord
My brother, in his small white bed,
held one end.
I tugged the other
to signal I was still awake.
We could have spoken,
could have sung
to one another,
we were in the same room
for five years,
but the soft cord
with its little frayed ends
connected us
in the dark,
gave comfort
even if we had been bickering
all day.
When he fell asleep first
and his end of the cord
dropped to the floor,
I missed him terribly,
though I could hear his even breath
and we had such long and separate lives
ahead.
Reprinted from A MAZE ME, Greenwillow, 2005, by permission of the author. Copyright (c) Naomi Shihab Nye, whose most recent book of poetry is You and Yours, BOA Editions, Ltd., 2005. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.
******************************
American Life in Poetry provides newspapers and online publications with a free weekly column featuring contemporary American poems. The sole mission of this project is to promote poetry: American Life in Poetry seeks to create a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. There are no costs for reprinting the columns; we do require that you register your publication here and that the text of the column be reproduced without alteration.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:08 AM | TrackBack
April 7, 2007
Jazz Favorites
Some jazz, brought to you by the princess, Smudgie, a cool cat by any definition.
I included the current artists and songs in the play list below, but it was too much work, cutting and pasting and adding the HTML code. But I wanted the information in there for the search engines. Finetune.com should make it easier. I don't know Flash, but perhaps that information is in the client already and could somehow be exposed to the search engines?
The play list includes Alberta Hunter, The Darktown Strutters' Ball; Bill Evans, 'Round Midnight, Autumn Leaves, and Stella By Starlight; Billie Holiday, Darn That Dream, Let's Call The Whole Thing Off, and They Can't Take That Away From Me; Blossom Dearie, I Won't Dance, Love Is Here To Stay, and Manhattan; Charlie Parker, Bloomdido, Ko Ko and Salt Peanuts; Clifford Brown, Daahoud, Jordu, and Joy Spring; Count Basie, It's Only a Paper Moon and Sing for Your Supper; Duke Ellington, Satin Doll and Take The "A" Train; Ella Fitzgerald, Don't Get Around Much Anymore, I've Got You Under My Skin, and Misty; Frank Sinatra, I Get A Kick Out Of You, I've Got You Under My Skin (yes, again), Fly Me to the Moon, Summer Wind, and The Way You Look Tonight; John Coltrane (with vocals by Johnny Hartman), Dedicated to You, My One and Only Love, and You Are Too Beautiful; Les McCann and Eddie Harris, Cold Duck Time and Compared To What; Louis Armstrong, Ain't Misbehavin', Dream A Little Dream Of Me, and Our Love Is Here To Stay (with Ella); Louis Prima, Embraceable You/I Got It Bad And That Ain't Good (Medley)(Live), Hey! Ba-Ba-Re-Bop, and Jump, Jive, An' Wail; Miles Davis, Budo, Moon Dreams, and Rocker (all from The Complete Birth Of The Cool); Nat King Cole, Almost Like Being In Love and Let's Fall In Love; and Tony Bennett, This Can't Be Love.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:25 AM
April 6, 2007
Catching the Moles
Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.
American Life in Poetry: Column 106
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
By describing the relocation of the moles which ravaged her yard, Washington poet Judith Kitchen presents an experience that resonates beyond the simple details, and suggests that children can learn important lessons through observation of the natural world.
Catching the Moles
First we tamp down the ridges
that criss-cross the yard
then wait for the ground
to move again.
I hold the shoe box,
you, the trowel.
When I give you the signal
you dig in behind
and flip forward.
Out he pops into daylight,
blind velvet.
We nudge him into the box,
carry him down the hill.
Four times we've done it.
The children worry.
Have we let them all go
at the very same spot?
Will they find each other?
We can't be sure ourselves,
only just beginning to learn
the fragile rules of uprooting.
Poem copyright (c) 1986 by Judith Kitchen, whose most recent book is the novel, The House on Eccles Road, Graywolf Press, 2004. Reprinted from "Perennials," Anhinga Press, 1986, with permission of the author. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.
******************************
American Life in Poetry provides newspapers and online publications with a free weekly column featuring contemporary American poems. The sole mission of this project is to promote poetry: American Life in Poetry seeks to create a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. There are no costs for reprinting the columns; we do require that you register your publication here and that the text of the column be reproduced without alteration.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 5:31 PM
April 5, 2007
The Word of the Day...
is Daisuke.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 5:18 PM
April 1, 2007
Hope springs eternal!
Baseball's opening day is here.
Baseball will take our people out-of-doors, fill them with oxygen, give them a larger physical stoicism. Tend to relieve us from being a nervous, dyspeptic set. Repair these losses, and be a blessing to us.
--Walt Whitman
Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:42 AM
March 29, 2007
Laundry
Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.
American Life in Poetry: Column 105
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
I've talked often in this column about how poetry can hold a mirror up to life, and I'm especially fond of poems that hold those mirrors up to our most ordinary activities, showing them at their best and brightest. Here Ruth Moose hangs out some laundry and, in an instant, an everyday chore that might have seemed to us to be quite plain is fresh and lovely.
Laundry
All our life
so much laundry;
each day's doing or not
comes clean,
flows off and away
to blend with other sins
of this world. Each day
begins in new skin,
blessed by the elements
charged to take us
out again to do or undo
what's been assigned.
From socks to shirts
the selves we shed
lift off the line
as if they own
a life apart
from the one we offer.
There is joy in clean laundry.
All is forgiven in water, sun
and air. We offer our day's deeds
to the blue-eyed sky, with soap and prayer,
our arms up, then lowered in supplication.
Reprinted from Making the Bed, Main Street Rag Press, 2004, by permission of the author. Copyright (c) 1995 by Ruth Moose, whose latest book of poetry, "The Sleepwalker," Main Street Rag, due out in 2007. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.
******************************
American Life in Poetry provides newspapers and online publications with a free weekly column featuring contemporary American poems. The sole mission of this project is to promote poetry: American Life in Poetry seeks to create a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. There are no costs for reprinting the columns; we do require that you register your publication here and that the text of the column be reproduced without alteration.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 7:25 PM | TrackBack
March 25, 2007
Guest House
This being human is a guest house
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
-- Rumi
Posted by Bill Trippe at 12:16 AM
March 24, 2007
Where They Lived
Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.
American Life in Poetry: Column 104
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
At some time many of us will have to make a last visit to a house where aged parents lived out their days. Here Marge Saiser beautifully compresses one such farewell.
Where They Lived
One last time I unlock
the house where they lived
and fought and tried again:
the air of the place,
carpet with its unchanging green,
chair with its back to me.
On the TV set, the Christmas cactus
has bloomed, has spilled its pink flowers
down its scraggly arms
and died, drying into paper.
At the round oak table,
ghosts lean toward one another,
almost a bow, before rising,
before ambling away.
Reprinted by permission of Marjorie Saiser, whose most recent book of poems is Lost in Seward County, Backwaters Press, 2001. Copyright (c) 2006 by Marjorie Saiser. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.
******************************
American Life in Poetry provides newspapers and online publications with a free weekly column featuring contemporary American poems. The sole mission of this project is to promote poetry: American Life in Poetry seeks to create a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. There are no costs for reprinting the columns; we do require that you register your publication here and that the text of the column be reproduced without alteration.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 1:54 PM | TrackBack
Currently Reading
...er, watching, The Merchant of Venice.
My son has to read it for school, so I went shopping for the CD, as shown, and also the audio. When I was an English major in college, I read all my Shakespeare while listening to the great Caedmon recordings. It looks like the Caedmon versions are downloadable from Audible.com. I sort of doubt he will put the 2.5 hours on his MP3 player, but I will sneak it on to his notebook computer and see what he does with it.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 1:19 PM
March 19, 2007
Thought for the Day
I am so small I can barely be seen.
How can this great love be inside me?
Look at your eyes. They are small,
but they see enormous things.
- Rumi
Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:40 AM
March 17, 2007
How Are You Doing?
Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.
American Life in Poetry: Column 103
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
One of the ways a poet makes art from his or her experience is through the use of unique, specific and particular detail. This poem by Rick Snyder thrives on such details. It's not just baseball caps, it's Tasmanian Devil caps; it's not just music on the intercom, it's James Taylor. And Snyder's poem also caught my interest with the humor of its flat, sardonic tone.
How Are You Doing?
As much as you deserve it,
I wouldn't wish this
Sunday night on you--
not the Osco at closing,
not its two tired women
and shaky security guard,
not its bin of flip-flops
and Tasmanian Devil
baseball caps,
not its freshly mopped floors
and fluorescent lights,
not its endless James Taylor
song on the intercom,
and not its last pint of
chocolate mint ice cream,
which I carried
down Milwaukee Ave.
past a man in an unbuttoned
baseball shirt, who stepped
out of a shadow to whisper,
How are you doing?
Reprinted from "Barrow Street," Winter, 2005, by permission of the author. Copyright (c) 2005 by Rick Snyder. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.
******************************
American Life in Poetry provides newspapers and online publications with a free weekly column featuring contemporary American poems. The sole mission of this project is to promote poetry: American Life in Poetry seeks to create a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. There are no costs for reprinting the columns; we do require that you register your publication here and that the text of the column be reproduced without alteration.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 2:44 PM
February 22, 2007
The One I Think of Now
This week's offering from American Life in Poetry features Maine poet Wesley McNair.
American Life in Poetry: Column 100
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
Here the Maine poet, Wesley McNair, offers us a vivid description of a man who has lived beyond himself. I'd guess you won't easily forget this sad old man in his apron with his tray of cheese.
The One I Think of Now
At the end of my stepfather's life
when his anger was gone,
and the saplings of his failed
nursery had grown into trees,
my newly feminist mother had him
in the kitchen to pay for all
those years he only did the carving.
"You know where that is,"
she would say as he looked
for a knife to cut the cheese
and a tray to serve it with,
his apron wide as a dress
above his workboots, confused
as a girl. He is the one I think of now,
lifting the tray for my family,
the guests, until at last he comes
to me. And I, no less confused,
look down from his hurt eyes as if
there were nothing between us
except an arrangement of cheese,
and not this bafflement, these
almost tender hands that once
swung hammers and drove machines
and insisted that I learn to be a man.
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. Poem copyright (c) 2002 by Wesley McNair, whose most recent book is "The Ghosts of You and Me," David R. Godine, 2006. Reprinted from "Fire: Poems," published by David R. Godine, 2002, by permission of the author. Introduction copyright (c) 2006 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.
******************************
American Life in Poetry provides newspapers and online publications with a free weekly column featuring contemporary American poems. The sole mission of this project is to promote poetry: American Life in Poetry seeks to create a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. There are no costs for reprinting the columns; we do require that you register your publication here and that the text of the column be reproduced without alteration.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 1:37 PM
February 16, 2007
New Water
Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.
American Life in Poetry: Column 99
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
My maternal grandparents got their drinking water from a well in the yard, and my disabled uncle carried it sloshing to the house, one bucket of hard red water early every morning. I couldn't resist sharing this lovely little poem by Minnesota poet, Sharon Chmielarz.
New Water
All those years--almost a hundred--
the farm had hard water.
Hard orange. Buckets lined in orange.
Sink and tub and toilet, too,
once they got running water.
And now, in less than a lifetime,
just by changing the well's location,
in the same yard, mind you,
the water's soft, clear, delicious to drink.
All those years to shake your head over.
Look how sweet life has become;
you can see it in the couple who live here,
their calmness as they sit at their table,
the beauty as they offer you new water to drink.
Reprinted by permission of Sharon Chmielarz, whose most recent collection of poems is "The Rhubarb King," Loonfeather Press, 2006. Copyright (c) 2006 by Sharon Chmielarz. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.
******************************
American Life in Poetry provides newspapers and online publications with a free weekly column featuring contemporary American poems. The sole mission of this project is to promote poetry: American Life in Poetry seeks to create a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. There are no costs for reprinting the columns; we do require that you register your publication here and that the text of the column be reproduced without alteration.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:28 AM
February 12, 2007
Hope Springs Eternal!
Or, if you leave now and keep driving 24 hours, you will reach someplace warm and sunny.
The truck that will carry Red Sox team equipment to spring training arrived outside of Fenway Park at 5:30 a.m. this morning (live photo above), and will depart for Fort Myers in an official ceremony at 1 p.m.
For fans who want to see it off, the truck will leave from the players parking lot entrance on Van Ness St., and will be followed in procession by Fenway Ambassadors, Red Sox staff, and Wally the Green Monster tossing gifts from a flat-bed truck.
Kevin Carson of Atlas moving in Holliston is supervising the loading process.
"I love it," said Carson. "Its like Groundhog Day for two reasons: Its the first rite of spring, when the moving truck arrives. And its the same every year, just like the movie."
Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:16 AM
February 10, 2007
Favorite Movies
One of the great things about having teenagers is you begin to get to share with them some of the cultural touchstones of your life--books, music, and movies. In truth, we are pretty far apart on the first two, especially music. They like hip hop, which I don't, except for an odd song or two. But we have found common ground in movies, especially since I have two boys. I have always loved gangster movies, including the obvious ones like The Godfather saga. But my favorite gangster movie, bar none, is the Coen Brothers' Miller's Crossing, which I watched with my boys the other night. It had been a few years since I watched, and it was just as good as I remembered it.
UPDATE: Speaking of gangster movies, The Departed comes out on Tuesday.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:00 PM
February 8, 2007
Kissing a Horse
Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.
American Life in Poetry: Column 98
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
A horse's head is big, and the closer you get to it, the bigger it gets. Here is the Idaho poet, Robert Wrigley, offering us a horse's head, up close, and covering a horse's character, too.
Kissing a Horse
Of the two spoiled, barn-sour geldings
we owned that year, it was Red--
skittish and prone to explode
even at fourteen years--who'd let me
hold to my face his own: the massive labyrinthine caverns of the nostrils, the broad plain up the head to the eyes. He'd let me stroke his coarse chin whiskers and take his soft meaty underlip in my hands, press my man's carnivorous kiss to his grass-nipping upper half of one, just so that I could smell the long way his breath had come from the rain and the sun, the lungs and the heart, from a world that meant no harm.
Reprinted from "Earthly Meditations: New and Selected Poems," published in 2006 by Penguin. Copyright (c) Robert Wrigley, 2006, and reprinted by permission of the author. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.
******************************
American Life in Poetry provides newspapers and online publications with a free weekly column featuring contemporary American poems. The sole mission of this project is to promote poetry: American Life in Poetry seeks to create a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. There are no costs for reprinting the columns; we do require that you register your publication here and that the text of the column be reproduced without alteration.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:55 PM
February 2, 2007
Someone Has a Birthday Today
If you have no idea, what the above text is about, click here.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:29 AM
January 28, 2007
Theories of Everything
Fans of Roz Chast know about her new book, Theories of Everything: Selected, Collected, and Health-Inspected Cartoons, 1978-2006. But I got an email from The New Yorker that linked me to this great video of Chast being interviewed by Steve Martin. It's a wonderful interview, and Chast is as charming and quirky as her cartoons.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 1:37 PM
For Weeks After the Funeral
OK, here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.
American Life in Poetry: Column 96
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
Grief can endure a long, long time. A deep loss is very reluctant to let us set it aside, to push it into a corner of memory. Here the Arkansas poet, Andrea Hollander Budy, gives us a look at one family's adjustment to a death.
For Weeks After the Funeral
The house felt like the opera,
the audience in their seats, hushed, ready,
but the cast not yet arrived.
And if I said anything
to try to appease the anxious air, my words
would hang alone like the single chandelier
waiting to dim the auditorium, but still
too huge, too prominent, too bright, its light
announcing only itself, bringing more
emptiness into the emptiness.
Copyright (c) 2006 by Andrea Hollander Budy. First published in "Five Points" and included in her book, "Woman in the Painting." Reprinted by permission of the author and Autumn House Press. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.
******************************
American Life in Poetry provides newspapers and online publications with a free weekly column featuring contemporary American poems. The sole mission of this project is to promote poetry: American Life in Poetry seeks to create a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. There are no costs for reprinting the columns; we do require that you register your publication here and that the text of the column be reproduced without alteration.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 1:04 PM
Young Man
Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.
American Life in Poetry: Column 095
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
Literature, and in this instance, poetry, holds a mirror to life; thus the great themes of life become the great themes of poems. Here the distinguished American poet, John Haines, addresses--and celebrates through the affirmation of poetry--our preoccupation with aging and mortality.
Young Man
I seemed always standing
before a door
to which I had no key,
although I knew it hid behind it
a gift for me.
Until one day I closed
my eyes a moment, stretched
then looked once more.
And not surprised, I did not mind it
when the hinges creaked
and, smiling, Death
held out his hands to me.
Reprinted from "ABZ: A Poetry Magazine," No. 1, 2006, by permission of the author. Copyright (c) 2006, by John Haines, whose most recent book of poetry is "Of Your Passage, O Summer," Limberlost Press, 2004. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.
******************************
American Life in Poetry provides newspapers and online publications with a free weekly column featuring contemporary American poems. The sole mission of this project is to promote poetry: American Life in Poetry seeks to create a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. There are no costs for reprinting the columns; we do require that you register your publication here and that the text of the column be reproduced without alteration.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 12:59 PM
January 1, 2007
Donald Murray
Boston Globe columnist and writing guru Donald Murray died on Saturday. The Globe has a nice tribute to him, and you can read some of his columns here. Murray had at least three great careers, first as a Puliter-prize winning journalist, then as a professor of writing at the University of New Hampshire, and then as a columnist for the Globe.
Murray was prolific. He published both personal and professional books, and was a mentor to scores of writers, writing teachers, and professors of writing. When I was in graduate school and considering a career as a writing teacher, Murray was a major figure in the field, as important for his encouraging presence as his cornerstone scholarship. After hearing Murray speak at a 4Cs conference, I bought his book, A Writer Teaches Writing. For me, Murray was the model writing teacher--an accomplished practitioner, a thoughtful and diligent scholar, and a teacher who encouraged his students and younger scholars. He will be missed.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 5:35 PM | TrackBack
December 28, 2006
Home Fire
Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.
American Life in Poetry: Column 92
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
Home is where the heart. . . Well, surely we all know that old saying. But it's the particulars of a home that make it ours. Here the poet Linda Parsons Marion, who lives in Knoxville, Tennessee, celebrates familiarity, in its detail and its richness.
Home Fire
Whether on the boulevard or gravel backroad, I do not easily raise my hand to those who toss up theirs in anonymous hello, merely to say "I'm passing this way." Once out of shyness, now reluctance to tip my hand, I admire the shrubbery instead. I've learned where the lines are drawn and keep the privet well trimmed. I left one house with toys on the floor for another with quiet rugs and a bed where the moon comes in. I've thrown myself at men in black turtlenecks only to find that home is best after all. Home where I sit in the glider, knowing it needs oil, like my own rusty joints. Where I coax blackberry to dogwood and winter to harvest, where my table is clothed in light. Home where I walk out on the thin page of night, without waving or giving myself away, and return with my words burning like fire in the grate.
Reprinted from "Home Fires: Poems," Sow's Ear Press, 1997, by permission of the author. Copyright © 1997 by Linda Parsons. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.
******************************
American Life in Poetry provides newspapers and online publications with a free weekly column featuring contemporary American poems. The sole mission of this project is to promote poetry: American Life in Poetry seeks to create a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. There are no costs for reprinting the columns; we do require that you register your publication here and that the text of the column be reproduced without alteration.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 4:13 PM
December 25, 2006
Dad, the Cook
I am not much of a cook, but every Christmas morning I make pancakes for the family. A few years ago, my friend David Guenette and I got to spend a few days in San Francisco together. David really knows the city, and I saw more of San Francisco in those few days than I had in the six first trips I had made there. One of the places he introduced me to was Sears Fine Food in Union Square, and their, "Sears’ World Famous 18 Swedish Pancake" breakfast. I loved the pancakes, I bought the batter, and now every Christmas we have a little taste of San Francisco here in Melrose.
Merry Christmas, David!
Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:04 AM
Merry Christmas
Merry Christmas, to friends near and far!
Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:00 AM | TrackBack
December 22, 2006
Driving Through
Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.
American Life in Poetry: Column 91
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
How many of us, when passing through some small town, have felt that it seemed familiar though we've never been there before. And of course it seems familiar because much of the course of life is pretty much the same wherever we go, right down to the up-and-down fortunes of the football team and the unanswered love letters. Here's a poem by Mark Vinz.
Driving Through
This could be the town you're from,
marked only by what it's near.
The gas station man speaks of weather
and the high school football team
just as you knew he would--
kind to strangers, happy to live here.
Tell yourself it doesn't matter now,
you're only driving through.
Past the sagging, empty porches
locked up tight to travelers' stares,
toward the great dark of the fields,
your headlights startle a flock of
old love letters--still undelivered,
enroute for years.
Reprinted from "Red River Blues," published by College of the Mainland, Texas City, TX, 1977, by permission of the author. Copyright (c) 1977 by Mark Vinz, whose most recent book is "Long Distance," Midwestern Writers Publishing House, 2005. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.
******************************
American Life in Poetry provides newspapers and online publications with a free weekly column featuring contemporary American poems. The sole mission of this project is to promote poetry: American Life in Poetry seeks to create a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. There are no costs for reprinting the columns; we do require that you register your publication here and that the text of the column be reproduced without alteration.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 4:10 PM | TrackBack
December 19, 2006
Quote of the Day
I am a writer and therefore an explorer. My immediate tribe remains the tribe of explorers.
-- Wole Soyinka
Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:01 AM
December 2, 2006
A Chapter for the Ladies
The joys of Project Gutenberg: baseball, as viewed in 1888.
On account of the associations by which a professional game of base-ball was supposed to be surrounded, it was for a long time thought not a proper sport for the patronage of ladies. Gradually, however, this illusion has been dispelled, until now at every principal contest they are found present in large numbers. One game is generally enough to interest the novice; she had expected to find it so difficult to understand and she soon discovers that she knows all about it; she is able to criticize plays and even find fault with the umpire; she is surprised and flattered by the wonderful grasp of her own understanding, and she begins to like the game. As with everything else that she likes at all, she likes it with all her might, and it is only a question of a few more games till she becomes an enthusiast. It is a fact that the sport has no more ardent admirers than are to be found among its lady attendants throughout the country.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 2:10 PM | TrackBack
November 26, 2006
Philippe Noiret
One of my favorite actors, Philippe Noiret, died. The New York Times headline calls him, "an Actor of Elegance and Dry Humor," and I couldn't agree more. He starred in two of my favorite movies, Cinema Paradiso (imdb.com, amazon.com) and Il Postino (imdb.com, amazon.com), playing a Sicilian projectionist in the former and the poet Pablo Neruda in the latter. Yet both characters were the same, decent, kind man at their core.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:13 AM
November 24, 2006
Raking
I have been remiss. Here, after a long hiatus on this blog, is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.
American Life in Poetry: Column 87
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
The first poem we ran in this column was by David Allan Evans of South Dakota, about a couple washing windows together. You can find that poem and all the others on our website, www.americanlifeinpoetry.org. Here Tania Rochelle of Georgia presents us with another couple, this time raking leaves. I especially like the image of the pair "bent like parentheses/ around their brittle little lawn."
Raking
Anna Bell and Lane, eighty,
make small leaf piles in the heat,
each pile a great joint effort,
like fifty years of marriage,
sharing chores a rusty dance.
In my own yard, the stacks
are big as children, who scatter them,
dodge and limbo the poke
of my rake. We're lucky,
young and straight-boned.
And I feel sorry for the couple,
bent like parentheses
around their brittle little lawn.
I like feeling sorry for them,
the tenderness of it, but only
for a moment: John glides in
like a paper airplane, takes
the children for the weekend,
and I remember,
they're the lucky ones--
shriveled Anna Bell, loving
her crooked Lane.
Reprinted from "Karaoke Funeral," Snake Nation Press, 2003, by permission of the author. Copyright (c) 2003 by Tania Rochelle. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.
******************************
American Life in Poetry provides newspapers and online publications with a free weekly column featuring contemporary American poems. The sole mission of this project is to promote poetry: American Life in Poetry seeks to create a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. There are no costs for reprinting the columns; we do require that you register your publication here and that the text of the column be reproduced without alteration.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:54 AM
November 11, 2006
Currently Reading
Philip Roth's American Pastoral. I have written before about how I discovered Roth early on, and have read nearly all of this fiction, and some of his nonfiction. I like it from its opening paragraph (read more of an excerpt here):
The Swede. During the war years, when I was still a grade school boy, this was a magical name in our Newark neighborhood, even to adults just a generation removed from the city's old Prince Street ghetto and not yet so flawlessly Americanized as to be bowled over by the prowess of a high school athlete. The name was magical; so was the anomalous face. Of the few fair-complexioned Jewish students in our preponderantly Jewish public high school, none possessed anything remotely like the steep-jawed, insentient Viking mask of this blue-eyed blond born into our tribe as Seymour Irving Levov.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:09 PM
September 1, 2006
Manhattan
I might hate the Yankees, but I still love New York, and Woody Allen's Manhattan makes the city look absolutely beautiful. I happened to catch it on cable last weekend, and I forgot how much I liked it.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 8:15 PM
August 24, 2006
In the Mushroom Summer
Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.
American Life in Poetry: Column 74
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
In the Mushroom Summer
Colorado turns Kyoto in a shower,
mist in the pines so thick the crows delight (or seem to), winging in obscurity.
The ineffectual panic of a squirrel
who chattered at my passing gave me pause to watch his Ponderosa come and go-- long needles scratching cloud. I'd summited but knew it only by the wildflower meadow, the muted harebells, paintbrush, gentian, scattered among the locoweed and sage.
Today my grief abated like water soaking underground, its scar a little path of twigs and needles winding ahead of me downhill to the next bend. Today I let the rain soak through my shirt and was unharmed.
Reprinted by permission from "The Hudson Review," Vol. LIX, No. 2 (Summer 2006). Copyright (c) 2006 by David Mason. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.
******************************
American Life in Poetry provides newspapers and online publications with a free weekly column featuring contemporary American poems. The sole mission of this project is to promote poetry: American Life in Poetry seeks to create a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. There are no costs for reprinting the columns; we do require that you register your publication here and that the text of the column be reproduced without alteration.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:27 AM
August 21, 2006
Yankees Finish Red Sox Beat Down
Wow, good thing I am not a Sox fan or anything.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 4:48 PM
August 13, 2006
Currently Reading
Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball's Last Hero.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:33 PM
Cup of Joe
Have I ever mentioned how much I like coffee? This was a good cup, all the better because I had it at Ferry Beach.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:24 PM
August 10, 2006
My Father Teaches Me to Dream
I stand corrected. Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.
American Life in Poetry: Column 72
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
Those who survived the Great Depression of the 1930s have a tough, no-nonsense take on what work is. If when I was young I'd told my father I was looking for fulfilling work, he would have looked at me as if I'd just arrived from Mars. Here the Pennsylvania poet, Jan Beatty, takes on the voice of her father to illustrate the thinking of a generation of Americans.
My Father Teaches Me to Dream
You want to know what work is?
I'll tell you what work is:
Work is work.
You get up. You get on the bus.
You don't look from side to side.
You keep your eyes straight ahead.
That way nobody bothers you--see?
You get off the bus. You work all day.
You get back on the bus at night. Same thing.
You go to sleep. You get up.
You do the same thing again.
Nothing more. Nothing less.
There's no handouts in this life.
All this other stuff you're looking for-- it ain't there.
Work is work.
First printed in "Witness," Volume 10, Number 2, and reprinted by permission of the author. Copyright (c) 1996 by Jan Beatty, whose latest book, "Boneshaker," was published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in 2002. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.
******************************
American Life in Poetry provides newspapers and online publications with a free weekly column featuring contemporary American poems. The sole mission of this project is to promote poetry: American Life in Poetry seeks to create a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. There are no costs for reprinting the columns; we do require that you register your publication here and that the text of the column be reproduced without alteration.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:05 PM
August Morning
Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.
American Life in Poetry: Column 71
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
William Carlos Williams, one of our country's most influential poets and a New Jersey physician, taught us to celebrate daily life. Here Albert Garcia offers us the simple pleasures and modest mysteries of a single summer day.
August Morning
It's ripe, the melon
by our sink. Yellow,
bee-bitten, soft, it perfumes
the house too sweetly.
At five I wake, the air
mournful in its quiet.
My wife's eyes swim calmly
under their lids, her mouth and jaw
relaxed, different.
What is happening in the silence
of this house? Curtains
hang heavily from their rods.
Ficus leaves tremble
at my footsteps. Yet
the colors outside are perfect--
orange geranium, blue lobelia.
I wander from room to room
like a man in a museum:
wife, children, books, flowers,
melon. Such still air. Soon
the mid-morning breeze will float in
like tepid water, then hot.
How do I start this day,
I who am unsure
of how my life has happened
or how to proceed
amid this warm and steady sweetness?
Poem copyright (c) by Albert Garcia from his latest book "Skunk Talk" (Bear Starr Press, 2005) and originally published in "Poetry East," No. 44. Reprinted by permission of the author. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.
******************************
American Life in Poetry provides newspapers and online publications with a free weekly column featuring contemporary American poems. The sole mission of this project is to promote poetry: American Life in Poetry seeks to create a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. There are no costs for reprinting the columns; we do require that you register your publication here and that the text of the column be reproduced without alteration.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 8:54 PM
July 27, 2006
My Son the Man
Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.
American Life in Poetry: Column 70
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
As a man I'll never gain the wisdom Sharon Olds expresses in this poem about motherhood, but one of the reasons poetry is essential is that it can take us so far into someone else's experience that we feel it's our own.
My Son the Man
Suddenly his shoulders get a lot wider, the way Houdini would expand his body while people were putting him in chains. It seems no time since I would help him to put on his sleeper, guide his calves into the gold interior, zip him up and toss him up and catch his weight. I cannot imagine him no longer a child, and I know I must get ready, get over my fear of men now my son is going to be one. This was not what I had in mind when he pressed up through me like a sealed trunk through the ice of the Hudson, snapped the padlock, unsnaked the chains, and appeared in my arms. Now he looks at me the way Houdini studied a box to learn the way out, then smiled and let himself be manacled.
"My Son the Man" from THE WELLSPRING by Sharon Olds. Copyright (c) 1996 by Sharon Olds. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.
******************************
American Life in Poetry provides newspapers and online publications with a free weekly column featuring contemporary American poems. The sole mission of this project is to promote poetry: American Life in Poetry seeks to create a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. There are no costs for reprinting the columns; we do require that you register your publication here and that the text of the column be reproduced without alteration.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 8:16 PM
July 24, 2006
Makes Perfect Sense to Me
10 reasons you should never get a job
Steve Pavlina feels strongly that you are better off working for yourself than working for the man.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 3:19 PM
Ironing After Midnight
Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.
American Life in Poetry: Column 69
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
This marvelous poem by the California poet Marsha Truman Cooper perfectly captures the world of ironing, complete with its intimacy. At the end, doing a job to perfection, pressing the perfect edge, establishes a reassuring order to an otherwise mundane and slightly tawdry world.
Ironing After Midnight
Your mother called it
"doing the pressing,"
and you know now
how right she was.
There is something urgent here.
Not even the hiss
under each button
or the yellow business
ground in at the neck
can make one instant
of this work seem unimportant.
You've been taught
to turn the pocket corners
and pick out the dark lint
that collects there.
You're tempted to leave it,
but the old lessons
go deeper than habits.
Everyone else is asleep.
The odor of sweat rises
when you do
under the armpits,
the owner's particular smell
you can never quite wash out.
You'll stay up.
You'll have your way,
the final stroke
and sharpness
down the long sleeves,
a truly permanent edge.
Reprinted from "River Styx," No. 32, 1990, by permission of the author, whose most recent book is "Substantial Holdings," Pudding House Publications, 2002. Poem copyright (c) 1990 by Marsha Truman Cooper. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.
******************************
American Life in Poetry provides newspapers and online publications with a free weekly column featuring contemporary American poems. The sole mission of this project is to promote poetry: American Life in Poetry seeks to create a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. There are no costs for reprinting the columns; we do require that you register your publication here and that the text of the column be reproduced without alteration.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 2:56 PM
July 7, 2006
Don't Look Back
Happy Birthday, Satchel Paige.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 3:46 PM
Family Reunion
Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.
American Life in Poetry: Column 67
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
One in a series of elegies by New York City poet Catherine Barnett, this poem describes the first gathering after death has shaken a family to its core. The father tries to help his grown daughter forget for a moment that, a year earlier, her own two daughters were killed, that she is now alone. He's heartsick, realizing that drinking can only momentarily ease her pain, a pain and love that takes hold of the entire family. The children who join her in the field are silent guardians.
Family Reunion
My father scolded us all for refusing his liquor.
He kept buying tequila, and steak for the grill, until finally we joined him, making margaritas, cutting the fat off the bone.
When he saw how we drank, my sister
shredding the black labels into her glass while his remaining grandchildren dragged their thin bunk bed mattresses
first out to the lawn to play
then farther up the field to sleep next to her, I think it was then he changed, something in him died. He's gentler now,
quiet, losing weight though every night he eats the same ice cream he always ate only now he's not drinking, he doesn't fall asleep with the spoon in his hand,
he waits for my mother to come lie down with him.
Reprinted from "Into Perfect Spheres Such Holes Are Pierced," Alice James Books, 2004, by permission of the author. Copyright (c) 2004 by Catherine Barnett. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.
******************************
American Life in Poetry provides newspapers and online publications with a free weekly column featuring contemporary American poems. The sole mission of this project is to promote poetry: American Life in Poetry seeks to create a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. There are no costs for reprinting the columns; we do require that you register your publication here and that the text of the column be reproduced without alteration.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 3:32 PM
June 29, 2006
The Copper Beech
Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.
American Life in Poetry: Column 66
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
The Copper Beech
Immense, entirely itself,
it wore that yard like a dress,
with limbs low enough for me to enter it and climb the crooked ladder to where
I could lean against the trunk and practice being alone.
One day, I heard the sound before I saw it, rain fell darkening the sidewalk.
Sitting close to the center, not very high in the branches, I heard it hitting the high leaves, and I was happy,
watching it happen without it happening to me.
Reprinted from "What the Living Do," W. W. Norton & Co., 1997. Copyright (c) 1997 by Marie Howe. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.
******************************
American Life in Poetry provides newspapers and online publications with a free weekly column featuring contemporary American poems. The sole mission of this project is to promote poetry: American Life in Poetry seeks to create a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. There are no costs for reprinting the columns; we do require that you register your publication here and that the text of the column be reproduced without alteration.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 3:38 PM
Someone Has a Birthday Today
They say he is 75, but I don't think he looks a day over 47.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 3:34 PM
June 24, 2006
Homecoming
Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.
American Life in Poetry: Column 65
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
Visiting a familiar and once dear place after a long absence can knock the words right out of us, and in this poem, Keith Althaus of Massachusetts observes this happening to someone else. I like the way he suggests, at the end, that it may take days before that silence heals over.
Homecoming
We drove through the gates
into a maze of little roads,
with speed bumps now,
that circled a pavilion,
field house, and ran past
the playing fields and wound
their way up to the cluster
of wood and stone buildings
of the school you went to once.
The green was returning to
the trees and lawn, the lake
was still half-lidded with ice
and blind in the middle.
There was nobody around
except a few cars in front
of the administration. It must
have been spring break.
We left without ever getting out
of the car. You were quiet
that night, the next day,
the way after heavy rain
that the earth cannot absorb,
the water lies in pools
in unexpected places for days
until it disappears.
Reprinted from "Ladder of Hours: Poems 1969-2005," Ausable Press, Keene, N.Y., 2005, by permission of the author. Copyright (c) 2005 by Keith Althaus. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.
******************************
American Life in Poetry provides newspapers and online publications with a free weekly column featuring contemporary American poems. The sole mission of this project is to promote poetry: American Life in Poetry seeks to create a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. There are no costs for reprinting the columns; we do require that you register your publication here and that the text of the column be reproduced without alteration.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 12:17 PM
June 15, 2006
Grandmother Speaks of the Old Country
Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.
American Life in Poetry: Column 64
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
Storytelling binds the past and present together, and is as essential to community life as are food and shelter. Many of our poets are masters at reshaping family stories as poetry. Here Lola Haskins retells a haunting tale, cast in the voice of an elder. Like the best stories, there are no inessential details. Every word counts toward the effect.
Grandmother Speaks of the Old Country
That year there were many deaths in the village.
Germs flew like angels from one house to the next and every family gave up its own. Mothers died at their mending. Children fell at school.
Of three hundred twenty, there were eleven left.
Then, quietly, the sun set on a day when no one died. And the angels whispered among themselves.
And that evening, as he sat on the stone steps, your grandfather felt a small wind on his neck when all the trees were still. And he would tell us always, how he had felt that night, on the skin of his own neck, the angels, passing.
Reprinted from "Desire Lines: New and Selected Poems," BOA Editions, 2004, by permission of the author and the publisher. Copyright (c) 2004 by Lola Haskins. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.
******************************
American Life in Poetry provides newspapers and online publications with a free weekly column featuring contemporary American poems. The sole mission of this project is to promote poetry: American Life in Poetry seeks to create a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. There are no costs for reprinting the columns; we do require that you register your publication here and that the text of the column be reproduced without alteration.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:15 AM
June 14, 2006
Donald Hall
Donald Hall has been named the next US Poet Laureate. I have enjoyed the current poet laureate, Ted Kooser, and his American Life in Poetry column, which I reprint here on the blog.
Donald Hall is a New England institution, as native to New Hampshire as granite even though he was born in Connecticut and went to Harvard. There are some good Hall resources on the Web here and here.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 3:02 PM
June 12, 2006
Listen to Bruce
Posted by Bill Trippe at 12:06 PM
June 8, 2006
The Dancer
Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.
American Life in Poetry: Column 63
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
Remember those Degas paintings of the ballet dancers? Here is a similar figure study, in muted color, but in this instance made of words, not pigment. As this poem by David Tucker closes, I can feel myself holding my breath as if to help the dancer hold her position.
The Dancer
Class is over, the teacher
and the pianist gone,
but one dancer
in a pale blue
leotard stays
to practice alone without music,
turning grand jetes
through the haze of late afternoon.
Her eyes are focused
on the balancing point
no one else sees
as she spins in this quiet
made of mirrors and light--
a blue rose on a nail--
then stops and lifts
her arms in an oval pause
and leans out
a little more, a little more,
there, in slow motion
upon the air.
Reprinted from the 2005 Bakeless Prize winner "Late for Work", by David Tucker, Houghton Mifflin, 2006, by permission of the author. "The Dancer" first appeared in "Visions International", No. 65, 2001. Copyright (c) 2001 by David Tucker. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.
******************************
American Life in Poetry provides newspapers and online publications with a free weekly column featuring contemporary American poems. The sole mission of this project is to promote poetry: American Life in Poetry seeks to create a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. There are no costs for reprinting the columns; we do require that you register your publication here and that the text of the column be reproduced without alteration.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 3:01 PM
June 7, 2006
Vote Early and Often
So out of the blue I get an email from Mike Hatcher, Cleveland Indians fan and soon-to-be newlywed. Mike writes, "My name is Mike Hatcher from Ohio. My fiancé and I are 1 of 3 finalists for the Cleveland Indians Dream Wedding at Jacobs Field. We have worked very hard to get to this point and now need your help with votes to make sure we win. Please visit the Cleveland Indians official website, then vote for Mike and Janet under fan forum in the wedding giveaway section."
I don't know Mike. I assume he got my name, and wrote to me, because I have written about Coco Crisp, formerly of the Indians and now of the Red Sox. So, good sport that I am, I watched the video, and Mike and Janet got my vote. It's very clever and very cute. Or, maybe I just have a thing for couples where the guy is a big lug and the woman is small.
Oh, and if you are really hooked, you can vote up to 25 times.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 12:07 PM
June 3, 2006
Bindweed
Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.
American Life in Poetry: Column 62
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE
Gardeners who've fought Creeping Charlie and other unwanted plants may sympathize with James McKean from Iowa as he takes on Bindweed, a cousin to the two varieties of morning glory that appear in the poem. It's an endless struggle, and in the end, of course, the bindweed wins.
Bindweed
There is little I can do
besides stoop to pluck them
one by one from the ground,
their roots all weak links,
this hoard of Lazaruses popping up
at night, not the Heavenly Blue
so like silk handkerchiefs,
nor the Giant White so timid
in the face of the moon,
but poor relations who visit
then stay. They sleep in my garden.
Each morning I evict them.
Each night more arrive, their leaves
small, green shrouds,
reminding me the mother root
waits deep underground
and I dig but will never find her
and her children will inherit
all that I've cleared
when she holds me tighter
and tighter in her arms.
Reprinted from "Headlong," University of Utah Press, 1987, by permission of the author, and first published in "Poetry Northwest," Vol. 23, No. 3, 1982. Copyright (c) 1982 by James McKean, whose most recent book is "Home Stand," a memoir published in 2005 by Michigan State University Press. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.
******************************
American Life in Poetry provides newspapers and online publications with a free weekly column featuring contemporary American poems. The sole mission of this project is to promote poetry: American Life in Poetry seeks to create a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. There are no costs for reprinting the columns; we do require that you register your publication here and that the text of the column be reproduced without alteration.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 8:33 AM
June 1, 2006
Off to Philadelphia
I am taking the Acela to Philadelphia, but got to South Station (Boston) early to do a conference call from the Acela lounge here. I discovered two new things on my way here. My local MBTA station now has the Charlie Card fare system in place (seemingly months (longer?) since I bought my first one at the Airport Station here), and the Acela lounge now has free wireless. Nice!
Posted by Bill Trippe at 1:58 PM
May 18, 2006
What I Learned From My Mother
Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.
American Life in Poetry: Column 60
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE
Most of us have taken at least a moment or two to reflect upon what we have learned from our mothers. Through a catalog of meaningful actions that range from spiritual to domestic, Pennsylvanian Julia Kasdorf evokes the imprint of her mother's life on her own. As the poem closes, the speaker invites us to learn these actions of compassion.
What I Learned From My Mother
I learned from my mother how to love
the living, to have plenty of vases on hand in case you have to rush to the hospital with peonies cut from the lawn, black ants still stuck to the buds. I learned to save jars large enough to hold fruit salad for a whole grieving household, to cube home-canned pears and peaches, to slice through maroon grape skins and flick out the sexual seeds with a knife point.
I learned to attend viewing even if I didn't know the deceased, to press the moist hands of the living, to look in their eyes and offer sympathy, as though I understood loss even then.
I learned that whatever we say means nothing, what anyone will remember is that we came.
I learned to believe I had the power to ease awful pains materially like an angel.
Like a doctor, I learned to create
from another's suffering my own usefulness, and once you know how to do this, you can never refuse.
To every house you enter, you must offer
healing: a chocolate cake you baked yourself, the blessing of your voice, your chaste touch.
Reprinted from "Sleeping Preacher," University of Pittsburgh Press, 1992, by permission of the publisher. First printed in "West Branch," Vol. 30, 1992. Copyright (c) 1992 by Julia Kasdorf. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.
******************************
American Life in Poetry provides newspapers and online publications with a free weekly column featuring contemporary American poems. The sole mission of this project is to promote poetry: American Life in Poetry seeks to create a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. There are no costs for reprinting the columns; we do require that you register your publication here and that the text of the column be reproduced without alteration.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 6:08 PM
Final Thought on the Flooding
Things are back to normal in most parts of Massachusetts, though people are now assessing the damage. The mayor of my small city was interviewed today on NPR.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 6:06 PM
Duty Calls
Here's a great story, about a World War II vet who was determined to do the right thing for some soldiers returning from Iraq. "I feel it's my duty. There were people there to greet me when I returned home," said Charles Nichols, a twice-wounded 80-year-old veteran of the Pacific Theater.
My dad was a veteran of the Second World War, also fought in the South Pacific, and also would have been 80 this year. My late father-in-law also fought in the Pacific, but would have been a little older this year (82 I think? will check...). This was a fine generation of men, the greatest generation according to some, and Mr. Nichols touched my heart with his gracious gesture to these fine young men and women returning home from Iraq.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:38 AM
May 15, 2006
Got the Pump
The basement is drying; I reached the far corners of it just now. Except for one large framed picture by Cartier-Bresson (this one, actually, though in black and white), everything survived. We have had water before, so most things are up on platforms.
Oh well, enough complaining. Compared to what some people have gone through, this is nothing of course.
Besides, the Sox are winning and the Yankees are losing. No complaints here.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:27 PM
OK, Enough Already
Massachusetts braces for more rain and major river flooding
Really, this is a bit much now.
I called my hardware store this morning asking about pumps. Interestingly, he quizzed me on how bad my problem was before answering. I have about 2 inches of water across my basement, so he recommended I wait until this afternoon and pick up something called a skimmer (they are getting a bunch more in this afternoon). They called back a little later and asked again about what I needed, and recommended again that I wait and get a skimmer. He didn't come out and say it, but I got the impression they are triaging things as they get calls, and saving the real pumps for the people who actually need them. Some people have serious flooding, with several feet of water.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 12:24 PM
May 13, 2006
Rain Out
The Boston area is awash with rain today, and through tomorrow apparently. They are expecting up to six inches of rain today and tomorrow where I live, north of the city. The Sox game is already called off, and I am sure there is water in my basement, but I have a cold and don't have the energy to look right now.
UPDATE: The basement is dry so far, but, apparently, Smudgie has decided it is not too soon to head for higher ground.
Some of you might remember that Smudgie enjoyed her fifteen minutes of fame on the Web a few months ago. For details on that and a picture of her highness up close, see this entry.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 4:10 PM
May 11, 2006
At Twenty-Eight
Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.
American Life in Poetry: Column 59
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE
Contrary to the glamorized accounts we often read about the lives of single women, Amy Fleury, a native of Kansas, presents us with a realistic, affirmative picture. Her poem playfully presents her life as serendipitous, yet she doesn't shy away from acknowledging loneliness.
At Twenty-Eight
It seems I get by on more luck than sense, not the kind brought on by knuckle to wood, breath on dice, or pennies found in the mud.
I shimmy and slip by on pure fool chance.
At turns charmed and cursed, a girl knows romance as coffee, red wine, and books; solitude she counts as daylight virtue and muted evenings, the inventory of absence.
But this is no sorry spinster story,
just the way days string together a life.
Sometimes I eat soup right out of the pan.
Sometimes I don't care if I will marry.
I dance in my kitchen on Friday nights, singing like only a lucky girl can.
"At Twenty-Eight" by Amy Fleury is reprinted from "Beautiful Trouble," Southern Illinois University Press, 2004, by permission of the author. The poem was originally published in Southern Poetry Review, Volume 41:2, Fall/Winter 2002. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.
******************************
American Life in Poetry provides newspapers and online publications with a free weekly column featuring contemporary American poems. The sole mission of this project is to promote poetry: American Life in Poetry seeks to create a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. There are no costs for reprinting the columns; we do require that you register your publication here and that the text of the column be reproduced without alteration.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:06 PM
May 9, 2006
So My Cab Driver Says...
Stuck in traffic in midtown Manhattan today, my cab driver says, "There's a big convention in town."
"Oh yeah?" I said. "Which one?"
"The Idiot Convention!"
Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:17 PM
May 6, 2006
There is Another Way
Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.
American Life in Poetry: Column 58
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE
A worm in an apple, a maggot in a bone, a person in the world. What might seem an odd assortment of creatures is beautifully interrelated by the Massachusetts poet Pat Schneider. Her poem suggests that each living thing is richly awake to its own particular, limited world.
There Is Another Way
There is another way to enter an apple:
a worm's way.
The small, round door
closes behind her. The world
and all its necessities
ripen around her like a room.
In the sweet marrow of a bone,
the maggot does not remember
the wingspread
of the mother, the green
shine of her body, nor even
the last breath of the dying deer.
I, too, have forgotten
how I came here, breathing
this sweet wind, drinking rain,
encased by the limits
of what I can imagine
and by a husk of stars.
Reprinted from "Another River: New and Selected Poems," Amherst Writers & Artists Press, 2005, by permission of the author. First printed in "Kalliope", Vol. XII, No. 1, 1989. Copyright (c) 2004 by Pat Schneider. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.
******************************
American Life in Poetry provides newspapers and online publications with a free weekly column featuring contemporary American poems. The sole mission of this project is to promote poetry: American Life in Poetry seeks to create a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. There are no costs for reprinting the columns; we do require that you register your publication here and that the text of the column be reproduced without alteration.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 12:24 PM
Busy, Busy
I have been traveling a lot, including out to San Francisco for the Gilbane Conference, but also to client visits in New York, Philadelphia, Tampa, and DC. The travel should quiet down the next few weeks, though I will still be very busy.
For those of you who attended my DITA tutorial at Gilbane, they will be posting my slides shortly on this page.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 12:03 PM
April 28, 2006
Coins
Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.
American Life in Poetry: Column 57
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE
Midwestern poet Richard Newman traces the imaginary life of coins as a connection between people. The coins--seemingly of little value--become a ceremonial and communal currency.
Coins
My change: a nickel caked with finger grime; two nicked quarters not long for this life, worth more for keeping dead eyes shut than bus fare; a dime, shining in sunshine like a new dime; grubby pennies, one stamped the year of my birth, no brighter than I from 40 years of wear.
What purses, piggy banks, and window sills have these coins known, their presidential heads pinched into what beggar's chalky palm-- they circulate like tarnished red blood cells, all of us exchanging the merest film of our lives, and the lives of those long dead.
And now my turn in the convenience store, I hand over my fist of change, still warm, to the bored, lip-pierced check-out girl, once more to be spun down cigarette machines, hurled in fountains, flipped for luck--these dirty charms chiming in the dark pockets of the world.
Reprinted from "Borrowed Towns," World Press, 2005, by permission of the author. First printed in "Crab Orchard Review," Volume 10, No. 1, 2005. Copyright (c) 2005 by Richard Newman. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.
******************************
American Life in Poetry provides newspapers and online publications with a free weekly column featuring contemporary American poems. The sole mission of this project is to promote poetry: American Life in Poetry seeks to create a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. There are no costs for reprinting the columns; we do require that you register your publication here and that the text of the column be reproduced without alteration.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:28 PM
At the Edge of Town
Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.
American Life in Poetry: Column 56
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE
When I complained about some of the tedious jobs I had as a boy, my mother would tell me, Ted, all work is honorable. In this poem, Don Welch gives us a man who's been fixing barbed wire fences all his life.
At the Edge of Town
Hard to know which is more gnarled,
the posts he hammers staples into
or the blue hummocks which run
across his hands like molehills.
Work has reduced his wrists
to bones, cut out of him
the easy flesh and brought him
down to this, the crowbar's teeth
caught just behind a barb.
Again this morning
the crowbar's neck will make
its blue slip into wood,
there will be that moment
when too much strength
will cause the wire to break.
But even at 70, he says,
he has to have it right,
and more than right.
This morning, in the pewter light,
he has the scars to prove it.
From "Gutter Flowers," Logan House, 2005. Copyright (c) 2005 by Don Welch and reprinted by permission of Logan House and the author. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.
******************************
American Life in Poetry provides newspapers and online publications with a free weekly column featuring contemporary American poems. The sole mission of this project is to promote poetry: American Life in Poetry seeks to create a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. There are no costs for reprinting the columns; we do require that you register your publication here and that the text of the column be reproduced without alteration.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:24 PM
April 19, 2006
I Would Rather Be in Philadelphia
Spring has certainly come to Philadelphia. I paused to take this picture before visiting a client near Independence Mall yesterday morning.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:56 AM
April 13, 2006
What We Need
Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.
American Life in Poetry: Column 55
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE
A circus is an assemblage of illusions, and here Jo McDougall, a Kansas poet, shows us a couple of performers, drab and weary in their ordinary lives, away from the lights at the center of the ring.
What We Need
It is just as well we do not see,
in the shadows behind the hasty tent
of the Allen Brothers Greatest Show,
Lola the Lion Tamer and the Great Valdini
in Nikes and jeans
sharing a tired cigarette
before she girds her wrists with glistening amulets
and snaps the tigers into rage,
before he adjusts the glimmering cummerbund
and makes from air
the white and trembling doves, the pair.
From "Dirt," Autumn House Press, Pittsburgh, 2001. Copyright (c) 2001 by Jo McDougall, whose most recent book is "Satisfied With Havoc," Autumn House Press, 2004. Reprinted by permission of the author and Autumn House Press. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.
******************************
American Life in Poetry provides newspapers and online publications with a free weekly column featuring contemporary American poems. The sole mission of this project is to promote poetry: American Life in Poetry seeks to create a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. There are no costs for reprinting the columns; we do require that you register your publication here and that the text of the column be reproduced without alteration.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 12:38 PM
April 11, 2006
Poets on Poetry
Information Please has a few well chosen quotes about poetry.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 8:22 PM
April 6, 2006
Tangerine
Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.
American Life in Poetry: Column 54
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE
Poet Ruth L. Schwartz writes of the glimpse of possibility, of something sweeter than we already have that comes to us, grows in us. The unrealizable part of it causes bitterness; the other opens outward, the cycle complete. This is both a poem about a tangerine and about more than that.
Tangerine
It was a flower once, it was one of a billion flowers whose perfume broke through closed car windows, forced a blessing on their drivers.
Then what stayed behind grew swollen, as we do; grew juice instead of tears, and small hard sour seeds, each one bitter, as we are, and filled with possibility.
Now a hole opens up in its skin, where it was torn from the branch; ripeness can't stop itself, breathes out; we can't stop it either. We breathe in.
From "Dear Good Naked Morning," (c) 2005 by Ruth L. Schwartz. Reprinted by permission of the author and Autumn House Press. First printed in "Crab Orchard Review," Vol. 8, No. 2. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.
******************************
American Life in Poetry provides newspapers and online publications with a free weekly column featuring contemporary American poems. The sole mission of this project is to promote poetry: American Life in Poetry seeks to create a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. There are no costs for reprinting the columns; we do require that you register your publication here and that the text of the column be reproduced without alteration.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 4:41 PM
April 4, 2006
What's in a Name?
I have mentioned before the suprising number of Red Sox players, past and present, who have first or last names that are also the names of Massachusetts cities and towns. So this year the Sox added Mike Lowell (hometown of Jack Kerouac) and Josh Beckett (an acceptable (in my book) spelling variant of Becket, MA, home of Jacob's Pillow). And we already had Tim Wakefield, of course. Too early to say of course, but some of the Red Sox minor league players include Matthew Hancock and Roger Lincoln.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 1:00 AM | Comments (3)
April 3, 2006
Pennant Fever Grips Hub
Sox win their home opener, 7-2.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 5:28 PM
Red Sox Opening Day
And hope springs eternal. There is no lack of stuff out there on opening day, but this caught my eye.
And I have offered this quote in the past, but it is so good I will take the trouble and repeat it here.
"I see great things in baseball. It's our game -- the American game. It will take our people out of doors, fill them with oxygen, give them a larger physical stoicism. Tend to relieve us from being a nervous, dyspeptic set. Repair those losses, and be a blessing to us."
--Walt Whitman
Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:26 AM
March 31, 2006
Nice Day, Too Much Work
It is a gorgeous day here in Boston, sunny, about 73 F. I have been heads down with some work since 7 AM. Any second now I am putting down this computer and stepping outside...
Posted by Bill Trippe at 3:14 PM | Comments (2)
March 30, 2006
A Pot of Red Lentils
Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.
American Life in Poetry: Column 53
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE
Writing poetry, reading poetry, we are invited to join with others in celebrating life, even the ordinary, daily pleasures. Here the Seattle poet and physician, Peter Pereira, offer us a simple meal.
A Pot of Red Lentils
simmers on the kitchen stove.
All afternoon dense kernels
surrender to the fertile
juices, their tender bellies
swelling with delight.
In the yard we plant
rhubarb, cauliflower, and artichokes,
cupping wet earth over tubers,
our labor the germ
of later sustenance and renewal.
Across the field the sound of a baby crying as we carry in the last carrots, whorls of butter lettuce, a basket of red potatoes.
I want to remember us this way--
late September sun streaming through
the window, bread loaves and golden
bunches of grapes on the table,
spoonfuls of hot soup rising
to our lips, filling us
with what endures.
Reprinted from "Saying the World," 2003, by permission of Copper Canyon Press. Copyright (c) 2003 by Peter Pereira. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.
******************************
American Life in Poetry provides newspapers and online publications with a free weekly column featuring contemporary American poems. The sole mission of this project is to promote poetry: American Life in Poetry seeks to create a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. There are no costs for reprinting the columns; we do require that you register your publication here and that the text of the column be reproduced without alteration.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:41 AM
March 29, 2006
Two Things I Like About this Picture
57 = the degrees Fahrenheit on my drove home Tuesday evening
277 = the number of total miles on my new car
And speaking of warm weather.... these crocuses like the sun today.
... and these daffodils are being a little coy, but aren't far behind.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 2:19 PM | Comments (2)
March 26, 2006
I Shall Be Telling This With a Sigh
Happy Birthday, Robert Frost.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 1:25 PM
March 25, 2006
"Tell the World What is Happening Here"
Dick Scobie was director of the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee from 1972 to 1988. He has recently published a memoir of his time there. For Dick, the defining time in his career at UUSC was the long war in El Salvador. He writes about this time in his book, and in an excerpt just published in UU World magazine.
For centuries the Salvadoran economic and military elite had brutally exploited the peasantry. Then, in the 1970s, the Salvadoran people became caught in a cruel geopolitical struggle between the capitalist West and the communist East. Government-sponsored death squads targeted anyone who supported reform of any kind—priests, professors, students, farmers, union organizers, protesters of election fraud. You didn’t have to do much to get labeled a subversive, and the targets of this nasty campaign included UUSC’s project partners.
In April 1977 I made my first visit to El Salvador with John McAward, the UUSC’s director of international programs. We interviewed victims and witnesses of government-sponsored violence and met with the country’s Catholic archbishop, Oscar Romero. A small man with a scholarly demeanor, Romero saw that his faith would compel him to speak out against the government repression. With grave sadness, he told us about the deepening crisis. “What can we do?” we asked. His response: “Tell the world what is happening here.”
And tell the world they did. Beginning with leading a Congressional delegation to El Salvador later that same year, the UUSC was instrumental in helping to bring peace to the country, but only after a long, bloody struggle.
During the next fifteen years the UUSC sponsored more than twenty delegations, giving more than thirty congresspeople from both parties an incomparable view of the social and political realities in Central America, especially as the Reagan Administration expanded U.S. support for right-wing regimes in the 1980s. A number of the people our delegations met with were murdered—including Romero, who was assassinated while saying mass in 1980. Most were civilian peasants, numbering in the hundreds of thousands in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua. Our work for a just peace in El Salvador was recognized in 1992 when Heather Foote, one of McAward’s successors, was invited to represent the UUSC as an observer at the signing of the Peace Accords that formally ended the civil war.
I've come to know Dick the past several years from the time we spend at Ferry Beach in the summer. He is a warm, wonderful guy, and I am proud to be in his circle of friends.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:33 AM
March 24, 2006
March Madness
I am not a huge college basketball fan, but I like the tournament, and am rooting for Boston College. I am watching the game now, and understand why so many people think Billy Packer is an idiot. The BC-Villanova game is happening right in front of him, but he seems to be commenting on a game he watched ten years ago.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 7:53 PM | Comments (2)
Radiator
Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.
American Life in Poetry: Column 52
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE
What a marvelous gift is the imagination, and each of us gets one at birth, free of charge and ready to start up, get on, and ride away. Can there be anything quite so homely and ordinary as a steam radiator? And yet, here, Connie Wanek, of Duluth, Minnesota, nudges one into play.
Radiator
Mittens are drying on the radiator,
boots nearby, one on its side.
Like some monstrous segmented insect
the radiator elongates under the window.
Or it is a beast with many shoulders
domesticated in the Ice Age.
How many years it takes
to move from room to room!
Some cage their radiators
but this is unnecessary
as they have little desire to escape.
Like turtles they are quite self-contained.
If they seem sad, it is only the same sadness we all feel, unlovely, growing slowly cold.
Reprinted from "Bonfire," New Rivers Press, 1997, by permission of the author. Copyright (c) 1997 by Connie Wanek. Her most recent book is "Hartley Field," from Holy Cow! Press. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.
******************************
American Life in Poetry provides newspapers and online publications with a free weekly column featuring contemporary American poems. The sole mission of this project is to promote poetry: American Life in Poetry seeks to create a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. There are no costs for reprinting the columns; we do require that you register your publication here and that the text of the column be reproduced without alteration.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:14 AM | Comments (2)
March 23, 2006
Crocuses
You wouldn't know it from the thermometer, but it is Spring here in greater Boston. These crocuses in front of my house seem to know it, though.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:10 AM
March 18, 2006
Marching
Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.
American Life in Poetry: Column 51
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE
Walt Whitman's poems took in the world through a wide-angle lens, including nearly everything, but most later poets have focused much more narrowly. Here the poet and novelist Jim Harrison nods to Whitman with a sweeping, inclusive poem about the course of life.
Marching
At dawn I heard among bird calls
the billions of marching feet in the churn and squeak of gravel, even tiny feet still wet from the mother's amniotic fluid, and very old halting feet, the feet of the very light and very heavy, all marching but not together, criss-crossing at every angle with sincere attempts not to touch, not to bump into each other, walking in the doors of houses and out the back door forty years later, finally knowing that time collapses on a single plateau where they were all their lives, knowing that time stops when the heart stops as they walk off the earth into the night air.
"Marching," from Jim Harrison's "Saving Daylight" (2006) is reprinted by permission of Copper Cayon Press. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.
******************************
American Life in Poetry provides newspapers and online publications with a free weekly column featuring contemporary American poems. The sole mission of this project is to promote poetry: American Life in Poetry seeks to create a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. There are no costs for reprinting the columns; we do require that you register your publication here and that the text of the column be reproduced without alteration.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:16 AM
March 15, 2006
An "Oh-My-God Level of Deliciousness"
That's what Zagat says about my nephew Max's cooking at Frascati in San Francisco (PDF download). If you want to see his the cover of the newspaper (also PDF), click here.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 4:30 PM
March 13, 2006
New York Scene
A couple of weeks ago I took my two sons to New York, and we did one of those tour buses around lower Manhattan. I snapped this shot along the way. I believe it was the Flatiron Building, but I am not sure. Might be from a building we passed in the Village.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 8:48 PM
Sunny Day in NoHo
It was a beautiful afternoon in New York, so after my meetings today I walked up Broadway a bit before jumping back on the subway and then the Acela back to Boston. Just north of Houston Street, this building caught my eye.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 8:40 PM
March 11, 2006
Against Lawn
Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.
American Life in Poetry: Column 50
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE
Thousands of Americans fret over the appearance of their lawns, spraying, aerating, grooming, but here Grace Bauer finds good reasons to resist the impulse to tame what's wild: the white of clover blossoms under a streetlight, the possibility of finding the hidden, lucky, four-leafed rarity.
Against Lawn
The midnight streetlight illuminating
the white of clover assures me
I am right not to manicure
my patch of grass into a dull
carpet of uniform green, but
to allow whatever will to take over.
Somewhere in that lace lies luck,
though I may never swoop down
to find it. Three, too, is
an auspicious number. And this seeing
a reminder to avoid too much taming
of what, even here, wants to be wild.
Reprinted from the literary journal, "Lake Effect," Volume 8, Spring 2004 by permission of the author. Copyright (c) 2004 by Grace Bauer, whose new book, "Beholding Eye," is forthcoming from Wordtech Communications in 2006. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.
******************************
American Life in Poetry provides newspapers and online publications with a free weekly column featuring contemporary American poems. The sole mission of this project is to promote poetry: American Life in Poetry seeks to create a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. There are no costs for reprinting the columns; we do require that you register your publication here and that the text of the column be reproduced without alteration.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 12:29 PM
Currently Reading
Actually--even better--my younger son is currently reading Darcy Frey's Last Shot: City Streets, Basketball Dreams. This is one of at least three great books in a special genre--nonfiction stories of urban youth who are gifted basketball players and might be able to use basketball as their ticket out of their challenging lives. It's a wonderful book, sad and wise and beautifully written. My younger son is not a big reader, but the night we bought it he sat down and read the first 40 pages, and has been plowing through it ever since.
The more famous book in the genre is Hoop Dreams: The True Story of Hardship and Triumph, made famous by the excellent documentary that was based on the book. I think Frey's book is the most well written, but my favorite book in this genre is the least known, Fall River Dreams: A Team's Quest for Glory, A Town's Search for Its Soul. It tells the story of can't-miss Fall River, MA basketball star Chris Herren. Herren did manage to miss, though he had brief stints in the NBA, including with my home-town Celtics. But drugs got in Herren's way, and last I heard he was playing professional basketball in Iran.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 12:09 PM
March 2, 2006
On A Moonstruck Gravel Road
Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.
American Life in Poetry: Column 49
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE
This fine poem by Rodney Torreson, of Grand Rapids, Michigan, looks into the world of boys arriving at the edge of manhood, and compares their natural wildness to that of dogs, with whom they feel a kinship.
On A Moonstruck Gravel Road
The sheep-killing dogs saunter home,
wool scraps in their teeth.
From the den of the moon
ancestral wolves
howl their approval.
The farm boys, asleep in their beds,
live the same wildness under their lids; every morning they come back through the whites of their eyes to do their chores, their hands pausing to pet the dog, to press its ears back, over the skull, to quiet that other world.
>From "A Breathable Light," New Issues Poetry and Prose, 2002, and first published in Sou'wester. Copyright (c) 2002 by Rodney Torreson and reprinted by permission of the author. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.
******************************
American Life in Poetry provides newspapers and online publications with a free weekly column featuring contemporary American poems. The sole mission of this project is to promote poetry: American Life in Poetry seeks to create a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. There are no costs for reprinting the columns; we do require that you register your publication here and that the text of the column be reproduced without alteration.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 5:04 PM
Overheard at Broadway and 33rd
"Look, I'm on probabtion. It all depends on what the court allows me to do."
Posted by Bill Trippe at 1:42 PM
February 28, 2006
Laissez les Bons Temps Rouler!
It's Fat Tuesday! And this year especially, we should all raise a toast to New Orleans. Better yet, raise a toast and open your wallets.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:51 AM
February 23, 2006
Some Boys are Born to Wander
Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.
American Life in Poetry: Column 48
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE
Every parent can tell a score of tales about the difficulties of raising children, and then of the difficulties in letting go of them. Here the Texas poet, Walt McDonald, shares just such a story.
Some Boys are Born to Wander
From Michigan our son writes, How many elk?
How many big horn sheep? It's spring,
and soon they'll be gone above timberline,
climbing to tundra by summer. Some boys are born to wander, my wife says, but rocky slopes with spruce and Douglas fir are home.
He tried the navy, the marines, but even the army wouldn't take him, not with a foot like that.
Maybe it's in the genes. I think of wild-eyed years
till I was twenty, and cringe. I loved motorcycles, too dumb to say no to our son--too many switchbacks in mountains, too many icy spots in spring.
Doctors stitched back his scalp, hoisted him in traction like a twisted frame. I sold the motorbike to a junkyard, but half his foot was gone. Last month, he cashed
his paycheck at the Harley house, roared off with nothing but a backpack, waving his headband, leaning into a downhill curve and gone.
First published in "New Letters," Vol. 69, 2002, and reprinted from "A Thousand Miles of Stars," 2004, by permission of the author and Texas Tech University Press. Copyright (c) 2002 by Walt McDonald. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.
******************************
American Life in Poetry provides newspapers and online publications with a free weekly column featuring contemporary American poems. The sole mission of this project is to promote poetry: American Life in Poetry seeks to create a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. There are no costs for reprinting the columns; we do require that you register your publication here and that the text of the column be reproduced without alteration.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:26 PM
February 16, 2006
Holy Cussing
Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.
American Life in Poetry: Column 47
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE
The poet, novelist and biographer, Robert Morgan, who was raised in North Carolina, has written many intriguing poems that teach his readers about southern folklore. Here's just one example.
Holy Cussing
When the most intense revivals swept
the mountains just a century ago,
participants described the shouts and barks in unknown tongues, the jerks of those who tried to climb the walls, the holy dance and laugh.
But strangest are reports of what was called the holy cuss. Sometimes a man who spoke in tongues and leapt for joy would break into an avalanche of cursing that would stun with brilliance and duration. Those that heard would say the holy spirit spoke as from a whirlwind. Words burned on the air like chains of dynamite. The listeners felt transfigured, and felt true contact and true presence then, as if the shock of unfamiliar and blasphemous profanity broke through beyond the reach of prayer and song and hallo to answer heaven's anger with its echo.
Reprinted from Southern Poetry Review, Vol. 43, No. 1, 2004 by permission of the author. Copyright (c) 2004, by Robert Morgan, whose most recent book is "The Strange Attractor: New and Selected Poems," Louisiana State University Press, 2004. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.
******************************
American Life in Poetry provides newspapers and online publications with a free weekly column featuring contemporary American poems. The sole mission of this project is to promote poetry: American Life in Poetry seeks to create a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. There are no costs for reprinting the columns; we do require that you register your publication here and that the text of the column be reproduced without alteration.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 7:56 PM
30th Street Station
I had a few minutes to kill in Philadelphia's 30th Street Station yesterday, and happened to notice a sculpture I hadn't seen before. It's enormous, and hard to miss, but it is kind of tucked away from the action. It is about 10 scenes in one, but I snapped this one. The sculpture is called, "The Spirit of Transportation," but I might call this part, "Amtrak on a Bad Day."
Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:13 AM
February 13, 2006
Just in Time for Valentine's Day
Information Please has a great roundup of love poems on the Web. There are thousands of worthy poems for such a list, but I still go for the oldies but goodies.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 2:03 PM
February 12, 2006
This Explains Everything
No wonder the wingnuts don't "believe" in evolution. They would have to admit this is an example of natural selection at work.
UPDATE from the Delightful Irony Department: Happy Birthday, Charles Darwin!
Posted by Bill Trippe at 6:29 PM
A Haiku
I watch the sun set
as your footprints fill with snow--
gone by tomorrow.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 5:08 PM
February 11, 2006
There is something about...
... a leafless oak tree against a winter sky.
This is looking up from the low point of my backyard, with my house on the left.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:04 AM
Nor'Easter Coming
So says the national weather service.
...BLIZZARD WATCH NOW IN EFFECT FROM THIS EVENING THROUGH SUNDAY
AFTERNOON...
SNOW WILL BEGIN ON THE SOUTH COAST AND ISLANDS BETWEEN 8 PM AND
11 PM TONIGHT...AND SHOULD REACH THE INTERSTATE 95 CORRIDOR BETWEEN
10 PM TONIGHT AND 1 AM SUNDAY. THE HEAVIEST SNOW WILL FALL OVERNIGHT
INTO EARLY SUNDAY AFTERNOON.
TOTAL ACCUMULATIONS WILL RANGE FROM 6 TO 10 INCHES ON NANTUCKET AND
BLOCK ISLAND...TO BETWEEN 8 AND 15 INCHES ELSEWHERE. THE 15 INCH
TOTALS ARE MOST LIKELY TO OCCUR FROM PROVIDENCE AND BOSTON TO THE
SOUTH COAST.
DURING THE HEIGHT OF THE STORM SUNDAY...BLIZZARD CONDITIONS ARE
POSSIBLE WITH SNOWFALL RATES NEAR 3 INCHES PER HOUR. NORTHEAST WINDS
GUSTING AS HIGH AS 50 MPH MAY PRODUCE WHITE OUT CONDITIONS WITH NEAR
ZERO VISIBILITY. ON THE SOUTH COAST...CAPE COD AND THE ISLANDS WIND
GUSTS MAY REACH 60 MPH.
Sounds impressive, but 28 years ago this week, we got through the Blizzard of 78. Now that was a storm; this will be a snow shower by comparison. Besides, I've got plenty of gas in the snow blower, and my roof rake stands at the ready.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:49 AM
February 9, 2006
Geology
Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.
American Life in Poetry: Column 046
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE
We constantly compare one thing with another, or attempt to, saying, "Well, you know, love is like...it's like...well, YOU know what it's like." Here Bob King, who lives in Colorado, takes an original approach and compares love to the formation of rocks.
Geology
I know the origin of rocks, settling
out of water, hatching crystals
from fire, put under pressure
in various designs I gathered
pretty, picnic after picnic.
And I know about love, a little,
igneous lust, the slow affections
of the sedimentary, the pressure
on earth out of sight to rise up
into material, something solid
you can hold, a whole mountain,
for example, or a loose collection
of pebbles you forgot you were keeping.
Reprinted from the Marlboro Review, Issue 16, 2005, by permission of the author. Copyright (c) 2005 by Robert King, whose prose book, "Stepping Twice Into the River: Following Dakota Waters," appeared in 2005 from The University Press of Colorado. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.
******************************
American Life in Poetry provides newspapers and online publications with a free weekly column featuring contemporary American poems. The sole mission of this project is to promote poetry: American Life in Poetry seeks to create a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. There are no costs for reprinting the columns; we do require that you register your publication here and that the text of the column be reproduced without alteration.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 7:15 PM
February 8, 2006
Coco Crisp Links
Looking at my site activity logs, I seem to get a lot of visitors who arrive at the site looking for information on Coco Crisp. I have discussed him briefly here and here. One common search query is about Coco's real name, which is Covelli Loyce Crisp, but people also have queried about his nationality (born in Los Angeles), and how old he is (26 as of November 1, 2005). As a service to my loyal readers and these visitors, let me also provide the following useful and interesting Coco Crisp links:
- Coco's "Player Card" page, including lifetime stats, at ESPN.com.
- Coco's page at Baseball-Reference.com, which tells me that Coco was first drafted by the St. Louis Cardinals but later sent as the "player to be named later" to the Cleveland Indians in a trade for pitcher Chuck Finley
- An article from the Boston Herald analyzing Crisp's trade to the Red Sox.
- A Canadian Red Sox blogger (no, I am not making that up) wrote some thoughts on the Crisp trade before it was official and elicited some interesting response. The blogger was one of a dozen or so who used the headline, "Cuckoo For Coco Crisp," and if you don't understand that, read this.
- Here's a good analysis from FoxSports.com, prior to the trade, of what they trade would mean for the Red Sox and Indians.
- Here's Coco's Wikipedia entry, which explains where his nickname comes from.
- Here's something you may not have known about Coco--he recorded a hip hop song, "We Got That Thing."
- Here are a couple of pictures of Coco when he played for the New Hampshire Ravens (now the Fisher Cats) in the Cardinals' minor league system.
Find this useful? Don't hesitate to click the PayPal button on the right-hand side of my main page and send a handsome donation to the author!
Posted by Bill Trippe at 8:58 AM | Comments (1)
February 4, 2006
A Little Unspoiled Florida in Disney
A few hundred yards from the hotel, I found this little pond.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 6:25 PM
Leaving Walt Disney
I had a little time after my meetings ended today to walk around Disney and take a few pictures. This is where we stayed and had the meetings, the Swan Hotel. What was the architect thinking?
Free WiFi here in the Orlando airport!
Posted by Bill Trippe at 6:18 PM
A Harbinger of Spring
So I am at Disney World, where, despite some rain, it has been warm enough to wear shorts. As Tennyson told us, "In the spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love." Maybe it is because I am not such a young man anymore, but this early taste of Spring has me thinking of baseball. Spring training starts in a couple of weeks, and I just found out that I can sign up already for Yahoo fantasy baseball. In a week or so, I can look forward to this.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:12 AM
January 30, 2006
Slow Blogging
I have been slow blogging for a few days, and have a small backlog of things I wanted to post about. Part of it is my travel schedule. I am in Denver at SPAB, and then am off to a client meeting in Orlando.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 3:33 PM
January 27, 2006
Mongrel Heart
Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series. I don't mind saying that this poem reminds me of a wonderful mutt in my life.
American Life in Poetry: Column 043
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE
Unlike the calculated expressions of feeling common to its human masters, there is nothing disingenuous about the way a dog praises, celebrates, frets or mourns. In this poem David Baker gives us just such an endearing mutt.
Mongrel Heart
Up the dog bounds to the window, baying
like a basset his doleful, tearing sounds
from the belly, as if mourning a dead king,
and now he's howling like a beagle -- yips, brays,
gagging growls -- and scratching the sill paintless,
that's how much he's missed you, the two of you,
both of you, mother and daughter, my wife
and child. All week he's curled at my feet,
warming himself and me watching more TV,
or wandered the lonely rooms, my dog shadow,
who like a poodle now hops, amped-up windup
maniac yo-yo with matted curls and snot nose
smearing the panes, having heard another car
like yours taking its grinding turn down
our block, or a school bus, or bird-squawk,
that's how much he's missed you, good dog,
companion dog, dog-of-all-types, most excellent dog
I told you once and for all we should never get.
******************************
Reprinted from "The Southeast Review," Vol. 23, No. 2, 2005, by permission of the author, whose newest book of poetry is "Midwest Eclogue," W. W. Norton (2005). Copyright (c) 2005 by David Baker. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.
******************************
American Life in Poetry provides newspapers and online publications with a free weekly column featuring contemporary American poems. The sole mission of this project is to promote poetry: American Life in Poetry seeks to create a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. There are no costs for reprinting the columns; we do require that you register your publication here and that the text of the column be reproduced without alteration.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:13 AM
January 23, 2006
What a Difference a Day Makes
Well, two days actually. Saturday we had Springtime in January here in Boston, and this morning I woke up to this.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 8:29 AM
January 22, 2006
Coco Crisp, Redux
So the Red Sox might get Coco Crisp, whom I have written about in the past as a member of my all-time Major League Baseball Food Team.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:51 AM
January 21, 2006
Springtime in January
Just like the other day, we have unseasonably warm weather for a January day in Boston. If you read my last entry on this, the weather then turned for the worse. I took the picture below about noon today. The thermometer is outside my kitchen window. That looks like 57 Fahrenheit to me (about 14 for you Celsius folks out there). But now it's 5:45 p.m. and the winds are whipping as a cold front moves back in. By tomorrow, it should be 39.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 5:42 PM
January 19, 2006
To Play Pianissimo
Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.
American Life in Poetry: Column 043
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE
Lola Haskins, who lives in Florida, has written a number of poems about musical terms, entitled "Adagio," "Allegrissimo," "Staccato," and so on. Here is just one of those, presenting the gentleness of pianissimo playing through a series of comparisons.
To Play Pianissimo
Does not mean silence.
The absence of moon in the day sky
for example.
Does not mean barely to speak,
the way a child's whisper
makes only warm air
on his mother's right ear.
To play pianissimo
is to carry sweet words
to the old woman in the last dark row
who cannot hear anything else,
and to lay them across her lap like a shawl.
>From "Desire Lines: New and Selected Poems," BOA Editions, Rochester, NY. Copyright (c) 2004 by Lola Haskins and reprinted by permission of the author and the publisher. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.
******************************
American Life in Poetry provides newspapers and online publications with a free weekly column featuring contemporary American poems. The sole mission of this project is to promote poetry: American Life in Poetry seeks to create a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. There are no costs for reprinting the columns; we do require that you register your publication here and that the text of the column be reproduced without alteration.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:16 PM
January 18, 2006
Four Words
Here are four words I don't mind using together in a sentence: "unseasonably," "warm," "January," and "Boston." It is supposed to hit 50 (Fahrenheit) today.
UPDATE: On second thought, maybe the warm weather wasn't so great after all.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:25 AM
January 12, 2006
Raising Cain
I'm watching the documentary Raising Cain, about the trouble with American boys. It's really good, and a number of the kids profiled are right here from my home town, Melrose, Massachusetts, so it has an extra poignancy.
The documentary is available on DVD. Of course, you could also read the book.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:48 PM | Comments (2)
What Calls Us
Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.
American Life in Poetry: Column 42
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE
Here is a poem by David Bengtson, a Minnesotan, about the simple pleasure of walking through deep snow to the mailbox to see what's arrived. But, of course, the pleasure is not only in picking up the mail with its surprises, but in the complete experience--being fully alive to the clean cold air and the sound of the wind around the mailbox door.
What Calls Us
In winter, it is what calls us
from seclusion, through endless snow
to the end of a long driveway
where, we hope, it waits--
this letter, this package, this
singing of wind around an opened door.
Reprinted from "What Calls Us," a Dacotah Territory Chapbook, 2003, by permission of the author, whose most recent book is "Broken Lines: Prose Poems," from Juniper Press, St. Paul, MN, 2003. Poem copyright (c) 2003 by David Bengtson. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.
******************************
American Life in Poetry provides newspapers and online publications with a free weekly column featuring contemporary American poems. The sole mission of this project is to promote poetry: American Life in Poetry seeks to create a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. There are no costs for reprinting the columns; we do require that you register your publication here and that the text of the column be reproduced without alteration.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 5:06 PM
January 9, 2006
New York, New York
I am off to New York for a couple of days, visiting a client. I always find myself wishing to write about New York--there is so much there to capture and discuss and mull over. I have tried here and there, but, really, the city deserves more. I'll be taking an evening Amtrak train, which gives me a nice block of time to read and write.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:28 AM | Comments (2)
January 4, 2006
Central Square, Redux
I wrote about Central Square recently, and fussed over which photo to include. I ended up choosing one that, I thought, captured the mix of themes I wrote about. I had been tempted to use this one, which, of course, is only one slice of Central Square. I figured it would be precisely what Red State voters imagine the whole of Cambridge to be, but I decided it was better to not tease them.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 2:55 PM
January 1, 2006
Rhododendron
In Winter, the Rhododendron next to my house is a great natural thermometer. The colder it is, the more the leaves droop and curl back. This is from yesterday, when it was probably in the mid 30s (Fahrenheit).
Here it is today, when it was 28 and snowing.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 7:26 PM
Baseball Cards
Baseball cards are so much cooler now than when I was a kid. Take this one, for example, which is of Moises Alou, a minor star in my book. It starts with a "throwback" graphic design, based on a set of cards that Cracker Jack first issued in 1915. Topps came out with a set of cards for 2004 that used the old design with some new twists. This card then includes a "game worn" Jersey swatch. They take an actual Jersey he wore in some game, and cut it up into tiny pieces and include little swatches in the cards. The one shown here, owned by my son, has a nice swatch because it shows a small piece of pinstripe. For a collector, this card is modestly attractive, worth $3-8 according to Beckett's, the publisher that tracks such things.
My older son is a fairly serious collector, and does some buying and selling on eBay. For a complete listing of all the cards my son is currently selling on eBay, click here.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 1:30 PM
December 31, 2005
Winter's Closing In
I consider myself a native New Englander, even though I was born outside Philadelphia. But I only lived there for 6 months, and, since then, Massachusetts has been my home. When I was a kid, I liked winter. I skated, played hockey, sledded, had snowball fights. It probably isn't true, but it seems like I was outdoors in winter as much as I was any other season. Some of my most memorable hockey games were on outside rinks--you don't see them much any more--but we would play a few each year outdoors. On the coldest days, the ice was hardest, and the tradeoff always seemed worth it.
Now I am not terribly active in the winter. I stay indoors, even to exercise. Each year it seems I tolerate winter a little less, and look forward to Spring even a little more.
Having said that, I still enjoy one thing about winter, and that is my small rituals of getting the house ready for winter. Putting down the storm windows. Dismantling and taking in the hammock. Putting away the hoses and the rakes and the lawn mower. My older son helped me today. We did some final raking, collected the soccer balls and basktballs from around the yard, and bagged up the leaves. I took out the snow blower, gassed it up, and drove to the gas station to fill the 3-gallon gas tank. It probably won't be enough gas for all the snow, but it makes me feel prepared. Before we went in, I took a few pictures. This one is a stand of elms directly behind the house. They are my shade in the summer.
The title of this entry, by the way, refers to an old Joni Mitchell song, though I've always liked Tom Rush's version. You can hear a brief clip here, and find the complete lyrics here.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 4:48 PM
December 30, 2005
A Yellow Leaf
I've discussed the American Life in Poetry project before. Here is the latest installment.
American Life in Poetry: Column 40
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE
Arizonan Alberto Rios probably observed this shamel ash often, its year-round green leaves never changing. On this particular day, however, he recognizes a difference--a yellow leaf. In doing so he offers us a glimpse of how something small yet unexpected may stay with us, perhaps even become a secret pleasure.
A Yellow Leaf
A yellow leaf in the branches
Of a shamel ash
In the front yard;
I see it, a yellow leaf
Among so many.
Nothing distinguishes it,
Nothing striking, striped, stripped,
Strident, nothing
More than its yellow
On this day,
Which is enough, which makes me
Think of it later in the day,
Remember it in conversation
With a friend,
Though I do not mention it--
A yellow leaf on a shamel ash
On a clear day
In an Arizona winter,
A January like so many.
Reprinted from "The Smallest Muscle in the Human Body," Copper Canyon Press, 2002, by permission of Copper Canyon Press. Copyright (c) 2002 by Alberto Rios, a writer and professor at Arizona State University. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.
******************************
American Life in Poetry provides newspapers and online publications with a free weekly column featuring contemporary American poems. The sole mission of this project is to promote poetry: American Life in Poetry seeks to create a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. There are no costs for reprinting the columns; we do require that you register your publication here and that the text of the column be reproduced without alteration.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:33 AM
December 29, 2005
Central Square
So I have had my office in Central Square, Cambridge, for more than 18 months now. I travel often enough, though, that my actual days in the office are far less than that 18 months suggests. So it is only recently that I have started to feel like Central Square is anything like my turf. If you don't know Central Square at all, I will be at a loss to explain it well. If you do know Central Square well, you will probably find me to be a rank amateur, a rookie.
Central Square is defined by what it is not as much as by what it is. Central Square is not MIT, and it's definitely not Harvard, though it straddles Massachusetts Avenue almost exactly equidistant between the two campuses. But while Harvard and MIT are world centers of power, influence, and intellect, Central Square is the center of the city of Cambridge itself--it's where you will find Cambridge City Hall and the main post office of Cambridge, the headquarters of the Cambridge Police, the Cambridge YMCA and YWCA, and dozens of other municipal and state offices.
Yet Central Square has only a tenuous hold on its role as the municipal center of Cambridge. In the classic tension of town versus gown, Central Square is every bit of town as Harvard and MIT are gown. It has stores that most Harvard and MIT students have never visited and likely never will have to--discount stores and dollar-amas, Goodwill Thrift Stores, and convenience stores that really are Keno parlors that happen to sell cigarettes and candy bars. It has a few bars that attract a younger crowd, but many more that don't--the sort of places that used to be called "Taps"--where older men nurse a few drinks for hours.
And it has street people. I started to write "homeless people," but I honestly don't know if they are homeless or not. Many of them are fighting one demon or more. They talk to themselves. They wander aimlessly. They ask you for money--some of them more menacingly than others. They idle at the benches, at the corners, and in the cavernous Dunkin Donuts where I get my morning coffee. One hot day this August, a giant of a man stood stalk still in the middle of Massachusetts Avenue, stopping all traffic, and then lay down. He didn't budge when first one pair of cops, then another, tried to rouse him. I watched for about 10 minutes, some EMTs arrived, and I moved on. The other day I watched a man wretching into a trash barrel, his female companion, nonplussed, waiting next to him. A couple of months ago, a handsome young black man sprinted by me on the sidewalk, three uniformed cops huffing and puffing behind him. No one took much notice.
You get the picture.
Yet despite these problems, Central Square has a lot of good things to point at. You can find almost any kind of restaurant in Central Square. It cornered the Boston-area market on Indian food ages ago, and you can walk for five minutes through Central Square and find excellent Korean, Vietnamese, Thai, Mexican, Bengali, Ethiopian, and Tibetan food. The last few years have seen upscale restaurants move in, but the mix of restaurants is far more interesting than any single one. I have guessed, but have yet to prove, that you could eat at a different restaurant every day for several months before starting to repeat yourself.
And it has vitality. Central Square is never empty, and it is rarely quiet. It has the dollar-amas and the thrift stores, but it also has bookstores, record stores, artisan shops, ethnic food stores, and more liquor stores in a few blocks than any neighborhood should have. Cheapo Records, the first used record store that I haunted, is still there, as are independent book stores and a Ten Thousand Villages, which sells fairly traded handicrafts from around the world.
It is all these things together that make Central Square so appealing to me. It is the good and the bad, the seedy and the hip, the way it struggles and the way it somehow thrives. When I climb the stairs out of the subway in the morning, I know I'm not stepping onto some chic avenue or into the hermetic seal of an office tower. I'll duck in and out of Dunkin Donuts, fend off an angry beggar or two. And then I'll make my way down the wide sidewalk of Massachusetts Avenue, and take in a few minutes of Central Square before reaching my office and the business of the day.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 6:57 PM
December 25, 2005
Currently Reading
Hawthorne in Concord by Philip McFarland.
Nathaniel Hawthorne has always been a favorite, and I have mentioned before that the Web has some excellent Hawthorne resources. But this book is revealing Hawthorne the person, and, so far in the telling, he is as loving and kind as a person as he was talented and probing as a writer. The book opens with his marriage to Sophia Peabody. In a love letter to Sophia three years earlier, he had imagined their new life together. "Oh, beloved, if we had but a cottage, somewhere beyond the sway of the East Wind, yet within the limits of New-England, where we could be always together, and have a place to be in--" What more could lovers want? "Nothing-save daily bread, (or rather bread and milk; for I think I should adopt your diet) and clean white apparel every day for mine unspotted Dove. Then... I could not be other than good and happy, when your kiss would sanctify me at all my outgoings and incomings, and when I should rest nightly in your arms."
When I was an undergraduate, a poetry instructor told us to write a poem of place. I was living in a rambling old brick house in New Bedford. It had probably been a nice house once, but now it was student housing, and really, nothing much to write about. But I was a dogged and unimaginative student, so I went with what I had. I learned the house was built in 1842, and the only thing noteworthy I could come up with about 1842 was that it was the year "Hawthorne was married." My poem was a pitiful little thing, but little did I know how important that single detail was. And now I do, thanks to the fine writing of Philip McFarland.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 7:53 PM
So It's Christmas
I don't think of myself as someone who is big on holidays. If I were pressed to choose a favorite, I might pick Thanksgiving. I enjoy family and football, in that order, and I like the relative simplicity of Thanksgiving and the sentiment of giving thanks. I'm also in Boston, close to where the holiday began, so I do have that same sense of impending winter, the need to buckle down, and the urge to be thankful for the bounty that is in front of us, at this moment.
I also might pick the Fourth of July, the one summer holiday, since summer is my favorite season. The Fourth of July is also symbolic of great beginnings--the birth of the nation and the beginning of the real hot weather of summer (around here anyway). It also close enough to the end of the school year that I still associate it with commencement--the end of school and the start of a new phase in life.
But Christmas is full of meaning of course. I have some childhood memories that I have touched on here and here. I also have seen Christmas anew over the last 15 years as my sons have gone from babies to toddlers to little boys to big boys and almost young men. My 14-year-old has made this amazing transformation the past few years. At 12, he was still all about what was under the tree for him. Last year, he groped for meaning in the holiday, saying out loud on Christmas day, "I don't know what to think about Christmas this year." And then this year he bought the most thoughtful and generous gifts for his brother, his mother, and me. When I helped him wrap the presents for his mother last night, he said, "I wanted to get two presents each for you and Mom because, you know, you're my parents and you get me so much and do so much for me."
For all his teenage awkwardness, my son is startlingly good at saying out loud what I sometimes only wish I could say. How many times I could have said, "I don't know what to think about Christmas this year"--whether it was because I was 13 or 19 or 46. And how many times I could have expressed my gratitude in such a direct and warm way.
So maybe that is why I hesitate to say Christmas is my favorite holiday. Perhaps it is too hard to know exactly what to think about a day filled with so much meaning. Perhaps it is too powerful to fully consider the obvious--how much we owe to the people most important in our lives. At Thanksgiving, we pause and give thanks, share a meal, watch some football, nap. At Christmas, we are too rushed to merely pause, and we have the extra task of choosing and bringing gifts. We bring these gifts hoping, in our heart of hearts, that we have chosen and are bringing the right gifts, the ones that show how we really feel about the living, breathing, smiling people taking them from our hands.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:53 AM
Whatever You Do...
... don't let the wingnuts who worry about the alleged war on Christmas hear about this.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:38 AM
December 22, 2005
American Life in Poetry
I have written about Ted Kooser before (here and here). One of the things he has done as U.S. poet laureate is to create a new, freely distributed column on poetry called American Life in Poetry. He shares a poem written by an American poet, and comments briefly on it. The following is the most recent column.
American Life in Poetry: Column 39
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE
Many of us keep journals, but while doing so few of us pay much attention to selecting the most precise words, to determining their most effective order, to working with effective pauses and breath-like pacing, to presenting an engaging impression of a single, unique day. This poem by Nebraskan Nancy McCleery is a good example of one poet's carefully recorded observations.
December Notes
The backyard is one white sheet
Where we read in the bird tracks
The songs we hear. Delicate
Sparrow, heavier cardinal,
Filigree threads of chickadee.
And wing patterns where one flew
Low, then up and away, gone
To the woods but calling out
Clearly its bright epigrams.
More snow promised for tonight.
The postal van is stalled
In the road again, the mail
Will be late and any good news
Will reach us by hand.
Reprinted from "Girl Talk," The Backwaters Press, 2002, by permission of the author. Copyright (c) 1994 by Nancy McCleery. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.
******************************
American Life in Poetry provides newspapers and online publications with a free weekly column featuring contemporary American poems. The sole mission of this project is to promote poetry: American Life in Poetry seeks to create a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. There are no costs for reprinting the columns; we do require that you register your publication here and that the text of the column be reproduced without alteration.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:07 AM
December 21, 2005
Two Black Dogs
Elsa Dorfman, who is a fine photographer, has said, "The hardest thing to photograph is a black dog. Forgive the word thing." I submit photographing two black dogs is harder. But here's one try. That's Cleo on the left, Petey on the right. Their focus is on some treats I was using to keep them still. Notice the fierce concentration! They know which side their bread is buttered on.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 1:14 PM
December 17, 2005
Richard Pryor
Richard Pryor passed away this week. The New Yorker has posted a 1999 profile from its archives, A Pryor Love, written by Hilton Als. Speaking of The New Yorker archive, I spent the past couple of weeks reviewing the disc-based version, The Complete New Yorker, and talking to some of the principals, including Ed Klaris, the project director at The New Yorker, and Murat Aktar, president of Bondi Digital, the company that developed the software and interface. My conclusion: it's great; just buy it.
The full article will be in EContent Magazine in a couple of months.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:50 AM
December 16, 2005
Farewell to Billy Ballgame
Bill Mueller signed with the Los Angeles Dodgers this week, bringing to an end a great three-year run with the Red Sox. Mueller is a class act--a soft-spoken, articulate professional who played every aspect of the game well. He may well be the least-known batting champion of the last decade, and this past year hit .295 with 10 home runs and 62 RBIs, all while playing Gold-Glove-caliber defense at third base.
I love baseball, but grow more cynical about the players themselves every day. Too many of them seem spoiled, self-absorbed, and indifferent to how lucky they are to be making millions of dollars a year to play a game. But Mueller was always thoughtful and self-effacing, and the respect and affection he has from his peers are obvious. Johnny Damon said last year, "Billy Mueller's my favorite ball player. I keep telling my son every time he watches a game to watch this guy because he's a guy who earns every bit of his success out on the baseball field with the way he approaches the game and the way he plays. That's the type of ball player I want my son to be." And Mueller's former manager, Dusty Baker, took his admiration one step further, saying Mueller was the sort of man he would want his daughter to marry.
So good luck to Bill Mueller, and I hope the Dodgers fans appreciate him as much as so many of us in Boston did.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 7:24 PM
December 12, 2005
Give My Regards to Broadway
Remember me to Herald Square!
Strictly speaking, this is Greeley Square, but close enough, and the lights were nicer.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 7:13 PM
December 10, 2005
Dad Physics
I have two boys, 12 and 14, both big and athletic, and both very physical. No shrinking wall-flowers here. When someone asks me how they are doing, I often say, "Bigger and meaner everyday." This throws some people off, imagining that I am raising two future Hell's Angels or something. But, in truth, I am just raising boys. They are physical. They are loud. The house shakes when they horse around. Things get broken at times, furniture flies. When my 14 year old is in my third-floor office listening to music, I can hear his foot-tapping in my kitchen two floors down.
Boys being boys, they are also prone to experimenting in what many parents of boys have come to call "kid physics,"--as in, let's try this and see what happens. Let's try bouncing a basketball off the living room wall. Let's try kicking a soccer ball against this picket fence as hard as I can. Let's try kicking the ottoman out from under my big brother when he is dancing on it. Knock on wood. We've had our share of stitches, bruises, and sprains, and we have well-used first aid supplies in all three bathrooms, but we have avoided major injuries. Here's to our continued good luck.
Looking at this picture of my younger son at a Red Sox game this past summer, I realized I have my own physics at work. Let's call it dad physics. That's him, wearing the #28 New England Patriots shirt (Corey Dillon), with the backwards Red Sox cap. He was waiting for autographs before a game. The man next to him is about my size, maybe a little shorter but a little bulkier.
And here's where the dad physics comes in. I am so used to seeing my sons as these big growing boys. I hear their thundering footsteps. I put away their shoes--almost as big as my size 13s already. I watch them, fearless and determined, on the soccer field and on the basketball court. Sometimes I forget they are just boys. Still small in some ways, still measuring themselves against bigger people, still measuring themselves against a big vast world.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 1:15 PM
December 8, 2005
The Tie a Day Club
Back in the day, men used to wear ties every day to work. Then they started with Casual Fridays, and, the next thing I knew, I was wearing a tie maybe fours times a year. So here I am with this great collection of ties, and few chances to wear them.
So I am thinking about creating a regular posting, featuring a tie that I might have worn that day had business required me to wear a tie.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 5:30 PM | Comments (1)
December 6, 2005
More Summer Musing
Every summer my family spends a week at a Unitarian Universalist conference center in Maine called Ferry Beach. It's in Saco, south of Old Orchard Beach, and the beach gives way pretty quickly to these tall, impressive pines. We have an outdoor chapel in the pines, and I sat there one day, looked up, and took the following picture.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:30 PM
Guilty Pleasures
So is anyone else addicted to Sudoku? I don't spend money on anything except necessities, and I have already bought a book and the software. (And look at the book! If Will Shortz likes it, it must be OK!)
After baseball and Law & Order, Sudoku is quickly becoming my third-favorite pasttime.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 5:28 PM
December 5, 2005
A Moment...
... before winter settles in. This is from the front of the house sometime in June.
We had a couple of inches of snow yesterday morning, and are expecting a few more tonight. It's 33 degrees out (Farenheit of course) as I write this, and the sun set at 4:12 pm. No surprise that today's tanning index was a 1 out of 10.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 8:33 PM
December 2, 2005
Some Boston Bests
Boston.com has a roundup of some of Boston's superlatives. Of course, the sports scene comes up, and I am a huge Red Sox fan, but this is just scary.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 1:07 PM
November 28, 2005
Books by Friends: Meal Makeovers
I have this nice pile of books next to my desk that have been written by friends of mine, so I thought I would take time out to highlight them over the next few weeks.
This book, The Mom's Guide to Meal Makeovers: Improving the Way Your Family Eats, One Meal at a Time!, was co-written by my friend Janice Bissex, who is a nutritionist. The book has done very well, and among our circle, people are always pointing out, "this is one of Janice's recipes" at pot lucks and such. As the title suggests, the focus is on family meals, so think "good, healthy food that doesn't require hours to make." My favorite is the Oh-So-Easy Chicken Parmesan. You can get some of their recipes online here.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 8:43 PM
Last, but Not Least
Here is the princess, Smudgie.
She thinks pictures are not all that dignified, so I had to sneak up on her during her nap. Now she won't speak to me for a week.
UPDATE: Smudgie has made this week's Carnival of the Cats, and, if you read the comments, she may be joining a select crowd at the home of the Carnvial.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 5:57 PM | Comments (3)
You Can Get Anything You Want...
... at Alice's Restaurant.
If you have no idea what I am talking about, read this, or better, yet, this. You can even listen to it here, and for free no less! If you are a serious fan, there is an entire Arlo concert (in pieces) here, here, here, and here.
Careful--apparently listening to this song identifies you as a lefty.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 2:12 PM
November 25, 2005
Mosey
I had some posts of my dogs earlier here and here. Here is a picture of one of the cats, the heat-seeking missile Mosey, enjoying some blankets and comforters fresh from the dryer.
In case you were wondering, yes, he is polydactyl.
UPDATE: I changed the polydactyl link above, as the page has been protected. You can also read the wikipedia entry on polydactyl cats here.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:26 PM | Comments (1)
A Poem
You Are
On a hot summer day,
you are the salt water to my hips,
and the approaching wave.
In the cool of November,
you are the last little pile of raked leaves.
At such moments,
I like to think I am
the perfect amount of room
in the waiting leaf bag.
Those who skate know the thrill
of being the first on the ice
after the Zamboni has finished its work.
The hard clean surface
under the glean of water.
That first stride onto the ice,
the skate edge catching exactly right.
You are that first stride.
And you are the perfect moments when I run.
The downward side of a long hill.
The deep filling breath.
The first glimpse of the finish line.
When night comes, you are, of course,
the first moment of our kiss,
our hands on each other's hips.
And then you are uncomplicated sleepiness,
a soft pillow,
the sheets and blankets arranged just so.
When I rise in the morning,
you are the first sip
of cream-silkened coffee.
Back in our bedroom,
I study the curve of your bare hip.
You are the freshly sliced canteloupe,
and I am the ready spoon.
-- Bill Trippe
Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:39 AM
November 22, 2005
And the Other 75% Were Lying
Almost a quarter of British motorists admit they have been so distracted by roadside billboards of semi-naked models that they have dangerously veered out of their lane, Reuters news reported earlier this week.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:04 PM
Currently Reading
Alfred Lubrano's Limbo: Blue Collar Roots, White Collar Dreams. There is a brief profile and precis of the book here.
The premise of the book is simple--people with blue collar roots who rise to the middle class have a different frame of mind from people who were born to the middle class. While I don't quite meet Lubrano's principal criterion for the people he calls "Straddlers"--he focuses on people who are the first in their family to attend college, and both my parents were college graduates--I identify deeply with much of what he says.
Early in the book he riffs on some of the values of blue collar culture, including some things he still holds close today:
Other things, too: loyalty; a sense of solidarity with people you live and work with; an understanding and appreciation of what it takes to get somewhere in a hard world where no one gives you a break; a sense of daring; and a physicality that’s honest, basic, and attractive. (When I worked for New York Newsday, a disgruntled reader had been stalking me and persistently threatening my life. A colleague suggested I get a "goon" to protect me. An editor answered, "Alfred doesn’t need a goon. Alfred is a goon.")
Later, he talks about his grandfather, a bricklayer, and what a tough man he was:
Sometimes, we'd simply look at the buildings on which my father and grandfather had worked. My grandfather was Ellis Island, Class of 1914. As a kid, he boxed and performed gymnastics on piles of horse manure dumped by the city in empty lots. Once, he lifted his junior high school principal and hung him on a clothes hook in a classroom wardrobe. "Guy deserved it," my grandfather said, and we believed him. He was handsome, with his mustache, thick hair, and eye twinkle. George Clooney looks so much like him in the movie O Brother, Where Art Thou? that my mother cried when she saw it. Now when the urge strikes, I can go to New York and see his handiwork—run my hands over the bricks that line the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway or any one of dozens of places that look like buildings to you but are monuments to me. He saw New York as two things: the deepwater port of possibility where you could make enough money to buy a place for your wife and raise your three daughters, and the lunatic town where punks sprayed graffiti over his bricks. He died when crack was big, and the city's renegade feel had soured him. Several Straddlers told me about a bluecollar elder who impressed them as much as my grandfather did me. These tough-guy old-timers possessed a characteristic—-strength, or dignity, or willfulness—-that Straddlers tried to emulate in their own lives. While working-class machismo doesn't always serve a Straddler well, sometimes just the knowledge that they share genes with people of courage can help a limbo man or woman through the hard days and nights.
Well said, and exactly the sentiment behind something I wrote about my own grandpa, Giacomo Tripi, Ellis Island, Class of 1909.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:15 AM
November 21, 2005
Tuning In, Redux
So after playing with the AM radio and the ionosphere the other evening, I then spent a couple of days in a rental car with XM Satellite Radio. I got a kick out of it at first, and was thrilled to find an all-baseball talk station. But, then, a day or so into it I realized that they were repeating a lot of programming. It didn't help that I seemed to hear the same disucssion of Alex Rodriguez winning the AL MVP (and beating out mi hombre, David Ortiz) over and over and over again. So I was beginning to conclude satellite radio might not be for me, but then I heard about this.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 5:43 PM
November 14, 2005
Tuning In
I had a long drive back from southwestern Connecticut to Boston this afternoon. About an hour into the drive, the sun set, I was bored, and I began scanning the AM dial, picking up distant stations. I have always enjoyed this phenomenon, where AM radio waves travel further between sunset and sunrise. This wikipedia entry describes the phenomenon in brief, and mentions there are some people who are really serious about it. So I spent a few minutes each listening to stations in Buffalo, Rochester, NY, Montreal, Toronto, Baltimore, Cleveland, Charlotte, and other places. It was radio drive time, so there wasn't much more to listen to than traffic reports (Pittsburgh sounded especially backed up) and weather (Charlotte 72, Buffalo 49). No surprise that stations sound drearily the same, with local advertising jingles providing the only variety. I was also struck by a particularly paranoid sounding home security ad from Charlotte; it had me ready to run out and buy one, and I even found myself briefly noting the 800 number. I also noted one insurance ad in Cleveland that seemed to repeat the phone number 16 times in 30 seconds. Is there something about Cleveland where people have trouble remembering phone numbers?
Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:03 PM | Comments (1)
November 13, 2005
Ted Kooser
When I taught composition and literature classes in the past, I often used a Ted Kooser poem as a perfect example of imagery. The poem, Flying at Night, like most of Kooser's poetry, speaks for itself.
Above us, stars. Beneath us, constellations.
Five billion miles away, a galaxy dies
like a snowflake falling on water. Below us,
some farmer, feeling the chill of that distant death,
snaps on his yard light, drawing his sheds and barn
back into the little system of his care.
All night, the cities, like shimmering novas,
tug with bright streets at lonely lights like his.
Kooser is poet laureate of the United States and winner of the most recent Pulitzer Prize in poetry. I also recently learned that he is Unitarian Universalist, which is my adopted faith. The magazine UU World has a really fine profile of Kooser. Kooser is not without his critics, and I think this profile does a nice job of answering them.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:53 PM
November 4, 2005
Andre Dubus
I brood (so much so that I had to think for a really long time before I decided to use the word "brood"--I also considered dwell, and considered the noun form, "brooder.") I have the kind of mind that yields few immediate and clear answers. Ask me my favorite food, and I will begin to list almost every style, "Italian, Thai, Indian, Sushi, Korean..." (Ask me my favorite color, and I will say "blue," but I don't really believe it.)
However, there is one question for which I have a firm answer, and that is, "Who is your favorite author?" I will immediately answer, Andre Dubus, and, knowing that he is not the best known author and is sometimes confused with his son, I often provide a brief introduction. "He was a writer's writer," I will usually say. "He wrote almost exclusively short stories, and many people count him among the greatest short story writers ever."
I could go on, but I usually don't. I don't say too often that I have read everything he wrote, and even less often do I say that I read his stories over and over and over again. And I probably almost never say that certain of his stories have informed and moved me more than anything else I have ever read. Reviewing one of Dubus' books for Harper's, Frances Taliaferro said it best, "Dubus at his best can evoke thoughts that lie too deep for tears."
I recently found one of my favorite Dubus stories, "If They Knew Yvonne," online. Recovering Catholics will especially like it, I think.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:09 AM | Comments (1)
November 2, 2005
All Shakespeare, All the Time
In a conversation today about some software testing that was going poorly, I happened to quip, "something wicked this way comes." Someone on the line immediately responded, "I loved that movie!" I was glad I was on a conference call, because I had no idea what this person was talking about and didn't have to even nod knowingly. I was thinking about the line from Macbeth, "By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes," but a little research told me that the reference was to this movie, which a little more research told me is based on this book.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:35 PM
October 27, 2005
Priorities
The blogosphere is abuzz with the news about Harriet and the rumors about Scooter and Karl. (And, by the way, what sort of grown man allows himself to be called "Scooter"?) But all I can think about is Theo, which shows you where my priorities are. Given how vicious and stupid politics continues to be, I take my priorities to be a healthy sign.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 12:03 PM
October 26, 2005
How about Them Sox?
Unfortunately I am a fan of the other Sox, but I have to marvel at the White Sox. And I love Jayson Stark's opening paragraph this morning.
On and on they went. To the 12th inning. To the 13th. To the 14th freaking inning.
I was just in Chicago last week, and people were clearly enjoying the White Sox' success. Even the Cubs fans I talked to seemed pretty happy about it--grudgingly, but happy nonetheless.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 12:04 PM
Grumble, Grumble
If you were looking for an audio book done by a company called New Millennium Audio and you came to this page, would you still send an email or call the number?
I hope the answer is no.
So why do I still get people calling and emailing me, sometimes more than one a day?
Posted by Bill Trippe at 12:00 PM | Comments (1)
October 15, 2005
Turntable with Built-in Preamp
So I have a few feet of vinyl that I would like to digitize, but I haven't had a functioning turntable in, oh, 15 years. I am looking at buying a Numark PT01 Portable Turntable.
Here's another turntable people have been looking at, the Audio-Technica AT-PL120 professional direct-drive turntable.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:07 PM | Comments (1)
Molly
I finished Ulysses. The third time, indeed, was the charm. The book famously ends with Molly Bloom's monologue.
O that awful deepdown torrent O and the sea the sea crimson sometimes like fire and the glorious sunsets and the figtrees in the Alameda gardens yes and all the queer little streets and the pink and blue and yellow houses and the rosegardens and the jessamine and geraniums and cactuses and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:51 PM
October 12, 2005
Amazon's Sense of Humor
So I run this amazon.com ad at the bottom of the page. It is supposed to be keyword-based, with the keyword being "Red Sox." So until a few days ago, it always came up with Red Sox books. Then, a few days ago, every few impressions it lists two other books instead--my SVG book and a book on Blogs by Hugh Hewitt.
This is rife with irony, beginning with the fact that I think Hugh Hewitt might be the biggest doofus in the world. But doofus or no doofus, his book outsells mine by about 1000-1. Irony can be cruel indeed.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 5:29 PM | Comments (1)
October 8, 2005
Must be a Maine Thing
And a good time was had by all.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 8:57 PM | Comments (2)
That's a Whimper, Not a Bang
Well, the Red Sox were certainly outplayed by the White Sox, weren't they?
Posted by Bill Trippe at 2:26 PM
October 2, 2005
Xena? Gabrielle?
Apparently I didn't get the memo stating we had a tenth planet in our solar system. Now, apparently, it has a moon.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 8:25 PM
September 28, 2005
Tramps Like Us
Columbia Records is coming out with a 30th anniversary edition of Bruce Springsteen's Born to Run.
(A moment of silence while I reflect on how old I am getting.)
I am a big fan of Bruce. He is my man in popular music--the one rocker I will still overpay to see in concert. I own all his records, have t-shirts from a few concerts over the years, a poster or two, ticket stubs, and some other memorabilia. I have seen him enough times to have lost count. I have seen him in Boston, Providence, Worcester, and New York. I have seen him at least six times here in Boston, including at the "Old Garden" and the Fleet Center (now the "New Garden"), the Music Hall (now the "Wang Center"), and, blessed be, Fenway Park. Seeing Bruce at Fenway was as close to nirvana as I will come.
In 1975, though, Bruce was only vaguely on my radar screen, and what I knew of him I resented. See, I was 16 and I was into Dylan, and there was that whole "new Dylan" thing and that whole "cover of Time and Newsweek thing." I heard his songs and some small part of me grudgingly realized I liked them, but I was 16 and I was sticking with Dylan.
But in March of 1977 my older brother Dan came home from classes at BU one day and told me had scored two tickets to see Springsteen that night. It was either the third or last night of a four-night run at the Music Hall. When he asked me to come, I wasn't going to say no, despite my anti-Springsteen compunction. I was a teenager. Teenagers go to concerts.
We get there, and see that they are great seats. The Music Hall was a fine venue for rock--about 4000 seats I guess, great acoustics, great sight lines, comfortable seats. We are on the floor, about 10 rows from the stage, dead center. Most people are seated already as my brother wades into the row in front of me, and then I hold up as he realizes someone is in our seats. I brace for some kind of confrontation, but little or nothing is said. It is a boy and a girl, probably college age, and they are really trashed. They quickly get up, brush by us, and we go to sit down.
It takes us no time to realize the girl was really trashed: she had puked all over the floor in front of her seat. Being the little brother, I take the puke seat, trying my hardest to hold my sneakers an inch above the mess. My mood is souring quickly. I start telling myself that I really didn't want to come to this concert. Fuck Bruce Springsteen. Fuck the new Dylan. Fuck the cover of Time and Newsweek. There's a sea of puke under my shoes and the goddamned concert hasn't even started yet.
But then the concert starts. The band runs onto the stage. Ten rows back and dead center, I am close enough to see Springsteen's molars. He is a little, wiry, hairy thing, but his voice booms out some primal greeting--I make out "Boston.... ready... rock...tonight..."--and then the band explodes into sound. We are lifted, en masse, onto our feet, and then onto our chairs. It's a freaking miracle!
I have the benefit of this great web site that tells me exactly what songs the band played that night, how long they took, and what order they played them in. With the exception of the song "Born to Run" itself and covers of several rock classics that came at the end, I had never heard any of this music before. But I was lost in it. Everyone was singing and clapping and screaming and waving their hands. We stayed standing on our seats the entire night, high above the puke. Everyone else seemed to know every word, every note, every cue--when to sing along, when to be reverently quiet. I just followed along, happy as a clam.
The night ended with a ten-plus minute version of "Higher and Higher"--a song that had been recently made a hit by Rita Coolidge of all people. But I would learn later it was a Jackie Wilson classic.
You know your love (your love keeps lifting me)
Keep on lifting (love keeps lifting me)
Higher (lifting me)
Higher and higher (higher)
I said your love (your love keeps lifting me)
Keep on (love keeps lifting me)
Lifting me (lifting me)
Higher and higher (higher)
I knew the words. I could sing along. And sing along I did. Springsteen had us doing some goofy combination of bows and waves, swaying side to side, forward and back, screaming the chorus at the top of our lungs. It was a silly, simple, joyous song. It wasn't Dylan. It was fun, damnit. And as I stood there on my chair, head back, arms waving, I knew for maybe the very first time my heart was singing.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:47 AM
Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu
45 years ago today, Ted Williams homered in his last at-bat in the majors. Soon after, John Updike wrote his New Yorker essay about the moment, including perhaps the most eloquent sentence ever written about baseball, "For me, Williams is the classic ballplayer of the game on a hot August weekday, before a small crowd, when the only thing at stake is the tissue-thin difference between a thing done well and a thing done ill."
Now that I have The Complete New Yorker
Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:22 AM
September 20, 2005
The Complete New Yorker
This looks like a lot of fun--every page of The New Yorker ever printed, in a set of eight DVDs. It's called The Complete New Yorker
This is also a technology story of course. The back issues of the great American magazines are a treasure trove of material, and the question of how to get high fidelity versions of the back issues out to a wide reading audience has continued to present practical problems. PDF is a great format of course, but it can be bulky. The New Yorker project uses a page rendering technology from LizardTech. Document Express with DjVu provides readers with a high-fidelity page in a much more compressed format.
I emailed LizardTech some questions in response to this press release. I will let you know what I learn.
There is a nice flash demo here.
Justyna Bednarski of LizardTech wrote back with the following stats.
How many pages in total? The New Yorker had 500,000 pages scanned into TIFF-formatted files totaling 15 terabytes of document images, then used LizardTech's Document Express with DjVu Enterprise Edition to convert the TIFF files into the open source DjVu electronic document format, where they measured a mere 300th of the original scanned size.
Total stored data in GB? 15 terabytes prior to compressing into DjVu.
I also asked how big the same collection would have been in PDF, but Bednarski didn't want to speculate on that. Bednarski added, "We cannot assert the size in PDF, as nobody wanted to try it because they didn't think it would be practical. The New Yorker didn't think it was practical as they say in the case study."
The case study can be found in PDF format here. You can also view it in DjVu format here (requires installation of the DjVu plugin, which can be found here).
Browsing The New Yorker web site, I also learned that The Complete New Yorker is a live project. According to the site, "Every year, The New Yorker will offer an updated Disk 1, which will include an additional year of issues, an updated index, and other enhancements."
Posted by Bill Trippe at 8:57 AM | Comments (4)
September 14, 2005
Indeed
I have been staying away from the wingnut blogs for the most part, but I peek in every now and then. I thought this pretty much describes that world.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 2:16 PM
September 6, 2005
Someone Was Feeling Left Out
This is Petey, our mutt since last October. Apparently, he heard about this post and demanded equal time. Needless to say, it is well deserved.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 3:23 PM
September 5, 2005
Goodbye, Columbus
The Arts and Leisure section of yesterday's New York Times tells us that Philip Roth has become only the third living writer to have his works published by The Library of America (Eudora Welty and Saul Bellow were the other two). The first two volumes are out, and the first volume, of course, features, Goodbye, Columbus.
You can read the original review of Goodbye, Columbus from the May 17, 1959 New York Times. Considering that it went on to win The National Book Award, this is a fairly tepid review.
I came to read Goodbye, Columbus years after my own discovery of Roth. My boyhood friend Sean McCarthy told me about Roth's Portnoy's Complaint. We were probably 11 or so. Just guessing, as it was published in February of 1969, a few months before my 10th birthday, but I didn't meet Sean until 5th grade, or a year later. Sean had older brothers who told him about the sex scenes, so Sean and I would sneak upstairs from the children's library and into the adult library and read the book standing in the stacks.
(By the way, considering the temptations my own sons face today, this story seems oddly quaint.)
When I finally read Goodbye, Columbus in college, I was deeply moved. I was the right age for the story, and I imagined myself an Italian-American Neil Klugman. I read it again probably 10 years ago, and was still moved. It's time to read it again, I think.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 12:22 PM
September 3, 2005
Welcome
You may have been redirected just now from another blog. This new blog combines two blogs, A Thousand Furnished Rooms, which has been active since March 2004, and a second blog, Ideas in Technology and Publishing, which I wrote from August 2003 to January 2005.
A Thousand Furnished Rooms was a personal blog with a specific focus. Over the last several years, I have been developing narrative nonfiction. I hesitate to call it “memoir,” because, well, that seems too precious to me. “Narrative nonfiction” seems both more accurate and less precious, yet also somehow less limiting to me.
My professional blog, Ideas in Technology and Publishing, focused on the subject matter of my business, New Millennium Publishing. New Millennium is a consulting practice focused on emerging technical issues for publishers — including content management, XML, and digital rights management.
Like its two predecessor blogs, this will be a work in progress. I will post a mix of new materials, recent materials, and past materials that I am revisiting.
I realize that in combining the two blogs, I run the risk of alienating readers who come here expecting one or the other blog. Some of you may only be interested in the entries related to technology and publishing, and some of you may only want to read the more personal entries. To that end, my developer, Aaron Schutzengel, added a “switch” that allows you to choose “personal posts only,” “tech posts only,” or “everything (default).” It seems to work really well, so if you feel strongly about such things, by all means, avail yourself of it.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:50 AM
August 27, 2005
Odds and Ends
This is a very funny little story.
I happened to get a piece of email today from a law firm with the most curious slogan.
Maybe it's just me, but the two things seem related.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 2:10 PM
August 23, 2005
The Christian Thing to Do
I couldn't make this up.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:52 AM | Comments (1)
August 22, 2005
Sopranos
I don't subscribe to HBO, so I catch up on the Sopranos when the season-long DVDs come out. I am down with a cold for a few days, so have been watching the 5th season finally. I know there is a trend out there to think the Sopranos have gone downhill, but I still find it really gripping.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 8:16 PM
August 17, 2005
Overhead in Dunkin Donuts This Morning
"Think they would toast a donut? I'm going to ask."
Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:02 AM
August 16, 2005
My Favorite Moron
I couldn't have said it better myself.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:49 AM
August 13, 2005
Cleo
There are many pretenders to the throne, but this is the best dog in the whole world. Too bad her master isn't better with the digital camera yet.
By the way, she is a mutt. Her parents were two distinct breeds. Any guesses? She is about 85 pounds.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:49 AM
August 12, 2005
Well, Yeah
Bill Sinkford weighs in:
It is important to understand that when we say "people of faith" in this country, we are talking about a wide spectrum of Americans who have many different beliefs and practices. The United States of America today has become the most religiously pluralistic society the world has ever known. Americans are not only Methodists, but Mormons and Muslims; not only Baptists, but Buddhists and Baha'is.
Those of us speaking to you today believe strongly that no one religious group or political party can ever hold a monopoly on religious belief. No person or group can honestly claim to represent "the" single authentic faith perspective on a given issue. Americans of faith and good will differ on the issues facing our country today, but those differences should never be cause for questioning another's faith or patriotism.
People of deep faith can and DO disagree about political issues and about the application of religion in daily life. But to demonize those who disagree with us is at best misguided, and at worst, a cynical tactic to cloak a political agenda in the guise of religion.
As a certain wingnut blogger would say, read the whole thing.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 7:14 PM
Great Stuff
Bill Littlefield is the man, and this is only one of a thousand reasons why.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 3:42 PM
August 9, 2005
To Boldly Go...
This sounds about right.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:06 PM
August 8, 2005
City Boy Learns the Birds and the Bees
No lie.
I watched two birds mate yesterday.
For me, this was a first.
I was struck--astonished really--
at how hard the male had to work.
Flapping his wings madly while trying to hit his mark.
Over and over again,
He flitted, hopped,
seemed to find his place.
Then he and she flapping urgently for a moment.
And then, just as quickly, off again.
I lost count.
20 times at least before some decision was made,
some conclusion reached,
leaving her alone on the perch.
I smiled at my wife, squeezed her hand.
This love.
This pursuit.
It's a young man's game.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 5:15 PM
More Proof that All Politicians Suck
Remember that George Bush said this when you read that crude oil hit $63 a barrel today:
Source: Katherine Q. Seelye, NY Times Jun 28, 2000
You know, one of the reasons that the wingnut blogs like Instapundit are so completely useless is they seem to think Bush is an action hero, infallible in the face of everything. By checking their critical thinking at the side of the keyboard, they fail to recognize that Bush is, at the end of the day, just another hack, looking out only for himself and the interests of a few friends. A political blog with that complete lack of critical thinking is useless, no matter which party it is shilling for.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 12:16 PM
August 7, 2005
Guilty Pleasures
They say one of the advantages of having children is that you get to learn US history all over again (and basic math, grammar, etc, when you help them with their homework). The other advantage (at least when you have boys) is you have an excuse to see Jessica Simpson in Dukes of Hazzard. Jessisa is dazzling, but the movie is dumb, of course, but I liked that it had a few holdover techniques from the original show, including the freezeframe-with-voiceover bit at critical moments ("Now there are a few things you don't say to a Duke..."). It got me thinking about the original voiceover announcer, whom I remembered as Hoyt Axton, but it turns out it was Waylon Jennings. My bad.
I always had a soft spot for Hoyt, who appeared on camera in a Woody Guthrie tribute called Hard Travelin', in which he and Arlo Guthrie do a heartbreaking cover of "Deportee."
This could explain my Hoyt/Dukes confusion: busy actor that Hoyt was, he was a guest-star on an episode of Dukes, playing "Himself" in episode: "Good Neighbors, Duke" (episode # 3.10) 2 January 1981. For the record, I was in Greece that day, so I must have seen the episode in reruns.
How many people out there know Hoyt wrote a certain #1 song?
Posted by Bill Trippe at 12:03 PM
August 6, 2005
Number 8
When I was a kid, I had one hero, and his name was Yaz.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:22 AM | Comments (1)
August 5, 2005
This is Cool
An interesting historical note from a site I have mentioned recently.
Speaking of Hawthorne, of course there are some good Web sites dedicated to him. This one seems like the broadest, but this one has more primary material.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 12:17 PM | Comments (1)
July 20, 2005
Oh, Acela!
So there are no Acelas between Boston and NYC, but I took Acela from Baltimore to NYC yesterday. The good news was the ride was nice and fast. The bad news was the train was mobbed through Philadelphia.
I enjoyed Baltimore, despite only being there for the day. The office I visisted was adjacent to the Orioles stadium at Camdem Yards, so I got to walk around the outside a bit.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:23 AM
July 19, 2005
Bush Clarifies Position on Rove
Hoping to clarify his position in the blossoming Treasongate scandal, Bush announced today that, yes, in fact, crass partisan politics always comes before national security. "Look, we had an election to win, and, you know, national security, classified information, and the safety of intelligence, whatever, operatives simply had to take a back seat." Asked if he expected the American people to understand his position, Bush cackled with laughter before finally blurting out, "Are you shitting me? Of course they will. They swallow anything I feed them."
Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:32 AM | Comments (1)
On the Road Again
After spending yesterday at home in Boston, I am in Baltimore today, New York City tomorrow and Thursday, and then Philadelphia on Friday. I get home to Boston Friday night, and then Saturday morning we pick up an RV and head to Maine for a week.
I am not complaining, really I am not.
My real complain right now is the Red Sox, who can't seem to win anymore. Tonight they face the lowly Devil Rays, who beat them last night, 3-1. Former Sox pitcher Casey Fossum is pitching for the Devil Rays, which means he will throw a perfect game. Check out Fossum's profile and stats. He is listed at 6'1 and 160, but he looks about 135 pounds. My boys nicknamed him AAA, as in battery, and not the level of minor league baseball.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:26 AM
July 11, 2005
Uniters not Dividers
Ted Rall has a great column about just how much of a slimebucket Karl Rove is if he really did out a CIA operative. As Rall points out, the Republicans never stop telling us we are fighting a war on terror, so Rove's actions would surely be treason. Rall seems to suggest the most likely outcome is impeachment, but I doubt that will happen. Can you imagine what the wingnuts would be saying if someone in the Clinton administration had done this?
Posted by Bill Trippe at 2:20 PM
July 9, 2005
Wherefore art thou Acela?
I had a miserable trip on a regional Amtrak last night from Stamford, CT back to Boston. The train was an hour-plus late and jammed with people. I finally found a seat, and quickly discovered why no one was sitting there. It was next to a bathroom that had a backed up toilet, and the smell was--how to say this politely--overwhelming. We limped through Connecticut, and some additional seats opened up elsewhere in the car, but by now the whole car and the neighboring car reeked.
As we left Providence, the conductors had all the doors between all the cars open. I think the hope was that some fresh air would dilute the smell, but I think it only had the effect of distributing the aroma uniformly through the entire train.
Oh joy.
I spent the last ten minutes between cars, catching some fresh air. I was briefly reminded of another long, slow train ride into Boston, many years ago.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 2:26 PM | Comments (2)
June 29, 2005
Speaking of Rubes
Check this out. If you want to donate to see it run, click here.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 5:40 PM
June 27, 2005
Redesign this Blog
I have been posting the following to a few bulletin boards. Please email at btrippe@nmpub.com if you are interested.
Thanks,
Bill
I run this blog using Movable Type 2.64.
I would like to have someone do the following:
-- Upgrade the site to the latest version of MT
-- Redesign the site
-- Add a few features (Google Adsense, not sure what else)
With this redesign, I am probably going to go with a new domain name as well. May also combine this blog with another one. May want some advice about that as well.
I would be looking for a fixed-cost bid, after we agree to a statement of work.
Movable Type experience a must. I am not interested in moving to another platform.
Please reply with example URLs of other sites you have designed.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 4:21 PM
You Could Look it Up
A postcard at lunch alerted me to this site, which includes some great detail about a favorite weird event in Boston history.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 3:20 PM
June 26, 2005
Be Cool
I grew up in a small two-decker, 5 of us in 3 bedrooms, and we never had air conditioning. Not many people seemed to have it in the 60s and 70s. Now I can't do summer without it. It's been very hot yesterday and today, and I have throttled down, and spent most of my time inside.
When I was a kid, the coolest part of the house was the basement. My grandfather kept a hammock in the basement, slung between two lally columns. It was the best spot in the house. I have a hammock in the backyard, much like the one shown in this Wikipedia entry, but I gave up my shady spot in the yard last summer so we could extend the driveway into more of a basketball court for my boys. I need to pick a new spot.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 12:48 PM
Instarube
I've been steering clear of political blogging lately, but James Wolcott has a very funny piece about why Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit is such a hopeless rube.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 12:28 PM
June 24, 2005
What We Talk About When We Talk About Baseball
I love the language of baseball. Wouldn't you know there is a free online baseball dictionary and thesaurus? I tested it for one of my favorite terms and it has it, though with an unfortunately tepid definition. Plus, I am pretty sure the word originated with George Scott, and there is no mention of that. How do you talk about "taters" in the baseball sense without mentioning the Boomer?
Looking at the baseball-reference.com page on Scott, it lists him at 6'2 and 215. He struggled with his weight, especially late in his career and upon retirement, but I wonder if he was ever only 215? I remember him as a giant of a man, even early in his career. Of course, I was only 8 when I first started watching baseball, so he would have seemed like a giant. But I am 6'2 and 215+ something. Does that make me a giant of a man?
Posted by Bill Trippe at 7:40 PM | Comments (1)
June 11, 2005
Junk E-Mail
I have this weird fascination with junk e-mail. It seems to tap into this focused set of vices and worries--prescription drug addiction, porn, consumer debt, greed, sexual prowess and potency. Then today I get one that reads, "Get the Washer and Dryer of Your Dreams."
Go figure.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:18 AM
June 9, 2005
Born on this Day?
I was! And so were Peter the Great, Cole Porter, Michael J. Fox, and Johnny Depp. Weirdly, this is also the day Donald Duck debuted and Dickens died. Coincidence? I think not!
Posted by Bill Trippe at 8:13 PM
March 89th followed immediately by July 17th
In other words, a typical Boston Spring, er, Summer.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 8:07 PM
June 3, 2005
Big Papi
Comes through again. As Ned Martin would have said, "Mercy!"
Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:39 PM | Comments (1)
Oops
Blank index page. Not cool.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:32 PM
May 20, 2005
Fuggedaboutit
Sometimes I think I am a decent writer, and sometimes I imagine even a little more than that. But then I read something by one of the greats and I think, who am I kidding? I could work for days and never come up with a line half as good as, "the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses."
Posted by Bill Trippe at 12:38 AM | Comments (1)
May 18, 2005
Payback?
My sons and I collect baseball cards, and I happened to pull a copy of this card from a pack the other day. The irony of a Red Sox fan ending up with a baseball card autographed by Ray Knight and Mookie Wilson--the two heroes of Game 6 of the 1986 World Series--is just too much. This is not my copy currently for sale. I am hoping this one sells for a fortune, and then I will follow up by selling mine.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:45 PM | Comments (1)
His Parents Must be so Proud
And after this, maybe I need to rethink the idea that Austin is the "Boston of Texas."
Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:47 PM
May 14, 2005
If T. S. Eliot Had Been a Soccer Dad
He might have paused before he wrote April is the cruelest month. I say this because I am facing my fourth straight weekend of rain, three of them in May. Last weekend I wore a winter coat, gloves, and hat, watching a 7:00 PM game, under the lights, in sweeping sheets of rain. I love my boys. I love soccer. I love watching my boys play soccer. Is it too much to ask for OK weather for a game once in a while?
It dawned on me last week that both my boys are playing my former position, what I used to describe as wing fullback (more of a rugby term I understand) but which most people describe as defender or back. At 12 and 13, they already have more foot skills and more game sense than I ever had. I started playing at 17, and got by on decent speed and an instinct to hurl myself in the direction of the ball. They both have that too.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:38 AM
May 12, 2005
Philly
Philadelphia is so crowded next week because of the AIIM conference that some of the downtown hotels are looking for $1,000 to $3,000 a night. $3,000 a night for Philly? Did Hell freeze over while I have been out here in Utah?
Posted by Bill Trippe at 3:47 PM
May 11, 2005
How often...
... does this happen?
In keeping with my weird luck over the last year or so, I happened to take the family to the one game the Red Sox lost out of the last nine.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 7:39 PM
I Feel Better Now
Turns out even the great ones get writer's block.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 7:34 PM
May 5, 2005
Testing, testing...
I had technical problems with my blogging tool for a few days, and I have been traveling some (Connecticut again, New York again, Utah now), so have been quiet for a bit.
This is my fourth or fifth trip here since February, and I still am awed by the mountains every time I get a glimpse of them. Plus, my terrible sense of direction helps here. I never know if I am looking east, west, north, or south, so I can never remember which mountain or range I am looking at. It's all new, each time I look out a window or step outside.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 1:33 PM
April 24, 2005
Fever Pitch
I saw Fever Pitch, and it was quite good. I am not a Farrelly brothers fan, so I can't really compare it to anything else they have done. But if you are a Red Sox fan, and enjoy romantic comedy, you should absolutely see it. All of the Red Sox details are spot on, and the love story is quirky and fun. Plus I think I have a new favorite song.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 1:26 PM
April 20, 2005
Reason Number 14,213...
...that I am no longer a Catholic.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:07 AM
April 19, 2005
Central Square
I don't write much about Cambridge, even though I have had my office there for almost a year. Central Square is such a funky neighborhood, and I really should take more time to experience it. Maybe now that the good weather is settling in.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:00 PM
April 14, 2005
Blue and Red States
Leaving San Francisco in the evening and waking up in Salt Lake City is, well, jarring. Especially since I was staying in the Palace Hotel in San Francisco, which is as nice as it sounds, and woke up in the Bumpkin Inn in the South Jesusville section of Salt Lake City. Don't get me wrong. Salt Lake City is a beautiful place, but San Francisco is my kind of town.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 7:22 PM | Comments (2)
April 11, 2005
On the Road, Again
I am in San Francisco for a few days, before moving on to Salt Lake City for another couple of days. Sounds exciting, but I would rather have an extra night or two in San Francisco. I arrived very late last night, and am leaving Wednesday evening, so I really only have two nights here in SF, and would rather have more free time. Oh well.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:35 PM
April 7, 2005
Seeing Marnie, Part 2
May faded to June, and June to July, and Marnie and I worked a little, talked a lot, and found whole new ways to kill long stretches of time. Marnie, naturally, could shop with the best of them, and left to buy something at least once a day--clothes one day, shoes the next, jewelry, food, things for the home, things for the garden, things for her Mom, things for her Dad, things for her Gram, and on and on. I would do the bookstores, and take long lunches in the Public Garden and Common. I was reading Dostoyevsky that summer, and it wasn't hard to lose myself for a couple of hours on a sunny park bench.
I kept plugging away, here and there, on the mosquito control project. I found that I liked spending time on the phone with the civil engineer who understood the problem. I took good notes, wrote up nice summaries for the constituents and the committee of representatives I was assigned to, and went to an occasional meeting.
Marnie, meanwhile, applied herself, when she applied herself, to projects that she thought would give her visibility with the right people--the Speaker of the House, Lieutenant Governor, or, her ultimate target, the Governor himself. Despite our bureaucratic, waiting-for-Godot-like existence, Marnie was certain that an opportunity would emerge for her to shine. If something crossed the transom that suggested visibility, Marnie was on it.
One day a call came in about a study that was being commissioned on re-regulating horse racing in the state. After jotting down notes from the call, I quipped to Marnie, "Here's a hot one."
"Let me see," she said, reaching over the notes I had just written. "You think this has juice?" Juice was Marnie's word, borrowed from the career pols, for a project or issue that the public and press would take an interest in. Something either had juice, and you spent time on it, or it didn't. Otherwise, it was "bullshit," and no one with any sense worked on "bullshit."
I knew in a millisecond that horse racing re-regulation lacked juice. Jesus, only about ten people cared about horse racing, and five of them were toothless. I teased Marnie about it, and realized she was a little flustered. And it occurred to me that Marnie wasn't completely unflappable. Sitting opposite me wasn't the master of the universe. She might become that in time, but she wasn't yet. Her hair may have been curling under her perfect chin, and her summer dress may have been revealing the slightest hint of the loveliest cleavage the world had even seen. She might be Harvard and she might spend more in a day than I do in a year, but at this moment she was only 19, and she was blushing.
A long time has passed since that moment, but the memory is still electric. They say d�j� vu is the sensation that you are experiencing a moment you have experienced before. This was just as profound a sensation, but was distinctly different. A cousin of d�j� vu. But instead of a feeling of a moment relived, it was as if I knew all at once that I was experiencing a fundamental truth of the universe for the first time. In this case, it was that there is no sight more fetching than a beautiful woman blushing. And I resolved to make it happen as many as I could in the few weeks of summer that remained.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This momentary blush spawned a series of incidents where I would tease Marnie, or play small practical jokes on her. After answering the phone and putting a call on hold, I would say,"Speaker's Office, line 2." She would snatch up the phone and answer brightly, "Marnie Adams speaking," and I would watch her smile turn to a scowl as she realized she was talking to a clerk from some obscure commission. It was amazing how many times I got away with this kind of thing. And I don't know what was cuter--how easily she was duped or how great she looked flipping me the bird.
This lead to my elaborate practical joke on Marnie, and everything that changed in our relationship after that. In connection with my mosquito control project, I had written a letter one morning, in the name of a legislator, to the Army Corps of Engineers. The secretary and I printed it out on the legislator's stationery; I signed it, and off it went. I was musing about how {amorphous} this all was--a nameless soul in one place forging the signature of someone, and sending it off to a place where it would never be dealt with--or, perhaps, only read by another nameless soul who worked for the person to whom the letter was addressed. I was writing a kind of fiction--an incredibly boring fiction to be sure, but fiction nonetheless.
So I decided to write a fiction to put Marnie in action. I tailored it to her combination of ambition and naivet�. Using a piece of the speaker's stationery, I wrote a memo requesting that an intern from our committee write a summary report of all the projects the interns were doing over the summer. This summary report should be delivered to the speaker's office on the last day of the internship.
I left this memo in our inbox one morning, knowing that Marnie would find it. Marnie had been looking for visibility all summer, and this was going to be it. She sprang into action. Within a week, Marnie had the entire group of interns in an uproar. These are people who hadn't done a thing all summer, and were now expected to account for themselves.
But Marnie wouldn't be denied. She brought all her skills to bear--charming those who needed to be charmed and intimidating those who couldn't be charmed. To the few of us who actually had done some work all summer, she was her most winning--learning our projects in enough detail to write cogent summaries of them, flattering us to give her time and her project enough attention. She spent an entire morning interviewing me, and halfway through the morning she was as expert at mosquito control as I would ever be. I found myself marveling at her, and thought at several moments that I wish this were a real project and not just a practical joke.
To be continued
Posted by Bill Trippe at 12:23 PM
March 28, 2005
Seeing Marnie
The following excerpt is from a story in progress. Let me know what you think.
Seeing Marnie
By Bill Trippe
She was impossibly pretty.
So much so that I spent hours around her without looking directly at her. This is not as hard as you might think. In the rules of nonverbal communication, it's polite to maintain eye contact when the other person is speaking. When you are talking, it is ok to let your gaze wander. So to keep from looking at her much, I simply kept talking.
At 21, I had two things going for me. First, I could talk with the best of them. I combined a high IQ, hyperactivity, my mother's Irish love of storytelling, and my father's Italian determination to have each situation play out as a grand opera. The talking simply never stopped.
The other thing I had going for me was that we worked together, in a small office, all day, where absolutely nothing ever happened. I am only exaggerating a little. We were legislative interns for a summer when the State House was out of session. This is like being a waiter in a restaurant with no food to serve. Except for the occasional customer who blunders in only to have to be told that there's nothing to eat, you have nothing to keep you busy.
We would split the handful of constituent calls that came in on a given day. A broken streetlight could kill an hour. You would call the public works department for them, report the outage, and then write an impressive sounding letter to the constituent, explaining the action you had taken and when the light would be fixed. Then you might take an early lunch, or read the paper, or wander the halls of the State House, pausing for a ridiculously long time before each portrait of some long dead and easily forgotten state secretary.
You could also, if you cared to, take up the cause of some long-neglected project that mattered terribly to a few constituents but didn't have the slightest chance of becoming real. This was sort of the legislative equivalent of a police department's cold case file. But instead of an ancient murder that has never been solved, you were resurrecting an ancient project that would never be finished. Aside from the few people directly affected, these were universally viewed thankless tasks. That summer, I dove into a languishing mosquito control project that had been studied to death with nothing tangible ever being done to a single mosquito. The 14 constituents who had the sorry fortune of abutting that swamp would simply have to keep buying plenty of "Off." In the meantime, though, I could fill a few afternoons boning up on it.
This kind of drudgery was anathema to my beautiful officemate. Marnie was going places where broken streetlights and mosquito control would not take her. She may have been 19 and only a year through college, but the world was clearly her oyster. It was simply a matter of who would come along and open it for her.
She had a boyfriend of course. Someone as pretty as Marnie, I reasoned, had an active boyfriend, dozens of exes, and a long waiting list of men in waiting. At first blush, I knew I didn't even have the Marnie application fee. She was blonde, blue-eyed, and startlingly curvy. And she had the pretty rich girl's gift of dressing properly but in outfits that were beyond inviting. No matter whether she was standing or sitting, in action or in repose, every gesture and posture was both beautiful and erotic. Each time I looked in her direction, I was struck blind.
And me? I was still growing into my body. I was 6'2, and only recently had bulked up to 160 pounds. My teenage acne still hadn't completely cleared up, and my wardrobe and hair were a bizarre clash of 60s hippy meets 70s disco meets college prep. I was some weird amalgam of Richie Cunningham, Vinnie Barbarino, and Maynard G. Krebs to her freaking Miss America.
Yet I had the verbal thing going for me, which she tolerated and even seemed to enjoy sometimes. She would laugh at certain comments, and say something like, "You know, you're pretty smart." She would say this with no small measure of surprise each time she said it--sort of like the child who is talked into tasting a homely dish and realizes it is actually edible. And I had a girlfriend who I actually liked and was vaguely serious about. The confirmed existence of a living, breathing girlfriend separated me from the vast armies of losers who were somehow not members of the same species as Marnie.
My girlfriend at the time was pretty, though safe to say not nearly as pretty as Marnie. More importantly to Marnie, I think, was that Ellen was also rich. Marnie seemed to size that up about Ellen, even though Ellen was sort of art school bohemian and Marnie was at Harvard and determined to crush the world. After Ellen stopped by the office the first time, Marnie asked exactly one question about her. "Where is she from?" When I answered Concord, which even I knew to be the toniest suburb of them all, something seemed to immediately register in Marnie's assessment of me. Even I sensed some change in the plasma between us, and I wondered for a moment if maybe I could afford the Marnie application fee.
I was also a little older, past my junior year. And even though Marnie was Harvard and I was Boston University, she had only completed her freshman year. And though I kept this thought to myself, while I lacked Marnie's ambition, I knew one thing about myself. As a lower-middle-class kid, I was hungrier. I worked hard in school, and studied seriously. I was going to do well in my chosen field, and Marnie seemed to recognize this about me.
Finally, and not least important, there was, as the saying goes, trouble in paradise. Marnie and her boyfriend Brad were at something of a crossroads, with Brad about to spend his junior year abroad and Marnie clearly unsure if she wanted to spend a year on the shelf.
I learned all this in the few odd minutes here and there when I allowed her to speak. Somehow, with me having a girlfriend, me being older and wiser, Marnie decided she could confide in me about how things were going with Brad. This was, of course, a mixed blessing. Having a pretty girl tell you her man troubles meant you were "safe," "brotherly," "a friend"--in other words a freaking gelding.
On the other hand, gelding or no gelding, it meant--at least for the moment--that the pretty girl was still talking to you...
To be continued
Posted by Bill Trippe at 12:50 PM | Comments (1)
March 27, 2005
Spring
According to the calendar, Spring is here. We have some crocuses out front that seem to think so. It only hit about 37 yesterday, but baseball's opening day is a week away, so hope springs eternal.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:38 AM
Pardon the Interruption
Well, I have been quiet. Sometimes I blog less when I have been swamped with work, and sometimes when I have to tend to some family business. In the case of the last several weeks, it has been both. So, excuse the pause. I am back.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:26 AM
February 12, 2005
Spring is in the Air
Some people wait for the crocuses; I wait for this.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:44 PM
Utah!
Well, they have the exclamation point on their license plates, so I am assuming I should use it too.
Anyway, just back from a very quick trip there and back. The Salt Lake area is beautiful. Of course, I have never been in the mountain states before, so I don't have alot to compare it to. But I spent two days in a meeting where the backdrop was the Wasatch Mountaints, snow covered and rising to about 12,000 feet above our 4200 or so foot elevation. Pretty stunning.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 4:56 PM
February 5, 2005
An Answer to the Church's Problems?
As a former Catholic, I have watched the church's struggles the past few years with a heavy heart. At times it has been beyond comprehension--the evil and trauma visited on the sex abuse victims, the staggering incompetence and malfeasance of the leadership, and--now--the painful closing of many individual parishes. Watching the vigils at parishes in Natick, Sudbury, and elsewhere, I wonder if things will ever improve.
But then I hear the stories of the people tending to these vigils, and I wonder if these folks haven't already answered this question themselves. By working to save their parishes against the diocese's wishes, the congregants have been banding together and keeping their churches open and alive all by themselves. I find myself cheering them on, and wondering if they are asking themselves the same question I am: why not just follow this path to one logical conclusion and start their own church?
I am a former Catholic for a number of reasons, some intensely personal and some less so. But I found myself in the Unitarian Universalist faith as an adult. Originally, it was a safe haven for my spiritual journey, but I have found many reasons to stay, and one of the biggest is the powerful way in which each of our churches is organized. Each congregation is recognized as a complete church in itself, and each congregation controls its own membership, manages all its own finances and administration, and selects its own leadership. This includes everything from finding someone to shovel the walk to calling our minister. We only belong to larger associations voluntarily--in our case, the Massachusetts Bay District, and the Unitarian Universalist Association.
This adherence to congregational polity is both simple and profound. We have committees for everything, and, especially in small congregations, every detail needs to be planned--from the flowers for the altar to treats for coffee hour. Yet there is real power in seeing all these details come together in a weekly service, and even more power in witnessing the long-term effort of building a faith community that supports its members in good times and bad. I spent two years as my church's treasurer, and was mindful each week when I paid all the bills how much good work was tied to each check I wrote--the supplies for the religious education classrooms, expenses for the minister, and music for the choir.
Needless to say, the differences between the Catholic Church of my childhood and the Unitarian Universalist Church of my adulthood do not begin and end at congregational polity. We UUs, as we like to call ourselves, are a liberal bunch, and go so far as to be creedless and to perform gay marriages and support abortion rights. But even these things are decided by each congregation, putting the power for both the mundane and the critical in the hands of each congregant.
New England, of course, has a long history of congregationalism. Many a New England town center has Congregational and UU churches, some of which were founded in the 17th century. Indeed, New England's roots are tied directly to its earliest settlers' desires to live unencumbered by a Pope and central leadership. New England is also home to the town meeting, which some still see as the purest expression of American democracy.
Is something afoot in the Catholic Church, where some of these churches, now threatened, will find their way to continued life? Will the diocese decide to keep them open? Will the individual churches try to sustain themselves in some way?
These are certainly not questions for me to answer. Despite my birthright, and despite the fact that I was both baptized and confirmed as a Catholic, it is no longer my church. But it is the church of the congregants in Natick, Sudbury, East Boston and elsewhere. The people who are now keeping vigil around the clock, bringing food and organizing schedules, and finding small ways to keep each other company and pass the time. The people who are, in small but important ways, keeping a faith community alive.
So, no, I can't answer these questions. Some would say only the Archbishop can. But I can marvel at the good works of the people who are keeping vigil, and I can quietly cheer them on. I can even politely suggest that they may have found the answer to their problem already in themselves. And, no matter what they decide, I can tell them that other people of faith are with them in spirit.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 4:01 PM
January 29, 2005
Florida
So I got the work in Florida, and will be down there for a couple of days starting Monday. I told my sons this evening, and the younger one punched me on the arm and said, "You suck. I hate you."
I know this is his way of saying he will miss me, but it is also his way of saying, "I should be going too." At 11, he has already been to Florida a half-dozen times, including Red Sox spring training and Disney World. He has also been all over New England, to New York, and to Washington DC.
I could do the "I walked five miles to school" routine at these moments. After all, I didn't see Florida until I was 30, and I really didn't travel much at all until my late 30s. But I don't. The world is a big and wonderful place. Why shouldn't my son be disappointed when he thinks he has missed out on a chance to go someplace warm in the middle of winter?
Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:14 PM
January 27, 2005
New York, Again
So I made it to New York on Sunday, at the tail end of the blizzard. There was a lot less snow in New York than Boston--about one foot instead of almost three. Then I came home last night to another 6 inches of snow. Good thing it was the fluffy stuff.
But, you know, when you have three feet of snow, it really doesn't matter if it is light or not. It reminds me of when my nephew Jake spent a couple of years doing construction in the desert heat around Phoenix. It wasn't unusual for him and his brother Max to work several days in a row with the temperature over 110°. "But you know," he would say with a wink, "It was a dry heat."
I have stayed on the Upper West Side the past couple of trips, and I have found a new part of the city to really love. I had spent some time up around Columbia when my brothers were there, around 110th and Broadway, and later I had some business at Columbia University Press, also in the same neighborhood. But lately I have been staying in the West 70s and 80s--the Lucerne on Amsterdam Ave last trip, and this time The Excelsior on 81st and Columbus, just opposite the Museum of Natural History. I had lunch at the Museum on Tuesday, and spent time in the exhibits. The dinosaurs in the great hall are a treat of course, but I especially liked the North American mammals. Giant, taxidermed beasts including Elk and Buffalo.
To get to my client, I took the #1 train all the way to its northern terminus--242nd Street and Van Cortland Park in the Bronx. For the last 100 blocks or so, a small group of us was treated to a lengthy sermon delivered by this slender, almost elegant middle-aged African American man. He stood over me and a young fellow and condemned us both to an eternity in a fiery hell. Heck of a way to start the day, so I was really tickled to find a Dunkin Donuts outside the 242nd St Station and I treated myself to an extra-large coffee.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 8:32 AM
January 23, 2005
Snow
It's hard to tell how much snow we have. The snow is powdery and the winds are high, so the drifting is substantial. It's up to the windows of my Honda Accord, but it only looks about a foot or so around the basketball net in the back. I have to get to New York tonight, but it doesn't seem worth it to shovel yet. The snow continues to really blow, and it's only about 10° F.
A quick scan of the headlines says 20 inches of snow had fallen at Logan Airport by early this morning.
The path of the storm reminds me a little bit of the blizzard of 1978, which most people still consider the granddaddy of storms in the northeast. The blizzard of 1978 started on a late Monday afternoon as a I recall, and thousands of commuters fought their way home through it. This storm came with tons of warning, and started on Saturday afternoon, so it has been less chaotic.
Amtrak is getting through, as is the MBTA, so if I can dig myself out, I should be able to make it to NY tonight.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:12 AM
January 19, 2005
Grandma
So I was sitting in this great kosher deli on the Upper West Side of Manhattan the other day, enjoying this incredible half-sour pickle, and the thought suddenly occurred to me, Did my Italian grandmother ever have a half-sour pickle? (And, please, no bad jokes here, this is my grandmother we are talking about here.)
It's possible she never did. I think I ate eat pretty much every type of dish my Grandma ever made--pasta, veal, chicken, soup, pizza, cream cheese pie, pizzales, anise cookies. I had breakfast, lunch, and dinner at her house dozens of times. I left there with plates and bowls and platters of leftovers. I am close to 100% sure that nothing pickled was ever consumed there.
Why does this matter? Well, to begin with, it was an incredibly good pickle, and it got me thinking about how much pleasure there is in good, simple food. And I can't think about good food without thinking of my Grandma. A lot of memories fade with time, but I have a million memories of my Grandma and food. In almost all of these memories she is cooking me something, serving me something, offering me more of something, or asking me what I would like next. Her tomato sauce had the whole world in it--tomatos, paste, garlic, onions, seasoning, meatballs, sausage, chicken, pork--and her versions of things still dominate whole categories of food for me--pasta, sauce, veal, pizza, cookies, to name a few. "Mangia," she would say. "There's plenty more. Mangia."
Biting into that pickle the other day, I had the sudden specific realization that I was a million miles and light years from my Grandma. She's been gone twenty years now, and the thought of my Grandma in a kosher deli on the Upper West Side makes as much sense as Kruschev in Disneyland. Not that Grandma had any biases--I can honestly say she never had a harsh word for anyone--but that she would have been so completely out of context. I can picture my Grandma in precious few places--her kitchen, her dining room, her church. But New York City? Grandma came through Ellis Island on her way from Palermo to Boston, but I am pretty sure she didn't stop on the Upper West Side.
Come to think of it, a more creative writer than me would put her there. It would be 1974. She would be a young, vibrant 84, with another decade to go before she is gone. Somehow, I have talked her into coming to New York with me to visit my brothers at Columbia. We are tired from the trip. It's been a long day, but I convince Grandma to have dinner with me at this kosher deli, Barney Greengrass (The Sturgeon King!) while my brothers finish their studying. The menu might as well be Greek to her, but I pick a few things for us. "Let's have the pastrami, Grandma. That sounds Italian." She is unconvinced, but she lets me order. We sip our Cokes. In no time at all giant steaming sandwiches are in front of us. She looks carefully at the sandwich, the mustard, the assortment of pickles. I spread some mustard on her sandwich.
"Mangia, Grandma," I tell her. "It's been a long day. Mangia."
Posted by Bill Trippe at 6:55 PM
4 Degrees
It's 4 degrees outside as I write this. Baseball seems very far away.
I have an opportunity to do some work in Florida next week. When I was writing the proposal today, I was tempted to offer a very, very steep discount.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 12:19 AM
January 18, 2005
Breece Pancake
Writing about Tim O'Brien got me thinking about other writers who have written about Vietnam, and that led me to Breece Pancake, or Breece D'J Pancake, as he came to be known. The terse biography on Amazon.com gives the outline of his life:
Breece D'J Pancake was born in West Virginia in 1952. He attended Marshall University, taught English at Virginia military schools, and then entered the creative writing program at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, where he died in 1979. During his lifetime, his short fiction was published primarily in The Atlantic.
Pancake was discovered by author James Alan McPherson when Pancake was a graduate writing student at the University of Virginia. Over the next couple of years, Pancake published a number of short stories in The Atlantic Monthly, and I had the dumb luck of reading a few of them. They blew me away. After he committed suicide in 1979, Little, Brown published a book of his collected stories. Joyce Carol Oates gave the book a rave review on the cover of The New York Times Book Review, and fellow West Virginian Jayne Anne Phillips said of the book, "Breece Pancake's stories comprise no less than an American Dubliners."
There are a few good Breece Pancake resources on the Web, including a nice collection of critical praise here, a nice brief biography here, and an NPR audio feature here. There is an especially good essay about Pancake by Cynthia Kadohata at MississippiReview.com.
Now I started this by saying that Pancake wrote about Vietnam, which is only half-true. All of his stories are set in his native West Virginia, but one story, "The Honored Dead," deals with a young man facing the draft. It is a heartbreaking story, and maybe the best short story I have ever read. I often thought of the young man in "The Honored Dead" as the spiritual brother of the soldier in "Machine Dreams" and "The Things They Carried."
The book is well worth the read.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:11 PM
January 17, 2005
Football
I have written elsewhere that I am much more of a baseball fan than anything else, but it is hard to not love watching The New England Patriots, who seem to have exactly the opposite karma that the Red Sox always had prior to this year. The Patriots themselves were always kind of the poor stepchildren in professional football--kind of like the Texas Rangers are to baseball and the Los Angeles Clippers are to basketball. Now they are the team that simply gets it done.
They dominated the Indianapolis Colts last night. I was struck as the game was winding down how relaxed and happy the Patriots players looked on the sideline. They were clearly pleased with a job well done, but their expressions also suggested to me that they hadn't doubted the outcome at all. This after everyone had picked the Colts to win, and many didn't seem to even give the Pats a chance. Yet these young men seemed to clearly be signalling that they knew they were the better team, and it was simply a matter of getting the job done.
This speaks to me of one of the differences between football and baseball, though I honestly don't know enough about football to be confident in my analysis. But it seems to me that in football, there are fewer odd variables to a game. In other words, the better team usually does win. In baseball, more freak things can happen--a rookie pitcher who comes in and pitches brilliantly, the light-hitting shortstop who suddenly hits a three-run home run (Bucky Fucking Dent!), the surehanded fielder who suddenly makes two errors in one inning.
Football has turnovers--interceptions, fumbles. These can make the difference in a game, and often do. But it seems to me that the better football teams are often better in that aspect of the game as well. They cough the ball up less, and they cause the other team to cough it up more.
Anyway, a few thoughts on that. It was fun to see the Patriots win last night. More power to them.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 2:15 PM
January 15, 2005
"I was a coward. I went to Vietnam."
There are some things I know to be true without even confirming them, and one of these things is that George W. Bush has never read The Things They Carried, Tim O'Brien's heartbreaking and staggering collection of short stories based on his experience in the Vietnam War. This is a book that grabs you by the throat and doesn't let go. It opens with the following:
First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross carried letters from a girl named Martha, a junior at Mount Sebastian College in New Jersey. They were not love letters, but Lieutenant Cross was hoping, so he kept them folded in plastic at the bottom of his rucksack. In the late afternoon, after a day's march, he would dig his foxhole, wash his hands under a canteen, unwrap the letters, hold them with the tips of his fingers, and spend the last hour of light pretending. He would imagine romantic camping trips into the White Mountains in New Hampshire. He would sometimes taste the envelope flaps, knowing her tongue had been there. More than anything, he wanted Martha to love him as he loved her, but the letters were mostly chatty, elusive on the matter of love. She was a virgin, he was almost sure. She was an English major at Mount Sebastian, and she wrote beautifully about her professors and roommates and midterm exams, about her respect for Chaucer and her great affection for Virginia Woolf. She often quoted lines of poetry; she never mentioned the war, except to say, Jimmy, take care of yourself. The letters weighed 10 ounces. They were signed Love, Martha, but Lieutenant Cross understood that Love was only a way of signing and did not mean what he sometimes pretended it meant. At dusk, he would carefully return the letters to his rucksack. Slowly, a bit distracted, he would get up and move among his men, checking the perimeter, then at full dark he would return to his hole and watch the night and wonder if Martha was a virgin.
The things they carried were largely determined by necessity. Among necessities or near-necessities were p-38 can openers, pocket knives, heat tabs, wristwatches, dog tags, mosquito repellent, chewing gum, candy, cigarettes, salt tablets, packets of Kool-Aid, lighters, matches, sewing kits, Military Payment Certificates, C rations, and two or three canteens of water. Together, these items weighed between 15 and 20 pounds, depending upon a man's habits or rate of metabolism. Henry Dobbins, who was a big man, carried extra rations; he was especially fond of canned peaches in heavy syrup over pound caked. Dave Jensen, who practiced field hygiene, carried a toothbrush, dental floss, and several hotel-sized bars of soap he'd stolen on R&R in Sydney, Australia. Ted Lavender, who was scared, carried tranquilizers until he was shot in the head outside the village of Than Khe in mid-April. By necessity, and because it was SOP, they all carried steel helmets that weighed 5 pounds including the liner and camouflage cover. They carried the standard fatigue jacket and trousers. Very few carried underwear. On their feet they carried jungle boots-2.1 pounds-and Dave Jensen carried three pairs of socks and a can of Dr. Scholl's foot powder as a precaution against trench foot. Until he was shot, Ted Lavender carried 6 or 7 ounces of premium dope, which for him was a necessity. Mitchell Sanders, the RTO, carried condoms. Norman Bowker carried a diary. Rat Kiley carried comic books. Kiowa, a devout baptist, carried an illustrated New Testament that had been presented to him by his father, who taught Sunday school in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. As a hedge against bad times, however, Kiowa also carried his grandmother's distrust of the white man, his grandfather's old hunting hatchet. Necessity dictated. Because the land was mined and booby-trapped, it was SOP for each man to carry a steel-entered, nylon-covered flak jacket, which weighed 6.7 pounds, but which on hot days seemed much heavier. Because you could die so quickly, each man carried at least one large compress bandage, usually in the helmet band for easy access. Because the nights were cold, and because the monsoons were wet, each carried a green plastic poncho that could be used as a raincoat or groundsheet or makeshift tent. With is quilted liner, the poncho weighed almost 2 pounds, but it was worth every ounce. In April, for instance, when Ted Lavender was shot, they used his poncho to wrap him up, then to carry him across the paddy, then to lift him into the chopper that took him away.
I read the book every couple of years, and read it again last summer, but I might read it again even sooner. I was reading about Tim O'Brien recently and came across a profile by my friend Don Lee where O'Brien mentioned an essay he wrote for The New York Times. The essay related O'Brien's return to Vietnam, 25 years after he fought there, and the ensuing depression and anxiety he suffered from the experience.
Today, O'Brien has no regrets about publishing the article. He considers it one of the best things he has ever written. "I reread it maybe once every two months," he says, "just to remind myself what writing's for. I don't mean catharsis. I mean communication. It was a hard thing to do. It saved my life, but it was a fuck of a thing to print." After taking nine months off and pulling his life back together, O'Brien started another novel, intrigued enough by the first page to write a second, propelled, as always, by his fundamental faith in the power of storytelling.
It's a powerful essay, well worth reading.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 8:12 PM
Titan
The Huygens space probe reached the Saturnian moon Titan today. You can see some of the images here. I wonder if today's events have Kurt Vonnegut rethinking anything.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 12:00 AM | Comments (2)
December 31, 2004
Tsunami Relief
I added a box for donating to the American Red Cross via amazon.com. There are many worthy charities responding to the crisis, so this is only one. The Boston Globe has a listing of charities, with links to their web sites. I attend a Unitarian Universalist Church, and our larger association and our service committee (UUSC) are joining in relief efforts to assist disaster victims around the Indian Ocean. To contribute to that effort, please click here.
It is such a staggering tragedy, but it has been heartwarming to see the world work so hard to respond.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 3:27 PM | Comments (1)
December 29, 2004
Jerry Orbach
Jerry Orbach, who played Detective Lennie Briscoe on Law & Order, passed away today.
I don't often react to celebrity deaths, but I am saddened over Orbach's passing. I probably watch 5 hours of Law & Order every week, and I love his character. But many of you probably know Orbach had a long and varied career—he was indeed a star of stage and screen. A song and dance man, he starred in Broadway shows including "Chicago" and "42nd Street" and won a Tony Award for his role in "Promises, Promises." More recently, he was the voice of the candlestick Lumiere in Disney's animated "Beauty and the Beast" (a video I saw 40,000 times when my boys were little, and I barely tolerated, but it was a kick to listen to Orbach).
I will always remember Orbach for a really chilling role as the mobbed-up Jack Rosenthal in Woody Allen's "Crimes and Misdemeanors." He only appears in a few scenes, opposite Martin Landau, who plays his successful and wealthy brother. But the few scenes, to my thinking, are perfectly done.
So a sad goodbye to Jerry Orbach—song and dance man, Hollywood character actor, and television star. You will be missed.
UPDATE: The Boston Globe is running a nice obit, written by Frazier Moore of the Associated Press. And there is a great roundup of coverage at The Gothamist.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 12:52 PM
December 28, 2004
The Flugh?
Given the spelling of words like phlegm and cough, and rhymes like "through" and "Hugh," shouldn't "the flu" be spelled "the flough" or "the flugh"?
We have had a nice Christmas here, but my sons and I are taking turns being sick with some crud. My oldest son is on antibiotics starting today, so he should be feeling better soon. Poor guy; he has always had the most productive nose and lungs of anyone I know. When he was little, maybe 5, and suffering similarly, he said between sneezes, "Where does phlegm come from anyway, and what am I supposed to do with it?
A great question.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 12:06 PM
December 24, 2004
Almost Christmas
And, as usual, I am doing many things at the last minute...
Christmas is rich territory for a writer. I don't have to think very hard at all to come up with a dozen or more themes or stories surrounding Christmas. This year's theme has a lot to do with it being the first Christmas since my mom died. I visited her last Christmas afternoon, and she was not having a good day. In some ways, then, this Christmas is more peaceful, but that feeling is bittersweet at best.
For some reason, I find myself thinking about Christmas 1973. It was the first Christmas I worked at a regular job. I was 14, and had already spent a couple of years delivering telegrams, doing a paper route, and doing things like yard work and errands for neighbors. But that Christmas I was working at a neighborhood pharmacy, literally next door to my house. And since I was low boy on the totem poll, I got to work Christmas Eve and Christmas morning.
Christmas Eve that year was a blast. As I remember it, it was the last year before the chain store pharmacy, CVS, arrived in town, so it was the last year little pharmacies like Bandy's, where I worked, had a monopoly on the last-minute shoppers.
And what a monopoly it was. From dinner time until the traffic slowed at about 10:00 pm, we were hopping. That Christmas Eve, it seemed that every dad in the neighborhood got off work, stepped off the bus, walked into Bandy's, and bought two or more of the following gifts for their wives: a Timex Watch, a box of Whitman's Chocolates, some perfume (Jean Nate or maybe Chanel for a big spender), and a lady's electric razor. I learned how to wrap presents that Christmas, using precisely the right amount of giftwrap, ribbon, and tape under the watchful eye of Bandy and his wife Estelle. There were small items, too--paperback books, Christmas cards, bags of nuts and candies, lip balm, magazines, cartons of cigarettes. Some of the younger men, married or not, took the occasion to buy themselves the Christmas issue of Playboy. And one neighborhood dad, whom I only knew as the rather intimidating father of two beautiful Italian girls down the block, would buy a box of condoms. I ended up working there four years, and learned this was his precise ritual.
But that was the last Christmas Eve Bandy's had a monopoly. By the next summer, CVS had opened a few blocks away, and even the very next Christmas Eve was a pale comparison to my first one there. By the time I went off to college, the store was closing by 6:00, and by the time I finished college, Bandy had closed the store and retired.
The chain stores had won; as we have learned now, they always do. People got things a little cheaper, and a little faster. But here's to a Christmas Eve remembered, and to small details in lives observed.
Merry Christmas to those of you who celebrate. And a wish for a peaceful New Year for all of us.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 2:03 PM
December 21, 2004
James Thurber on Christmas and Hemingway
James Thurber was the first writer I fully embraced. Sometime partway through high school, I read everything I could get my hands on. Along the way, I read a really fine biography by Burton Bernstein and began to understand how complicated a writer's mind and life can be.
The New Yorker is highlighting a Thurber piece from their archives. Short and sweet.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:29 PM
December 19, 2004
Cosmo Kaye
Watching White Christmas tonight, I realized how much Michael Richards, who played Cosmo Kramer on Seinfeld, riffs off Danny Kaye. I can't be the first person who noticed this, can I?
Great line, when Danny Kaye kisses Vera-Ellen in front of General Waverly, "In some ways you're far superior to my cocker spaniel."
Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:14 PM
December 17, 2004
It's a Wonderful Life
OK, I am sappy, but I have always loved the Frank Capra/Jimmy Stewart movie, It's a Wonderful Life. If you have trouble sitting through the whole thing, you can try this 30-second version, as re-enacted by bunnies. The bunny who plays Mary Bailey is OK, but she is no Donna Reed.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:48 PM
December 11, 2004
Me and Julio Down at the Schoolyard
46-year old infielder Julio Franco signed a contract to remain an Atlanta Brave today. That means, as of this writing, there is still someone in Major League Baseball who is older than me.
Here's to you, Julio.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:49 PM
December 9, 2004
Shameless Request Department
People in the fund raising business tell me, "if you don't ask, people don't give." So I am asking. I have been working on this blog for a while, and I enjoy writing it, but I still need to pay the bills. I would love to spend more time on blogging. So, here goes.
<shameless-request>
If you like what you have been reading, and would like to see more, show the love, vote with your feet, and contribute through the Paypal "Make a Donation" button on the left side of the page. And, truly, any amount is welcome.
</shameless-request>
Thanks,
Bill
Posted by Bill Trippe at 3:24 PM | Comments (2)
This is a Prayer
I have mentioned that, for a writing group in Melrose, we have been using a book, Writing Alone, Writing Together, by Judy Reeves. One of the approaches in the book is to do timed writing exercises, where you write freely based on a brief prompt. We have been doing this with great success in our group.
One recent prompt was, "This is a prayer," and I wrote the following in eight minutes.
Glory be to God for these plain things--socks without holes, shoes that stand up to the rain, eyeglasses without scratches, and a plate of beef stew that is just big enough.
My strong, handsome boys do so many things so well. When my oldest son was a baby, he would sleep stretched from my belly to my chin, burrowing into the warmth of my chest as I too slept. This comforted both him and me, of course. Him in his colic and distress, me in my awe of his mere presence. Some time later, I would spend the night with him in the hospital, and all my anxieties felt so small in the face of how matter-of-fact he was about all these strange, invasive tests. It didn't cure me of whining, but I do it less now.
And my younger son, so cool and self-possessed, so sure of himself in so many spheres.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:29 AM
December 8, 2004
Ted Kooser
Ted Kooser is the new US poet laureate. This was actually announced in September, but such announcements don't make the front page, so you will forgive me for only picking up on this recently.
Ted Kooser replaces Louise Gluck, who replaced Billy Collins, a poet I have discussed here a couple of times. Like Collins, Kooser is very readable, though I find Kooser relies more on imagery and Collins relies more on story.
The press has made a somewhat big deal of the fact that Kooser is from Nebraska, and the first poet laureate from the great plains. I do think geography is a big part of Kooser's work. Consider, for example, his poem Flying at Night.
There are some nice profiles of Kooser in the New York Times, Washington Post, and Christian Science Monitor. The first two links require (free) registration.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:44 AM | Comments (1)
December 3, 2004
Some Cautionary Tales
Ten Ways I Almost Killed Myself
Or
Son, Don't Do What I Did
By Bill Trippe
1. 17, drunk at a lake in New Hampshire, my friend Chucky and I decide to bring a cast-iron chair from shore to a diving platform some 20 yards away. It is too heavy of course, and a few yards from the platform we lose our grip. As it drops to the bottom of the lake, the chair catches my ankle, taking me with it. A few frantic seconds later, I free my foot, but not before I have swallowed enough water to leave me retching over the side of the platform. I am fine.
2. 18, drunk and stoned in my friend Scott's car, we pick up three girls and head for a party across town. A block from the party, we are broad-sided at an intersection. Scott's car is pushed onto the sidewalk, shearing a hydrant off in the process. I am bathed in glass from the exploding windows and drenched in the deluge from the hydrant. A friend finds me wandering away from the accident, hysterical, imagining I am bathed in blood. Except for a few scratches, we are fine.
3. 15, I am hitchhiking to a nearby subway station when two guys pick me up. A few minutes later, the driver tells me they are not going to let me out, and their glassy looks confirm trouble. Without thinking, I open the door of the car, now going about 40, and declare that I am getting out unless they stop the car. With my feet scraping the pavement, gravel flying, they realize I am serious and stop the car. I am fine.
4. 14, I am on the elevated train tracks in a gritty neighborhood in Boston. From the street, some tough throws a paint can at the oncoming train and has the astonishing luck of derailing it. I slide from my seat on the back of one car, hit the floor, and slide the 45 feet to the front of the car, hitting the wall feet first. In the aftermath, I am somehow nominated to help shuttle people from the crippled train, along a narrow catwalk, to the platform. I am fine.
5. 16, I am riding shotgun and Shithead is driving a borrowed car. (Yes, we really called him that, and, no, I don't remember his real name.) Going 90 on a divided road near the airport, Shithead cuts the wheel -- he wants to fishtail -- but instead he loses control. The aftermath is spectacular. We have taken out 200 feet of chain-link fence and wrenched 50 fifty feet of guardrail from the divider, twisting it across the road. Every surface of the car is destroyed. We are fine.
6. 17, I am riding shotgun again and Chucky is driving. We are drag racing on a bridge over the Mystic River when the right front tire blows out. We veer into the curve, built high for exactly this kind of calamity. The passenger compartment comes right off the chassis, coming to a rest on the rail above the river. We climb out the driver's window. We are fine.
7. 18, my college roommate Erick and I have driven through a blizzard, stoned, to buy tickets to a concert. A half-mile from campus, Erick loses control on the ice, the car slides off the road, hits the embankment, and flips into the woods. I get my first non-hockey concussion, but am otherwise fine.
8. 17, I am riding shotgun with Chucky again when he decides to burn rubber outside a mobbed-up East Boston bar. We hit a puddle, and plow into a row of Cadillacs and Camaros. The patrons pour out of the bar, but the tension is quickly cut when one of the Camaro owners recognizes Chucky to be his cousin. We are fine.
9. 16, we are hanging out, all buzzed on one thing or another, when apparently I say the wrong thing to Shithead. He is a big ugly menacing kid, all red hair, freckles, and aviator glasses, but I can't see this is now because he is holding a gun to my face, screaming incoherently. I somehow put a parked car between us and dive underneath it. Someone else talks Shithead down, and a few minutes later we are back to partying.
10. 19, I am on an underground trolley, stopped in a station, when fire erupts from the dashboard. I have the bad luck of being in the backseat of the trolley. The driver gets up and bounds off the trolley, leaving us all to fight our way off. With the smoke billowing, I push open a window and dive out. It's a long way down to the platform, but a trash barrel breaks my fall. I am fine.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 2:26 AM
December 2, 2004
Palm Springs
Well, honestly, I haven't seen much of it yet. I loved the plane ride from Phoenix to Palm Springs. Once we were terrestrial, it was kind of like driving around in southwest Florida--a whole lot of asphalt with chain stores and some palm trees here and there. Plus, there is the whole Bob Hope thing. I really am expecting him or Bing Crosby to emerge from stage left, highballs in hand, crooning... something. I am staying at the resort where, supposedly, Irving Berlin wrote "White Christmas." I have a meeting tomorrow in the Frank Capra room, for crying out loud.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 1:03 AM
November 29, 2004
This is Cool
Red Sox fans will appreciate this. You can read about the technology here.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:10 PM
November 28, 2004
Little Feat
I don't get a chance to listen to much music. Sometimes, in the car, I get an uninterrupted 30 minutes or so, and I lean pretty heavily on the cassette tapes close at hand--a lot of Springsteen, some Dylan, and small equal parts of Grateful Dead, Allman Brothers, and Van Morrison. I also like acoustic music; I could listen to Greg Brown all day.
Of course, I don't have all day, so a lot of stuff goes unlistened. Take Little Feat, for example. They were my lifeline, for a few years at the very end of high school and the beginning of college. Then founder and lead singer Lowell George died in my sophmore year of college. I wrote a horribly bad tribute to him for my college paper, but then moved on. By the end of college I was seven parts Bruce Springsteen to three parts acoustic music, and I haven't moved much from that since.
But Little Feat has such a great sound, and when I hear them I rocket back to a time when listening to music was pure joy. My friends and I had a blast, with Little Feat as a backdrop. Yes, if you know Little Feat you know the many obvious allusions to drugs in their lyrics. But it was more than that. It was offbeat, playful songs like "Dixie Chicken" and "Tripe Face Boogie," and sweet plaintive songs like Missing You."
Something the other day got me thinking about the Little Feat song Willin" and the silly little argument my friends and I used to have over the lyrics in the refrain. The correct lyric is, "And if you give me weed, whites and wine/ And you show me a sign/ And I'll be willin' to be movin'..." Some of us would argue that it wasn't "weed, whites, and wine"; rather it was "weed, rice, and wine" or "wheat, rice, and wine." I forget how we ever settled it, but we finally did.
I have this pet theory that the ready access to the Internet basically puts an end to all such squabbles. Have a question? Google it, and voila, there is the answer. So I googled the lyrics, and not only did I find the correct ones, but I also found a Google answers discussion correcting someone who made the "wheat, rice, and wine" mistake.
Here is the really funny thing, though. The "wheat" vs. "weed" line isn't even the tricky part of the lyric though. The refrain actually begins with a couplet that we obviously never figured out, and never even bothered to argue about:
And I've been from Tucson to Tucumcari
Tehachapi to Tonopah
Driven every kind of rig that's ever been made
Driven the backroads so I wouldn't get weighed...
My recollection is that we knew to sing... "Tucson to Tucumcari," but the next line is only a vague memory. I asked my wife, also of that era, and she thought the line mentioned "Chesapeake," but I completely drew a blank. Did any of us even have a clue?
Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:25 AM
November 17, 2004
Sports
Regular readers know I am a baseball fan. I have, at different times been crazy about all of the Boston teams, but the Red Sox have always been my one true devotion. My interest in every other sports waxes and wanes. I loved the Patriots as a little kid, and flirted with them again in my teens. I was rabid about the Bruins the whole time I played hockey, and into my early 20s. I am probably a fair weather fan when it comes to the Celtics; I have watched them in three phases of greatness that have coincided with my sports-watching career--the tail end of the Bill Russell era, the John Havlicek-Dave Cowens era, and the Larry Bird era.
I really don't watch much professional basketball anymore, and the professional hockey season is currently not happening and no one has yet noticed. Of course, I watch a lot of soccer and basketball because my sons play.
I watch the Patriots now. Partly because they are a dynasty in the making, of course, but also because my sons love football, and they love the Patriots. I can't say I blame them. Even with the Red Sox winning the World Series this year (wow, that was cool to type!), my boys have already learned the bittersweet reality of being a Red Sox fan. The end of the 2003 season devastated them, and as early as 1999 they watched the Sox flame out in the playoffs.
The Patriots, on the the other hand, are the anti-Red Sox. They win when they are supposed to win, and often win when they are not supposed to. Confounding, weird things happen to their opponents, and not to them. They are competent and uncontroversial. Their coach is a measured, intellectual guy. The owners are liberal-minded, successful, and fan-oriented. (Considering the Patriots were kind of the joke of professional football for their first 30-odd years, this is especially remarkable.)
This year, they also have the element I love to see in football--and that is the big, powerful running back. This year it is Corey Dillon. My first Patriots hero was Jim Nance, to my thinking the most underrated power runner of his time. Later, the Patriots had a big back named Sam Cunningham, whose nickname, "The Bam," pretty much summed up his style. When the Patriots had the ball close to the goal line, Sam was fond of leaping over the pile of players into the end zone. When he did this as a rookie, an opposing veteran claimed he would rid Sam of the habit by driving his helmet into Sam's Adam's Apple. But either it never happened, or it did and Sam didn't notice, because he kept doing that leap throughout his career.
Dillon, halfway through the season, already has 900 yards rushing, which would be impressive for an entire year. At this rate, he would get 1800 yards, which would be a Patriots record, I am quite sure, but who knows what the rest of the season will bring. We shall see. But it is a pleasure watching him run over people.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:05 AM
November 16, 2004
This is Great
One of my favorite series of books over the years has been the Paris Review Interviews, which have been rolled up into a series of books called, Writers at Work. Starting in the 1950s, then-editor George Plimpton and later others interviewed many of the great living writers. Now these interviews are becoming available on the Web. Some of the interviews up there already include Truman Capote, T.S. Eliot, Ralph Ellison, and Dorothy Parker.
I am still checking it out, but it looks like the interviews will be coming out in phases. The full interviews are downloaded as PDFs, which are nice and clear but don't look like the typography from the books. They do include a favorite feature from the books--most (all?) interviews began with a facsimile of a manuscript page, showing, typically, typewritten manuscript with the author's edits in pen or pencil. I always found the interviews--and the manuscript pages--a wonderful glimpse into the creative process of giants.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 8:58 PM
November 15, 2004
Ulysses, Redux
Well, I have been silent about Ulysses for a while, but I am making progress. I finished the Circe chapter last night, and have just started on the final section, The Nostos. I like how the opening chapter of The Nostos, Eumeus, is illustrated in the Ulysses for Dummies very very short version.
In other news, I am teetering toward pursuing a very old interest, collecting matchbooks. Long story, but I did this for several years as a kid, but lost my collection. We had our church fair this past weekend, and there was a massive collection for sale. I am ruminating about it as we speak.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:54 PM | Comments (2)
November 3, 2004
One Last Baseball Quote for Now
I often share the following quote with friends at the end of the baseball season. Like the one in the previous entry, it is from the late (and great) A. Bartlett Giamatti, who in his lifetime was a Renaissance scholar, President of Yale University, and the Commissioner of Major League Baseball. If there were a baseball team of intellectual gods, Giamatti would hit cleanup in my lineup.
It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone. You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops. Today... a Sunday of rain and broken branches and leaf-clogged drains and slick streets, it stopped, and summer was gone.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:04 PM
Another Baseball Quote
"Much of what we love later in a sport is what it recalls to us about ourselves at our earliest. And those memoriesare not simply of childhood or of a childhood game. They are memories of our best hopes. They are memories of a time when all that would be better was before us, as a hope, and the hope was fastened to a game. One hoped not so much to be the best who ever played as simply to stay in the game and ride it wherever it would go, culling its rhythms and realizing its promises. That is I think, what it means to remember one's best hopes, and to remember them in a game, and revive them whenever one sees the game played, long after playing is over."
A. Bartlett Giamatti, from his book, Take Time for Paradise
Posted by Bill Trippe at 8:48 PM
October 30, 2004
Quote for the Day
I see great things in baseball. It's our game -- the American game. It will take our people out of doors, fill them with oxygen, give them a larger physical stoicism. Tend to relieve us from being a nervous, dyspeptic set. Repair those losses, and be a blessing to us.
--Walt Whitman
Posted by Bill Trippe at 8:45 PM
Red Sox Parade
I am down for the count with a bad cold today, so I stayed away from the Red Sox parade, watching a long stretch of it on television today. I have to say I really liked a lot of the touches--the Red Sox traveled in the amphibious "Duck Tour" boats. Each boat seemed to have its own theme--starting pitchers in one, relievers in another.
The camera work was not great. It was overcast, and it looked like a lot of shots were taken at a great distance, but I think I saw former Sox manager Joe Morgan in one of the duck boats, along with former player (and a personal favorite of mine) Rick Miller, who is also a New England native as I recall. I am not sure though, so will check the writeups tomorrow.
The other great thing about the parade is that it featured nearly all of my favorite parts of Boston--starting at Fenway Park, then the Back Bay and Copley Square, the Public Gardens and Boston Common, and finally both the Boston and Cambridge sides of the Charles River. I love a lot of different cities, but the backdrop of the parade also reminded me how much I love Boston.
This calls to mind a book about the Boston cityscape, referenced below.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 4:34 PM
October 27, 2004
Here's An Interesting Idea
National Novel Writing Month. From the rules:
At midnight, local time on November 1, begin writing your novel. Your goal is to write a 50,000-word novel by midnight, local time, on November 30th.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 8:58 PM
October 25, 2004
Speaking of Roy Hobbs
There is a small universe of novels about baseball that I have enjoyed over the years. A couple of these are obvious, and the others less so.
There is no lack of great baseball writing of course. Andre Dubus, for example, has at least two great short stories that center on baseball. And James Thurber's, "You Could Look it Up" is a delight.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 2:09 PM
Where do I Start?
There are just too many themes and stories, plots and subplots, and texts and subtexts of this year's baseball postseason. There is the whole curse of the Bambino angle, the improbable Red Sox comeback over the Evil Empire, and the Roy Hobbsian story of Curt Schilling bleeding through his socks.
For my part, I love all the small stories of redemption. It was Tim Wakefield, who coughed up the series-winning homerun to Aaron Boone in 2003, only to come back this year and win the crucial game five over the Yankees. It was Mark Bellhorn emerging from a slump to deliver key hits to beat the Yankees (and, since then, to deliver key hits against the Cardinals as well.) It was Derek Lowe recovering from a woefully disappointing season to win the clinching games in both the AL Division Series and AL Championship Series.
You couldn't write these stories in advance. They are too quirky and almost entirely unpredictable. And that is one of the things that makes baseball great.
Now if the Red Sox can only stop making so many damn errors.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 1:45 PM
October 22, 2004
Thinking Like Your Editor
I have been reading a very good book, Thinking Like Your Editor, by literary agents Susan Rabiner and Albert Fortunato. It was recommended by my agent, Margot Maley, as I began to dig into this next book project. It makes a general point that I already understood--that publishing serious nonfiction depends on clearly identifying an audience and why it would read your book. But it makes the point very well. It is full of good advice, and drives home its point with a lot of good questions and examples.
If you are interested in publishing a nonfiction book, I would recommend you read this book before you undertake the project.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:49 PM
October 21, 2004
Everett Hoagland's "Homecoming"
Catching up on some reading, I discovered that a former professor of mine, Everett Hoagland, had published a poem sequence called "Homecoming" in UU World, which is the house magazine for the Unitarian Universalist Association. They are really wonderful, and worth a thoughtful reading or two.
There is also a brief interview with Hoagland, where he reveals something I hadn't known about him. In response to the question, "How did you become a poet?" Hoagland gives an absolutely stunning answer:
"Langston Hughes met student poets at my college, Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, which was also his alma mater, and told me there were a couple things he liked about my manuscript. I took his suggestions very seriously, put them into effect, and graduated with one of two creative writing awards. So I said, you know, if this great man, this poet laureate of the Negro race, the most popular black poet who ever lived, could take my poetry seriously, maybe I should take it more seriously. "
Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:06 PM
Yankee Tales, II
I met Reggie Jackson during the 1978 season. No, I am overstating it. I was in the same room as Reggie Jackson during the 1978 season. He actually came into the store where I was working. My buddy, Kevin Whalen--a huge Yankees fan--was also working that day. Kevin was so excited that he was quivering. He went straight up to Reggie and asked for an autograph, and Reggie turned him down. Kevin was crushed.
But Mrs. DiOrio came to Kevin's rescue. Mrs. DiOrio ran our cosmetics counter. She was as blunt and funny as they come, and she marched right over to Reggie and bellowed, "Who the hell do you think you are? Give that boy your autograph!" Nobody said no to Mrs. DiOrio, not even Reggie Jackson, who just laughed, motioned Kevin over, and added his autograph to Kevin's book.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 8:59 PM
October 12, 2004
Yankee Tales, I
When I was in college, I used to work summers at a nice drugstore in the plaza level of the Prudential Center in Boston. One of the perks of working there was that it was right next to a nice hotel, what was then the Sheraton Boston, and the visiting baseball teams often stayed there, since it was also very close to Fenway Park.
As a result, I ended up coming face-to-face with a number of major league baseball players. Reggie Jackson was easily the most famous, and there were plenty of unfamous ones--rookies, journeymen, and various one-hit wonders.
This would have been the summers of 1977, 1978, and 1979--so the height of the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry of that era, with Jackson, Thurmon Munson, and Ron Guidiry on the New York side, and Jim Rice, Fred Lynn, Carlton Fisk, and Bill Lee on the Boston side.
I was working one day the Yankees were in town, and Chris Chambliss came in to the store. Chambliss was a big, slugging first basemen for the Yankees. On any other team, he would be the heart of the order, but on that Yankees team he was one of many stars. His relative obscurity on the team saved him, I think, from the wrath of Red Sox fans.
There was something, too, about Chambliss' demeanor though. He was a tall, quiet African-American man, and this was a period in history when Boston was not necessarily a friendly place for a person of color to visit. The protests over busing were only a few years in the past, and the Red Sox, who had been the last team in major league baseball to integrate, were still a team of white, lumbering stars. The 1978 team had both Jim Rice and George Scott, as I recall--both African-American men--but Boston always seemed to have the fewest nonwhites on the field.
I say all this as backdrop to Chambliss and his demeanor. Next to Reggie Jackson, who was all swagger and flash, Chambliss was the strong, silent type--a star in his own right who carried himself with a quiet dignity. The cynic could easily say that this is how white Americans prefer their African-American athletes--productive and quiet--and this could be seen as especially true of Boston at that point in time. But I like to think there was something else at work with Chambliss too. Even as rival fans--even as rival and primarily white fans--we liked him both for his obvious talent and his workmanlike approach to the game. In that way, he was like Boston's superstar of the time, Carl Yastrzemski. No one else approached the game with the stoicism and New England work ethic of Yaz; he appealed to that flinty New England sense of life as effort, life as grim duty. Perhaps we saw in Chambliss some of the same gritty everyman we saw in Yaz.
So I am standing at the cash register and in walks Chris Chambliss. After briefly wandering the aisles, he comes to the register and chooses a couple of newspapers--a Boston Globe and a New York Times. (Baseball players are not the most cerebral types, so one of them buying the Times--and passing up The Daily News and other NY papers--is noteworthy, in my book.)
So here is Chambliss, now, pulling out a pocket of change and handing me 50 cents, to which I reflexively reply, "that's 75 cents."
And then here is Chambliss, who up until this time hasn't even looked at me, instead scanning the papers in front of him, looking up and saying, "Why 75 cents?"
And here I am, about to say what I always to to people, that the total is 75 cents since we charge extra for the New York Times because it is an out of town paper. But instead, for some reason, I say, "Because you play for the Yankees."
I only let this hang out there for a few seconds, but I wish I had the skill and vocabulary to describe the look on Chris Chambliss' face in the few seconds before I said, "Just kidding!" It quickly went from confused to bemused to, well, horrified, and I imagined in that very brief moment that he was considering that I was really and truly crazy. This was Boston, after all; in games that season the Yankees and Sox had slugged it out with bats and fists, and, of course, the Red Sox were on the losing end on both counts. Why couldn't I be a crazed fan seeking vengeance? He was probably thinking it was just his damn luck to buy a newspaper from some me.
But the moment passed. I nervously explained I was joking, that the Times cost extra because it was an out-of-town newspaper. He smiled very briefly, but I wasn't sure if he was smiling at my little joke or smiling because he was certain now that I was nuts and was just trying to be polite. He folded his newspapers under his arm and walked back toward the hotel.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 1:28 PM
Yankees-Red Sox
So here we sit on the cusp of another Red-Sox Yankees playoff series. The last two times they have met for the American League Championship, the Yankees have won. The Yankees also won a one-game playoff to decide the American League East in 1878. Since the Red Sox last won the World Series in 1918, the Yankees have won the World Series 26 times. Yet people still use the word "rivalry." A more accurate description would be something along the lines of a sado-masochistic relationship.
I am still traumatized by Grady Little's vapor lock in the playoffs last year when he left Pedro in just long enough to lose the game, and, as a result, the series, the season, and his job. As a result, I doubt I will be able to directly watch even a minute of this series. I will probably listen to the radio in short bursts... just long enough to determine the score. Unless the Red Sox are up big (5 or more runs with less than 4 outs to go), I won't sit down and watch. I am committed to this strategy after I thought I took sufficient care during the Red Sox-Angels series but ended up terrorized yet again.
I missed most of the clinching game against the Angels, working instead. I only got the score second-hand on my subway ride home. They were up 6-1 when I stepped into my wife's car, moments later it was 6-2 and, two pitches after that, 6-6. I almost had a stroke. I decided at that moment that I needed some new hobbies.
So I will follow this series from a distance, thank you. I really do love reading about baseball almost as much as I like watching it, so this will be a much safer way to go.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:45 AM
October 10, 2004
Unnaturally Speaking
In an effort to break a recent block on some of my professional writing, I decided to try a new technology that I have been considering for a long time--speech recognition. I have to say, I am really pleased. I bought a copy of Dragon Naturally Speaking, Standard Edition. I got it up and running in an evening, and spent the next day writing a long-overdue white paper for a client. There are only a handful of must-know commands, and the accuracy is very impressive. I have had to learn to speak more clearly; interestingly, you don't want to speak slowly.
When I was first learning it the other night, I came up with some funny results, though. I was doing the tutorial that comes with the product, where you learn how to dictate a memo. After a solid start, I lost it, and then got flustered. By the end, I am talking to myself.
The dictated text:
I heard that you are starting a new job in San Francisco. Congratulations! When this the new jumpstart? I would love to have lunch with you before you leave. At a congratulations. When this the new jumpstart the is it still listening to make all my call I! What should read as all my call! He says Griese, he says Griese want to find and one to find nothing yelled is my handsome son. It has no idea what to do that. It is to stop somehow add oyster.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 7:51 PM
October 5, 2004
Another Reason why the Internet is Cool
I have this tiny side business selling used books through Amazon.com. I enjoy noting where the buyer is from and what they have purchased. The Melville reader in Kansas, or the hockey fan in Mississippi. Today I shipped a book to Unalaska, AK, my first sale outside the lower 48. I had to look it up, and was delighted to see where it was. Zoom out and pan for greater effect.
Apparently, the location isn't all that convenient for movie theaters, though you can find a bite to eat. Tino's Steakhouse is a Mexican restaurant, and pretty good, but as pricy as you would expect a restaurant to be in Unalaska.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 3:16 PM
September 29, 2004
A Writing Community
For the writing group I am involved with in Melrose, I recently ordered and have been reading, Writing Alone, Writing Together, by Judy Reeves. My first take is that this is a valuable book, full of practical advice and also wisdom about building writing community. We tried some of the writing practice exercises, and it seemed like time well spent. I will report on this more as we progress, and I will share a few of my attempts at the exercises.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 7:34 PM
September 2, 2004
Fishing
I am not a fisherman, but I have experienced what I imagine to be the perfect moment in fishing. Imagine casting your line, and having a strike each and every time. And I don't mean a nibble or a bite. I mean a strike--a brace-your-feet, bend-your-back strike, 14, 15, 16 pounds of bluefish hitting your lure at full speed, firing into the air, and twisting and turning at the end of your line.
And then it's back in the water, fighting me and me fighting it. I am up to my thighs in the ocean. It's high tide on Buzzard's Bay, a perfect June evening, the waves are big, and the water is abnormally warm. As I fight the bluefish back to shore, the waves are crashing around me. One moment a wave is slamming me at the waist and the next the wave is retreating, water and sand and rocks sucking at my ankles, my heels digging deeper in the sand.
I really don't know enough about fishing to compare a bluefish to anything else, but I know it to be a sporting fish. I also know my oldest brother is an experienced fisherman, and he regards bluefish warily. As I pull fish after fish back onto shore, he is ready with a gaffe, a short club with a heavy metal end. He gaffes each blue at least once before extracting the lure from its mouth, and then he tosses it onto the cooler full of ice. In minutes, the cooler is full. "Keep casting," he says. "We'll throw the rest back in."
What he doesn't say is, keep casting, because it will never be this good again. He doesn't say it, but his smile does. A smile from my oldest brother is a rare thing. This is a serious man. A big-time litigator for a 900-lawyer firm, he has been working 16 hours a day, 7 days a week since he was in diapers. His avocations are few--golf and fishing--and he normally golfs and fishes with the same gritty joylessness with which he prepares for his next trial.
But this one evening in June is a rare moment. He has invited me along to fish. I am using his rods, his reel, his tackle and bait. And now, in this moment of fishing nirvana, he is doing all the scut work, leaving me in the warm water to my waist, casting like I have never cast before, watching bluefish after bluefish strike my line, hurtle through the air, and flash and wriggle at the peak off its jump to signal that the battle was on.
I was thrilled of course, but I was also keenly aware oh how unusual this was. I could count on one hand the things my brother and I had done one on one. We were far enough apart in age to almost represent different generations, and we were far enough apart in temperament to almost represent different species. He was Ivy League, Republican, and wingtips to my state school, liberal Democrat, and Clark Wallabies. But I was at a low--my marriage had fallen apart in the past few months--and he had reached out. "Come fishing," he said in his usual, clipped way in a surprise call a few days before. "Just bring clothes. I've got all the gear."
And have the gear he did. He was next to me now, a few yards down the shore. He was a masterful caster, perfect form again and again. But I am taller and more athletic. Most of my casts were erratic and off my mark, but the few I did well were spectacular--long, arcing casts that landed 40 yards and more from shore, the lure perching on the crest of a wave for a split second before a bluefish slashed thought it, jerking it and the line 10 feet in the air.
"Unfuckingbelievable!" I exclaimed again and again. In truth, my heart was bursting with emotion and the word was all wrong. But this was my big brother, and I had to play it cool. I also knew his vernacular--he had always been caustic, and being a lawyer certainly didn't break him of the habit. Everyone was a cocksucker, and everything was a piece of fucking shit. "Unfuckingbelievable" was, to my thinking, how I should thank him for this joyous moment.
And so what if it was the wrong word, I thought to myself, the water whirling around my legs. I was Ernest Hemingway on Cuba. I was a young man fighting the elements, willing fish after fish onto shore. For one moment, my legs in the warm water felt better than any baseball I had ever hit, any goal that I had scored in hockey, any race that I had ever run well. I cast again--a long perfect cast. I watched it arc high over the incoming waves. I dug my heels deeper in the sand, leaned back, and waited for the next fish to strike.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 1:48 AM
Little Crush
You have no way of knowing this,but I have silently catalogued
every observable, erotic detail
about you.
It begins with the wisps of brown hair
that have escaped your braid
to make little swirls on the back of your neck.
One thicker strand curves in thoughtful counterpoint
to your hooped earring.
It is a perfect day to catalog you.
It's going to be hot and humid,
and you have dressed accordingly.
The neckline of your summer dress
droops just so—to the lovely shelf
at the top of your breasts.
I could be crass and pause here,
but I won't. It's the small things about you
that matter. Accessories, for instance,
are everything, but sparseness is key,
so I am delighted to trace your unsleeved arm
down to three slender bands of silver
cascading around your wrist.
Perfection!
And suddenly motion—the banded wrist rises—
and your tanned fingers absentmindedly
find the thick strand and return it to the braid.
Your lips purse, you exhale slowly,
releasing the first of the day's heat,
and your wrist returns to your side.
With all the world's expectation,
my gaze returns to your braid.
I have to get off the trolley at the next stop,
but the wayward strand is already pulling free again.
There is time still, my dear,
to capture the next detail,
to record the next delicious gesture.
— Bill Trippe
Posted by Bill Trippe at 1:43 AM
August 25, 2004
Big Daddy
I miss hockey. I miss the rush of it--skating full bore, legs pumping. And I miss the insane blood lust of it--chasing a puck carrier the length of the ice, poking and slashing at his arms, legs, and body with my stick. Harassing the shit out of him. I read once that a hockey player at top speed exceeds 30 miles an hour. I also read once that 30 miles an hour is the speed at which serious injuries begin to appear in car accidents. I have no doubt these two facts are somehow related.
It is fully within the rules of hockey to hit someone at full speed. You can't line someone up and plant them into the boards, you can't hit them with a raised stick, and you can't connect primarily with your arms, elbows, or an outstretched leg. Technically, if I remember the rules correctly, you cannot take three or more strides directly at an opponent and then check him. But the reality of hockey is that very little skating is done in a straight line. You are constantly shifting, cutting, turning, deking--doing anything to get around obstacles and get the best angle on the puck. So if someone is in open ice, head down, and your trajectory just happens to intersect with him, well, Katie bar the door and you better check your dental insurance, may the best man win.
I have been at both ends of such collisions, but more often on the receiving end. Once, retrieving the puck behind my own net, I turned 180° and started to head up ice. Bad idea. I was looking up ice and never saw my opponent, who hit me low--I felt the impact at mid-thigh. As I was pin-wheeling through the air, I found myself admiring the little prick for executing such a perfect check.
Smaller opponents loved to take me down. At 6'2" I was often the tallest player on the ice. This gave me a significant advantage in terms of reach, but I was so damn skinny that my center of gravity was somewhere between my sternum and my Adam's apple. And smaller opponents took advantage of this. Once, lining up for the opening face-off against an all black team (yes, a rarity then, and now), I found myself facing off against a menacing boy a foot shorter but perhaps three times wider than me.
"Oh, Lordy!" he said, before fixing his mouthguard in place. "I've got myself a big one here!"
His linemates chuckled knowingly. "Get him Big Daddy! Take him down!"
When the puck dropped and play started, I found myself putting as much distance as I could between myself and Big Daddy. But hockey doesn't work that way. You can't challenge someone for the puck from 30 feet away, no matter how tall you are. On the first line change, my coach greeted me at the bench. Grabbing my facemask, he leaned in and hissed, "What the fuck is wrong with you tonight?" He then let me sit for a good long time before finally putting me out to kill a penalty. "Now go out there and hit somebody," he barked before sending me out.
Killing a penalty was my thing. I was not a good scorer or passer, but I was an above-average skater, and tireless. I also had that great reach and the witless tenacity of a terrier. As the opposing team tried to use their extra skater to set up some kind of play, I would relentlessly dog them. Check them, poke at them, chase them all over the ice--anything to get them to hurry their play and make some kind of mistake. Being a penalty killer meant being an agent of chaos, and I loved this role.
As luck would have it, Big Daddy was on the ice for their power play. Standing at the "point," the blue line that straddles the ice about 45 feet from the goalie, Big Daddy was at a safe distance from the corners where he could do me grave harm. But being at the point also put Big Daddy in a position where he might get set up for a shot, and I would have to close the gap to him as quickly as possible.
Of course, this is precisely what happened. The puck came out to Big Daddy and I was the closest defender. As he lined up his shot, I had a very clear thought--Big Daddy might be scary, but my coach was scarier. I was not going back to the bench without challenging this shot.
So challenge I did. I headed straight for Big Daddy and closed the distance between us in two strides. Now there are perhaps two safe ways to challenge a shot in this situation. You could slide, putting your skates and well-padded shins in the path of the puck and your head a safe distance away. Agile players do this, and you see professional and major college players do this brilliantly. You can also simply skate directly at the shooter, in the hope of rattling him, confident that the shot will hit you fairly low on the body and in a well-padded spot.
Bizarrely, though, I did neither. Desperate to attack the shot, I instead lunged at Big Daddy, reaching out to my full length to put my stick in his way as quickly as I could. Big Daddy unleashed a furious shot. My teammates later told me that his slapshot glanced off the oncoming blade of my stick and rose to hit me squarely in the face.
"You went down like a ton of bricks," one teammate told me, with too much glee. "You were out fucking cold."
Another teammate chimed in, "It's like you said, 'Here, shoot it at my face instead.'"
I came to in the ambulance. The puck had hit me high on the face mask, almost where it meets the helmet, so I felt like I had a divot in my forehead. The EMTs were unimpressed, though. This was a tough neighborhood, and they had seen far worse. "You'll be fine," one said. "They call us because of the insurance or something."
My next concussion would convince me to quit hockey. I was killing a penalty (again!), chasing the puck carrier around the net when my skate caught a stray piece of netting. I hit the boards head first, at close to full speed, and got my second ambulance ride in a year. This time, the EMTs seemed more concerned. They must have asked me who was President 25 times, and never seemed satisfied with my answer, no matter who I tried. The smelling salts finally brought me around.
"You really should think of a different sport," the EMT offered. He was right of course. Even at 17, I was smart enough to know it wasn't worth it. I wasn't much of a player, but I loved it. God help me, I loved it so.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:53 PM | Comments (1)
August 24, 2004
By Way of an Update
I was on vacation for a bit, and then in San Francisco at a conference. While in Maine, I attended Jim Ellefson's writing workshop again, and have some new material in a notebook that I will get online soon.
While I was in San Francisco, I had dinner at my nephew Max's restaurant, Frascati. It was a great meal, and a great time.
Careful readers of the blog will note that I haven't mentioned Joyce's Ulysses lately. Fear not. I am making progress! I am on page 559, most of the way through the lengthy chapter referred to as Circe. The online guide I have been using summarizes Circe best, saying, "Chapter Fifteen opens with Bloom arriving in 'Nighttown', trying to catch up with Stephen but getting caught up in his own guilts and lusts, which appear as a riot of hallucinations, all presented in the style of a stageplay's script."
I have had a few reading side trips this summer, taking time out to read Pete Hamill's memoir, A Drinking Life, and some poetry. Which reminds me: am I the last person to discover Billy Collins?
Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:12 PM
August 10, 2004
A Love Story
The following appeared, in a slightly different form, in the journal Willard & Maple.
Miss Beaver: A Love Story
By Bill Trippe
I am too tempted to play with her name, but I won't, as it obscures the more obvious truths about her.
The most important thing is that she was beautiful--long blonde hair, an open pretty face, big blue eyes--and by far the best-dressed teacher I had ever seen. Brilliant patterned dresses, big colorful scarves--one day her hair in a thick braid, the next day up on her head and coiffed. It is a ridiculous understatement to say she stood out amidst all of the other teachers--all hopelessly stern--all gray in looks and dress and demeanor.
The only drawback was I only saw her once a week, for music, for an hour. But what an hour it was! She radiated warmth and fun in a building that knew precious little of either. Within moments of entering her space, we would be up, moving, clapping, and singing at the top of our lungs. It was 1970. The folk revival may have been waning, but not in Miss Beaver's 5th Grade Music Class. Songs like, "This Land is Your Land," "Goodnight, Irene," and "Blowing in the Wind" roared from our lungs and throats, and left the fluorescent lights buzzing when she would signal us to a rest.
When she told us one day she was forming a glee club, I was far too smitten to do anything but volunteer to audition. I may not have learned higher math yet, but this formula was simple to me--glee club meant more time with Miss Beaver. Imagine my surprise and anxiety when I looked at the list later and realized that precious few other boys had volunteered. And the ones who had volunteered--beside myself of course--were all hopelessly out of step. Nerds! I realized. Not a hockey or baseball player among them. This was trouble.
To make matters triply worse, word came down that auditions would take place in none other than music class. In front of the whole fifth grade! The indignity I was facing--the sheer horror of it all.
With D-Day approaching, I quickly thought through and just as quickly eliminated every conceivable scheme to back out. I was too chicken to play hooky, and even if I had deluded myself into thinking I had a singing voice (at least one good enough for a glee club), I knew that I wasn't enough of an actor to feign illness. The next thing I knew it was Wednesday afternoon, and I was slumped in the back of Miss Beaver's class, feverishly praying she would somehow forget me.
But I was the tallest boy in the class, and the son of her teaching colleague. I knew she had already told my mother I was auditioning. She wasn't going to forget me. And even if by some miracle she had forgotten me, the three girls in front of me weren't about to let me or her forget. After virtually everyone else had auditioned and she called out, "Who's next?" I felt her eyes alight on me as my three persecutors chirped, "Billy Trippe hasn't gone yet."
I was in front of the room now. Miss Beaver facing me, her pretty face radiating warmth and encouragement. But behind her, 100 flavors of torment--every fifth grade boy and girl in the school. I could see the sneers already, hear the giggles of looming disappointment. Even the most encouraging faces--my best friends, a goodhearted neighborhood girl--were reflecting my alarm.
Miss Beaver sat at the piano, hands poised. "I'll lead you in," she said. "Shenandoah, the first two verses." She led me in, sang the first few bars with me, and left me dangling out there. When I heard my own frail note, alone, out there, I choked. Is that the right word? Choked? Croaked? Chirped? Whirtled? In truth, all of the above, in a space where only a middle C should have appeared.
Disaster! Worse than disaster! Abject and total humiliation! A rout! A wipeout! The laughter exploded out of my classmates with such force I winced in pain. My mind spun with humiliation--a blur of confusion and white noise all at once. I had this sudden, specific fear I would lose control of my bladder and bowels. But then just as suddenly, Miss Beaver was up, on her feet, her warm face in front of mine.
To this day, I have no recollection of the next few moments. I have no idea what she said or how she said it, what technique she offered or what reassurances. I have no idea how she calmed me and quieted the room all in an instant. But she did. The following facts are indisputable--a matter of record. She was back at the piano. I was standing up straight, shoulders back, looking at her and only her, awaiting her cue to start again.
It is amazing how much emotion and information and understanding can pass between two people in a moment--indeed, perhaps without any time passing at all. But all at once I knew what Miss Beaver expected of me--to follow her cue, to sing well, to reach the far note I needed to reach. The other boys hadn't sung well. She needed me. She led me in. I drew a deep, full breath, looked into Miss Beaver's smiling face, and belted it out.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 5:14 PM
July 26, 2004
History, Schmistory
My 124-year old house has yielded precious few archaeological finds, something that I find disappointing. When we bought the house 12 years ago, I imagined more. I nervously joked for several weeks when we first moved in that the house was haunted, but so far nothing--no floating heads, unexplained cold breezes, or unexplained noises.
We bought the house from a young guy who only owned it for a couple of years. Prior to him had been a colorful (read:crazy) owner, and prior to that an artist. By the time we moved in, there was little to find. We did find an old milk bottle once when we were putting an addition on the back of the house; it bore the name of a local but now defunct farm, but the bottle somehow didn't survive the construction. We have a few scraps of china, old nails, and a small nondescript bottle, but that is almost it.
This beautiful old house had a bizarre feature when we moved in. One of the owners--I believe the crazy one--had sealed off the small older closets in several of the bedrooms and had instead built these shoddy, wall-length closets from 2 by 4's and paneling. Over the paneling he had tacked dark-green velour. The result is even uglier than you could imagine.
We have tackled one major project after another in this house. Most recently, we finally opened up the last long-sealed-off closet. Amid great expectation, it yielded precisely one thing: a bland black and white photo of what looks like a laboratory, circa 1960. It's so dull as to not even be worth scanning for this blog.
We then tackled the last remaining ubercloset. We will actually be keeping the frame of it intact, but dismantling the rest of it has been several days of work. Imagine my delight, then, when my wife told me of a find during this process. A 1913 Buffalo nickel. I am not truly a coin collector, though I have some. Buffalo nickels have always had a place in my heart though. There is something in that man's look, something I understood better as a child than I seem to now.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 12:03 PM
July 21, 2004
I Suppose This is a Good Thing
No surprise to anyone but me perhaps, but there is an official site for the WIFFLE ball. They even have a simple graphic to show you how to throw the basic pitches. However, what they show to be a slider works like a screwball for me.
A far better site seems to be Tom's Wiffle Ball Page hosted by the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, of all places. Boston has a preciously short wiffle ball season as it is, so I can imagine how Minnesotans value their summer nights.
Only as an adult have I mastered a few wiffle ball pitches. My sons, at 11 and 12, have it all over me. My younger son is a wiffle artiste, throwing a bewildering assortment of curves, screwballs, knucklers, and sliders. Plus he works at it. He will practice a pitch dozens of times in a row. My arm is sore from trying to keep up with him the other evening. A 45-year-old arm doesn't rebound like it used to.
Which reminds me: Is Jesse Orosco still pitching? Apparently not, though he could be in the minors or in one of the independent leagues. He was one of the few players left in the major leagues who is older than me. Julio Franco is almost a year older than me, and still playing pretty well.
I have wondered (read: obsessed) over the past 12 or so years when middle age begins. Maybe it begins when I am finally older than all the players in major league baseball. I will have to give this some more thought. In the meantime, let's hope for good health and good at bats for Julio.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:01 PM
July 16, 2004
Guilty Pleasures
According to Andy's Anagram Solver, "Bill Trippe" is an anagram for "Triple Blip."
Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:23 PM | Comments (1)
July 9, 2004
A Poem
For a Friend Widowed Young, Bringing the News to his Children
Nothing, I'm sure, prepared you
for this moment.
Not that brilliant fall afternoon
you collected my long clearing pass.
Your legs churning, blonde hair
flashing over the green.
Nor that warm summer night we picked up
the two prettiest girls in town.
I have this picture of you--
young, handsome, reverent--
candle in hand--
tending to some school ceremony.
And another, more wistful, displaying
some carefully wrought
drawing for the camera.
You had it all,
and I was thrilled you were my friend.
As you walk now into your quiet house
to greet your daughters,
how much I want all your gifts
to come together in this fragile moment.
For their little faces to look up at you
and hear some perfect words come from your mouth.
-- Bill Trippe
Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:49 PM
July 8, 2004
Forgive Me
More on the major league baseball All Food Team:
Pepper Martin and Spud David were teammates on the 1928 St. Louis Cardinals.
For those lovers of game, the starting shortstop on that team was Rabbit Maranville.
In an odd twist, the 1927 Cardinals only had Rabbit, but had a number of All Music Team members, including Hi and Les Bell and Jimmy Ring.
(Another idea... unfortunate names for pitchers. Bob Walk. Eric Plunk. Is that it?)
Posted by Bill Trippe at 1:10 AM
July 2, 2004
Am I a Cruel Father?
For turning my boys into Red Sox fans? They found a whole new hellish way to lose tonight, dropping the final game of a three-game series in which the Yankees swept them. The Sox are now 8 1/2 games behind the Yankees.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 12:50 AM
June 27, 2004
Those Darn Red Sox
The Red Sox took two out of three against the Phillies this weekend. They won the Friday opening game, 12-1, lost yesterday, 9-2, and romped again today, 12-3.
Guess which game I spent more than $300 dollars taking my family to see?
I love baseball, and I often remind myself to love baseball first and the Red Sox second. I don't like to see them lose, of course, but what really sucked about the 9-2 loss was the way they lost—they committed four errors in the field, and they only managed to score 2 runs despite out-hitting the Phillies, 14-13. Red Sox pitchers threw a staggering 174 pitches in 9 innings, only 112 of them for strikes, walked four batter, hit another one, and threw a wild pitch.
Today they turned it all around. They scored 12 runs on 12 hits, made a single uneventful error, and pitched well.
Go figure.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:42 PM
June 24, 2004
Coco Crisp
Coco Crisp is the switch-hitting centerfielder for the up and coming Cleveland Indians. I don't even want to know if it is his real name or not, as it rockets him to the top of my all-time Major League Baseball Food Team. It puts him past Catfish Hunter, Mudcat Grant, Tim Salmon, Steve and Dizzy Trout, and one-time teammates Chili Davis and Candy Moldonado. Let's not forget Alfredo Griffin. Bill Bean (and Billy Beane). Randy Bass. Bob Kipper.
(There is also now a Barry Wesson in the majors, but I haven't come up with a rule yet for brand names. That would open the floodgates to the likes of Bill Campbell and Tom Prince, for starters.)
The more uncommon the food name, the better. Thus, I prefer a name like Strawberry over, say, just Berry. There is only one Strawberry in the history of major league baseball. There are a number of Berry's in the history of baseball; the one I always think about is Ken Berry, who played most of his career with the White Sox and was a nemesis to the Red Sox.
The Red Sox have had a few food-named players. Jim Rice of course. Steve Curry. Charlie Berry and, much later, Sean Berry. Jeff Frye and Jack Coffey (admittedly a stretch on spelling, but this is more often a spoken discussion than written, and would allow names like Johnny Oates and Bob Veale to be added to the larger roster). Rob Deer (if you include game) and Jimmie Foxx (if you include game and allow for a stretch on spelling). Catfish Metkovich (you could look it up!).
(If you want to get cute, you could also add to the Red Sox list Bernie Carbo, Eric Wedge, Guido Grilli, Jack Baker, Tom Brewer, and old-time player Ralph Glaze. Don't forget Wes Stock and Taffy Wright.)
Another list, for another time, is the startling number of Red Sox players past and present whose last name is also a place name in Massachusetts. Tim Wakefield. Carl Everett and Everett Scott. Fred Lynn and Lynn McGlothen. Joe Hudson (and a Sid Hudson back in the 1950s). Wes Gardner (and a Larry Gardner back in the early 20th century). Tom Bolton. Jeff Plympton. Erik Hanson. Garry Hancock. Mike Paxton. Bill Lee, Lee Graham, and Sang-Hoon Lee. Lou Clinton. 1920s one-hit wonder Bob Adams. Allen "Rubberarm" Russell, Jack Russell, Rip Russell, and Jeff Russell.
Current Red Sox announcer and former big league pitcher Bob Tewksbury is an honory member, despite having never appeared for the Red Sox.
(In an odd detail of this Boston placename thing, the Red Sox once traded away a promising young infielder, Adam Everett, for outfielder Carl Everett. In another, Lou Clinton was traded for Lee Thomas.)
Sadly, Daryl Boston never played for the Red Sox. Nor did Lee Hancock.
But Ernest Dudley Lee did.
(How about an all music team? Steve and Dave Sax. Frank Viola. George, Buddy, (and many other) Bell's. Ryan Minor. Bill Singer. Jimmy Key. Sam Horn (who was a teammate of Dave Sax and Jody Reed at the same time.)
OK, I will stop now.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:36 PM
June 23, 2004
Raw Material
I have been slowly but surely getting myself organized since moving my office from Melrose to Cambridge. In fact, I actually moved to two places at the same time. I took all of my technical work to my new office in Central Square in Cambridge; at the same time, I took all my personal work to an office in the third floor of my home. I am sitting in the home office now. I don't know how realistic a goal this is, but I am hoping to do all my technical work in Cambridge and my more personal work here at home. Ultimately, I have the lofty goal of making more and more money writing narrative nonfiction, but for now I am still on more or less the same track. Indeed, since my move to Cambridge I am as busy as I ever have been.
One of the benefits of this move is that I threw a bunch of stuff away. I had been in the Melrose office for 4.5 years. It was amazing how much I accumulated in that time. My older son and his friend filled a small dumpster in about an hour. Most of it was periodicals, the majority of which live online now, but it also included a lot of marketing materials, trade show brochures, outdated (and therefore useless) technical books, broken equipment, broken furniture, and unused and outdated office supplies. I threw away my old Macintosh Plus, but kept the 40MB hard drive (though I am not sure what is on it).
My office in Cambridge and my office at home are both pretty sparse. They both have a desk, a chair, and a bookcase. My one good file cabinet is in Cambridge, so I will have to do something about one here at home.
I am glad to now have close at hand a great deal of raw material for my personal writing. This includes manuscripts and journals that date back to college, and personal organizers that date back to my early career. I find such things to be embarrassing, poignant, startling, and confusing all at once. For example, I can open an organizer from November 1988 and see that on the 30th I had a series of meetings, my notes from which are cluttered with acronyms (EDG, ESD/PL, ESD/SC, Building R, T Building.) I even had a "mini-meeting" that day (yikes!), and I left early to get an allergy shot at 3:30. I had written one urgent marginal note, "Bug Sally!" Sally was my sponsor on a state grant I was running that year, but I can't imagine what I needed to bug her about. A few days later I interviewed for a new job&mdash:one that I would eventually get, though I wouldn't start for several more months. 1989 was on the horizon, and it would be a big year for me. I would start the new job, which turned out to be the best of my career to that point, I would get married, and I would turn 30. My penmanship seemed to reflect the eagerness and good energy I had for the next year.
This is good stuff. 1988 was a pivotal year for me, and 1989 even more so. I am looking forward to digging in.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 5:30 PM
June 13, 2004
Flying at Night
I spent the evening of my 45th birthday napping in the back of an idling 757. In one of those special Hells that the airlines seem to have mastered, United kept us waiting on the tarmac at Logan Airport for about four hours before taking off for Chicago. First the pilot was late, then the weather in Chicago was bad, and then the weather around us in Boston was bad. All this without so much as a pretzel to eat. Finally, at about 10:30 we took off. As we left Boston behind us, I caught a glimpse of Fenway Park, brilliantly lit with the grey-white tarpaulin protecting the infield. Someone near me mentioned the Red Sox had been losing the game, 4-1, but the striking green of the outfield grass still warmed my heart.
I hadn't planned to spend my birthday in an airplane, least of all an airplane taking me to business meetings. But such is life when you are self-employed--when the work is there, you do it, whether the work is in Chicago or not, and whether or not it is your birthday. But I am not griping. I like my work, I like making money, and I like traveling. I didn't travel much for work until I was in my late 30s, so I have not burned out on business travel. For the most part I go to places I enjoy--New York, San Francisco, Philadelphia.
The real irony of the moment wasn't so much that it was my birthday; the real irony was that I was napping. Somehow, in a jam-packed airplane, I had three seats to myself, and once I knew that we were in for a long delay, I lay down and quickly fell asleep. This wasn't a first for me, but it was close to one. I am a nervous flyer, and always have been. I don't nap in airplanes because I am convinced that my nervous energy is a big reason for the plane staying in the air.
I didn't fly until I was 21, and my first flight--all the way to Greece--culminated in a teeth-grinding, gust-blown, and gymnastic final approach and landing that had everyone cheering and crying in relief when we finally touched down. I was traveling with my girlfriend and her parents, and we were all shook. My girlfriend's father was a quiet man, not prone to histrionics, and when we discussed it afterwards he admitted after the third aborted landing attempt he decided maybe we were not going to make it in safely.
(If you have never been in a Jumbo Jet when it aborts a landing, I probably cannot do the moment justice. But imagine that you are in a plane, a few feet over the runway, about to touch down, when suddenly the nose of the plane lurches up and the plane fills with the deafening roar of the engines at full thrust. There is a horrifyingly long, pregnant moment when you realize you are still going down even though the pilot is clearly urging the plane to go up. The G force has you pressed in place--even if you could decide whether to duck and cover you are effectively paralyzed.)
I won't bore you with the long list of things I did to get myself to fly with any regularity. Suffice to say that the winning combination proved to be drugs, a learned relaxation technique, and knowledge. I finally realized that planes--and pilots--do the things they do for a reason. For example, I was terrified for years by the habit planes have, after roaring to a takeoff, of slowing down after the initial blast into the air. Flight after flight I imagined the plane was losing power and stalling, and I would go blind with fear imagining what happens to a 200,000 pound jet that has stalled 1000 feet over downtown Boston.
Finally, one day on a flight the captain invited us to listen to air traffic control and I did. Much to my delight, I discovered that the pilot was doing precisely what he was told to do! In this case, to take off and then level off at 3000 feet and a speed of 200 knots. Suddenly, there was an order to the universe. Those agonizing dips of the wing and turns when preparing to land? The seeming devil-may-care rocky descent down from cruising altitude? Again, they are told to do this. Moreover, they are amazingly calm and matter of fact with each adjustment.
"United 245," the air traffic controller will say. "Climb and maintain 10,000 feet."
"Roger," I will hear my pilot's bright reply. "United 245 climbing and maintaining 10,000." A split second later the engines will rev up as the pilot begins to urge the plane upward. All is right with the world.
Believe me, I still have my anxious moments. The shuttle from Boston to La Guardia, for instance, can give me a couple of jolts. Depending on the weather and the approaches they are using, a typical La Guardia approach and landing has the plane making a steep turn directly over Shea Stadium. If I make the mistake of looking out the window at the wrong moment, it seems as if I am about to spill out of the plane and into centerfield. The irony of me being a Red Sox fan and Shea being the scene of the crime in the 1986 World Series always feels especially cruel at that moment. Then the actual landing is always bracing. I have not looked this up, but I think La Guardia has absurdly short runways, causing the planes to brake much more sharply than they do at other airports. The shuttle seems to land, brake violently, and take an immediate right-hand turn into the terminal. In my mind's eye, the plane is on two wheels, the right wingtip sparking off the tarmac. (I compare this with landing at Indianapolis, where the runways are the length of the state of the Indiana and we seem to taxi for a week.)
So sleep I did, only to be gently awakened by the flight attendant as we were about to finally take off. This is when I glimpsed Fenway. Then I stayed awake long enough to get my pretzels and drink before I fell asleep again.
The next day in Chicago was a whirlwind. Two meetings at two ends of the metropolitan area, and a long drive back to the airport. I got good and lost, and the air was heavy as I drove. It wasn't raining yet, but they were close to calling off the White Sox home game that night, and it was only 5:00. I feared a repeat of the night before--hours waiting out the weather before I could get home. So far I had resisted feeling sorry for myself, but my resistance was weakening.
As it turned out, the pilot was late again, and the weather was bad. As I ate a quick dinner in the terminal food court, I could hear the rain drumming off the metal roof, and the wind was pushing torrents of rain back and forth across the tarmac in front of me. They were nice enough to let us wait in the terminal this time, so we spent 3 hours lounging around the gate before we finally boarded. I had eaten my fill, and I had three seats to myself again, so this time I didn't even wait for the snack before I lay down and fell soundly asleep.
Once again, the attendant woke me. The weather in Boston was clear, and it was well past midnight as we passed over the city and began an arc out past my hometown of Winthrop and out into the Harbor. I say hometown, but in fact it is the town of my youth. I live 10 miles north and west of Winthrop now, but many days it feels 1000 miles away, even more now in the few months since my mother died. It is a peninsula that juts out into Boston Harbor, almost curling around the airport and the downtown skyscrapers; this time of night, it was perfectly outlined by its streetlights. With the shape I knew so well glowing beneath me, the plane made a long, lazy turn out over the Harbor and then began its approach to the runway. Winthrop was out my window again. I marveled for a moment at being in the air, and remembered the hundreds of times as a child I had stood on that ground below me and watched planes passing overhead. Where were those people going, and where had they come from?
The air was still, and the plane was straight and true as the pilot edged the nose of the plane up slightly and slowed for touchdown. There would be no gymnastics tonight. In a few minutes I would be in my car, driving the 15 minutes home to my wife and boys. I thought of my birthday for a moment, and then of my mom, whom I had said goodbye to just weeks before in a nursing home somewhere in my vision right now. I miss my mom, but the soft glow of the lights seemed to be telling me that--just as this familiar shape of Winthrop was here for me now--so too perhaps was she. There were few cars on the road, and few lights besides the yellow-amber glow of the streetlights. I would be the last person to call Winthrop pretty, but, tonight, in this light and from a few hundred feet above, it may have been the prettiest thing I have ever seen.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:42 PM
June 7, 2004
Thought for the Day
Writing is very easy. All you do is sit in front of a typewriter keyboard until little drops of blood appear on your forehead.
--Red Smith
Posted by Bill Trippe at 7:18 PM
May 22, 2004
The Annual Spaghetti Harvest
One of the great things about the Internet is that all kinds of quirky and specialized content is no more than a Google away. Consider the BBC's April 1, 1957 broadcast of the bumper Swiss Spaghetti Harvest. My favorite line has to be, "The spaghetti harvest here in Switzerland is not, of course, carried out on anything like the tremendous scale of the Italian industry. Many of you, I'm sure will have seen pictures of the vast spaghetti plantations in the Po valley. For the Swiss, however, it tends to be more of a family affair."
Posted by Bill Trippe at 5:59 PM
May 19, 2004
The Big Unit
Randy Johnson pitched a perfect game last night, only the 17th in the history of major league baseball. Johnson, known as The Big Unit because of his extraordinary height (6'10"), is also, at 40 years old, the oldest pitcher to ever throw a know hitter.
I love baseball for a lot of reasons, but one of them is its quirkiness. As recently as a few days ago, people were wondering if Johnson still "has it." Clearly he does.
Here's to people in their 40s achieving perfection.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:12 PM
May 17, 2004
Playing Catch
Our backyard is a small area for two boys and a dad to play catch with a hardball. If you are off by even a few degrees, or a few feet, your throw will rattle off a screened window or hit the clapboard with a decisive thud. The house is 120 years old, and, really, it deserves nicer treatment than this. So I go to great pains to aim most of my throws at the far corners of the yard, where the grass grows higher along the fence, and the house is safely behind me.
At least once per game, I will send a long, arcing throw just over the fence, and watch it disappear into thick groundcover. When this happens, we leap into action. My younger son, unbidden, will scale the fence, and his brother and I will race to the spot where the ball dropped, and supervise the hunt. We play catch nearly every warm, dry day from May through September, and only lose two or three balls a season. We like to think we are doing well.
Because of our limited playing field, the beauty in this game--the real challenge--is for me to make my throws difficult enough for my athletic, growing sons to be challenged--yet at the same time--and this is the key--respecting the practical limits of our little backyard. The perfect play, for example, is to send my older son--his back to the fence--reaching to all his height to pull in a soaring pop-up as it drops from the sky. A foot too long and it is over the fence and we are scurrying to retrieve it. A foot too short--and really--this is worse, he eyes the ball, his shoulders slump, and he steps forward and nonchalantly catches it. He punctuates his disappointment at these moments by firing the ball back at me. At 11, he already throws harder than I have ever been able to. And his throws have an alarming snap and movement to them--one diving toward my sandaled feet as it nears me, the next skipping on some unseen surface and zooming up suddenly at my face.
My younger son has his own requirements. First and foremost, he wants to catch the ball in motion. His favorite throw is a line drive, to his right, and a little over his head, that he can snare with a leaping backhand catch that ends in a tumble. If this results in a "snowcone"--the effect where the top of the ball is visible over the webbing of his glove, I get extra points. Like his older brother, he also shows his displeasure when my throws fail to test him. Luckily, he is far more tolerant of slightly bad throws on my part. Really, I can only get the perfect throw about once in every five throws. He seems to know, without saying it, that his requirements are a little more stringent, and he shouldn't grouse about a game but ineffective try on my part.
But, if in a moment of laziness, I simply lob a throw to him--a mere toss--he will hurl the ball back at me and seemingly himself with it. He releases the ball with a grunt as he charges toward me, and while he doesn't produce the Thor-like bolts of his bigger brother, his throws pop into my glove, the snap of leather on leather somehow growing louder every day.
We tinker with the minor rules of the game all the time. Most recently, my younger son has prohibited compliments after all but the most spectacular of catches. Gone, then are the days of my endless, fatherly patter--"nice catch"--"way to go"--"that's the way to follow it into your glove." I miss this, of course, but I know better than to force it or make too much of a point about it.
Besides, I have a delicious secret. If I leave them alone to catch, I will hear my older son say these very same things to his brother. For certain, their game can just as often end in a fight, but I have more than once retired to my hammock and nodded off to the rhythm of popping gloves and the voiced reassurances of love.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:56 PM
May 10, 2004
Grandpa Cleans Up
This is the story as it was handed down to me.
It's early in World War II, early enough so that the United States is not yet in the battle. Along the East Boston waterfront, an uneasy truce is being played out between the visiting British sailors and the Italian-American workers who are building, rebuilding, and fixing their ships. The irony that many of these British ships were damaged by Italian submarines is not lost on anyone.
One day at a diner, my grandfather Giacomo and my Uncle Joe watch as a British sailor badmouths an Italian waitress. This is precisely the spark all this ready tinder needed.
Within seconds, my grandfather and Uncle Joe are tossing British sailors around this diner. It is our two against their eight, but it is by no means a fair fight. Grandfather Giacomo, only 5'4", is built like a cinder block. This is a man who walks five miles each way to work, and then spends the day working, basically, as a human fork lift. I forget the Italian word for his job, but it loosely translates to "lumper" in English. His job was to move massive, awkward things around construction sites. A 150 pound bag of cement here, a four-foot square fieldstone there. This squadron of pasty Limeys is simply no match for him.
The MPs arrive with the fight in full swing. As my uncle would explain years later, the MPs apparently make a quick decision that the best thing was to get the sailors out of there. So they do, restraining Giacomo long enough to hustle the sailors into a wagon. They race off.
Now Giacomo wasn't what you would call a cerebral guy. Indeed, he labored to make himself literate in English over many, many years. But somehow he knew, in an instant, where that wagon was going and how to get there faster on foot than they could by wagon.
I knew my grandfather much later, as an old man, but I have seen pictures of him as a young man. He was never built for speed. But, so the story goes, he was waiting at the brig for that wagon-full of sailors. And when they let them out the wagon door, he proceeded to finish the beating he had started at the diner.
I have heard different endings to the story. In one version, Giacomo and my uncle Joe end up in the brig instead of the sailors. In another, the young waitress ends up as my Uncle Joe's bride. (And in a poignant but unconfirmed related detail, the story has my future aunt bailing uncle Joe and Grandpa out.) In still another version, it is the sailors who finally end up in the brig, begging to be put there to be kept safe from my grandfather. Who knows really, what happened. It was so long ago, and Grandpa has been gone for almost forty years. Even Uncle Joe has passed, and my aunt--always my favorite by the way, with her big warm smile bearing flaky chocolate cannoli--is frail and forgetful.
Still, thinking back on my grandfather, the solid little man with his thickly accented and broken English, I can't begin to doubt the gist of the story. I can see him now, his face darkening when he hears the sailor's curse, stubbing out his little black cigar, rising from the lunch counter with death in his eyes.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 8:39 PM
May 6, 2004
The Headlong Rush
Imagine being young, fit, passionate, and outfitted as if for battle. Helmet, face mask, thick padded gloves, expensive glistening skates, every square inch of your body covered with thick padding--elbows, knees, shins, and shoulders bolstered with hard plastic.
Stick in hand, I watch the mad rush up and down the ice, the puck ricocheting off the boards, pinging high off the glass. First one, then the next, and then the next skater and the puck somehow all meeting at once, crashing together, and then spinning off again in whole new directions.
I might have only been on the ice a few times, but I am already soaked through with sweat, drinking water in great gulps. I glance at my nearby teammates along the bench, and I know I too am steaming like a draught horse.
"Trippe! Perry! McGinness!" The coach calls out our names. He doesn't move or take his eyes off the action on the ice. Everyone knows what to do. Players shift up and down the bench, allowing me and my two linemates to move next to the coach. "You're on," he says, indicating we will go on the ice as soon as he can flag the other players off. With that, we are ready--mouthguards back in, gloves on, helmets snapped back in place. Ready? Fuck, with his next words, we would jump out of a plane or off a cliff if there were one nearby.
The momentum on the ice shifts. The other team starts to change up, leaving our defensemen free to begin carrying the puck up ice. My linemates stand on the bench, and I join them. This is a new tactic we have come up with on our own, and so far the coach hasn't nixed it. Rather than climb over the dasher onto the ice, we have taken to leaping from the bench, over the dasher, and onto the ice. Done right, this has a spectacular effect. Rather than awkwardly clambering over the boards, this allows us to hit the ice in stride, landing and streaking forward like invading marauders.
And we do. One by one our teammates crash into the boards and clamber off. And each incoming projectile is met with an outgoing one, my two linemates first and then finally me. In my mind's eye, my linemates--shorter, more solidly built than me--are incredibly graceful and land perfectly. I on the other hand, am all limbs, 6'2 and 155 pounds, and my body seems to require a dozen or more in-flight corrections between the moment I push off the bench and the moment first one skate edge and then the other catches the ice.
But I make it in stride--a rush in and of itself but then I hear my coach's voice, "Get 'em, Spider!" This is my teammates' nickname for me, and somehow I know all at once that this is the first time he has used it to address me and his decision to do this is purposeful. It's momentous.
I reach the opposing blueline just in time to see one of my linemates take out a defender with a shuddering check. What happened next was nothing short of pure hockey perfection. The puck slides out to me, on a line, flat as a pancake on the ice, and directly to my stick side.
Thank God I didn't have time to think and undo the moment.
Instead I did what I have done thousand of times on rinks, on frozen ponds and puddles, on frozen swimming pools and tennis courts, in driveways and on streets. I raised my stick and fired a slapshot in stride.
The puck was in the net before I finished my follow-through, and I saw the red goal light go on at the same instant someone leveled me with a stick check to the head. But the check didn't matter. Flat on my back on the ice, I was gone, screaming at the top of my lungs, an incomprehensible stream of syllables through my mouthguard that were met again and again as my teammates reached me, pulled me to my feet, and cuffed my head, punched me, pushed me, and jostled me as we skated back to the bench.
I'm back on the bench, facemask tilted up, downing water again in the same great gulps. Part of me is reliving the previous moment, part of me is basking in my teammates compliments and affection, part of me watching the new action break on the ice. "Spider," I hear again and again. "Way to go, Spider!" "Way to go!"
Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:52 PM
April 22, 2004
Amsterdam...
...rules!
Top ten reasons to visit Amsterdam.
- The coffee. A four-ounce cup packs the punch of a half gallon of Dunkin Donut's
- The direct but polite people.
- The colors and the typography. Even pay phones are cool.
- Walking. Anywhere and everywhere.
- The architecture. I'm sure there are boring streets somewhere in Amsterdam, but I didn't see one.
- The bikes, everywhere. I saw more than one dog in a basket at the front of a bike, and easily 1000 children riding in front of their parents in boxes, baskets, and bikeseats.
- The trams.
- The beer.
- The Van Gogh Museum. Weirdly ugly on the outside; the second floor is wonderful.
- The canals. Obvious yes, but beautiful still.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 8:12 PM
April 13, 2004
New York City, on Foot
Walking in midtown Manhattan is, from my experience, different from walking in any other place in America. Try, for instance, crossing Broadway and 48th street at evening rush hour. I was walking downtown, in a light rain, and had the misfortune of carrying my computer and an overnight bag. I am a fast walker, and I don't like being encumbered. That the two bags slowed me a little and made me about 50% wider was all the difference between a brisk walk and a slow plod behind, well, thousands of people. (Maybe this is one of the reasons I like New York City so much—it withstands my tendency to exaggerate. I can say I was behind thousands of people and, goldarn it, I was!)
Crossing the wide expanse of 42nd Street, I almost stopped and laughed at the swarm of people crossing in both directions. 42nd is double the width of the surrounding streets and, of course, the hub of the theater district. The sidewalks too are extra wide there, so when the signal changed to "walk" the center of the street was suddenly—how to best say this— a crush of people. What was so striking, though, was how many people had umbrellas. Carrying an umbrella has the odd effect of making someone, at first glance, faceless—you can't immediately tell if someone is coming or going—so the center of 42nd street was momentarily jammed with people seemingly going in every direction at once. I found myself halting for a moment and nearly laughing before I caught myself.
A few blocks before this, I had one of those moments I seem to have all the time in New York City. Stopped at the 46th street light, I caught the glance of a guy, my guess a local, who was clearly impressed with something. I followed his gaze to the woman next to me at the light, who, I suddenly realized, was beautiful and underdressed. The rain had been really coming down for a minute—anyone with an umbrella had raised it—but here she was, leather jacket open, shirt open several buttons, and her magnificent cleavage catching as much of the rain as the biggest of the umbrellas. She was talking with a guy whom I can only describe as an aging,vaguely cleaned-up version of Ratso Rizzo. Picture Ratso, later in life, in a bad suit. I glanced long enough to catch her eye, then his, and offered what I hoped was the perfect, brief ironic look, as if to say, "It's raining, I had a moment here at the light and glanced at you, but don't read anything more into it than that. You have your business and I have mine." Mercifully, they kept right on talking, I turned to face front again, and the light changed. The local guy stumbled off the curb a step ahead of me—he was drunk I now realized, which explained his momentarily extra long look at the couple. Had I read his condition more quickly, I wouldn't have followed his glance.
Navigating a Manhattan sidewalk can involve many such quick and important judgments. Somehwere below 42nd St, for example, I found myself behind an impressively large black man. I would guess he was at least 6'4 and 250 pounds, and he was leading a girl, no more than 5 or 6, by the hand. The remarkable thing was how quickly and how deftly he was moving, without making her sprint and stumble to keep up. This wasn't new to him, or to her; she knew what it took to keep up. They were right in front of me, and I saw my chance to make some headway through the crowd. He was wider than me, even with my bags, and the two of them together, hand in hand, were perhaps double my width. I quickened my pace and got right behind them.
If you have walked in midtown Manhattan, you know there are two fates for a pedestrian—walk or be walked over. I always note that it takes me about 24 hours in Manhattan to go from a stumbling, halting, gosh-forgive-me, oops-excuse-me idiot to a confident, striding Titan. People do not get out of your way or yield even an inch on a Manhattan sidewalk unless you show purpose. Clearly, the man in front of me exuded purpose. The sidewalk seemed to part before him, and we breezed along for about four blocks this way. When I broke right and he and the girl broke left at 34th, I resisted the urge to thank him.
I wondered for a moment what led people to give him as much berth as they did. Was it merely his size? Was it his size and the color of his skin? I was hoping that it was neither of these, that instead it was the presence of the young girl at the end of his arm. "She is so little!" I imagine them saying. "And look at her! So good following her father that way. They have places to go. He is a serious young man and he is guiding her through this maze of people. Let's give them a little extra room."
I wonder too what she is thinking. How her father's massive hand swallows hers, and how she knows that if she just keeps pace, just concentrates and turns and meaneuvers as he does, that everything will be fine and they will get to where they are going.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:41 PM | Comments (1)
New York City
I stepped out of Penn Station last night into a steady rain, but was lucky to have a cab pull up to the curb just as I did. Because of traffic and the rain, what should have been a 5-minute cab ride turned into 20 minutes. I was tired, it was late, the cab was hot, and the air inside the cab was close. This is normally a recipe for misery for me, but the driver knew where he was going, so I didn't feel like I had to back-seat drive and could fall back into my thoughts.
As soon as we pulled from the curb, my driver started talking over his radio. At first I thought it was simply a call into his dispatcher, but then I realized he was speaking into one of those cell phones that also act as radios. He held the phone open and a few feet from his face and spoke at great length, in Hindi. I could barely hear the response from his listener, but she was clearly female, and she said perhaps 5 words to his 500.
More interesting was the rhythm of his voice. He was speaking rapidly, not quite as quickly as an auction caller but faster than a Catholic priest moving through the most rote portions of the Mass. He was also clearly repeating himself at times, not, it seemed to me, out of nervousness but in the way mobile phone users do when they suspect they have hit and returned from a dead cell. Of course, I had no idea what he was talking about. He didn't seem particularly upset, but nor was he amused or bored. I wondered, with how quiet his listener was and how musical his speech was, if he were perhaps reciting something or offering some kind of blessing.
Often when I am in a car I like to imagine the passing scenery as the opening scene from a movie that I will one day produce; this works especially well when I have the right music playing—the right soundtrack. New York City has perhaps been the setting for more movies than any other locale, and it's easy to see why. I never tire of looking at the streetscape in Manhattan. The tumble of high-brow and low-brow—Smith Barney meets The Metropolitan Opera meets Chip's Bagel and Brew—and the 24-hour flow of people and cars. Listening to my driver, I begin to think that perhaps New York City, now East 51st Street now Lexington Avenue, is the opening scene in some movie he is envisioning. The neon signs alone seem as if they could light the world, and his voice is urging me to understand this.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 2:32 PM
April 7, 2004
Wonderful Things
I am guilty of liking movies that border on sappy, especially when they involve Sicilians. Thus, I would count movies such as Cinema Paradiso, Three Brothers, and Il Postino among my favorite "sappy movies that involve Sicilians." (Conveniently, there is usually an astonishingly beautiful woman in each movie to play to the cheap seats of my heart. Consider Maria Grazia Cucinotta in Il Postino, arguably the eighth natural wonder of the world, and the ethereal Agnese Nano in Cinema Paradiso, who appears on screen for all of eight seconds. There is a part of me that would see the movie again just for those eight seconds.)
There is a wonderful scene near the end of Il Postino where the hero, Mario Ruoppolo, goes around his island recording the sounds of the things he finds beautiful—the ocean waves, the wind. It is a beautifully expressed song of praise representing all that Mario has come to love, and, all the more poignantly, what he has learned to articulate. Mario is wise enough to know that, even though he has found his own voice, it is sometimes best to let wonderful things speak for themselves.
In a similar vein, there is a great mining exercise in The Poet's Companion where you declare what you believe. In the spirit of poetic license, I combine Mario's list and the mining exercise and list here some things that I have found to be wonderful.
- Cape Cod through the eyes of Joel Meyerowitz
- Baseball played well
- Swimming in just about any temperature water at Ferry Beach
- Greg Brown singing just about anything
- Bobby McFerrin leading the crowd in Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes
- Playing cards (the activity) and playing cards (as in, a deck)
- Being on the Acela, drink in hand, watching out the window as it rounds a bend in the Rhode Island woods at 150 mph
- A smooth touch down in your home airport after a long trip.
- Fresh, cold canteloupe and a hot cup of cream-silkened coffee.
- Robert Duvall acting, as opposed to Robert Duvall talking politics.
- Astonishing, one-of-a-kind books like The Stories of Breece D'J Pancake