Gone With the Wind

"Good old-fashioned American sportsmanship seemed a thing of the past--in baseball as in business and politics." --Ed Achorn

You could certainly say that today, but, wonderfully, it's a comment about baseball in 1884, soon after it became a professional sport.  It's from Fifty-nine in '84, the story of Hoss Radbourn, a "barehanded baseball" player in the days before gloves and helmets and few regulations when players were literally putting their lives in each other's sometimes broken hands day after day of play.

Already the National Pastime in the 1860s, and as the country built itself back up after the Civil War, it was at first a joyful, fun, leisurely, healthy game played by whole towns--one early version was called "town ball"--and celebrated in poetry, notably by Walt Whitman!

Once cut-throat competitive strategies and money moved in, the game got fast-paced and ruthless. A pitcher could throw the ball straight at the batter if he wanted. And did. Hoss Radbourn was hit in the chest the season before his titular season and unable to pitch for a time but got back in the game by grit and willpower.

Sort of like Scarlett O-Hara! Gone With the Wind is 75 today.

I heard this story on NPR this morning, on my way home from lap swimming in the glittering sandy-bottomed pool. (I took swimming lessons in this same pool and did "water ballet," or synchronized swimming as it is called, olympically, today. Ah, those water ballet days are gone with the wind....)

Susan Stamberg went to Atlanta to see where Margaret Mitchell wrote her novel, in a tiny ground-floor apartment, on a Remington, while laid up with an ankle injury. She wrote it to entertain herself after she ran out of things to read!

Post Pontoon

I Googled the term "post pointlessness" to see if it was already a literary critical or post-postmodern philosophical movement...but just saw a lot of posts on pointless posts on pointlessness, some in the Huffington Post, and so on, but I imagine it should be a movement, just not one that would get very far...in a pontoon.

Yesterday was the most beautiful day of the summer so far, and my book group did talk about Noah's Compass, by Anne Tyler, on a pontoon boat on a beautiful placid lake. Herons, a few fishing boats, no mosquitoes, plenty of wine and chocolate.

I asked Susan about her preference for books with happy endings, and about how Anne Tyler fits into her reading pleasure, since things don't always lead to happy endings in her books. Susan likes Tyler because there is hope and authenticity in her stories, even if things do not always turn out the way a reader or a central character might wish.

And that's what I want to ask you, too.  If you prefer happy endings, do the happy endings help you live your life? Aim toward a similar happy ending? Keep you optimistic and cheerful and goal-oriented?

Or are happy-ending books an escape from the way life usually turns out, a sort of wish fulfillment?

Pam mentioned Romeo and Juliet, just the kind of random coincidence I love, since I had just seen the play, saying she never wants to see/read that one, as the tragedy is so depressing. You know it's not going to work out for them, there's nothing you can do to prevent the disaster or help them out, so why sit through it?

I was happy to sit through Part One of Romeo and Juliet at the Illinois Shakespeare Festival the other night, and see the delightful falling-in-love part, butterfly wings, and pink high-tops with glitter, plus a wonderfully traditional balcony scene, but I agree that Part Two (post intermission) was harder. Juliet suddenly grew up, the speeches lacked the glittering clarity of the first half, and death and doom were inevitable.

Here, by the way, is Julie Kistler's review. And the traditional balcony scene above is by Ford Maddox Brown. And here are Clare Danes and Leonardo DiCaprio.

Anyhoo, I escape pointlessness by seeking out the other way of seeing it. If a happy ending is unlikely, where is the joy or hope or meaning in the moment at hand?

Yes, the one he's kissing!

And the question answers itself.

***

Moments later:

Oh. Apparently I originated this movement. Postpointlessness. In 1988. I knew I had seen the term somewhere....

A Serpent's Tooth

It's a gorgeous sunny, breezy day out there, and I am going back out in it! Yesterday I snapped up some of the drastically price-reduced perennials and annuals in the "garden shop" of my grocery store and transplanted them into the patchy areas of my various beds and hanging pots, for another round of beauty.

I will take Noah's Compass, by Anne Tyler, outside with me, to re-read sections of it in preparation for tonight's book group, the pontoon-boat version.

Speaking of Book Group, we are now hooked on the tv series via hulu.

Speaking of beauty, this is Lilith, by John Collier, with a serpent not baring its fangs.

The main character of Noah's Compass, Liam Pennywell, has lost his job and is looking over his life, revisiting his relationships with his daughters, his ex-wife, his father, etc., and considering his options in the future. But, as he tells his grandson, who is coloring Noah's ark in a Bible coloring book, "Noah didn't need to figure out directions, because the whole world was underwater and so it made no difference."

While swimming laps this morning, my heart and mind were full of parent-child relationships. I recently saw Romeo and Juliet at the Illinois Shakespeare Festival, thanks to theatre reviewer Julie Kistler, and I look forward to her review!

We chatted a bit about how the play gets presented to high school readers--sometimes stressing the rashness of youth (hasty young love!), sometimes the rashness of parents (Juliet's father's cruelty), sometimes the "star-cross'd lovers" aspect, sometimes the folly of blood feuds.

Seeing Juliet and Lord Capulet, we were naturally reminded of Cordelia and King Lear, the one who said, "How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child" as part of a longer, bitter curse. Sigh...

All I will say is that we have been very lucky in our children and have navigated the teen years with them without much upset, but that I am looking forward to a placid pontoon ride tonight on Lake Bloomington, with or without a compass!

A Perfect World

This morning I was the only one in the pool for the first half hour of lap swim. Humbly grateful for the lifeguards, the peace, the water holding me up.

Home to sad news, the obituary of the father of one of my daughter's school mates, and our family eye doctor. Only 47. This sudden, shocking loss ripples through me, and I wish I could ripple that back out as comfort to his family.

Yesterday, a fond farewell to a couple moving to North Carolina (job transfer) after building their life in this community--leaving friends, family, a church, and all things familiar. At least they are moving somewhere beautiful.

But they were Chekhovian, smiling their goodbyes: through tears (frequent stage direction in Chekhov plays, even the comedies.)

So I offer a poem from Broken Sonnets.

A Perfect World 

In the back yard today we created
a perfect world.  Moira was president:
first she disarmed us with a gun museum.
My son dug up worms and put them back.
My daughter went barefoot.  A cicada
rustled in the white pine like plastic.
We said we'd recycle anything plastic
into toy dinosaurs and play equipment.
Lunch was cream cheese on Ritz crackers,
milk, and freezer pops.  Our lips turned blue,
red, orange, and purple.  We drew sharks
and hopscotch on the sidewalk.  The gas man read
the meter.  We watered impatiens, basil, and fern.
Nobody cracked a tooth, nobody died.

Prick of the Spindle

The new issue of Prick of the Spindle is up.

It's an amazing online magazine that offers everything: poetry, fiction, nonfiction, reviews, interviews, and even drama and short film.

And what about that brave name? Re: internet search engines and annoying innuendo thanks to annoying behavior of politicians, etc. I prefer the fairy tale connotation, the magic implied, plus the possibility of fiber art spun from handmade thread!

What you see here is fiber art by Pat Kroth, a piece called Inside Out that reminded my husband (when we saw it at the Dittmar Gallery on Friday) of the colors and interior views of the body in the Body Worlds we saw recently exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry. If you click Pat's name, you can see the piece in great detail--the yarn, threads, the hint of tulle.

The gallery was indeed a magical place, with all these amazing colorful pieces on the walls and panels of sheer fabric collages hanging from the ceiling. Some pieces are draped or shaped on wall or floor, somehow caught in flow!

I was thrilled that recent pieces incorporate protests on behalf of public workers in Wisconsin!--a piece that sews in post-it notes, like the ones protesters stuck on the door of the capitol building in Madison. Another with the message "Workers unite," sewn in subtly around the border.

And speaking of magic and asserting the rights of the individual human...and returning to Prick of the Spindle, I hope you will take a look at these two reviews, of

Tongue by Rachel Contreni Flynn

and

Every Dress a Decision by Elizabeth Austen