Impossible Read: The Once and Future King

After four months of my Impossible Read project, during which I spent most of those days not reading, I have finished the first book on the list: T. H. White’s 1939 book The Once and Future King. I have an Ace Fantasy edition that was printed, and possibly acquired, in 1996.

As I have stated before, when I began this project I demanded far too much of myself — so much that I got in my own way and stymied any progress at all on reading the book. I wanted not only to read the greatest classic works of all time but also to create a neat, creative, multimedia reading journal for the ages. And that was just too much. (I still want to do it, but I’m now telling myself that I can do all that on the second pass through the reading list.)

Once I got over that issue, it was much easier to make time for reading. And after I got past the second “book” in the novel, “The Queen of Air and Darkness,” I was hooked on the story. Sometimes I stayed up late just to read a few more chapters.

The story begins with the boy Arthur, nicknamed “Wart,” being raised by Sir Ector along Sir Ector’s son Kay. The eccentric Merlyn presents himself as a teacher to both of the boys, but since he is living backwards in time his focus is on training Wart — who he knows will eventually be Arthur, King of England.

Along the way in this first section (“The Sword in the Stone”) we meet Robin Wood (not Robin Hood!), Maid Marian, Friar Tuck, and other members of Robin’s band that we remember, or think we remember, from the 1973 Disney movie. I was surprised to see these two very English tales combined in one narrative.

The way this particular version of the King Arthur tale is told, however, soon reminded me of the storytelling structure used in “The Princess Bride” (1987). Though Arthur’s tale is timeless, it’s definitely being told, perhaps as if to children or grandchildren, in 1939. There are references to cricket, to contemporary politics and fashions, and to Nazis. As much as Merlyn cautions Wart to learn to think for himself, the narrator expects the reader to make certain connections between Arthur’s story and contemporary events.

Another curious aspect of this version of the story has to do with how many times the narrator straight-out tells the reader that if they’d like a blow-by-blow retelling they should just read Malory’s Morte D’Arthur. Now that I have finished The Once and Future King, a friend is sending me an 480-page edition of the Malory so I can do just that. (Next time around, of course.)

Anyway. In the first section we also meet King Pellinore and view his curiously codependent relationship with the Questing Beast, who is lost and purposeless when she has no one to hunt her. But we don’t just meet characters; we learn the rules of chivalry and tournamenting that we will need to know all through the book.

Each section of the book views the larger story through the lens of a particular character: Arthur; Queen Morgause and her sons; Lancelot; and an omniscient narrator who jumps from view to view and finally settles back in the mind of Arthur. By the end of the book, Arthur is an elderly king who finally understands Merlyn’s reasons for trying to teach him how to think both rationally and on behalf of his entire nation rather than for his own self-interest. He is able to look back on his life and view his actions in context, now seeing where his mistakes have caused harm. The final pages give Arthur, and the reader, hope of a bright future. In fact, the last two words of the story are the label, “THE BEGINNING.”

Before I read this book I was only vaguely familiar with the notion of Camelot. In “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” (1975), which I have seen several times, it was presented as the home of the Round Table, both a mythic and noble destination and “a silly place.” But it was also used to describe the Kennedy White House. I read hundreds if not thousands of pages about John F. Kennedy when I was a teenager, and came across this reference several times. But since I had neither read the King Arthur story nor watched the movie “Camelot” (1967) by that time, I assumed that it referred to the society of King Arthur and his knights in its glory days. By the time I reached the third book, “The Ill-Made Knight,” I began to see other associations between King Arthur and Kennedy — tragic ones. When I neared the end of “A Candle in the Wind,” the final section, I was reading with a more sober and slightly broken heart.

I mentioned earlier that Merlyn was living backwards in this story, which immediately brought to mind the “Doctor Who” character River Song. She also could not remember when she had last met the Doctor, which would be the first time that he met her. Their relationship was always confused, not the least because the Doctor regenerated two times during her story arc. But thinking about the Camelot connection to the Kennedy administration put me in mind of David Tennant’s Tenth Doctor, particularly at the end of “The Waters of Mars” (2009), when the Doctor succumbs to pride and begins to see himself as an all-powerful force. It’s a terrifying episode in so many ways, but the final minutes of the episode hint less at the monsters than at the tragedy that lies ahead. And of course, “Doctor Who” is another very English tale.

The Doctor, thinking he has control over destiny.

This week I’ll continue the Impossible Read by starting Marion Zimmer Bradley’s 1982 novel The Mists of Avalon, of which I own a 1984 Del Rey/Ballantine edition. This time, the Arthurian legend will be told from the point of view of the women in the story. After I finish this book, I will close out the segment with three movies: “The Sword in the Stone” (1963), “Camelot,” and “Monty Python and the Holy Grail.” Huge thanks go to my friend Casey for suggesting that I watch the movies in this order. The idea is that I’ll watch a child’s version of the Arthur legend, then watch a grown-up’s version of the story, then watch a version which turns everything upside down and then blows it all up.

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I added one more typewriter to my collection this weekend, despite the fact that its thrift store label read “DOES NOT WORK.” The label also read “$2.00,” so I was willing to take a chance that it might just turn out to be a parts machine for another collector/restorer. But I’m not sure that will be its fate.

This 1951 Remington-Rand Super-Riter Standard was designed so that its top, side, and back panels would practically pop off for access to the insides for cleaning and adjustments. (They were loose when I bought it; perhaps that convinced the previous owner that it was truly falling apart.) After I brought it home I was able to quickly find and download, for free, both its user manual (“Operating Instructions”) and its 77-page service manual (“Mechanical Instructions”).

Meet “Vincent.”

And after a few minutes of skimming the manuals and fiddling around, I was able to get several things working that hadn’t worked before. The carriage still doesn’t advance when the keys are pressed, but that feels like some kind of mechanical misalignment; something just isn’t catching. I will have to learn more and dig deeper to find and address the mechanical difficulty, so for now I have fastened the panels on more securely, taken some photos, and created an entry in my typewriter inventory.

The typebars are in wonderful shape: this is regular-motion elite type.

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Knitwise, I added a few rows to the Habit-Forming Scarf in the course of the week and weekend. It’s now 22-1/2 inches long. I usually get more knitting done on a Formula One weekend; the next race (Imola) isn’t until next weekend, but Monaco will be held the following week.

I did pull the rest of the yarn from the skein and wind it into a little ball. That reminds me that the next skein is soon to come.

My campus (and community) based yarn community will meet on May 21 for lunch and yarning. Surely by the time the green flag is waved at Monaco, I will have joined the second skein of yarn to the scarf.

Half-spacing

In the course of this weekend I acquired two more typewriters. The first one, a Smith-Corona Model 88 Secretarial, was purchased from a somewhat local seller via Facebook Marketplace. He ended up being able to deliver the machine to me at work on Friday afternoon.

There are some issues with the tab and margin settings, but I’m sure that if I actually read the manual and do what it says I will have a better understanding of how to move the right levers and press the right buttons, all in the right sequence. But my goodness, look at this beautiful machine! She will clean up just fine.

Ah, 1954.

When I brought her home, I really didn’t know where I was going to put her. She sat on the dining room table for a while, then moved to the coffee table in the library. It’s not the best place, but I’m definitely running out of room for typewriter display and storage.

On Saturday afternoon I met up with a friend who hinted that she would have a “weird surprise” for me. We sat in a coffeeshop and talked for hours about everything and finally had to leave when we noticed that the owners were closing for the day. (Next time we’ll definitely have to try the coffee.) She was getting into her car when we both remembered about the weird surprise.

Someone had set out this little typewriter case in downtown Milwaukee, labeled thusly. How could she not pick it up and take it to a new home? And how could I not take it in?

This machine was built in Korea in 1988 or 1989, as the American market was shifting towards electronic word processors and home computers. Somehow it ended up in the American Midwest, broke its right platen knob, cracked and popped off the key to the right of the spacebar, and became irrelevant to its owners.

I have the broken pieces and I’ll ask someone more experienced than I am to put them back on. In the meantime I have fixed the ribbon setting (in the photo it’s still set to red, not black) and done a little typing test to assess the key action and have a look at the typeface. This Safari III is a little trouper weighing just 10 and a half pounds without its lid.

But where is it going to go?

One of the features of some of the more clever manual typewriters is the half-space. It’s a way to make room for a correction as an alternative to retyping the whole page. You erase the mistake and then have a way to fit the correct word into the space you have left. You hold the spacebar down, then type the next letter before you let the spacebar up. Then a longer word fits into a smaller space without looking obviously scrunched. It’s like a tight kerning before there was word processing software that did the kerning automatically.

I wish I could do some half-spacing around my house. If certain items could take up half their usual shelf space, I could easily slide two more typewriters onto the shelves, the tables, or…wherever. In lieu of that magical happenstance, some of these typewriters will need to find new and more spacious homes.

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Project updates: This week, as research for Black Walnut, I listened to a lot of bluegrass music, then switched to a CD set I bought online called Music of Coal: Mining Songs from the Appalachian Coalfields. All of the (48!) songs are related in some way to coal mining, strip mining, unionizing, Mother Jones, and/or black lung. They sometimes tug at your heartstrings and occasionally just run you over with heavy-duty machinery.

I mean, this is from the cover art.

Well, you really shouldn’t have been standing there anyway. My mother’s family comes from an area where these kinds of things are talked about all the time: strikes, mine disasters, being killed by a train. Stuff happens, life goes on, and you have to make a living somehow. The area of focus on my story doesn’t have mountains but it does have some very hilly places, some of which are labels as strip mines on my county map.

I didn’t move forward on the other project at all this week. I kept thinking that I would just sit down and take care of one last task with my library copy of Development of Mathematics, but so many things were happening that I just didn’t make the time. Next week, next week.

I did finally start a short-term project that I had planned to do over spring break, but it expanded and became more complex until I had to figure out how to reschedule it on my own terms. I don’t get time off during spring break anyway — nor for “summer vacation” either — so it’s more of a state of mind than any time away from work. I’ll just say that this is a movie-review project and leave it at that for now. I will be working on this in the background, as it were, and when I have finished it I will share the link to my work. That will probably be sometime in August.

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Knitwise, I made one row of progress on the Habit-Forming Scarf this week. I should be able to do more next weekend while I’m watching sessions for the Grand Prix of China.

The Improbable Read: Dialing back the big plan

One or two of you may be starting to wonder whatever happened to my Impossible Read project. To be honest, it’s still sitting in a tote bag next to my Comfy Green Chair in my home library.

I have been very frustrated at running out of time before being able to sit down and work on the project. Eventually I realized that this was happening because I took an admittedly very very long book list and converted it into an extremely time-consuming project. Not only was I planning to read some of the greatest books of all time, but I was also going to create a series of books filled with my own thoughts and annotations. And not only that, but the physical space necessary for working on these notebooks wasn’t even anywhere in my own house.

So I am setting aside the idea of creating a multi-volume artifact for myself. Instead I have a new plan, and I hope that you are sitting down as you read this. You’re simply not going to believe it.

I’m just going to read the books.

You heard me.

I will just read the books, and then watch the movies. I have plenty of other places where I can write about my reactions to the texts — in my morning freewriting, in my evening journaling, and here in my weekly blog posts. It’s even possible that as I work on my two primary writing projects, the great works and my thoughts about them may spill over into the writing I do there. (That’s kind of the point — to finally read these books and be influenced by them in my thought and my expression. To be edified, and to be improved.)

So hang on, Wart! I’ll be back soon to enjoy all of your adventures with Merlyn. I’ll just try not to be taking notes at the same time.

This weekend, for the Impossible Improbable Read-ing list, I found a very good used copy of Grendel by John Gardner. (I’m frustrated that I had to buy it at all, because I recognize the cover but cannot find the copy that I surely already own. ANYWAY.) Then I splurged on a new unabridged copy of The Tale of Genji, translated by Royall Tyler. Evidently this edition was originally published in 2003. It’s more than a thousand pages long and includes exquisite line drawings, a timeline, and a glossary. It’s full of helpful notes to the reader (hooray!) and it’s printed on paper that is soft to the touch (a high clay content?) and makes you want to just sit and pet it.

I marked these titles as “owned” in my Google Sheet, then scanned down the list to what I would next need to acquire. There are several books in a whole time period that I need to find — but they were written in the late 1600s and the 1700s. Before I even get to that point, I will have read The Once and Future King, The Mists of Avalon, The Epic of Gilgamesh, Beowulf, Grendel, The Tale of Genji, The Arabian Nights, The Decameron, The Canterbury Tales (in Middle English), Orlando Furioso, Don Quixote, and Salman Rushdie’s novel Quichotte. I have no idea what that cumulative page count even looks like (and I think it will go better for me if I don’t work it out in advance; I will log them in the spreadsheet as I finish each book [I have already created the formula]). There are also movies planned for viewing at the end of each segment, and those (so far) are The Sword in the Stone, Monty Python’s The Holy Grail, Beowulf, Aladdin, and Man of la Mancha (okay, I do need a DVD of this).

It may be two-three more years before I reach Oroonoko by Aphra Behn or Pamela by Samuel Richardson. But if you do see a nice used copy, could you let me know about it?

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On to the Primary Projects mentioned above.

For Black Walnut (the fiction project), I continue to collect and listen to bluegrass music. I’m reading mostly about the early years because that’s the timeframe that will impact my characters, and I’m doing a little side research into the bluegrass radio shows of the 1950s and 1960s, particularly in the Ohio-Appalachia area. In the last few days I managed to pick up a used DVD of O Brother, Where Art Thou?, a CD of the soundtrack, and a CD of live music from the groups on the soundtrack. I also snagged CDs by Mac Wiseman, Alison Krauss, and Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys. From the reading I’m doing, I am starting to recognize the names of key bluegrass musicians. Some of these names may or may not sneak their way into the manuscript when I’m writing again. (I also promised an archivist that I would name a character after him, and I have absolutely no problem with that.)

I can see now how thin and underdeveloped my original storyline was. I’m reminding myself that it was a NaNoWriMo project from 2014 and that it didn’t have to be any better than it was. I wrote 22,500 words in 30 days and it was okay. But now I want to meet the characters and their parents and grandparents, get to know them, get to know the time and the region, and find the big story that’s worth telling. Every so often I get a glimpse of it.

For the Development of Mathematics project (doesn’t that sound thrilling?), I have catalogued almost every annotation in the copy of the book held by my own university’s library. When I’m done with that, the logical next step is to do the same for the other copies in the University of Wisconsin System libraries. The catch is that Inter-Library Loan operates by choosing a copy at random from the system holdings. I’m in consultation with a research librarian and our library director as to how to tweak that system so that I efficiently receive each copy in the system for evaluation and possible cataloguing. That phase will start in June so that I will have the maximum possible time with the books.

Another thing I need to do for this project is to brainstorm until I understand what the core project actually is, then what are the possible spin-off projects. That was something I had hoped to tackle this weekend, but plans changed and that’s been postponed until next weekend.

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Knitwise, this week I did put in a few sessions of work on the Habit-Forming Scarf. This evening it measures 15 inches from the cast-on edge, and the remainder of the skein weight 51 grams (out of 100). This backs up my calculations from last week about getting 30 inches out of each skein. Hooray, my scarf is now 25 percent complete.

I’m going to have to normalize adding a couple of inches every couple of days if I want to get out of “slog” territory.

And with that in mind, it might be nice to have a small and colorful project to do on the side, to keep me motivated to work on something so long and grey (although certainly elegant and sophisticated).

My friend Nicole recently crocheted an office plant for me, and my friend Mary sent me a link to some crochet patterns published by the U.S. National Park Service. Here is one for a halibut. Here is another for a walleye. There are some fun patterns out there, including one (somewhere; I don’t have a link) for a crocheted Scottish thistle. It’s time to go stashbusting and color this place UP.

End of row

This week I came up with a new plan to trick myself into doing more writing. I bribed myself with new pens — Pentel EnerGel 0.7mm pens in purple and blue liquid gel ink — and gave myself permission to start using a journal that proclaims on the cover that “Anything is Possible.” So far, the plan is to only allow myself to use the pens and the journal on the weekends, until such time as I truly can’t take the wait any more and insist on having half-hour free-writing sessions during the week.

We’ll see how it goes. And for those whose neurology is as unconventional as mine, you may be intrigued to know that the blue (cyan) EnerGel pen is made in Japan, while the purple (violet) EnerGel pen is made in Mexico. I am not making this up. And now you know, too.

Zoom in for more similarities and differences!

I don’t have any progress to report on actual typewriter maintenance. I did purchase a can of something called PB Blaster that is supposed to help with loosening the tight screw on the spool cover, but I haven’t had enough time to devote any of it to the Galaxie II. Maybe next weekend — or maybe not, if I have to go out of town (see below).

I haven’t found any time to do any reading for the Impossible Read, either, but this weekend I purchased two of the books on the list (The Old Man and the Sea and A Tale of Two Cities) and two of the movies I’ll watch between groups of books (The Sword in the Stone and Aladdin). That doesn’t really keep me moving forward on the project, but it does make me more prepared for forward progress when I have some. It will be a long time before I need a copy of the next text, which is Grendel by John Gardner, which I am reluctant to purchase because I think that I already have a copy that I can’t find.

I’m also collecting DVDs for a Kevin Smith movie watchathon over spring break at the end of March. At first I thought I would watch Clerks-Clerks II-Clerks III, but now I’m wondering if the order should really be Clerks-Mallrats-Chasing Amy-Dogma-Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, and then Clerks II and Clerks III. What do you think? What do you think Kevin will suggest? (I’ll ask him.) For this project I’ll blow the dust off one of my other blogs, Take Five Movie Reviews, and link to it from here.

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Knitwise, I cast on for a new project this week. The yarn is Patons Classic Wool, worsted weight, which I bought three skeins of by mistake when I was searching in vain for Plymouth Encore last fall to use in the recently finished Stripe Scarf.

This pattern, by Madison knitter and knitting designer Elizabeth Morrison, is called “Habit Forming” and is modeled on the pattern sheet by Friend-to-All-Knitters Franklin Habit. The pattern, which is a free download on Ravelry, was designed with Noro Kureyon in mind — whether or not you choose to edit the colorway — but I think this grey wool will look rather elegant. I have been finding it easy to sit down and knit two rows of the pattern at a time to take a break from the other items on my task list, so it’s slowly growing. I’m finding that breaking some tasks into tiny chunks is allowing me to devote larger chunks to other tasks. Imagine that.

I did mention earlier that the Stripe Scarf was finally completed. After I found the Perfect Box™ it was also shipped, but unfortunately I didn’t have the apartment number for my son. USPS returned the package to me, I obtained the apartment number, and I re-shipped the package. It arrived today (!) to some acclaim. Or perhaps it arrived yesterday and the acclaim was sent today. ANYway, the scarf has made it to its requestor. Will it snow again this winter? Who knows, but it sure has been cold. I do like knowing that Liam can now be more bundled up against the cold and the wind.

I think the Habit Forming scarf will be for me. The knitting itself is therapy, and it’s been a little while since I intentionally made something for myself to wear. (As you can imagine, I already have several hand-knitted shawls, hats, scarves, cowls, and pairs of socks.) Lately I have been trying to find patterns that will give me some pleasurable knitting and allow me to use up bunches of yarn. “You know, I could make myself a scarf” hasn’t exactly been the first thought on my mind. But now I’d like to give myself a nice cozy gift.

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This week’s post has been brought to you by the memory of my grandmother, Elizabeth Christine (Chris) Walker, who departed this world earlier today at the age of 101-1/2. She was a force of nature and there will never be another one like her. She also loved the slippers I knitted for her over the years; I stopped making them because she became unsteady on her feet and I didn’t want her to slip. On Ravelry, where I haven’t updated my project records in several years, I found photos and notes for ten pairs of slippers that I knitted for her — so there may well have been more. She did wrap herself up in a throw that I knitted for her. Rest in peace, Grandmother.

To Read the Impossible Read

Over the past few days I’ve taken a look at my overflowing bookshelves and devised an utterly ridiculous plan for doing something about it. In honor of Miguel de Cervantes’s hero I have dubbed this plan “The Impossible Read.”

The idea is to start reading the greatest works of literature, almost all of which I have not read before. (I was an English major, but I had a lazy habit of re-reading what I liked — Jane Eyre, anyone? — rather than excessively broadening my horizons.)

I posted my initial list on Facebook on Saturday morning and my revised (i.e., more chronological) list on Sunday, and I’m currently in conversation with everyone from high school classmates and fellow knitters to English professors about which books should be on the list and in what order. At this time, four more books have been proposed: Voltaire’s Candide paired with George Bernard Shaw’s Candida, and Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey paired with The Martian by Andy Weir. (Maybe it should have been paired with Homer’s Odyssey.)

The stories will start with the legend of King Arthur and end, eventually, with contemporary science fiction. The book list itself is so extensive that my attitude towards adding more books can be described as, “Sure! Why not?” I’m making a deal with myself not to count any pages until I’ve finished a book, and I’m planning to end each book-grouping (since most of them paired off with another book) with the film of the story. In most cases, it should be easy to decide on the film.

Group One: The Once and Future King by T. H. White and The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley. Feature film: “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” (1975).

And so on.

This May I finished reading a book about (and by) a fellow who challenged himself to read the entire Encyclopedia Britannica. Another book on my shelves is about (and by) someone who read the entire Oxford English Dictionary in a year. Perhaps these accounts were in the back of my mind as I started to develop my colossal reading plan. The purpose of my reading project isn’t to show off; it’s to finally read those “must read” books that have influenced or changed the course of literature. The main idea is to get started.

I’m still trying to figure out the best way for me to take notes and keep track of my progress through the reading list. My Facebook friends have voted for me to just make postings on my personal Facebook account rather than create a special Facebook group. But I could just as easily create a Facebook group or a new blog on WordPress; I’ve certainly created many other groups and blogs over the years, and I enjoy the process.

What do you think? Would you want to see those posts collected in a separate blog, or is this the place for them? Would you be willing to travel to Facebook to read those posts or would you rather not? Let me know. And what books do you think I should read? I can post my Impossible Reading List next week.

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This weekend we rescued another typewriter, from the surviving nephew of the original owner. It’s a 1952 Smith-Corona Clipper and it will need — and receive — a lot of TLC. I made arrangements early in the week to pick it up on Saturday afternoon; by the time we arrived to pick it up, the nephew had also found the original manual. Its front cover humbly states, “Congratulations! YOU NOW OWN THE WORLD’S FINEST PORTABLE TYPEWRITER.”

I will clean this up.

For some reason, out of all of the typewriters I now own this is the one that I want to get started on cleaning up and using. I do have another Smith-Corona Clipper, one from 1956, that I can either use to compare parts or to work on at the same time. Typewriter repair manuals won’t be included in the Impossible Read, but I’ll be working my way through those as well.

I have already cleaned this up.

Fortunately, this particular typewriter seems not to need more than a thorough cleaning and a fresh ribbon. I hope to be writing on it soon; I promised the seller that if I sold it, it would only be to another writer.

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Knitwise, this week I’ve added a few more repeats to the Thrift Stripe Scarf. (How many different names have I given this project?) I have now done 33 repeats of the color pattern, and I’ll measure it again at 45 repeats. I’ll probably stop there, since that will give me more yarn left over to turn into a cowl, a hat, a brooch, or a pterodactyl.

Oh, I can make a lot of things!

I haven’t been able to locate any more Plymouth Encore yet; if you know a source, I’d love to find out soon. I did sew in most of the remaining ends on Stripe Scarf project, so after I add a few more stripes I’ll be nearly done with it and it will be a quick finish to give as a Christmas gift.

There has been no further progress on the Skinny Shawl — alas.

My life at the mall

I spent part of this weekend at a mall, and it led me to reflect upon the many intersections of my life with various shopping malls. Depending on the generation to which you belong, this may be a trip down memory lane (Gen X) or the most boring and pointless piece you’ve ever read. Also, I have no idea how this will (or will not) resonate with audiences outside of the United States; feel free to leave a comment.

Then

My memories of Westland Mall go back to before the mall was covered with a roof. I remember going shopping there with my mother on a rainy day, and dashing from one doorway to the next to avoid the raindrops. The mall also gave me one of my first pony rides; every so often, during the summer, a contractor would set up outside one of the entrances with a contraption that put the tamest ponies in the world in their traces and let them plod around in a circle for a few minutes. I don’t know exactly when this happened — I think it was after the roof was added — but I was young enough to be absolutely thrilled.

After the roof was added, seasonal events took place in the open areas of the mall. There was a visit with Santa, a visit with the Easter Bunny, and sometimes musical events or magic shows. One particular set-piece was a display of penguins “skating” on simulated ice.

center: clingy Chocolate Lamb.

Going to the mall was a big deal in the early 1980s, especially for kids from out in the country (where I now lived, having moved from Columbus’s West Side [Hilltop] in the summer of 1977). Behind the mall was a strip mall that contained an arcade and a movie theater; it was at that theater that I watched, though slightly underage, the movies Flashdance and Beverly Hills Cop, having smuggled in snacks that I had purchased from the Woolworth’s in the mall proper.

My first real job was at JCPenney’s in Westland Mall. I worked in the Mens’ Department in the summer of 1985, where I learned how many pins are in an button-down shirt (all of which you need to remove), my ethics with regard to swapping out change for a buffalo nickel in the till (I refused), and how many people shoplift jeans and try to get a cash return (too many). I returned to JCP in the summer of 1986 to find that I didn’t have a job there because I “hadn’t given them advance notice” that I would be returning. I retaliated by applying for a job at Domino’s on my way home from the mall. After I spent a week answering the phone and cleaning the windows at the pizza place, Penney’s called me with an offer to rehire me in Linens, where I spent the rest of my “career” with JCPenney. Note: minimum wage was $3.70 an hour in 1986.

I never saved a dime from my job at Penney’s because I used all the money, in addition to my employee discount, to shop at special sales where I could purchase clothes that complied with the strict dress code. No patch pockets, no blue jeans…. But one lasting benefit of the job was my first credit card. Penney’s knew I didn’t earn enough to qualify for the card, but since I was an employee they couldn’t turn me down.

Many years later, my beloved took me out to dinner (and drinks) at the Chi-Chi’s at the mall, after his homemade dinner proved too spicy for me to eat.

These days (literally) Westland Mall is being demolished. There’s a Facebook Group that shares still pictures and drone videos of the teardown, and the group also gives those of us who came of age at the mall a place to share our memories.

Now

This weekend I visited a mall in one of Milwaukee’s suburbs. Although JCPenney’s remained as one of the mall’s anchors, Boston Store was empty and the food court was nearly deserted. One of the few food vendors in the court was a place called Arepa’s, where I ordered a vegan arepa and a side of sweet fried plantains (sorry, Starliner Diner). I nibbled on the blazing-hot plantain slices, took the leftovers with me, and didn’t try to dipping sauces until I got home hours later. OMG try the dipping sauces, folks!

Westland Mall’s food options back in the day were an Orange Julius, a place where I could get bagels with cream cheese, Auntie Anne’s Pretzels, the super-classy restaurant at Lazarus, a Mark Pi place, the Woolworth’s lunch counter until it was taken out, and a Wendy’s next to the Chi-Chi’s. I never could have conceived of being able to order Venezuelan food in a mall.

One-third to one-half of the spaces in the mall were empty. I sat in the center and worked on a knitting project (cf. below) between a “We Fix” kiosk and a tall video screen that, on a loop, displayed Halloween-oriented recipes and makeup tips. At one point I set down my knitting just so I could finally discover the food item on which “Edible Intestines” was based (cinnamon roll dough).

Eventually one of the “We Fix” owners approached me, complimented my knitting, and offered me his business card. A few minutes later, a young Asian girl worried about the End Times invited me to her open Bible study. People with various disabilities walked laps around the perimeter of the mall’s interior. The mall itself seemed eternal.

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A week after being potted, the peach seedling didn’t show much sign of growth — but it was still alive. I watered it and put it back in the window. The remaining seeds didn’t show any evidence of rooting, and I cracked the lid of the plastic container when I checked on them. Goodbye to the rest of the setup; I’ll take the peach seedling to work for more sun and regular watering if nothing changes in the next week.

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Knitwise, I have been knitting 2-4 rows every day after casting on for a shallow-but-wide shawl from the marled purple skein. It’s soothing. The pattern right now is kf&b, k1, YO, k to end; repeat. I won’t change anything until the last 2 rows, which should be (k1, YO) across, end K1; BO.

I’m on the third stripe of the Stripe Scarf after restarting on smaller needles. I had a GP to watch this weekend, so I was able to make progress building on what I knitted at the mall (cf. above). Winter is far away, but the chilly weather has already arrived. I need to keep up the pace.

Mousetified

This weekend’s plans gang agley, as they say — well, as Robert Burns might have said. I’m rather behind the eight-ball now and I hope that during the next week I’ll find some time to catch up.

My plans were simple: review my research paper for the graduate course, look over the professor’s comments on the previous stage, and start making the revisions for the final paper. I finally figured out how to download the annotated version of the previous draft and email it to myself so I could work on it at home, but I didn’t realize that it would come through as a PDF instead of a Word file. No problem: I had printed out a copy of that stage of the paper, and I went through it and added his comments in the margins. My plan was then to read through the paper carefully, all the way through, before making any changes. That part of the plan lasted until I finished reading the first sentence and thought, Oh, my, this needs work.

I did read through the entire draft, but I was rewriting, eliminating, and adding sentences as I went. I made notes wherever I needed a new fact (and its citation). I made notes where I would need to add a table of data (so far there seem to be four of them). I reviewed the references that I hadn’t had the time to check out before the previous draft of the paper was due; I identified 17 of them, and my professor gently urged me to cut them down to the top four. (I picked five, but I’ll swap out one of my previous citations that didn’t relate to my topic very well. Don’t tell him.)

That was the work that I did by hand on Saturday. The plan for Sunday was to start making those changes and produce a working draft to keep revising over the following week. Then there was a livestream of one of my favorite musicians, which would give me a nice break. Then I would turn my attention to working on my congregation’s monthly newsletter, for which I do the layout.

The livestream was almost finished when Eldest came downstairs with a strange look on his face. He noted that I had moved the popcorn popper from the kitchen table back to its usual place on the back left burner of the stove, and he wondered why.

It turned out that, after I had gone to bed on Saturday night, he had come downstairs and seen a mouse sitting on top of the popcorn popper. That’s why he had moved it to the table, and why he had moved the oven mitts to the laundry basket; apparently the mice had been scaling the microwave cart and making their way from there to the stovetop.

Ick! Ick! Ick!

We live in a house that was originally built somewhere around 1860-something. It has been added onto since then, of course, and modernized over the years, but there is no way that a house of this age will ever be hermetically sealed from the critters that live nearby. I understand that, and I have lived much of my life in old houses. But this was too much.

Plans shifted. We needed to do a lot of cleaning and a lot of Moving Things Around. Of course the dining room table is covered again, this time with boxes of pasta, boxes of crackers, partially filled bags of tortilla chips, bags of basmati rice, a teakettle, a coffee mug packed with singles packs of instant coffee, empty Mason jars, and a stack of cookie sheets and half-sheet pans that were still waiting to be washed. The kitchen table was packed with snacks, popcorn-making supplies, and the pots, pans, and lids that had previously been in the drawer beneath the oven (the mice had been there, too).

Together we moved appliances, vacuumed and scrubbed floors and surfaces, and brainstormed where we could safely place the next series of mousetraps. I went shopping in the evening and came home with mousetraps, caulk, a caulking gun, plastic storage bins, and a brand new popcorn popper. It just has to work.

The newsletter? I’ll try to get to it tomorrow night.

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Knitwise, I did get some work done on the sketchbook pouch. It’s now exactly 8 inches deep and I’m beginning to wonder what’s going to fit in it. The space may be too small for a sketchbook, but it could certainly hold my cell phone and the work-wallet I carry that contains my campus ID and my office key. If I repurpose it that way, I’ll need to figure out the “strap and flap” situation. What kind of closure do I want? How long should the flap be? Do I want to knit an integral strap that’s long enough to wear the pouch as a crossbody item?

I’m still thinking that through. In the meantime, I have also been thinking about the new office to which I’ll be moving over the summer. It has a very narrow and very tall window, and it has occurred to me that I should knit a curtain for it. This weekend I found a pattern on Ravelry that looks promising — Crest of the Wave Lace Curtains, designed by Christina Hanger in 2011.

I don’t know what yarn I might use for this curtain, but my stash might yield several possibilities after I measure the window and estimate the yardage I’ll need.

First, of course, will come the Yoga Socks. Of course.

Defining perfection

Eldest and I recently had a conversation about which movies we thought were the closest to perfect. I think that by perfect we mean that the movie came as close as possible to doing exactly what it was trying to do.

We’ve all seen movies that bogged down, lost their way, got the details embarrassingly wrong, or gave up and went for the cheap laughter or easy tears. And we’ve all see some very very good movies that are well done — but we would hesitate to call them perfect.

What puts a movie into the category of perfect? Here are the five films we favored, in alphabetical order.

Apollo 13

A real-life deadline plot doesn’t always become a good or great movie, let alone a perfect one. (Titanic, anyone?) Ron Howard does an excellent job of building the tension in the Apollo module, at Houston ground control, and within the homes of the astronauts. He also knows just how — and just how much — to break that tension. And when. Every detail is important. We have seen this movie countless times, and every time we happen to see it on TV we absolutely must stop what we’re doing and watch it to the end. Yes, we know exactly how it ends. We know it’s a movie and we know that everything is going to be fine. Nevertheless, we get caught up in the story that’s being told and we worry about the characters. Are they going to make it home this time?

Breaking Away

Once again, we have a script based on [some amount of] reality and the very tangible, tactile details of life in a small college town. All of the emotions are strong and painful: feeling left out, feeling left behind, feeling misunderstood, feeling disregarded. There’s a turf war fought at the quarry and at the campus bowling alley. Bicycle tuneups. Riding hard in the rain. Stonecutting. There is tension and disconnection and frustration and confusion. There is trust and betrayal. There are impossible dreams. All of it is filmed with respect. By the time the story is over, even the villains are cheering for the heroes. The one cringeworthy line uttered by the frat jock is almost forgotten when you hear Barbara Barrie’s brief soliloquy about her passport. Midwest families rarely say exactly what they mean, but they usually find a way to show it.

CODA

I stumbled into this movie in a theater purely by accident, and I have recommended it to everyone I know ever since. I do not want to spoil one bit of it for you, but the film contains several complex and emotionally weighty subplots and handles all of them with skill, compassion, respect, and unexpected humor. It could easily have fallen into cliché or caricature, but it never does. When you think you know what will happen, you are wrong. As in Breaking Away, you are given the chance to see and feel every character’s perspective. It feels so honest that it is hard to believe that this screenplay was adapted from anything else — but there you are. Go find a way to see it.

The Blues Brothers

With The Blues Brothers, I’m not even sure where to start. This movie has been a favorite of my family for decades. For years we watched the version shown by AMC and eventually discovered the director’s cut. We watched it like some people watch Rocky Horror Picture Show, and were on the verge of putting costumes together to perform our own rhythm and blues revue. It’s a musical and a blues homage and a fantasy and the best movie ever made about a Catholic school fundraiser. It introduced my family to so many musical legends. I don’t think that anyone could argue that it is technically perfect, but it tells its own fantastical, crazy story so well that it’s quite possible that we quote from it every day (or on an average of every day). Do you see the light? Do you have the Miss Piggy? You want out of this parking lot? Hit it.

Ocean’s Eleven

It would be almost impossible to make a perfect heist movie — but this film, or possibly the 2003 version of The Italian Job — might come the closest. Every character gets his moment of seriousness, his moment of comedy, and his moment of crisis. Each character is necessary. The tension builds and builds and builds, then dissolves into utter relaxation during the performance of the fountains at the Bellagio. The postscript calmly lets us know that the story isn’t over: there will be consequences. Eventually. (If you’re not convinced that this movie is perfect, you could compare it to its sequel, Ocean’s Twelve, which fell irritatingly short of the goal in so, so many ways.)

What do you think? If these films fall short of perfection for you, tell me how and where. What are your five perfect films? How do you define perfection?

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Knitwise, I’m pleased to be able to tell you that I’m almost on the verge of knitting again. Am I picking up the Pink Project? No! Am I finishing the mystery project with the silk yarn the color of Easter eggs? No! Am I finishing that pair of socks I have on the double-points? [What pair of socks? you ask. I don’t remember any pair of socks.] No! The project with the blue silk? No!

Yesterday afternoon I started sorting through the piles of boxes that sit outside my bedroom closet. I’d like to have easier access to the folding closet doors, and I had lost track of exactly what items were piled up there. The work went on into the evening, and finally I had cleared enough room that I could walk into the small anteroom and not knock anything over on my way to the closet doors. I also put my clothes back into chromatic order and removed any empty clothes hangers.

This meant, of course, that the items that had been piled up in the anteroom were now piled up in my bedroom proper, and at some point I would have to sort through them to see what I could put away or dispose of. That point was this afternoon.

In the course of going through those items I found a Ziploc bag stuffed with four skeins of handspun yarn created by my long-distance friend (and cyber-hermana) Lauren.

When I opened up Messenger to ask her about the yarn’s origin, I saw that our last conversation had been in 2018. At that time she wanted to know my work mailing address so she could send me some of her yarn stash before she and her husband repatriated to Mexico. A few days later several densely packed boxes of yarn, needles, and other supplies showed up, making her own path a little lighter. Over the next few years I did my best to rehome the yarn that she sent to me, but I set aside her handspun for my own future projects. Today, when I found these four skeins, I finally wanted to start a project with them.

Those are Shetland wool, she texted back almost immediately, adding that the sheep’s name was Leroy.

I’m thinking cowl, I replied, and she agreed.

After I weighed the yarn and Lauren estimated its yardage, I searched Ravelry for cowl patterns and sent her links to three of them. We agreed on the merits of the simplest pattern, which I downloaded and printed out. I found the specified needles and added them to the project bag, then (eventually) found where I had put my skein winder. Ironically, it was out of sight because it was now blocked by a tall stack of boxes and bins that had previously blocked the access to my closet.

ANYWAY I now have a simple but satisfying project that I can start at the beginning of the school year, when the campus knitters will be back and we’ll be joined by one or two more folks who want to learn how to knit. Life is good.

Another round and one more show

Last week’s composition of the blog post was an invisible comedy of errors. I had begun a blog post the week before and never done anything with the draft; when I started working on it last week I ran into all sorts of odd errors. WordPress told me that I couldn’t edit the file; as it turns out, I could edit but not save. I also couldn’t view the photos I had uploaded and placed, or resize them. Out of desperation I copied and pasted the whole thing, emailed it to myself, and took up the work on the iPad — where I was able to finish everything.

Today everything is working just fine. Why? Why ask why? (Why does asking that question make me thirsty?)

Last week’s primary rabbit hole had to do with my recent project of self-study of Hebrew. Modern Hebrew uses consonants without vowel markings (as in the McDonald’s sign above), but the Hebrew of the Bible is what I’m trying to read, and it uses strategically placed dots and lines to specify the vowel sounds that should be used with the consonants.

Shalom!

Where I got caught up — and I’m not complaining, just describing — was on the names that are given to the vowel markings. I know what they’re telling me to do; the dot above the baseline on the left-hand side of “Shalom” is telling me to use a long O sound, and the funky mark below the baseline on the right is indicating that I should use a short A sound. But the names of those marks are, respectively, “cholem” and “qamets,” and I wanted to know if those names had meanings that would help me remember the functions of the symbols.

(If I have lost you, I apologize; last week I bent the ear of everyone in my department who has studied linguistics or is teaching phonetics this semester. I may have accidentally turned my obsession on each of them like a fire hose. Sorry, Sheila, Luzma, Olesya, Pam, Hala, and Alicia. I’ll need to learn moderation and maybe some modulation.)

To make a long story short (“TOO LATE!”), I found a few reference books that have given up bits and pieces of these words’ meanings, and I’ve started collecting the data on a Google Sheet on my iPad. (It’s super helpful that it allows me to change the language to Hebrew in the appropriate cells.) And my friend Marsha is in the initial stages of enthusiasm in response to my questions (this, too, shall surely pass) and has offered to help me learn. I’m gradually learning that the information is out there — it’s just that, with the books that I have on hand, it isn’t all in one place. But it will be.

Found this little golden guy two weeks ago. Perfect as my songwriting mascot!

I made some progress on the songwriting front by recording the vocal track to this month’s song, uploading the music and the lyrics to the group folder, and linking to the files in the group feedback spreadsheet. So far no one from the songwriting group has offered any feedback (okay, it’s only been about 24 hours), but my musician-friend Dave (Hi, Dave!) sent me some Encouraging Words and suggested that I get a MIDI keyboard to help me add some extra tracks to the tune.

I’m never going to be a professional musician, and I’m not worried about that. Right now I’m happy that song #1 was uploaded on the 27th of its month and song #2 was uploaded on the 12th of its month. The more quickly I can get my lyrics in a finished state after the prompt, the more time I have to receive and respond to feedback on the song.

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Knitwise, last week I made more progress than usual on the turquoise scarf. Even better, I remembered to do a photo shoot. You can see that I only have enough yarn left for a few more rows. How many more, I have no idea. But I’ll be able to tell when it’s time to bind off. I’m looking forward to getting this scarf off the needles, washing it up, and seeing how the yarn softens and fluffs up.

These needles will probably be retired and rehomed after this project. They are 14-inch aluminum single points, and my hands (and arms!) need kinder and more ergonomic knitting tools. I have flower vases filled with colorful aluminum needles like this pair. While they make attractive displays, the needles would serve better to go back into the world and be used by someone who needs them. Look for them at a Goodwill near you.

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Today is Eldest’s 23rd birthday. We celebrated with a movie and a meal yesterday, and today Secondborn visited (and MiddleSon and Youngest came home) to give him a special present and hang out with him for a while. It was nice to have everyone in the house and happy, if only for a couple of hours. The dog was ecstatic to be able to count to five again.

Have a happy prelude to spring (or fall, depending on your hemisphere of residence), and may you cope well with the transition to Daylight Savings Time (if such is your societal custom).

Reward levels

This week dealt mostly with problem-solving, and it’s a good thing that I like solving problems. The novel thing was that I eventually rewarded myself with — or, allowed myself to enjoy — some activities that really make me happy.

I attended two webinars that I was really eager for, and they far exceeded my expectations. You would not think that it would be fun to sit for another 75 minutes in front of a computer, but I loved the learning and the discussions. Surprise, surprise, I really like learning more about language and page layout and editorial decision-making. Who knew?

I also took myself out to lunch to one of my favorite local restaurants. I was almost the only customer, so the room was quiet while I started “Morpho Eugenia,” a novella by A. S. Byatt. I only read about ten pages, but from the first or second paragraph I realized I was reading the work of a master. And I could relax and enjoy it. On top of that, I got to try a soup version of my favorite taco in all the world, and it was lush and complex and delicious. It was also accompanied by a perfect example of my second-favorite taco in all the world.

Friday night was the backers-only soft open for the new season of Mystery Science Theater 3000, and with seconds to spare I logged in to the “Gizmoplex” to watch a rather bizarre movie involving luchadores, time travelers, and Count Dracula. Even though there were a few glitches, it was a lot of fun and I could really just relax.

I had planned for a weekend of staying home and doing nothing, but on Saturday afternoon I went shopping with MiddleSon instead. How many almost-18-year-olds want to go shopping with their mother? For several hours? We had a grand time, except for our shock and grief at discovering that the local Exclusive Company location was closing. We pounced on everything that we could at their closeout sale, but I was too much in shock to think clearly. We wound up with some nice CDs, and I think that both of us are grateful for our memories of the other times we have visited the store — though not as many times as we should have.

In the evening I took myself to the Café Carpe for a show. It was supposed to be an evening out with a friend, but when the original musical act had to cancel due to the weather, we postponed the mutual activity for another day night. I did go by myself to have dinner and see the replacement act; if you have been to the Carpe you will understand that the cook and the musician were the same talented individual. I also got to talk with both owners (one of whom was also the cook/musician) about all kinds of things. I drove home in a ripping spring-is-coming-dammit thunderstorm, with lightning bolts arcing across the sky, spiralling in the air, and landing all around me. It was a stimulating evening capped by an exciting drive. (After which I spent an hour or so comforting the storm-terrified dog.)

Today I had two interesting Zoom events, and I enjoyed both of them. I studied a little Biblical Hebrew, I played word games, I did some laundry. And I made some plans for next weekend.

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Knitwise, is anything happening? Barely. Last week I knitted a few rows on the turquoise scarf, but since I now do my lunchtime knitting after actually taking the time to eat lunch, I don’t make much progress. (And, as usual, I forgot to take a picture.) I haven’t been knitting on the weekend, usually because I’m busy driving around or doing my housework or studying.

But this week I received a new songwriting prompt, and within 48 hours I had written the lyrics to a new song. So I’ve got that going for me, which is nice.

The creative energies are definitely being diverted into the songwriting. I do have faith that the time and energy currently being devoted (diverted?) to songwriting will pay dividends in the future through other creative activities. I’m jump-starting the car; that doesn’t mean that I know exactly where I’m going to go, but it looks as if it will be a fun trip.