Movies, Poetry, Family, War

On this day in 1931 Shintaro Katsu was born in Fukagawa, a suburb of Tokyo known for its geishas. He grew up to become an actor, singer, producer, and director. He directed the seminal martial arts movie "Zatoichi Meets the One-Armed Swordsman."

I've never been to Japan, but the titular focus of this old blog, Richard Brautigan, spent a year there (1975/76), which culminated in his poetry collection "June 30th, June 30th." Here is a short poem from the book, in which Brautigan remembers the feeling of never fitting in, never being entirely comfortable -- except perhaps at the game arcade!

Pachinko Samurai

I feel wonderful, exhilarated, child-like, 

perfect. 

I just won a can of crab meat*

and a locomotive** 

What more could anyone ask on May 18,

1976 in Tokyo?

I played a game of pachinko

/ vertical pinball /

My blade was sharp. 

*real 

**toy

The only person in my immediate family to have been in Japan (so far as I know) is my father. He flew several missions from Okinawa to the main islands of Japan in the late stages of WWII, including some transfers of Japanese POWs just after Japan surrendered. In our back hall closet hangs a silk embroidered smoking jacket he got in Japan. One of my sisters has the Samurai sword he brought back.

Fukagawa was also where the esteemed Haiku master Basho lived for a time. Here's a Basho poem, translated, curiously enough, by Robert Hass.

Taking a nap, 

feet planted 

against a cool wall.

Hoagy

On this day in 1899, one Howard Hoaglund Carmichael was born in Bloomington, Indiana. Carmichael, known to everyone as Hoagy, was a great songwriter, credited with many contributions to what some still call the Great American Songbook.

I lived a couple blocks off campus in Bloomington, and there was a little diner nearby called The Gables. I ate lunch there often because they offered students a punch card deal -- twelve meals for the price of ten, or something like that. Their beef commercial was cheap and filling.

In the back at The Gables stood an old upright piano with a small plaque commemorating the fact that Carmichael wrote many of his hits there, when the building was a bar. Here's Diana Krall crooning a Carmicheal tune. Enjoy!

Confusing Civic Nomenclature: Midwest Division

In a recent TV news story, the reporter referred to “The University of Indiana.” As you surely know, the official name of the school (my alma mater) is Indiana University. There is a school called Indiana State University in Terre Haute (French for ‘high ground’ even though it’s really not very). There is also a school called Indiana University of Pennsylvania because it is in the city of Indiana, Pennsylvania.

So far as I know, only one major university has officially tacked “The” in front of its name:

The Ohio State University, although the official name of Rutgers includes an emphatically capitalized 'the':

Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. But there are a half dozen other state universities or colleges in New Jersey.

I worked at The Ohio State University when the name and logo were changed, which lead to no perceptible difference on campus. Coincidentally, I lived on Indianola Avenue in Columbus. There’s another school in Ohio called Ohio University. It’s in Athens, OH. I think the founders of Athens had unrealistic aspirations.

I did a stint as a student teacher in Columbus, Indiana. Columbus, IN, billed itself as the Athens of the Prairie not in homage to Athens, Ohio, but because Columbus, like the Original Athens, boasts many fine buildings designed by famous architects. The famously high architecture fees were paid for by the founder of the Cummins Engine Company because he liked nice buildings. My student teaching gig, which did not go well, was at a school designed by famous architect Eliot Noyes,

who apparently knew little about schools but a lot about poured concrete.

I worked for a time in the architecture department at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, two cities named for a city and county in Ohio. The founders were not very imaginative. The main campus library is underground. Even the architects I worked with at U of I did not know why.

So be careful when people talk about Indiana or Columbus or Athens or Urbana or Champaign or any school associated therewith; you might want to get some clarification.

Busted Flat in Budapest, Waitin' for a Train...

We don’t speak or read Hungarian, but that didn’t stop us (though maybe it should have) from setting out to explore Budapest on our own. No guide, no guidebook, just a map from the hotel front desk.

It’s what we often do when travelling – just go! We like to have a bit of serendipity, even though that approach sometimes doesn’t work out. We like to use local public transportation if possible because it gives a more authentic feel for the layout and the rhythms of the city. And the people are usually friendly, though they can easily spot us as tourists: we’re the ones looking at the signs and then at the map and then at the signs again, pointing first one way and then the other, obviously lost or nearly so.

The trip started in Prague and ended in Budapest. On our first day in Prague, we set out with another couple who wanted to see the famous “dancing house” designed by Frank Gehry. We went to the subway station, looked at the map on the wall and jumped on the red line, intending to transfer to the yellow line. After getting off at the transfer station, one of us said that we’d made a mistake and we really should have gone in the opposite direction. So we ran to the other side of the station, got back on the train and returned to our starting point. Then we realized that the original plan had been the correct one. We eventually made it to the Dancing House, took pictures, and went in search of some Czech beer, which we eventually found off a pleasant path by the Vltava River (Smetana called it by its German name, the Moldau). Later, we learned that there’s a nice bar on the top floor of the Dancing House.

The subways in Prague and Vienna and Budapest all used roughly the same fare process: Go to a kiosk and buy a ticket, then scan or stamp the ticket at a little box as you enter the platform (see the orange box on the post in this photo.)

No turnstiles, nobody patrolling or asking to see your tickets. We obediently bought our tickets each day or each trip, and we noticed that (a) most riders had passes so they didn’t mess with paper tickets and (b) those with paper tickets never stuck them in the slot. Everyone just walked on and off and the poor validation boxes got totally ignored.

We still bought tickets, not wanting to be freeloaders, but after many trips over several days in all three cities, we no longer bothered to stick the little tickets in the little slots.

On the last day of the trip, we headed out to find the market in Budapest. It was nice. We ate on the patio of a small restaurant near the market. It was very nice. Map and tickets in hand, we figured out the best route back to the hotel and hopped on the subway again.

The exit we chose was monitored by three burly uniformed gendarmes, checking tickets. We happily presented our tickets, purchased less than two hours before. The official was not pleased. We expressed our puzzlement through confused expressions and frantic pointing at the tickets. He made it clear through gestures and scowls that we had failed to validate the tickets. We countered by saying ‘well, yes, but we do indeed have tickets, and besides nobody else seems to be validating them.’ This was unconvincing. He pulled us aside and made it clear that we couldn’t leave until we paid a fine. We didn’t have enough Forints [I don’t know how one could ever have enough Forints because it takes 2,600 of them to equal 1 US dollar] but the official was happy to accept a credit card on the spot.

The ride cost us about $40.00. Up the stairs to street level to discover that we’d gotten off one stop too soon.

Community: Fifty Shades of Meaning

“The county, which owns the 88-acre property housing The Ponds at Battle Creek golf course, has been working with the city of Maplewood to reconfigure the property. Citing poor earnings, the county had planned to close The Ponds in December. When the community pushed back, the county agreed to delay the closure…" --- St. Paul Pioneer Press, March 2, 2021

Who exactly pushed back? The neighbors? The city council of Maplewood? Golfers? The cast of "Caddyshack"?

“What does your organization do for the greater community?” -- Karla Hult, reporter for KARE11 TV, interviewing someone from a drug treatment program about support for graduates.

In the same story, one of the graduates referred to “the recovery community.” I suppose the greater community is a very large area which may include the recovery community, which I suppose includes people recovering from addiction and their families and their friends and their employers and coworkers and neighbors and the cops who busted them and… Once again, the term is so broad and so vague that it has almost no meaning.

“…to be connected to a local agent in your community.” --- Part of an ad for health insurance (Aetna).

Where else would a local agent be?

“As chef Jack Riebel -- co-owner of The Lexington -- prepares to undergo an aggressive fourth treatment for neuroendocrine cancer, the Twin Cities community is rallying around him.” --- from Pioneer Press web site March 8, 2021.

We’re all pulling for Mr. Riebel, but only in “the Twin Cities community?” What about the suburbs?

“A neighborhood advocacy group is seeking community members interested in planning a downtown St. Paul park.” -- Pioneer Press web summary March 17, 2021

Isn’t a neighborhood advocacy group already composed of community members? How about ‘residents’ or ‘people’?

“Thank you for the honor of representing our communities in the state legislature.” --- Opening sentence on a postcard from our state representative.

I don’t know which communities he’s talking about. He represents a legislative district, so presumably he’s talking about all the communities in the district, so he should simply say “our district.”

“TPT 2020 Annual Report to the Community.” --- Title of the annual report by Twin Cities Public Television.

Why not just call it the annual report?

“Benjamin Moore is committed to community at this time.” --- Banner near the top of the main page at Benjamin Moore paints web site.

I don’t even know what to say to this bit of corporate balderdash.

“Thanks for your participation in the Fine Arts at our community’s public schools.” – In a letter from the Northfield Fine Arts Boosters.

Just say “our public schools” because we already know that those schools are in our community.

++++

If you feel tempted to use the word “community”’ please pause and consider something more concrete or specific. Customers. The city. The school district. Employees. Constituents. Voters. Members. Think hard about who you’re actually talking about or talking to. Just because the word feels kind of cozy and friendly and do-gooderish, “community” is really amorphous and ambiguous. That is my message to the writing community.

While you ponder this, please enjoy a somewhat related video from the distant past. You might become a reluctant member of the nostalgia community.

Prodigal Window

Just after we were married, Kathy and I bought a house in south Minneapolis. All three of our children were born while we lived there. We spent a lot of time fixing up that house. It was a very well-built Tudor-style stucco house, of which there are hundreds in that part of town. It had a heavy wooden arched front door that I refinished. The door had a small plain window. My dad made a lovely stained-glass window to replace the plain one. I watched him carefully install that window.

About six years later, we sold the house. We debated taking the window out but I was afraid I might damage the window or the door, so we left it there. That was 35 years ago. This year, for my 75th birthday, our daughter Karin gave me that window!

She had recalled me lamenting (probably more than once) about leaving the window behind. So she found out who owns the house and talked them into swapping the old stained-glass window for a new one. They were very nice about it, allowing someone Karin chose to carefully remove the window and design a replacement that they could call their own.

The gift was completely unexpected and I still smile each time I recall that evening. Such a kind and thoughtful gesture!

I took the window to a local frame shop and they made a very nice cherry wood frame. The framed window now hangs in the large front window of our house and when we move, this time it’s coming with us!

Back in the saddle?

 

I quit Twitter today. Didn't even bother to alert my very few followers. This is part of an effort (futile, no doubt) to take a step away from the oligarchs and whackos who seem to dominate what is inaccurately called "social media." One way to ensure that the censors or flamethrowers or shade throwers aren't surrounding or diostorting or silencing is to be my own damn content moderator. So...it's back to blogging. Gradually, folks that I know and like will be able to see these musings and maybe even enjoy them. Looking back on postings from a few years ago, I realized that it was fun to talk a little about travels and travails. We're going on a couple of short trips to warmer climates this year, so look for edifying dispatches from the great southwest desert or the southeast coast. Exciting, no?