Christopher Tuthill's Blog, page 11

To Scrimmage, or Skirmish

My eleven year old son’s soccer team scrimmages each week in practice. On the way home this week, he told me how much he enjoys ‘skirmishing.’

“Did you say ‘scrimmage,’?” I asked. “Or skirmish?”

“Skirmish,” he replied. “Skirmishes are so much fun.”

I found this so funny, he knows about skirmishes because we play lots of tabletop games, some of the wargaming variety, that include skirmishes. I explained the word is ‘scrimmage,’ but since they sound so similar, it got me to wondering, so I had to check the glorious, trusty old OED. I had no idea that the word scrimmage seems to have its origin in the word skirmish, which was itself borrowed from the French escarmouche. It makes perfect sense that skirmish, which deals with warfare, would also be used in sports, where war metaphors abound. The kids are indeed skirmishing. I mean, scrimmaging. Anyway, as usual, my son is correct and knows more than dad, and has taught me something.

You can check out the etymology here: “skirmish, n., Etymology”. Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford University Press, July 2023, https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/8783343266

I’ve found that since my children began playing sports, I care less and less about the pros and am mostly interested in how much fun the children are having, what they are learning, and what friendships they form as they play. It’s for the best, anyway, since all the pro teams I like are terrible. Somehow we have the biggest market in the world for sports but all the local teams are not good.

Youth sports are much more fun anyway, what with all those skirmishes.

Happy Halloween!

It’s my favorite day of the year! Here’s a seasonal story I published a couple of years ago, called “The All Hallows Knight,” in which a young boy tries to revive the spirit of the dead, and gets more than he expected. Happy All Hallows Eve, one and all. https://issuu.com/theparagonjournal/docs/final_version_tales_of_reverie/10

Art is by Joseph Mugnaini, who did many wonderful illustrations for Ray Bradbury’s work. This one is from The Halloween Tree, first published in 1972.

The Independents

“Please support us,” they say. “We care about the local community! It’s so hard to stay afloat, with competition from amazon and things like that. We’re have a great selection and we care–buy local!”

So, we buy local for many years. Gosh, it isn’t fair that these little stores must compete with Jeff Bezos!

“Hello,” you say, “I’m a local author published by a small press–“

“Do you think this is a charity?” the store says. “Get real–we only deal with gigantic publishing houses.”

Funny, Jeff Bezos carries my book…

Dead Man Walking

I try to steer clear of political writing, I detest most of it and want to spend my time on more productive things. However I am seeing reviews for Dead Man Walking, the opera, and I’ll simply say that after watching the film and learning some things about it, I felt it was a lot of drama over someone who murdered innocent people in cold blood. Until you have been the victim of such a crime, I have absolutely zero interest in your opinions on clemency for monstrous behavior.

I’m not even pro death penalty. I just want to spend my time and efforts on people who are worthy of it. That doesn’t include those who murder innocent people.

There are plenty of good arguments to be made against the death penalty, not least of which is that any society that punishes criminals with death seems uncivilized. I sympathize with these views.

Even so, I don’t care what happens to convicted murderers. Once again, come back and have a conversation about it after someone in your family–your spouse, say, or maybe your child–has been viciously murdered in cold blood. Until that time, I could not care less what your opinions are.

I write this not out of some petty vindictiveness but because I keep seeing reviews of this opera and various other articles in the New York Times and elsewhere about forgiveness for people who have committed atrocities, about criminals who now assure us they are very, very sorry about the murdering they did. I can guarantee you none of the people writing and advocating for clemency and speaking of rehabilitation have had a spouse or child murdered in cold blood. They have absolutely no idea what they are talking about and I think they don’t even realize how such pieces come across to victims of such crimes.

So, hard pass on Dead Man Walking. Save your sympathy for those deserving of it.

T.S. Eliot

T.S. Eliot was born September 26, 1888, 135 years ago. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, first published in June 1915, is a groundbreaking work that left me floored when I first encountered it as a young man. Wonderful, evocative, elegaic, just beautiful. I committed much of it to memory and read all of his work, which I revisit often.

I’m not going to parse the poem here; many learned scholars have done so over the past hundred and eight years. What I will say is that as an eighteen year old, I read this poem and was deeply moved. It was not like any poem I’d read before. Among many memorable images, Eliot writes:

“I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,       
And in short, I was afraid.”

I think this and much of this work speaks for itself and needs no intermediary. I knew as a teenager what Eliot was getting at, felt it in my soul, and still remember that unsettling, exciting moment, and feel it just as keenly over thirty years later.

Happy reading, my friends.

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse
A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondo
Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero,
Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.


Let us go then, you and I, 
When the evening is spread out against the sky 
Like a patient etherised upon a table; 
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets, 
The muttering retreats       
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels 
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells: 
Streets that follow like a tedious argument 
Of insidious intent 
To lead you to an overwhelming question …         
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?” 
Let us go and make our visit. 

In the room the women come and go 
Talking of Michelangelo. 

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,       
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes 
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening, 
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains, 
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys, 
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,         
And seeing that it was a soft October night, 
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep. 

And indeed there will be time 
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street, 
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;         
There will be time, there will be time 
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet; 
There will be time to murder and create, 
And time for all the works and days of hands 
That lift and drop a question on your plate;         
Time for you and time for me, 
And time yet for a hundred indecisions, 
And for a hundred visions and revisions, 
Before the taking of a toast and tea. 

In the room the women come and go         
Talking of Michelangelo. 

And indeed there will be time 
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?” 
Time to turn back and descend the stair, 
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair—         
They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!” 
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin, 
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin— 
They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!” 
Do I dare       
Disturb the universe? 
In a minute there is time 
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse. 

For I have known them all already, known them all:— 
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,         
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons; 
I know the voices dying with a dying fall 
Beneath the music from a farther room. 
  So how should I presume? 

And I have known the eyes already, known them all—       
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase, 
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin, 
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall, 
Then how should I begin 
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?       
  And how should I presume? 

And I have known the arms already, known them all— 
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare 
But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair! 
It is perfume from a dress       
That makes me so digress? 
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl. 
  And should I then presume? 
  And how should I begin?

Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets       
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes 
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?… 

I should have been a pair of ragged claws 
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!       
Smoothed by long fingers, 
Asleep … tired … or it malingers, 
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me. 
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices, 
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?       
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed, 
Though I have seen my head grown slightly bald brought in upon a platter, 
I am no prophet—and here’s no great matter; 
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker, 
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,       
And in short, I was afraid. 

And would it have been worth it, after all, 
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea, 
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me, 
Would it have been worth while,         
To have bitten off the matter with a smile, 
To have squeezed the universe into a ball 
To roll it toward some overwhelming question, 
To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead, 
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”—         
If one, settling a pillow by her head, 
  Should say: “That is not what I meant at all. 
  That is not it, at all.” 

And would it have been worth it, after all, 
Would it have been worth while,         
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets, 
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor— 
And this, and so much more?— 
It is impossible to say just what I mean! 
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:       
Would it have been worth while 
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl, 
And turning toward the window, should say: 
  “That is not it at all, 
  That is not what I meant, at all.”

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be; 
Am an attendant lord, one that will do 
To swell a progress, start a scene or two, 
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool, 
Deferential, glad to be of use,         
Politic, cautious, and meticulous; 
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse; 
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous— 
Almost, at times, the Fool. 

I grow old … I grow old …       
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled. 

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach? 
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach. 
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. 

I do not think that they will sing to me.         

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves 
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back 
When the wind blows the water white and black. 

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea 
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown       
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

Hobbit Day!

For Hobbit Day, I had great fun chatting with Jackson Schelhaas about Tolkien themed games on his excellent Exploring Arda podcast. We chatted about tabletop games, rpgs, video games and plenty more–check it out, and happy Hobbit Day!

Dragonfly

This dragonfly landed on my hand as I was on a nature walk. Seems like a good omen as we head toward autumn.

Labor Day and low pay

My labor day thought: I totally understand why people refuse to work low paying jobs. I’ve been searching unsuccessfully for part time gigs for some time now. I had one interview where the pay was less than twenty bucks an hour. And you needed a master’s degree plus some years of experience for this professional level, academic job in a library. I told them no thanks and explained that the pay was outrageously, insultingly low. They agreed but explained it was all the money they were allotted for the position.

My full time job’s real dollar earning value has gone way down over the years, pathetically so. My pay has remained exactly the same for years while the cost of everything skyrockets, hence my search for extra work. Luckily I like my job, I enjoy helping students and working in a library, and I’m thankful for that. Yet somehow CUNY finds ways to pay their upper management hundreds of thousands of dollars a year while the rest of us struggle to buy groceries and drown in debt. Not a great feeling.

So, if you’re going to pay a worker some insulting amount of money that barely covers gas as they give up their evening or Saturday, no thanks.

I hate talking and thinking about money, but it’s pretty frustrating to never have enough of it. Yes, I understand that I’m not starving or homeless. I should be thankful I have a job, and I am. I just wish my institution valued us, even a little bit. They make it very clear they do not.

Join a union. They built our middle class and their scarcity is the reason the middle class is hurting so badly now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwbzxemJZIc

The Award-Winning OSPREY MAN

I’m happy to report that THE OSPREY MAN won second place in the YA category of the CIPA EVVY awards! Congratulations to all the winners.

If you’d like a copy, please get in touch, I’ll sign it and send it to you. It’s cheaper and more personal than amazon

Happy reading!

Star Wars: Rebellion

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…

There was an endless appetite for games based on our favorite heroes and villains. Star Wars Rebellion, I am happy to report, is one of the very best of the bunch. Made by Fantasy Flight Games, it has their usual high quality minis, a beautiful board with numerous planets and systems, and lots of cards and markers and characters. It’s for 2-4 players, though I have only played the two player version. One side plays the rebels, the other is the dark side.

Rebellion is varied enough and features enough twists and turns that I think it has a high level of replayability. My 10 year old and I have played it 6 or seven times since we got it, and it’s always been fun and surprising. Essentially, the rebel player has a hidden base that the empire is trying to find. If the rebels can stave off the superior firepower of the empire and hang on for enough turns, while increasing their sympathy throughout the galaxy, they’ll win. But the moment the empire finds the rebel base, it’s over for the rebels. Each time we’ve played, both of us had a chance to win by the final round, making for an exciting and unexpected end with each game.

Each player has special attributes and cards to help them win; the rebels, for example, are aided by cards that allow them to change the location of the base, should the empire draw near. Other cards will allow sabotage, and to increase your reach through the galaxy. The rebels will gain victory points through a series of objective cards that award points when completed. The empire, meanwhile, has far superior numbers and brutal planet destroying weapons like the Death Star, making them hard to beat.

The character cards are also well designed. Each of the rebel characters have special skills and powers that allow them to succeed at basic missions, like gaining loyalty in systems, establishing weapons production, or conducting raids on the empire. The empire characters have similar skills, and are able to corrupt the rebels, destroy them with the death star, or otherwise ruin their chances to win. For example, in one very funny moment in our game, Obi Wan was turned to the dark side, which is rather hard to envision if you’re a fan of the old films, like me.

There are plenty of opportunities for battles, and that’s a lot of the fun of this game. You can move into systems and attack with your fleet of finely constructed X-Wings, Tie-Fighters, Star Destroyers and ground forces. You’re aided in battle by the leaders you’ve chosen and special cards that you draw through each round of combat. Nothing hurts so badly as building up a legion of rebel troops only to have them wiped out by Stormtroopers and AT-ATs (take it from me.)

This game is not cheap–the price runs around $90, but if you’re a fan of strategic war games, and of Star Wars, and you think you’ll have time to play this one, I’d say go ahead and buy it. It’s a lengthy game, often taking a few sessions of an hour or two each (or most of a day, if you’re able) to complete. I have found it a great way to spend time with my son, who has delighted in beating me a number of times.

Rebellion is pretty true to the spirit of the films. I love it, and recommend it highly, rating it five out of five stars. Maybe six out of five if you’re a star wars fans into miniatures and epic boardgames.