Man Martin's Blog, page 201

Mockingbird

Saturday morning my alarm rang, I turned it off.  I've been somewhat sleep-deprived lately, so I felt I'd earned the right to sleep late.  And I did sleep late, too.  Really late.  It must've been, ooh, 6:00, 6:15 before I finally stumbled out of the rack.
What woke me up was a mockingbird outside my window, going through some vocal acrobatics.  Don't mistake me, I cannot think of a more pleasant way to awaken.  And this guy was going to town!  I mean he was a crazy bird!  He was going zinng-zinng!  powee!  Kazoom!  (Mockingbirds do not actually make any of these noises, but the actual noises he was making are irreproducable in print.) 
Keats wrote a beautiful poem to a nightingale, which he fittingly titled, "Ode to a Nightingale," and in it, he gets off some pretty good lines, such as saying the song "ofttimes hath charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn."  That's sort of the way it was for me.  The mockingbird not only filled the air outside the window, it charmed the window itself.  It would have been equally fitting to look out, hearing that wild ruckus, and see Narnia or Prydian, as Dunwoody, Georgia.
I guess they must not've had mockingbirds where Keats came from, or maybe he'd have written a poem about them instead.  I'd like to write a poem about a mockingbird myself, except I don't write poems.  I write blogs.

New Shoes

New Shoes
My daughter Spencer has talked me into doing a triathalon sprint this summer.  Actually, first she talked me into running with her, then by degrees she introduced the topic of a triathalon.  I now realize my daughter would make a pretty good living as a dope-pusher.  I used to do a fair amount of running, but a series of accidents dampened my enthusiasm somewhat.  (Torn ACL, dislocated shoulder.  On the day I write this, I took a nasty bump on my bike and flattened the back tire.)  Anyway, my running shoes were pretty well shot, and Spencer took me to the store to get some new ones.  (Running shoes is probably not the mot juste - they are no more suited for running than a reasonably comfortable pair of lace-up cinderblocks.  Nor could they be called "tennis shoes" unless one played the most desultory and lackluster style of tennis imaginable, one in which the ball is never allowed to bounce, but must roll back and forth under the net.  Neither can they be called "sneakers" unless one is sneaking up on an especially lethargic and hearing-impaired sloth.) 
Anyway, at the store she took me to, the salesperson made be remove my shoes and socks and stand on a pair of footprints on a plastic pad.  Thence he showed me to a computer screen where we examined some sort of thermo-infra-red three-D image of my feet that showed how I distributed my weight.  (The screen saver on this computer, I should mention, was a likable dalmation, who, in addition to the regulation black spots, also had blue, green, and pink ones.  His name, I was to learn, is Shoe Dog.)  Anyway, having determined that I put most of my weight on my feet, the salesman conducted me to the second test, where I ran a few paces barefoot on a treadmill with my jeans rolled up my calves, making me feel not unlike Huck Finn if Huck Finn ever got on a treadmill.  The salesman conducted me back to the computer screen, where Shoe Dog was now wearing an apron and chef's hat, sitting before a large stockpot, with the caption, "Let's add a few more ingredients." 
The salesman analyzed my running technique and was pleased to note my toes pointed forward since that was the direction I was going.  He keyed in this information, and the next thing we saw was Shoe Dog running in circles the way Zoe does when we're about to go for a walk. 
"Shoe Dog is excited," the salesman explained in a perfectly serious voice, "because we're about to pick out your new shoes."  I will cut the story short to say the shoes I ended up with are indeed a marvel; as soon as I put them on, they seemed to whisper to my feet, "Let's go!"  But the chief joy of the outing was getting to meet Shoe Dog and the salesman's solemn assurance that the dalmation was excited just thinking about my getting some new shoes.  When I was a kid, there was a brand of shoes called Red Goose.  For all I know, they still exist, but I haven't seen them in ages.  When a kid got a new pair of Red Goose shoes, he also got to turn a crank on an over-sized gumball machine and pull out a big red plastic egg, inside of which was a prize.  (The quality of the prize was better than something from a Cracker Jack box, but not much.)  Red Goose had the rather creepy slogan, "Half the fun of having feet is Red Goose shoes."  But no matter.  Shoe Dog has it all over Red Goose.  If only every purchase could be accompanied by a happy dog chasing its tail, excited at the prospect of my getting something new.  "BP Dog's excited you're buying gasoline!"  "Birdseye Dog's excited you're getting frozen peas!"

Chicken Feed

One of the challenges of suburban-chicken raising is finding chicken food.  The nearest Tractor Supply, our preferred vender, is in McDonough, so when we visit my inlaws down that way, we try to pick up a bag.  One time we ran out and had to resort to a fancy organic gardening store that caters to yuppies - the price for 20 pounds of their special organic chicken food was 40 bucks.  At Tractor Supply we can get 50 pounds of chicken kibble for less than 20 bucks.  You do the math.  It may seem hard-hearted on my part not to spring a few extra sawbucks to get my birds a fancier feed, but my chickens eat dirt.  This is a fact.  I've seen them do it.  I've not yet seen them turn up their beaks at the Purina Chicken Chow I get at Tractor Supply.  But actually, if my chickens really had their druthers they wouldn't eat Chicken Chow or the fancy organic blend, but leftovers.  We had to throw out some pickled beets that had a rime of white mold growing on the surface, so before I buried it, I offered it to the chickens.  They went to town on it.  When we let some cornbread get moldy - in this humid climate, it takes about twenty-four hours - I pour some buttermilk on it, or if we don't have any buttermilk, some soured skim milk, and the chickens don't just go to town, they go to New York and return by way of Mexico City.  (In case you're confused, this traveling business is just a metaphor for the chickens' gustatory pleasure.  They actually do almost no traveling whatsoever.)  And what they love best is a melon rind with just a few scraps of uneaten bits still clinging to it, in which case, they...  Well, you get the idea.  And I'm glad to see my chickens happy with some taste treat, but I'll be durned if I'm shelling out $40 bucks on 20 pounds of organic chicken food for birds who look forward to bad milk poured on moldy cornbread.

One More Reason I Never Made It As A Cartoonist

"You want flies with that?"

Spring Planting

Nancy and I put in our garden the first week of April, one of the benefits of climate change being a longer growing season. We grow all the usual stuff – tomatoes, of course, which someone once identified as the gateway drug of home gardening – peppers, squash, cucumber, eggplant, okra, and this year, pole beans. In the past I’ve also planted corn, which wasn’t that satisfactory, except that it’s so fun to watch grow. “The corn is as high as an elephant’s eye,” goes the song from Oklahoma, and me, whenever I see those unlikely-looking green stalks shoot up out of the ground.
In addition to planting, Nancy and I have another ritual which is arguing about what to plant and how. Nancy has concepts about stringing beans and even stringing tomatoes which I consider ill-advised if not downright foolhardy. On Nancy’s part, she thinks the spot I’ve chosen for the tomatoes is too shady. Privately I’ve concluded she’s probably right, but I’m danged if I’ll tell her so.
The sun is hot and birds are singing. I tell Nancy she’s beautiful and she gives me a look, like, “Go ahead and pull the other one.” She doesn’t believe me, but I don’t try to persuade her. There’s something about a hard-working woman digging holes in the ground beside you, and the warm air, and birds singing, and the pink flowers on the dogwood and the azaelas, and spring is in my blood, and dirt is under my nails, and there’s a streak of dirt across Nancy’s sweaty forehead, and I think again how beautiful she is and how much I love her. But I don’t tell her she’s beautiful because she wouldn’t believe it, and anyway she’ll go right on being beautiful whether I tell her or not.
But I have to say something, so instead I say, “I think you’re right about the tomatoes,” and Nancy nods, just like I knew she would, and wipes the sweat from her forehead with the back of her glove.

I love spring.

Ecclesiastes for the Twenty-First Century

To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven.  A time to text, and a time to refrain from texting.  A time to browse the internet, and a time you may not browse.  A time to friend people on Facebook, and a time to unfriend them.  A time for Pilates, and a time for Rocky Road Icecream.  A time to send emails, and a time to check emails.  A time to google yourself, and a time to google others.  A time to refinance, and a time not to.  A time to use a bluetooth and a time to rip that damn stupid thing out of your ear.  A time to fold, and a time to go "all in."  A time for a cappucino, and a time for just a plain cafe americano.  A time for Dancing with the Stars, and a time for Jersey Housewives.  A time for networking, and a time not to network.  A time for hybrids and a time for hummers.  A time for Wii, and a time for Nintendo.  A time for global warming and a time for more global warming.  A time for Polar Bears and a time for Polar Bears, but only in the zoo.  A time for safe sex and a time for no sex.  A time for tatoos and a time for HepB.  A time for Spring Break and a time for HepB.  A time for margaritas and a time for ibuprofin.  A time for Pay-Per-View, and a time to download from Netflix.  A time for NASCAR, and a time for NFL.  A time for Merlot and a time for Zin.  A time for Country and a time for Western.  A time to vote, and a time not to vote and just tell people you're sick of the whole mess, and they all stink, and besides, what's the point.  A time for taxes and a time for death.

Winter the Dolphin

Winter the Dolphin was discovered one December; she'd lost her tail in a crab trap.  After 6 months, Kevin Carroll, who had successfully designed prosthetics for other animals, was able to create a prosthetic tail for Winter, an astounding accomplishment given the complexity of a dolphin's tail.
I didn't write this blog to gush at the medical miracle and the plucky marine mammal who refused to give up hope.  Nor do I intend to excoriate American culture for its lack of priorities devoting such valuable resources to the recovery of one dolphin.  What interests me is how I imagine Winter feels about her new tail, and how she felt about losing the old one.
I have read that for raw brainpower, a dolphin is easily a match for a human being.  Dolphins, I understand, feel love and grief, communicate and play.  I have even heard it said that it is only the fact that we have hands with opposable thumbs that make us the dominant species over dolphins. I submit that there is something more than thumbs and cerebrums, however, something more fundamental, something mysterious and ineffable, that separates us from even the most intelligent of animals, and that the story of Winter might help illustrate this.
To begin with, I admit, we cannot know what Winter feels about anything, so everything I say from this point on is conjecture.  Nevertheless, I accept that what D H Lawrence had to say for birds, applies equally well for dolphins: "A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself."  Therefore, and again, this is only conjecture - when Winter's tail got tangled in line, cutting off the blood supply, it was painful and probably frightening.  That when she lost her tail altogether, it was painful, and inconvenient, and scary and life-threatening.  However, I do not believe that any such thought passed through her mind as, "Why is this happenning to me?" or "This is so unfair," or even "I wish I had my tail again."  I cannot imagine a dolphin having such thoughts, and not just because she wouldn't have words to think them with.  Likewise, when she was fitted with her new tail, her life no doubt, was immeasurably improved.  I'm sure she felt, safer and happier than she had at any time since she lost her tail.  But I do not imagine she could think, "Well, finally!  I should have had this all along," or "This new tail is nice, I guess, but it's not as good as my old one.  It isn't really me, and I really feel less of a dolphin than I used to."
Self pity is not an emotion we like to acknowlege, but it indicates something very important about us.  We have a self, and are aware of it as a discrete thing, a thing which is capable in some situations of deserving pity.  We read about Winter and are understandably cheered, as we should be, a creature that was less happy has been made more so, and a creature that was in peril has been saved.  But when we imagine her relief at a "new lease on life," or feel a secret twinge of sorrow that she must make do with a mechanical tail instead of her own natural one, these are our emotions only, not hers.  Pity and self-pity are reserved for humans only.

What Spy vs Spy Taught Me About Writing

When I was in the first grade, I had difficulty reading.  Mother asked me why, and I said, "I don't care about those people."  The people in question were Dick and Jane, who, in one memorable episode, run.  Run, Dick, run, run!  Look!  See Dick run!  I was more intrigued - not much more - by the drawings.  The artist rendered the shadow of Dick's lower lip with a line, and whenever the action in Dick and Jane flagged, I practiced drawing faces with that same line under the lip. 
Since Dick and Jane weren't getting the job done, Mother taught me to read using Mad Magazine and Peanuts comics.  I later learned to love Peanuts, identifying with hard-beset Linus, but my first love was Mad, especially Don Martin, Antonio Prohias, and Sergio Aragones.  I was fascinated by the gorgeous drawings of Mort Drucker's movie parodies, but there was too much writing for me to read, and I wasn't familiar with the movies or the actors.  The cartoon I especially loved, because it had no words at all, was Spy vs Spy.  I didn't know the Cold War from a Cold Cut, but what kid doesn't think violence is a laugh-riot?  Spy vs Spy was responsible for filling my visual imagination with handguns, daggers and bowling-ball-shaped bombs with little white fuses. 
Above all else, the cartoon was about design.  Even the name - Spy vs Spy - just look at it typed on the page.  The name looks cool.  Even if you couldn't read a lick, even if you were a Martian just arrived on earth who had no sense of written communication, you'd somehow know, just from the shapes and contrasts of the letters, this had to do with unceasing conflict between two precisely matched forces.  I think I believed the little bird-like characters were chess pieces, and in this I wasn't far wrong.  We had a Stanton chess set, and I thought the bishops' mitres were faces, pointing upward with bulbous noses and mouths slightly agape.  In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if Prohias had been inspired by the look of black and white bishops because his point was that the Black Spy and White Spy were completely interchangable.  Even as a kid, I got that.  There wasn't one you rooted for, neither was more noble or more evil than the other.  And that was what was so fascinating about the strip.  In the top panel, Prohias always had a gag in which one of the spies overcame the other - the White Spy's hand, for example, sticking in Black Spy's kitchen window, upending a skull and cross-bone labeled bottle, letting a single teardrop of poison fall into a coffee cup.  In the following adventure - which had nothing to do with the top panel, by the way, even if we saw the Black Spy eviscerated in the opening panel, he was fresh and raring to go in the next one, (The spies were more resilent than Indian Rubber.  They could be stabbed, shot, blown to bits, and be back in the next issue as good as new.)  the White Spy would seem to have the upper hand, hatching a new plan to foil the Black Spy, or practicing his Judo chops, or whatever, but then, in the last panel, the Black Spy would turn it around on him, and - ha, ha! - the White Spy would go down (sometimes quite literally) in flames.  Usually, the expression on the losing spy in the last panel - assuming he wasn't atomized by a bomb or cannonball - was neither shock nor horror, but red-faced embarrassment (the cartoons were in black and white, but you could tell when they were blushing) that he'd been so caught out by his rival.  If the White Spy won the encounter in the top panel, he'd lose in the main cartoon, and if the White Spy lost in one issue, he'd be sure to come out on top in the next one.  That was what so intrigued me about the cartoon.  Prohias signed the strip in a series of dots and dashes spelling his name in Morse Code.  I never figured that part out, but I did realize the strip itself was a code, each episode fulfilling a set of rules by which the Spy vs Spy world was governered.  This is why I was not so far wrong thinking they were chess pieces; their world was a space strictly, even mathematically, of alternating black and white.  That Black Spy would win in one episode and White Spy in the next, was not a matter of fairness, so much as proportionality.  When it comes to writing a musical fugue - I know nothing about writing fugues, but bear with me here - there's a set of notes or a theme that is repeated with variations until the end, a highly logical and rule-bound system of variations.  As I admitted, I don't know anything about writing fugues, but this is what Prohias taught me - not the reversal of fortune essential to narrative, although that too - but the logic of art, the power of a creator to fashion a set of arbirtrary rules, and then abide by them, improvising in the details with combinations of daggers, bottles of poision, and round black bombs with little white fuses.

What Mayberry Taught Me About Telling Stories

I grew up on Gilligan's Island, Andy Griffith, and The Dick Van Dyke Show.  Of the three, my least favorite at the time was Andy Griffith.  I much more identified with Dick Van Dyke who was simultaneously suave and goofy.  And Laura Petri in capris!  Rrrow!  Ditto for Gilligan's Island, I liked the fantasy of innocent, good-hearted, but disaster-prone Gilligan always messing up the latest fool-proof plan the Professor hatched to get them off the island.  (Moral: As soon as someone comes up with a fool-proof plan, nature comes up with a bigger and better fool.)  And Mary Anne in short-shorts!  Rrrow!  By contrast, Andy Griffith seemed slow and draggy, and his girlfriend - Ellen Crump, for pity's sake - why would anybody date someone named Crump?  And she was a school-teacher!  She was like a friend of your mother's.  I'd much rather watch Bewitched.  Samantha Stevens in capris!  Rrow!  Or I Dream of Genie.  Barbara Eden in a genie costume!  Double-Rrow!
But of all the shows I watched as a kid, the only one I can still tolerate is Andy Griffith, and over the years, I've come to love it more and more.  There was always a secret sadness to the Andy Griffith show - the soundtrack was often strangely plaintive for a situation comedy.  And Andy Griffith had one basic story - with some variations - but there was one story it told over and over again.  As I've watched reruns over the years, I've come to realize what a wise and hopeful story it is.
It starts with a sourpus.  Not someone's who's bad, but someone who believes he's bad.  There's goodness inside him, but it's like he's constipated in the goodness department.  Then Andy and his friends find a way to let him release his inner goodness without hurting his pride - sparing people's pride is another major motif in the show - and then the former sourpus realizes he's a good person after all, and it hurts him to even think of doing something selfish and unkind.  At the end of the show, everyone's a little better off, the former sour pus most of all.  Lord help me, it's hokey and obvious, but maybe the truth was hokey and obvious all along.  Maybe the secret of life's just a matter of sparing the other fellow's pride and trusting in his goodness.  And trusting in your own goodness.  I just love that show and I watch it whenever I can.
Then there's The Beverly Hillbillies.  Ellie Mae in blue jeans.  Rrow, rrow, rrow!

Why I Am Such a Remarkably Good Husband

I am a Remarkably Good Husband.  This is something I don't think gets pointed out nearly enough.  There are many things that make me a superlative husband, but the primary one is the way my mother raised me.  I have learned to be grateful.
Take the matter of food.  Mother raised me to be very grateful for food.  She had a number of specialties, one of which was poached eggs.  Only recently have I learned what a real art poaching eggs is, and Mother was a past master.  She would get a big pot of water boiling, then start a whirlpool inside it with a wooden spoon, crack the eggs, and plop them in.  What came out were perfectly-formed poached eggs.  If you think this is easy, give it a try.  What you're likely to end up with is a kind of boiled egg confetti.  Unfortunately, as a child, I did not see what consummate artistry a poached egg represented.  I saw a white lump with a half-molten yellow center, oozing water on my plate.  The other breakfast Mother made was oatmeal.  Generally, I preferred oatmeal to poached eggs, but my heart did not soar on wings of joy in either case.  Mother's method of cooking oatmeal was laissez-faire.  She saved artistry for the poached eggs.  She'd get the water boiling, dump in oatmeal, and when we got to the breakfast table, dip it out.  The result was an al dente oatmeal plug with a core both gooey and resilient, like the firmest possible wad of mucous, just before it begins to dry out.She made beef burgundy, as well.  Stew beef, cooked in a skillet and then doused with burgundy to form a distinctively purple gravy and served on noodles.  Her beef stroganov was similar, but with sour cream instead of burgundy.  Once, I believe, she may have attempted beef stroganov-burgundy, but I cannot swear to this.  Other than that, the typical meal in the Martin household was a hamburger patty, cottage cheese, applesauce, and canned spinach.  On special occasions Mother would open up a can of asparagus and dollop on mayonnaise, swearing it was extremely gourmet.  I was a grown man before I could bear to look a stalk of asparagus in the face. She wanted us to be adventurous eaters, and would sometimes bring home special gourmet treats, saying "Open your mouth and close your eyes, and I will give you a big surprise." We'd close our eyes and she'd pop something in our mouths.  It might be chocolate covered cherries, it might be smoked squid.  You never knew what you'd get and that was half the adventure.This is just one of the things that make me such a wonderful husband.
When we'd been married only a week, Nancy spoke to me sharply, "You don't have to say 'mmm' after every bite!"  I think she thought I was being obsequious, or even sarcastic, but that wasn't it at all.  I was just grateful.  More than grateful, I was in awe.  One night we'd had meatloaf.  Then we'd had macaroni and cheese.  Then pork chops.  Then baked chicken.  It seemed as if wonders would never cease with this woman.  I did not say "mmm" after the next forkful, but I had to vocalize my delight in some way, so I went "Beep-beep!"  After the next bite, I went, "Zoom!" then "Cock-a-doodle-doo!"
At any rate, as you can see I am a superlative husband.  Nancy is a lucky, lucky woman.