Malcolm R. Campbell's Blog, page 22

Coming and Going Via My Bedroom Window

By the time I was in high school and college, I didn’t think my weekend activities were any of my folks’ business. I was far away from home on many nights, and as far as I know, my parents never had a clue. My “Green Smoker” 1954 Chevy Bel Aire was the means. As for getting back in the house without detection, my bedroom window was ideal, much better than the front door which was next to my folks’ bedroom door.

Oddly enough, when I was in college (a local college), I learnt that my favorite professor did all his thinking while driving dark roads at night. I was already doing that when I met him. As I’ve probably said here before, I knew all the diner waitresses by name in a hundred-mile radius of my house.  In those days, the Dobbs House (popular in the 1960s) was a great place for a 3:00 a.m. burger.

I found driving at night to be great therapy in part against the sturm und drang of high school and college English departments that I thoroughly detested for treating students as third-world folks who didn’t grow up speaking English. I had no tolerance for their methods and could always use a glass of Mateus, a dry red wine from Portugal that young people drank like water in those days. I graduated to Pinot Noir and Red Zinfandel as I grew older.

The odd thing about coming and going via my bedroom window came from finding out that my younger brother was also coming and going via his bedroom window. We never spoke up about it. Just nodded at each other and returned to the reality of our daily lives which included keeping our parents out of the loop.

Did they (the parents) ever know? Beats me.

—Malcolm

For Thieves Vinegar

“Four thieves vinegar (also called thieves’ oil, Marseilles vinegar, Marseilles remedy, prophylactic vinegar, vinegar of the four thieves, camphorated acetic acid, vinaigre des quatre voleurs and acetum quator furum is a concoction of vinegar (either from red wine, white wine, cider, or distilled white) infused with herbs, spices or garlic that was believed to protect users from the plague.” – Wikipedia

17th-century bottle

Over the years, vinegar has been used for a variety of health reasons, but none has attracted more attention than the purported blend of vinegar that kept people from getting the plague. It seems that four thieves were robbing the homes of the dead during the plague without getting sick. Supposedly, this vinegar and herbs mixture was their protection, possibly because it kept fleas–the carriers of the plague–away from people who use it.

Ultimately, the thieves were caught and–to save their lives–said they were using a special vinegar as protection. The recipe itself has been elusive, with various versions arising out of the mists of time here and there. Today, some witches and hoodoo practitioners use their own versions of the vinegar for a variety of health and protection needs.

According to Nourished Kitchen writes that “Four Thieves Vinegar is the stuff of legends and of kitchen magic – a beautiful combination of rosemary, sage, mint, and raw vinegar that combines for a vibrantly herbaceous and slightly floral concoction that may or may not protect your family from the rigors of medieval plagues, but will definitely enliven plates of sweet lettuces and other summer greens.”

The Farmers Almanac traces the original recipe back to French chemist and scholar René-Maurice Gattefossé [who] published the “original” recipe that hung in the museum of Old Marseille, France in  his 1937 book, Gattefossé’s Aromatherapy: “Take three pints of strong white wine vinegar, add a handful of each of wormwood, meadowsweet, wild marjoram and sage, fifty cloves, two ounces of campanula roots, two ounces of angelic, rosemary and horehound and three large measures of champhor. Place the mixture in a container for fifteen days, strain and express then bottle. Use by rubbing it on the hands, ears and temples from time to time when approaching a plague victim.”

They note that modern recipes include garlic, rosemary, clove, and sage–one herb for each thief. Some people add juniper, thyme, and cinnamon. It’s best to let it steep a while and then use it in diluted form–one tablespoon in a glass of water daily. Or, on your salads.

I don’t care about the plague at the moment but have found that various combinations of this recipe are a great salad dressing and that if they keep the plague and/or bad guys away, that’s an extra benefit.

–Malcolm

What kind of tired does the day bring?

“I suppose the important thing is, if you’re tired, to understand what kind of tired you are. Are you physically tired? Emotionally tired? Spiritually tired? Because there are different ways to deal with each kind of tiredness. For physical tiredness, you need to rest and sleep. For emotional tiredness, sleep is important as well, but so are taking walks in the park, reading books, meeting with friends. For spiritual tiredness, which is a category of its own, the remedy (I think) is something like spending time with trees and looking at the sky. You need to somehow drink in the essence of existence.”  Theodora Goss in “Emotional Energy”

Theodora Goss is one of my favourite authors, so I find a lot to ponder when she steps away from her fantasy fiction and poetry and writes an essay or blog post.

Due to the stomach infection, I mentioned in yesterday’s post, I’m feeling emotionally tired. Part of that comes from the discomfort of the infection and part of it comes from dealing with doctors, labs, appointments, tests, and procedures. I find all this quite draining for it represents the kind of out-of-control chaos that I find pushing me into a world of fatigue.

While I like stirring things up in a trickster kind of way, I easily done-in when the stirring up is coming from somebody else–or the “system.” Maybe that’s karma. I can dish it out but I can’t take it. Oh hell, I don’t really believe in karma but there are times when one wonders.

I hear about people who run five miles before going to work. They feel better for running and love the kind of tired it brings. Getting up early enough to run and then take a shower before arriving at work on time makes me feel tired. That is, making it happen is a lot of tedious trouble.

People used to say, and maybe they still say it, “different strokes for different folks.” This makes it hard for husbands and wives, boyfriends and girlfriends, &c., who get tired for different reasons, often by the very things their spouse or BFF requires. We have to negotiate, I think, with those around us to give us all the freedom we need without draining other people’s energy. That kind of negotiation often makes us tired.

Right now, I’m too tired to figure this out. Needless to say, I would like to feel some positive energy, enough to run five miles even though I don’t want to.

–Malcolm

Potpourri for Saturday, September 9th

My stomach infection is about four months old because the GP decided to refer me to a specialist whose first available appointment was two months away. When I complained, the GP did a test, found an infection, and gave me antibiotics. They seemed to be working but the infection came back after they ran their course. I didn’t tell him because by now, I was at the specialist’s practice. She ran an upper GI which came back normal, then sent me back to the lab for the same test the GP ran many weeks ago. I like the specialist, but think the infection would be gone for good if the GP had handled the whole process. I love modern medicine. I guess I’m watching “Yellowstone” because all my regular shows are still off for the summer and/or stalemated by the actors’ and writers’ strikes. The series is gritty and well-written but seems to be composed of all the possible cliches about life in Montana, including large ranchers being evil, the rez being a bad place, and all levels of state and tribal government being corrupt. I hate to say that I’ve become addicted. I liked Jeff Shaara’s historical novel about Teddy Roosevelt called Old Lion. Very readable, and also compelling even for those of us who’ve read TR biographies such as  Mornings on Horseback. Up to now, Shaara’s novels have focussed on wars and battles. I guess he finally ran out of wars to write about. His battlefield novels are always told via the points of view of some of the major players. It took me a while to adjust to an omniscient narrator point of view in a Shaara novel.Years ago, I learned that food poisoning was a “great way” to lose weight. As it turns out, so is a stomach infection. They work faster than all those diet plans advertised on TV.  They’re a no pain, no loss kind of thing.Well, it seems that most of the books I want to read haven’t come down in price yet. So, I’m re-reading many of my Kathy Reichs (Bones) thrillers, including her 1997 novel Déjà Dead. These are well-written and compelling even if you’ve read them before because there’s no way one can remember all the plots and subplots. Since her novels stem from her profession, one learns a lot about dead people and morgues. Like the TV series, the Temperance Brenan in the books likes skipping out of the lab and investigating what the police seem slow to focus on. Déjà Dead is her first novel. If you read enough of these, you’ll become well-versed in Quebecois profanity that you don’t hear in France such as “Tabernac.”Nice to see a little rain today in NW Georgia.

–Malcolm, author of “Conjure Woman’s Cat”

‘The Invisible Hour’ by Alice Hoffman

Quite likely, most readers know Alice Hoffman through her “Practical Magic” series as well as The Dove Keepers. There’s such a variety in her work, that one might wonder if there are multiple Alice Hoffmans out there crafting her thirty novels. If so, her latest book The Invisible Hour, released on August 15th, which may or may not come from yet “another” Hoffman is a tempting treat.

From the Publisher

“From the beloved New York Times bestselling author of The Marriage of Opposites and the Practical Magic series comes an enchanting novel about love, heartbreak, self-discovery, and the enduring magic of books.

“One brilliant June day when Mia Jacob can no longer see a way to survive, the power of words saves her. The Scarlet Letter was written almost two hundred years earlier, but it seems to tell the story of Mia’s mother, Ivy, and their life inside the Community—an oppressive cult in western Massachusetts where contact with the outside world is forbidden, and books are considered evil. But how could this be? How could Nathaniel Hawthorne have so perfectly captured the pain and loss that Mia carries inside her?

“Through a journey of heartbreak, love, and time, Mia must abandon the rules she was raised with at the Community. As she does, she realizes that reading can transport you to other worlds or bring them to you, and that readers and writers affect one another in mysterious ways. She learns that time is more fluid than she can imagine, and that love is stronger than any chains that bind you.

“As a girl Mia fell in love with a book. Now as a young woman she falls in love with a brilliant writer as she makes her way back in time. But what if Nathaniel Hawthorne never wrote The Scarlet Letter? And what if Mia Jacob never found it on the day she planned to die?

“Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote: “A single dream is more powerful than a thousand realities.”

“This is the story of one woman’s dream. For a little while it came true.”

Reviews

Kirkus says that it’s “Not one of Hoffman’s best, but it may spark a desire to reread Hawthorne.” The Washington Post writes, “Alice Hoffman’s ‘The Invisible Hour’ is the latest fervent tribute to the power of literature and libraries.” The New York Journal of Books says, “With a truly imaginative structure, Alice Hoffman delves into what has become her trademark theme of magic. The Invisible Hour asks a grand ‘What if?’ Not so much the question posed on the book’s jacket: What if Mia Jacob never found the library or The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne? The larger question the novel contemplates is whether a young woman can escape so deeply into a book, and fall so deeply in love with its author that she time travels to 1837 to be with him? “

Even though the reviews are a bit mixed, Hoffman fans care what they think, not what the critics think. Having read most of her work, that’s my approach to The Invisible Hour.

–Malcolm

 

‘Necessary Trouble’ by Drew Gilpin Faust

Faust and I grew up in the South about the same time when Jim Crow was king and most people saw the Civil War as a glorious and noble lost cause.  I’m interested in her take on the world we knew and the trouble people are having talking about that world openly and fairly today.

In an August 22 interview with NPR, she says, “I believe that affirmative action has changed the shape of and the landscape of higher education in a way that we need to continue,” she says. “The past is with us. We can’t pretend that it’s not, even as we misrepresent it or try to erase it.” When asked about Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ black history teaching standards, she says, “It’s preposterous and it’s extremely distressing. It’s a complete distortion of the past, which is undertaken in service of the present, of minimizing racial issues in the present by saying everything’s been ‘just great’ for four centuries. Slavery was not ‘just great.’ It was oppressive. It was cruel. It involved exploitation of every sort, physical violence, sexual exploitation. ”

This interview gives you an idea about what to expect in Faust’s new book Necessary Trouble released by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux on August 22.

From the Publisher

“A memoir of coming of age in a conservative Southern family in postwar America.

“To grow up in the 1950s was to enter a world of polarized national alliances, nuclear threat, and destabilized social hierarchies. Two world wars and the depression that connected them had unleashed a torrent of expectations and dissatisfactions―not only in global affairs but in American society and Americans’ lives.

“A privileged white girl in conservative, segregated Virginia was expected to adopt a willful blindness to the inequities of race and the constraints of gender. For Drew Gilpin, the acceptance of both female subordination and racial hierarchy proved intolerable and galvanizing. Urged to become “well adjusted” and to fill the role of a poised young lady that her upbringing imposed, she found resistance was necessary for her survival. During the 1960s, through her love of learning and her active engagement in the civil rights, student, and antiwar movements, Drew forged a path of her own―one that would eventually lead her to become a historian of the very conflicts that were instrumental in shaping the world she grew up in.

“Culminating in the upheavals of 1968, Necessary Trouble captures a time of rapid change and fierce reaction in one young woman’s life, tracing the transformations and aftershocks that we continue to grapple with today.”

About the Author

Drew Gilpin Faust is the Arthur Kingsley Porter University Professor at Harvard University. She was Dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study from 2001 to 2007, and after twenty-five years on the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania, she served as Harvard’s president from 2007 to 2018. Faust is the author of several books, including This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War, winner of the Bancroft Prize and a finalist for the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize; and Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War, which won the Francis Parkman Prize. She and her husband live in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

–Malcolm

‘I’ve Got it Bad and That Ain’t Good’

While the rest of the USA was listening to “Chances Are,” “Don’t Be Cruel,” and  “All I Have to Do is Dream” in the 1950s, I was learning about jazz and the blues from my father’s large collection of 78 rpm records. My musical “philosophy” (haha, like I had one) came from a 1931 song by Duke Ellington, “It Don’t Mean a Thing if it Ain’t got that. . .” Well, you know.

I’ve always preferred jazz and blues to just about everything else except, perhaps, songs by Pete Seeger and the Weavers. Sooner or later, when moving to a new town, I would find the local jazz station even though it never earned as much money as the so-called “top forty” stations.

So naturally, I liked “I’ve  Got It Bad and That Ain’t Good” by Duke Ellington and Paul Francis Webster released in 1941.  A lot of other people liked it, too, since everybody who was anybody sang it, including Cannonball Adderley, Ivie Anderson, and Louis Armstrong. Cher, who–like me–wasn’t born when the song came out, sang the version I liked the best on her 1973 album “Bittersweet White Light.” Many think this album contains some of her best work, though it didn’t do well.

I ended up liking Cher a lot, probably because of this album, surprising everyone knew me.

I still like jazz, blues, and ragtime best which means, I guess, that–music-wise–I’ve still got it bad and that ain’t good.

–Malcolm

My musical preferences usually make their way into my novels.

Jimmy, I’m sure there’s a woman to blame

I tell you what, people younger than me are dropping like flies, and I wonder if it’s time to worry.

Buffett

Today the mayor of Margaritaville has left the beach, flying high and away up into the clouds in his wonderful HU-16 Albatross (a plane I knew well from my time in the Navy), the “Hemisphere Dancer.” I want to say thank you for all the songs and that  “drunken Caribbean rock ‘n’ roll” flavor that fueled them. But he knows we liked the music and would have moved to Margaritaville if we could.

I’m not sure whether I should mourn his passing with a pitcher of margaritas or a six-pack of LandShark Lager. He’s left behind a legacy of songs, books, and business ventures. So he leaves us with a lot of what he knew and loved.  He was part of the “Silent Generation,” though that term doesn’t describe him! And yet, I think of the knowledge lost as members of this generation fly away–as useful as albatrosses, the younger generations believe–that will never be known again.

The manatees say, “So long, and thanks for all the sea grasses, mollusks, worms, crustaceans, bivalves, and fish.

What we know, some say, is out of date and irrelevant. I doubt that. But that’s life. Rest in peace, Jimmy.

—Malcolm

Annie, that Pilgrim, whose words I go back to again and again

“I can no longer travel, can’t meet with strangers, can’t sign books but will sign labels with SASE, can’t write by request, and can’t answer letters. I’ve got to read and concentrate. Why? Beats me.” – Annie Dillard, from her website

I was browsing through the Poets & Writers website today when I saw that a profile of Annie Dillard, by John Freeman, “Such Great Heights”  from 2016 was displayed from the magazine’s archives.  Freeman writes, “You can almost hear the pops and fizzes of combustion as the flue clears and Dillard’s mind gulps down the oxygen it has been feeding on for years—books. It’s something to behold. Here is the sensibility that emerged from a white-glove Pittsburgh background because she read a novel about Rimbaud and wanted her mind to be on fire too. Here is the writer who pulled it off, chiseling out Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (Harper’s Magazine Press, 1974), the Walden of our time, in nine months because she read a book on nature and felt she could do better. And thus Dillard wrote that great, elegant prayer to the seasons, largely at night, in the Hollins College library in Roanoke, Virginia, powered by chocolate milk, Vantage cigarettes, and Hasidic theology.”

Tinker Creek in Virginia

If there were a website where readers who love a writer’s words and philosophy could sign up to become an official kindred spirit, I would have gone there in 1974 when the Pulitzer-Prize-winning Pilgrim at Tinker Creek emerged to sign my name on Dillard’s kindred spirit page. He work has influenced by thinking .

In Tinker Creek, she writes, “It is so self-conscious, so apparently moral, simply to step aside from the gaps where the creeks and winds pour down, saying, I never merited this grace, quite rightly, and then to sulk along the rest of your days on the edge of rage.
I won’t have it. The world is wilder than that in all directions, more dangerous and bitter, more extravagant and bright. We are making hay when we should be making whoopee; we are raising tomatoes when we should be raising Cain, or Lazarus. Go up into the gaps. If you can find them; they shift and vanish too. Stalk the gaps. Squeak into a gap in the soil, turn, and unlock-more than a maple- a universe. This is how you spend this afternoon, and tomorrow morning, and tomorrow afternoon. Spend the afternoon. You can’t take it with you.”

Yes to all that. And to her words in such books as Holy the Firm, Teaching a Stone to Talk, and Tickets for a Prayer Wheel. She taught for 21 years at Wesleyan University where I wish I’d been a student to audit her classes. If you read a lot, you will most likely find your Annie Dillard, the friendly author you wish lived next door with the porch light on..

We’re about the same age, she and I,  and there’s much we could have talked about.

—Malcolm

Oops, I’ve bitten off more than I can chew

I think the first time I did that was when my grandparents insisted that I was to eat a turkey drumstick at Thanksgiving dinner when I was in junior high school. I wasn’t prepared for the size of the thing or the thin bones hidden inside it. But, I finally ate the whole thing. In one meal. Before it got dark.  And, food wise, that wasn’t to be the last time that happened.

This time, it’s the novel in progress which, if I don’t get my teeth sharpened up, could turn into a real turkey and that would tick off my understanding publisher. So, my apologies for the length  of time that’s passing by since the release of my last book, Fate’s Arrows in 2020. Like a turkey drumstick to a guy used to fried chicken, Cornish game hens, and squabs, this book was supposed to be essentially a short novel or a long novella. But once I got into it, I realized that–as a continuation of the story in Fate’s Arrows–it was a lot longer and more complex than I expected.

If I were the kind of person who outlined novels, before I write them, I wouldn’t be telling you why Avenging Angels isn’t ready, or won’t be ready soon. But, I’m not the kind of person who outlines novels before I write them because I don’t know what’s going to happen or here things will go until I start writing them. I follow the stories like a blind man who doesn’t know the size of the drumstick on his plate.

As it turns out, the drumstick on my plate weighs nearly two pounds and comes from an Ostrich. What fresh hell is this? According to  a 2016 story in the Chicago Tribune, “Thirty years ago, farmers and breeders flocked to the ostrich business, oversaturating it. But without consumer demand to match and a vulnerability to scams, the industry plummeted as quickly as it had prepared to take off.” Bottom line, nobody around here sells Ostrich meat. So, I had not reason to suspect that dark angels would put such a thing on my plate.

If Ostrich really tastes sort of like venison, I would like it. So I hope that when I finally get enough spare room inside my mouth to chew what I ended up with, I’ll make better progress with this book. And, when it comes out, I hope you’ll like it even thought it will probably be darker and grittier than Fate’s Arrows. Let’s face it, there’s no good way to write a light-hearted book about the KKK because it’s members in Florida where my novels are set were more cruel than Shortfin Mako Sharks and quite likely lived next door. Your friendly sheriff was probably a member.

So, I’m still here, still writing, and still hoping I’ll finish this drumstick in the near future.

—Malcolm