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Priming the Pump

Priming the Pump

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I sit here as I do on many work-at-home mornings. The top half of the plantation shutters are open to the new day. It’s still early. There are no colors yet, just dark
shapes silhouetted against the light. Soon I will leave the keyboard and
venture out. It used to be my morning habit, up and out before the day had any cobwebs
on it. But now I write first. It’s the only way sometimes. 

And sometimes it
works, the words pour out in a torrent. From the feel of the keys
beneath my fingers, this will not be one of those days. But no matter. I write
in all internal weathers; I prime the pump. And, on this day, which feels so
much like a first day, a new year, I will prime it some more. 
The Encounter

The Encounter

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I saw him on the path to the Franklin Farm Meadow, a placid paved trail adjoining a napkin-sized playground. Fat and sleek, he sat munching grass, completely oblivious of the human two feet away.

His jaws worked each mouthful as he hungrily tore into each new tuft. This was one hungry guy — though from the looks of him he hadn’t missed too many meals.

Groundhogs are always bigger than I think they’re going to be. Good-sized and galumphing. But this one wasn’t budging. He had found a tasty patch of fescue and was going to eat it all or else.

After a few minutes I delicately eased by the guy — and that’s when he sprang into action. He snapped around and assumed an attack position, crouched, teeth bared. I spoke to him quietly, told him I wasn’t after his grass, just on a run.

When I turned back to look at him, he had gone back to his dinner.

A wild thing, observed.


(I’m fresh out of groundhog photos, but this is near where I saw him.)

Burying the Lead

Burying the Lead

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Though it originates in our nation’s capital, this blog is decidedly apolitical — with a few exceptions, several of them also occurring, curiously enough, on 9/11. What I have to say today is not a solemn memorial, though — it’s an editor’s view of President Obama’s speech on Syria.

Maybe it’s because I’m in the final stages of getting the magazine to the printer and am thinking best with a red pen in my hand, but it struck me last night that the startling new diplomatic developments that began emerging  the day before yesterday were not so much fully incorporated into the president’s speech as they were tacked on at the end. This gave the address a confusing inconsistency.

For at least two-thirds of the 17-minute speech Obama told us why we should use force to punish the Assad regime for using chemical weapons against its own people — and then for the next five he told us that the vote to authorize such force was postponed in order to explore a diplomatic solution. We in the journalism biz call this burying the lead.

This didn’t just confuse me; it made me feel used. As George Orwell pointed out 67 years ago in his essay “Politics and the English Language, “…[T]he decline of a language must ultimately have political
and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that
individual writer. But an effect can become a cause…” As he noted a few paragraphs later, “[I]f thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.”

Perhaps there is no hope for political speech. Orwell didn’t think there was. “In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible,” he said.  It’s hard to believe that the world has improved much in the last seven decades.

But if last night’s explanation had been more honest from the start, it would at least have gotten my attention.  And perhaps even earned my respect.

Brown Study

Brown Study

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In Victorian novels characters are apt to be caught in a brown study. It’s a state of deep thought, a reverie, perhaps with a slightly gloomy cast, though more abstracted than anything else.

I put the phrase “brown study” in the same category as “wool gathering” — though the latter means indulging in idle fantasies or daydreams. It’s less furrowing of the brow and more staring at the clouds.

Both conditions have a certain fuzziness about them, though; both connote a cocoon of thought, whether stimulating or soothing.

Both are lovely, fanciful ways of taking leave — even if just momentarily — of the here and now.

Small Favors

Small Favors

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I read in today’s Writer’s Almanac that July 11 is the birthday of E. B. White, essayist, journalist and the author of the beloved children’s books Stuart Little and Charlotte’s Web. Here’s what White said about the genesis of Stuart Little:

“I took a train to Virginia, got out, walked up and down in the
Shenandoah Valley in the beautiful springtime, then returned to New York
by rail. While asleep in an upper berth, I dreamed of a small character
who had
the features of a mouse, was nicely dressed, courageous, and questing.
When I woke up, being a journalist and thankful for small favors, I made
a few notes about this mouse-child — the only fictional figure ever to
have honored and disturbed my sleep.”

 What caught my eye is the phrase “being a journalist and thankful for small favors.” As usual, White  nails it in a few words. When one makes a living asking other people questions, one is grateful for information. And inspiration.

It took 15 years after the mouse-child appeared in his dream for White to complete the manuscript for Stuart Little. Talk about inspiration. I’m grateful for small favors.


First Edition Cover from Wikipedia

Rhapsody

Rhapsody

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Choose a word, a favorite word.

It was the first assignment of a writing class in college, and it didn’t take long to come up with “rhapsody” — a highly emotional utterance, a highly emotional literary work, and a musical composition of irregular form. Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. Not everyone’s favorite word but a fair representation of the romantic English major I was at the time.

The professor’s favorite word was “deliquesce” — to become soft or liquid with age or maturity — a verb I’ve come to appreciate more of late. He not only liked it for its sound and spelling, he said, but also because it contained the word “deli.”

Another student, the pet, picked “level.” A palindrome of perfect symmetry, a word that walks its talk, the two “l”s bolstering the structure, the “e”s in between and the “v” equally open to each side.

Next to “level,” “rhapsody” looked silly and sophomoric. But when I heard it on the radio this morning (Brahms Rhapsody in E Flat Minor), I have to admit that it still has a hold on me. And if I had to pick a favorite word again, I don’t think I could find a better one.

Power of the Press

Power of the Press

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Yesterday I learned that Kentuckian Cassius Clay had a specially reinforced door and cannons mounted on the top of the building from which he printed his abolitionist newspaper. He was willing to step out and call for an end to slavery, but he was going to protect himself, too.

As it turned out, his office was ransacked — and his printing press sent packing to Cincinnati — while Clay was out of commission with typhoid fever.

Journalists who speak truth to power have never been safe. Neither now nor then. Sometimes the power of the press is best measured in the lengths people will take to silence it.

Steps of Revision

Steps of Revision

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Yesterday I spent some time revising an essay. It’s been a while since I’ve written one I wanted to revise, so I was a bit rusty.

It’s a halting process, full of stops and starts. If it was a walk it would be an interrupted one. Halfway down the block, I stop to tie my shoe. At the corner, I run into a neighbor, admire her lettuce, chat about our kids. 

At the next stop sign, I change playlists on the iPod, turning my back on the sun so I can see the tiny screen. A block later it’s the same thing. Another playlist, another pause. As I warm up I take off my jacket, tie it around my waist. Only 15 minutes in do I start to move freely, do I limber up enough to flow.

The steps of revision. I’d forgotten how painfully slow they can be.

Seize the Day

Seize the Day

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Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough
And stands along the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide

Now, of my threescore years and ten
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score
It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.
A.E. Housman

I kept thinking of these words yesterday, of how beauty is bounded by time, how all things precious are. And so this seasonal ritual is not just spectacle, not just renewal, it is reminder.

The blossoms are fleeting; they, like us, will come and go. But we’re here, and they’re here.

There’s nothing left to do but seize the day.

Company of Writers

Company of Writers

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There were six people crammed into a booth in the darkest corner of a brightly lit pizza place off a busy street. There were two novels and an essay.

“Welcome to the writer’s group,” the waitress said. She’s served these folks for five years and has a feel for their rhythm. Maybe she has a manuscript in the basement, too.

It didn’t take long to feel at home. These are men and women who talk about transitions and character motivations and commas; who admit their dread of starting the next chapter; who spend much of their time with people who don’t exist.

Except that they do exist. They live on the page, and they lived for us last night.

It was good to be in the company of writers.