Hopefully, Only One Term

That's the punch line to a joke on a poster at the Arizona Democratic HQ that begins, "What do you get when you cross the Class Clown with the Village Idiot?"

A pleasant, articulate young man called one night last week asking if we'd be willing to volunteer some time this Saturday at the above mentioned hq.  I said sure, knowing K would be back in town and itching for something subversive to do.  Little did I know.

We made it to the appointed location, not very late, and were let in and directed to a back room where phone banks were being manned and womaned  - even more so.  It's hard to describe our disappointment at standing around for almost twenty minutes, trying to make eye contact, trying to find someone to report to and salute, and having no success.  Finally, I turned to K and said, "You know, the Huskers are playing right now."  She said ok, and we left.  We wanted a yard sign or two, but those weren't even in evidence. Sheesh.

Once in the parking lot, she says to me, "Let's go look at that car you were telling me about."  Long story short, we came home three hours later with a Ford Focus ZX5.  Like we need another car.  My recollection was that our plan had been to let the S2000 lease run out, then get by with the truck and the motorcycle until we find out whether K & B are selling their company, and then get another car.  Sheesh.

Ida Mae Ewbank

One of the most extraordinary women I've known has merged with the universe.  Ida Ewbank was a voracious reader with a keen business mind, easily able to reduce multiple pages of nine-point agate type legalese into real-world language, and similtaneously plan how to efficiently accomplish the task.  When Ida walked into the room, it became her room.  She had a naturally commanding presence and, when she cared to use it, The Voice to match.

I finagled a job interview many years ago, and was immediately impressed by her easy confidence.  At the conclusion of that interview, she said, "I have a person who works for me who is gay, and if you don't like that, you can't work here."  Knocked my socks off - way off.  That kind of blunt affirmation separated her from most people I know, and it was my first indicator of her astonishing loyalty to her people.

Through an uncharacteristic lapse in judgement, she hired me, and I became one of Ida's Girls.  Believe me, that's a real compliment.  No group I know of is better able to combine hard, mentally exhausting work with high hilarity than the Inverness gang.  Mass lunches, pool hall parties, and especially cocktail hours were the norm.  Who can ever forget the Ida Hip Hop Jig after her second shot of tequila?

My office was two doors down from Ida's, and her displeasure with inanity was sometimes not secret.  When in full voice, her "GET OUT!!!" would resound through the 'hood and everybody would think twice about going in with a question they could answer for themselves.

Ida's displeasure was not unknown to me.  Always unable to shake the Smart-Ass gene, I think I still hold the single session record for being flipped off with that immaculately manicured, impossibly long middle digit.

Ida was more careful with her clients' interests than with her own.  She cared more about the welfare of her employees than her own.  She was the most delightful amalgam of first-class business woman with a bawdy, enthusiastic confidant.  No one could know her and not love her.  I know I did and do.

"you can take it with you" by Josephine Jacobsen, from In the Crevice of Time: New & Collected Poems © Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)

you can take it with you

2 little girls who live next door
to this house are on their trampoline.
the window is closed, so they are soundless.

the sun slants, it is going away;
but now it hits full on the trampoline
and the small figure on each end.

alternately they fly up to the sun,
fly, and rebound, fly, are shot
up, fly, are shot up up.

one comes down in the lotus
position. the other, outdone,
somersaults in air. their hair

flies too. nothing, nothing, noth
ing can keep keep them down. the air
sucks them up by the hair of their heads.

i know all about what is
happening in this city at just
this moment, every last

grain of dark, i conceive.
but what i see now is
the 2 little girls flung up

flung up, the sun snatch
ing them, their mouths rounded
in gasps. they are there, they fly up.

Pirate walks into a bar.  Bartender says, "Hey!  We don't get many pirates in here!"  Pirate says, "Aargh!."  Bartender says, "So, what's the deal with that steering wheel shoved down into your pants?  That must be real uncomfortable!"  Pirate says, "Aargh!  It's driving me nuts!"

Know what you call a caveman who takes his time getting home?  A meanderthal.

Friday in Oxford

From the Bodlean Chuck and I went to the next stop on the walkabout proposed by our dining companions from the previous evening, namely The Turf Pub.  Just after you pass under the Bridge of Sighs is a tiny walkway, no more than three feet wide, that meanders around two corners and for about 200 feet, and there it is.  Famous for 1) being open every day since 1310 save one, the day the bartender died, 2) for being mentioned in Thomas Hardy's "Jude The Obscure", 3) being the Oxford set for the Inspector Morse BBC series.  (Colin Dexter, the author of the Inspector Morse sagas is a diabetic patient of the people K & B were converting. Professor Matthews of the group is a character in Dexter's book "Death Is My Neighbor".)  This pub is so old that the ceiling joists hang at about 5'8".  On the first joist inside the entry, in big beautiful olde english script is the cautionary menu "Duck or Grouse."  I saw two hapless patrons avail themselves of the latter.

A pint and a potty break - make that a languish in the loo - and we're off to the Pitt Rivers Museum founded in 1884, not near the Pitt River but by General Augustus Henry Lane Fox Pitt Rivers.  Thoughtful of the bloke to truncate his euphonious appellation and thus save acres of marble.  A real dodo bird, lots of dinosaurs, some very unpleasant shrunken heads.

Down Keble Road onto St Giles, turn left (I'm reading now) and pop into the Lamb & Flag.  This place was a smokey dump whose ATM wouldn't accept my now flattened and battered card.  Across St Giles, a surprisingly wide street for Oxford -vrrrrroooooooooom - still looking the wrong way before stepping into the street - More Ale!! And Fresh Horses For My Men!!.  The Vauxhalls and Peugots get a good run at you if you don't step nimbly, and by this time I ain't.

Into the Eagle and Child, where Lewis Carrol, CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien liked to hang.  The non-smoking section was clear in the back in the recently converted pony stall from which not all the air of authenticity had been removed.  Chuck's beginning to roll his eyes when I shout Pip Pip at the waitress.  She's charmed in that "I already have a grandfather, thank you" sort of way.  We left right after I ordered the barkeep to "Have that wench washed and brought to my tent."  Seemed a good idea, especially to Chuck who all of a sudden has work to do back in the room.

The Last Day, Really, In Oxford

Must be that time zone thing.  It's Friday and Chuck & I are working from a walkabout written up by two lovely locals last night.  Rachel, who has lived here all her life & Jan, the five foot firecracker responsible for bringing us over here.

We start at the Bodlean Library, which argues with Merton's claim of being the oldest.  The Bod is one of five copyright libraries in Britain, so every book, magazine and newspaper published in the UK is obligated to send a copy here, gratis.  A van pulls up each day with more.  Underground and at a remote facility they have more than 21 miles of bookshelves.  The oldest part of the Bod is built along the same lines as the Merton - vaulted ceilings, very tall racks, single plank benches running down the aisles - but the beams in the Bodlean are beautifully painted.  Only four of us on the tour, and Claire the decent docent had been a librarian there since 1968 "when Chas retye-uhhed from the Fauz-un Suhvice,"  retiring only when "they brought in those computah things.  I rally don't like them atall."  She was a doll, quick with the conspiratorial aside, enthusiastic about every detail, every gargoyle like her own child (I can expecially relate to that).  One of those in our tour had written a book and published it through a vanity press.  "I only published 100 copies, and it damned near broke me.  Then the copyright libraries demand the first five off the press!"  All books at the Bod must be read in situ.  This is not a borrowing library.  The aforementioned author axed if, perhaps since it was his book, boughten and paid for, he might get to take the copy out for a walk at lunch.  Claire reeled backward, clutching her breast, gasping for air ,"Oh No! Nono   NO Nooooo nononononono!!!!   !!!    !!!!! When King Challs asked to borrow a tome on national security, the poor librarian who had to decline his request litrully risked her veddy life to maintain the protocol of the labbry!"  A silent toast to this doubtless diminutive but steel spined mistress of the muses whose only joy each week was bathing her mother.  Probly.

Oxenford - Last Day

Thursday: Chuck and I got the last tour of the season of the Merton library which claims to be the oldest library in continuous use in the English speaking world.  They have a first edition of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, but not on display since there have been some recent unpleasantnesses.  Seems people have come in and ripped pages out of manuscripts - ancient maps are especially attractive - so all the first editions are in safe keeping.  Some books back to the 1200's - only one of which we're allowed to see up close, if not touch.  Many of the book spines have their years of publication.  I find many from the late 1500's and early sixteens.  The smell, the feel of the place, the cast of the light through the leaded windows is something akin to what religiosity must induce in those so induceable.  What thoughts have been thunk in these small upper floor rooms in the past 700 years.  The vibes are as palpable as at Buchenwald, or the Viet Nam wall in DC, but here the vibes have a deep, calming, almost joyful effect.

Out to dinner at Loch Frye with the peeps the girls have been railing at.  Rather mediocre food and service, but that's the first gripe with either since arriving.  Have begun ordering off the menu that entree whose description has the most words (in English, mind you) i don't understand in the context.  Usually ends up being some nether part of a normally uneaten small animal, with lots of cheese.  Gopher Anus Miribilis Gustatorius.  Not glorius.