The more I read, the more I discover what I haven’t read

Hydrangeas and tansy from Couchwood,

photo by C. Hoggard

~ ~ ~ ~

 

 As is my wont, when there’s no bee in my bonnet for a post, I pull down a book from the antique shelf (found in the attic, put back together, refurbished) behind the computer—my resource shelf, I guess one could call it.
 

So I did. I'd picked up “Annable’s Treasury of Literary Teasers” by H. D. Annable for a half-dollar in 1997 at a regional writers’ conference. It became my inspiration du jour.
 

 On the last page of the chapter called AUTHOR! AUTHOR! were eight questions about poets and famous authors. I guessed at this one: “Can you name the Italian author of “La Vita Nuova,” “De Vulgari Eloquentia” and “De Monarchia”? Then where was a hint: “He wrote a very long, very famous poem, too.” Aha! Could it be Dante?  YES! Thank goodness for hints.

 

 The next section, was STAGE AND SCREEN. I doubted I’d know even one of these, but, because I’d just re-read the first chapter, I knew the answer to this: “George Kaufman did two very successful musicals with a collaborator other than Moss Hart. Despite ‘The Royal Family’ and ‘Stage Door, she is known primarily as a novelist (one of her books was set on a showboat, another in the oil fields). Who was she?” Edna Ferber.

 

Now, I know friend Dot H., being an actress and a collector of plays, would know the answers. I knew only one: “Who created the character who sang: ‘I’m called Little Buttercup—dear little Buttercup /Though I could never tell why’ in ‘H.M.S. Pinafore’”? I wrote in pencil, Gilbert & Sullivan. Gilbert was correct.
 

I knew none of the next page of questions. So I called Dot. She knew this one: “What three Shakespearean characters open a play with these lines: ‘When shall we three meet again/ In thunder, lightning, or in rain?’ and what do actors call it instead of its title?” Answer: The 3 witches, The Scots Play (Macbeth).
 

The other teaser—there were eight in all—that Dot knew was this: “Name the sophisticated British actor and playwright of ‘Bitter Sweet,’  ‘Private Lives,’ ‘Cavalcade,’ and ‘Pomp and Circumstance.’” Noel Coward.
 

So much for stage and screen. Let’s see what’s next. FIRST AND LAST. First question: “Name the author who began a poem, ‘Tiger! Tiger! Burning bright.’ Oh, I know! I know! Robert Blake. Grandson Billy has a book of that poem, only Tiger is spelled Tyger.
 

One down, seven more to go: “The first line of the poem is ‘Oh my luve’s like a red, red rose.’ Who wrote it?” Robert Burns!
 

The only other one I knew on that page was: “The first line is ‘The sun shines bright in my old Kentucky home.’ Give the author and the title.” Stephen Foster, “My Old Kentucky Home.”
 

On the next page of 8 questions, I knew only two: “Who wrote, ‘When I wrote the following pages, or rather the bulk of them, I lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbor, in a house which I had built myself.’” Thoreau, Henry David, from Walden.
 

Finally, the other one you’ll know from the get-go: “Who’s the author of the long poem that begins with the words, ‘I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear’”? Walt Whitman. Ah, yes.
 

 

So much to read, so little time. Sigh.



Seven years ago, I moved for the final time—during this life

A lone dutch iris amid the shrubs

-view from the front porch

                   Seven years this month, Kid Billy and I moved into the family home upon the demise of his grandmother and my mother in late March of that year.

                  Dad and his dad, Noah David Couch, built this rock and brick abode in 1932 sometime after their other house, which sat a little west and a little north on this hill, burned. “N. D. Couch, 1932” is scratched on the concrete sill of the (now) bathroom window.

                When Dad and Mom moved from “the Little House”—a smaller rock-and-brick abode farther north and within walking distance—with five children, the youngest not a year old—the family moved in with Dad’s mother. Granddaddy had betaken himself to Houston for construction work and Grandmother refused to go.

              Soon, we kids learned the names of the various areas in this “huge” house. The concrete front porch—facing east, stretched the width of the house. Two-thirds of it was roofed. Then there was the living room, the sun room, the dining room, kitchen, and beyond that, the breakfast room and a dark hall leading to the large, partially-roofless back porch--this one extending only from the back door to one of the back bedrooms.

             Three bedrooms opened from a squarish hall: the back room whose two west windows look out on the porch, called “the boys’ room;” the northwest room with two windows on each wall, called “the girls’ room,” a space for an as-yet non-existent bathroom, and Mom and Dad’s room, also on the north, with two windows, plus a door opening into the living room.

             Above was “the attic,” below was “the basement.”

             I lived here until I married in 1960, then after 46 years that saw many changes--both in my life and in this house-- I moved back “home.” 

            Brother Bill (sibling, not preacher) knew an electrician and that’s where we started in 2006: Terry took out all the original black-encased, knob-and-tube wiring, added new outlets, and increased the amperage, added one ceiling fan inside and another on the shed porch. Now, it would be safer, at least.
           I took down all the drapes and curtains in the main living areas. The sunroom became my “office,” sometimes called “the blue room.” The walls and ceiling still are the original plaster, though cracks abound in the ceiling. And I read last Saturday that in older houses, cracked plaster ceilings should be replaced with drywall. Not under my watch!

           Eventually, both the gas and water lines had to be replaced. The water heater in the basement, which very often had to be re-lit because of high water after a rain, was replaced with an electric one, so that nothing is down there now except iron braces, floor joists, wires, old fruit jars and milk jugs. Oh, I did buy a sump pump, and later, a water vacuum.

           Three air-conditioners were in the house when Kid Billy and I moved in, and we quickly added one in each of our bedrooms. Soon, two of the old units had to be replaced and while we were at it, I added one in the office. My electric bill during the summers is way up there, but so be it.

            I’ve had several trees cut, and now it looks like two of the three large red oaks must go soon. I may also take down the giant hackberry whose large limb split off and fell earlier this year.

            And I’ve enlarged Mom’s front flower beds by twice or more. As I write, the gardenias are blooming as well as the Easter lilies and the daisies.

            I think we’ll stay.

Two Junes ago - a perfect combination and setting

                “Writers, like other dangerous criminals, should come to know solitary confinement.” – Paul Greenberg, Arkansas Democrat Gazette.

 I had been in Florida when he delivered his speech to the Arkansas Writer’s Conference, but  caught it in his next Sunday’s column. (Which saw double duty.)

Greenberg’s sentence hit me like a dirt clod. For each of eight mornings, some days as early as 6:15, I sat in solitude (not solitary confinement, but still...) and read and wrote. It was like being at a writers’ colony with Gulf breezes and doves as a background for creativity. What better place could I find myself?

Never mind that I had to look out over a parking lot as large as a football field. I tried to look up and beyond to the little patch of Gulf across the street and behind a row of ubiquitous condos fenced in against any but the owners/ guests. 

Our arrival at the condo turned out to be not-so-pleasant. The air conditioning labored, but got no cooler than 74 degrees. Billy couldn’t stand the heat so all the others in our party--Billy, his mother, his sister and a friend—“jumped ship” and stayed at J.’s place. “An emergency,” Daughter said, until a definite complaint to the lessors could be made the next day.

I found myself alone in room 2C of Tristan Towers, which touted three queen-sized beds but held only one-- they must have meant a blow-up mattress (in the closet) and a pull-out sofa for the other two. I had an oscillating fan that Billy traded for my smaller “face” fan.     

The AC was repaired later the next day, but by 6:15 Friday morning, I was outside on the deck.

Myriad doves with a different sound than those at home—a 3-pulse motif: coo-coooooo-cuk ––called over and over.

Sights included the horizon––the curved edge of the earth––a cloudless sky, dog walkers, joggers, swallows, palms, oleanders, river gravel, ornamental grasses and CARS! 

A business man, satchel in one hand, lunch in the other, purple shirt, taupe trousers, walked to the farthest vehicle in the parking lot––a slate gray hatchback. Before exiting, he pulled over to the concrete barrier/fence and hosed off the car and then headed into the gate’s security eye and disappeared. He must have been one of the 90 families who lived in the Towers. (I counted the mailboxes in the lobby!)

A dove settled on the top of a nearby light standard. Before I could get a good look through my binoculars, it flew. Another--or perhaps the one that flew—a gray blob fluffing its feathers--perched on the clubhouse chimney.

A cool breeze barely moved; a school bus passed silently––the merging of nature versus man, an attempt to meld them into a mecca where inlanders like us long to go on vacation.

If folks needed and enjoyed solitude as much as I did, they’d escape to a deserted place where only the water, birds, and fish were companionable. And the breeze.

My family didn’t know what a gift they gave me when they—for want of a cooler abode—fled to J.’s place for the night.

And they left me in a $1680-for-ten-days, Gulf-area condo—spacious, q-u-i-e-t, orderly.

For a day or so, at least.

Never too old to learn

Karen, Carolyn and Deanna--
Hemingway-Pfeiffer Museum
at Ruth Hawkins' book signing, June, 2012

 

             Things I didn’t know until lately: That a colt is male, a filly is female and a foal is genderless. That an elevator is not a cubicle, but a car. That many “experts” say not to begin a sentence with a gerund.

              Oh, I learn new stuff every day—if not from people, from the newspaper. Did you know a car is the worst place to be in during a tornado? And Ernest Dumas’ Arkansas Times column told me this bit: Carbon molecules stay in the atmosphere for 50-200 years.

              Do you know what Silver Gray Dorkings, Jersey Black Giants, Buff Orpingtons and Silver Laced Wyandottes are? If I added some others, you’d know: Barred Plymouth Rocks, Bantams and Brown Leghorns.Yep, chickens.

             “The sweep of time” in Arkansas began in 11,500 B.C., according to G. Sabo III, the new director of Arkansas Archeological Survey, and continues through the moment in 1541 when Hernando DeSoto crossed the Mississippi River into what is now Arkansas. Tracy Dungan, AD-G cited this info.

              Arkansas has about 1500 dentists, 60% of whom practice in only eight out of our 75 counties.

              And speaking of carbon, from the Business section of the state paper last week, this: A carbon footprint is the amount of carbon dioxide or other carbon compounds emitted by an activity or entity.

              Would you have spelled correctly the winning word in the National Spelling Bee? It was “knaidel”—the German-derived Yiddish word for a matzo ball! A 13-year-old New Yorker spelled it for the win.

              Have you read astronaut Buzz Aldrin’s sci-fi novel, Encounter with Tiber? No? Stay tuned for the TV series soon to be available.

             Added in 1963 (I was a young mother of little boys; who had time to read the paper??), the ZIP code—Zone Improvement Program—was put in place. It was meant to speed up mail handling and delivery. I presume it has done that since post office people seem to need the zip code before deciding the cost of a package.

              Here’s one I’ll bet you didn’t know: The rapper Snoop Dogg is now Snoop Lion. (You’re welcome.)

              Puzzles sometimes teach us new things: For instance, LOEW began MGM. Who Loew? I wondered and Googled it.

              In 1924, Marcus Loew, an “entertainment entrepreneur,” who owned Loew’s Theaters chain of 150 theaters, bought Metro Pictures (founded in 1916), Goldwyn Pictures Corporation (founded in 1917) and Louis B. Mayer Pictures in 1924. Louis B. Mayer became vice-president of Loew’s and head of studio operations in California.

            I think my dad helped build some Loew theaters in Little Rock during the 1940s, but try as I might, I couldn’t find any supporting data from the Arkansas Online Encyclopedia of History and Culture.

           Another puzzle clue that I didn’t know at the time--but found out later was this: “___ talks …” Twice in one day I saw the answer: TED – Technology, Entertainment, Design, a global set of conferences owned by … Sapling Foundation. TED talks. Hmm. Is this a TV thing? If so, that's why I missed it.

           Never too old or too busy to learn new stuff.  Are we?