Accommodatingly

If you know Else Minarik’s Little Bear (the original series of four linked illustrated stories for small children, not the sequels) you probably think of it as a cute, warm story– certainly that’s what I expected when Jessie brought it home for Nathan, and that’s right as far as it goes. But when I realized that reading it all the way through, to Nathan, made me cry more than once, my interpretive organ got to work: what’s so profound, or so sad, or so happy, about it? Why does it feel as profound as (less mysteriously) The Giving Tree, a book that really is sad (so much so that I think it’s not really for kids), whereas Little Bear is consoling, and happy at last?

If you don’t know Little Bear, this won’t make any sense. If you do, try these hypotheses: in the world of Little Bear and Mother Bear, you can only become what you are: the best coat is your fur, the best planet to visit (the only planet you can visit) the Earth you know. Moreover– as Little Bear learns when he can’t sleep– the only wish that is ever granted to us is the wish for stories; and the only stories we end up hearing, the only stories we understand or want to hear, are stories about ourselves.

Nathan, by the way, loves it: he paid me the great compliment, tonight, of calling me Father Bear.

Jessie says Nathan’s been reading the development books, just so that he knows what to do. Now more than ever that seems to be true. Downside: he’s stunningly contrarian on occasion– a two-and-a-half year old trying to get in, after a slightly late start, his full quota of one million times saying “No!” before he turns three. Upside: Monday night, after I lay in the dark with him for a couple of minutes (something we do after we finish reading stories and turn out the light) he said “I’m a different person. I’m not you!”

Last week Jordan accomplished a great deal of David Foster Wallace memorial blogging. You should go read it. I wasn’t quite as deeply affected as Jordan was by DFW’s sudden, grim passing, but I was very deeply affected by Infinite Jest when I read it, perhaps a year after it came out– I took it with me on trains, couldn’t put it down, found it not daunting but completely absorbing, and I think that if I reread it I’d still find it so. The intellectual games served a temperament; they were fun and sad and they got me to say “Life really might be like that.” What if it is?

When you’re done reading Jordan’s blog, but before you tear yourself away from the Internets, you should go look at Forrest Gander’s new writing on the Poetry Foundation blog– and at the rest of the fall team of bloggers there, too, especially Javier Huerta, whose verse I did not know at all but whose short piece about privilege will go on provoking talk for some time.

This week I don’t know which of the two desiderata I want more intensely, or more often: for Barack Obama to win this election, or simply for the election and its attendant news blitz to end, so that I can clear the mental real estate now devoted to such questions as whether cell phone-only voters skew polls (turns out they do) and what happens if there’s a 269-269 tie (if Obama has won the popular vote, Obama probably becomes President; if McCain has won the popular vote, it’s a national tangle that makes Florida 2000 look like a slice of pie).

If you too are way too close to the election, and if you have a couple of slices of time in which you can do something (other than write a check– checks are nice) to affect the outcome, and if you too would like Obama to win, you can use his state-by-state tool in order to learn where to go and what to do, even if you live in an uncontested state. If you live in Massachusetts and want to do something from home, you will almost certainly be asked to call New Hampshire.

Not very well connnected to one another, but all worth noting:

The NYTBR’s sf critic has recommended sf reading for presidential candidates. I found it hilarious: that doesn’t mean you will– I think I might be precisely the target audience.

You can now purchase Minor Threat hot sauce. Apparently it’s not so hot.

My mom and dad have now been married for 40 years! Cool.

My dad recommends a Jewish book.

And I recommend this Xmas Hannukah book, by one of the most successful authors of our time: we just got in in the mail from some awesome people, and I’m hoping Nathan enjoys it as much as I did.

I’m reading and answering questions at Brown University in Providence, R. I. this Wednesday, November 14: McCormack Family Theatre, 4pm. If for some reason you will be in Providence then, why not drop in?

I’ll probably still be reading (on the train, I mean, not in the auditorium) War and Peace, which I began last weekend mostly because I got about 100 pages into Claire Messud’s The Emperor’s Children, liking it a great deal, and then realized that almost every chapter contained at least one play on a character or an event from Tolstoy’s much bigger book. So far I’m surprised by how much of the Tolstoy seems, not predictable in a bad sense, but familiar: it’s as if, having grown up among people who were pretty good at juggling three or four balls, I saw grainy film of the guy who invented juggling, who did it by juggling 58 balls at once. It’s extraordinary and impressive, and yet the procedure (i.e. large-canvas, detailed, moralized, omniscient-narrator realism) is one I think I recognize. And no, I don’t mind admitting that I have come this far in life without having read W&P already. Major writers of England and America are far more likely to send a young reader to Proust, or to Anna Karenina, than to send that young reader to the Napoleonic Wars.

As for other reading, I’m still blogging some of it here.

And as for Nathan’s linguistic inventions, which interest us more than anyone else’s, the latest is “fun guys”: I am a fun guy. So is Jessie. So are our friends, when he meets them, and so are my parents, whom he asks about all the time, and so are his friends at school– last night, Jessie says, he listed all the people who are fun– it took a while.

He also asked, this afternoon, about my parents (Bubbe and Zayde), concluding that since he wanted to see them, and they weren’t visible, therefore “Bubbe hiding. Zayde hiding.” It’s a good thing they will come out from hiding next week: he’ll definitely enjoy Thanksgiving.

Just a reminder: Jessie continues to post, get cool authors to post, and moderate the comments at Beacon Broadside, which has new content on most weekdays and comment streams ready for action at all times. Right now it’s veterans week, with a post today on the troubles our women and men in uniform face once they come home.

It’s also Jewish Book Month: the first of a few projected JBM postings has Jerusalem Syndrome blogger, editor and rabbinical candidate Danya Ruttenberg recommending David Grossman’s study of Samson, a book I’m now convinced I ought to read.

Jessie is going to Minneapolis tomorrow to do this. If you live anywhere near Minneapolis, check it out. I’ll miss it (in addition to missing Jessie).

Steve is going to Chicago tomorrow to do this. He’ll be talking on Sunday morning, accompanied by, among others, the very good poetry critic Eleanor Cook; he– oh, I give up: I… I’m looking forward to Rosanna Warren and others on Friday night, and to James Wood on Saturday night, both in time slots compatible with sleeping until the morning hour when most non-parents likely wish to awaken. If you’re in Chicago I hope to see you there.

Nathan gets to hang out all weekend with his Bubbe and Zayde. We’ll miss him– but we think they’ll all have fun.

And if I don’t say something here about this guy soon, I’ll be derelict in my poetry-blogging duties: watch that space, I guess…

…new books I’m very excited about, and expect to say so at greater length elsewhere soon: this one, and also (despite the slightly overwrought catalog) this one. What are you excited about these days? Let us know. In Chicago or Minneapolis this weekend, if possible– in Boston later, otherwise.

Take a look– this time you should be able to see it!– at Jessie’s cool new project (link fixed), which has now, really, gone live.

Jessie’s really cool project did not in fact go live today, but I thought it did and posted a link that won’t work for you unless you are Jessie, are one of her co-workers, or are working on a computer she’s recently been using (which is why I thought it had gone live). Whoops. We’ll link to it as soon as it’s something you can actually see: many apologies to our only temporarily frustrated friends. (Is there a category called “overenthusiastic bonehead husband”? or maybe just “red-faced mistakes”?)

Well, I had to call this miscellany-style post something, and it’s a neat ice cream flavor Jessie found last week. As neat as I’ve tasted recently unless you count the best ice cream store in the world. (Sorry, Izzy; you are tied for second best, though.)

Two hours ago we got back from Willimantic, where we celebrated Jessie’s mom’s birthday and Jessie’s mom’s husband’s mom’s birthday. Nathan got to chase a ball, and kick a ball, and watch a ball kicked by, his affectionate cousins, whose names he likes to say. It’s a bit of a drive, but not bad if Nathan (a) sleeps or (b) wants us to sing children’s songs— we got (a) on the way down and (b) on the way back– and it’s certainly easier than flying. Yep, that’s one of the reasons we moved.

Should I write an essay entitled “Science Fiction as an Ethnic Literature”? Somebody should. I’m afraid that I’ve taken on an assignment (no, a different assignment) that requires me to read all of Philip K. Dick, which is like, and yet in another way not in the least like, having to read all of Swinburne. For a third assignment short article, I need to find out– tomorrow if possible– whether it’s true, or whether it’s more of an urban legend, that few Americans cared much about Paul Revere until Longfellow versified his midnight ride. UPDATE: the Paul Revere archive-and-tourism folks say it’s true. (I still want a print source, though. [shakes head])

I owe about ten people mix CDs. And in a couple of weeks they’re going to get them.

I owe many more people than that thanks and some sort of detailed update on our first month or so in Massachusetts: it’s neat to get so many queries, but scary to think about how many I may not answer directly. Come visit us when you can, o friends who live elsewhere. And tell us, if appropriate, just what you saw and ate at the State Fair. We miss the fair: age cannot wither, nor can custom stale, its infinite variety of food on sticks…

Partial Nathan update: he’s super-interested in opposites– up and down, new and old (and the associated word “time”), on and off (bathroom faucets now say “on” and “off,” rather than “off” and “no”), small and tall, Sox and Yankees (really– he loves saying “Go Sox!”) and the fact that 6 becomes 9 upside-down, while N becomes Z on its side.

As Brazelton’s research predicted, our extroverted, neophilic child loves the stimulation of his day care but sometimes, about half an hour after we bring him home, gets cranky and needy and desirous of Mommy’s (in particular) attention, maybe in part because he can “misbehave” around us and blow off cranky steam, while at work at day care he wants to behave.

Jessie reviews a cool memoir in the new Rain Taxi; it’s also the Powells review of the day today.

Unless things go pear-shaped I should be blogging here soon. Stay tuned. Oh, and support the Mercury if you can. All they need now is two out of three.

Our Belmont condo is still full of stuff, but at least it’s not (or doesn’t feel) full of sealed boxes: we are, as fast as we can, unpacking. It’s psychologically exhausting while in progress, but slightly exhilarating (if anything can be only slightly exhilarating) to see the floor, and some books and dishes on shelves, where, the day before, we saw nothing but boxes. (We have a lot of books. And a lot of dishes.)

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Still prepping for the science fiction course that’s going to run this fall, I came across this bit from Kim Stanley Robinson’s Green Mars:
“One night Art sat up suddenly from his couch. ‘I’m losing the content of things,’ he said to Nadia seriously, still half dreaming. ‘I’m just seeing forms now.’” –Admits of several applications, no?

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Not only do we miss our friends in Minnesota: we miss the Current. And Blanche’s show on KFAI. On the other hand, it’s pretty great to be able to wake up on weekdays with WMBR’s Breakfast of Champions when Nathan lets us sleep that late, and to go to bed with Record Hospital. In a manner of speaking, of course.

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Speaking of radio, Minnesota Public Radio last month asked me to write lyrics for a few Twin Cities indie bands who would then compose songs around them– I’ll let you know if and when the segment on the songs is likely to air. I like what the Owls did a lot. One of the others is… a bluegrass number! A well-done bluegrass number. I like it too, though I fear that my lyrical sensibility is about as “country” as the Flatiron Building. (And not as cool.) The third song, by Matt Wilson, has a cycling piano riff that’s super-catchy, and still growing on me.
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Have you been reading the Poetry Foundation blog? Worth a look– especially Ange’s posts (every word of which, so far, strikes me as true). Apparently I’ll be blogging there once school starts after the WNBA playoffs after our full-time day care starts starting sometime in September.

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Nathan loves Amy Winehouse. In fact, if you sing him the first line of her hit “Rehab,” he will answer “No, no, no!”