Back on line

I seem to have abandoned the blog which afforded me so much pleasure over the last fourteen months. Any time for writing that I could steal had to be devoted to the column. We are now at a stage of equilibrium, so perhaps I can get back to blogging. Bill had his lung cancer operation eleven days ago and came home four days ago. The operation was a success – I could tell because every time the surgeon and the resident surgeon talked to us, they were grinning. The surgeon said that the operation went better than he had expected and that Bill tolerated anesthesia better than they had anticipated. His initial recovery has been swifter than they expected. Tomorrow we hear the result of the lab report and what kind of chemotherapy he will have. There were some tense moments – the worst one after the operation itself, was when he went wonky, thinking he was in the building he had taught in, trying to get out of bed. Since he was hooked up to many tubes, including lung drains, this would have been catastrophic. However, our son and I dodged that bullet by staying with him 24 hours for three days and then hiring a night time sitter for two days. We had a private room and the hospital put in a cot for us. I had expected him to be much frailer when he got home so I had hired night time sitters for five nights (our other son and his family were here over the weekend), our friend and helper Joe for daytime, and Meals on Wheels, none of which we really need, but having contracted for, must keep on. A lovely problem to have. Another minor glitch was that everything tasted to him like “rotten wood,” but in the last few days his taste buds have rallied.

Together at Last

My column for next week is about movie-making, inspired by the made-for-TV movie shot on our street ten days ago. I didn’t see many movies when I was a kid because we lived a distance from the theater. At college I discovered that I was nearly the only girl there who hadn’t seen The Wizard of Oz. I didn’t see Fantasia either, and Bill was happy I could at last see it because he had been so influenced by it when he was a boy.

I never caught the movie bug even when I lived where I could see them more handily. When my granddaughter or my daughter came home, we would have a film festival of video tapes, and at least once go to the theater, but that was about the extent of my movie-going.

A number of things have happened in the last year to make me more interested. My daughter has been in several movies and TV shows. When Bill came home from the hospital, my son bought us a TV and DVD player and installed them in the living room. Up to then the TV had been relegated to the basement. About the same time, our cable network added a classic movie channel to its lineup. The kids gave Bill DVD’s for his birthday, and we have been renting them as well. Am I right in thinking that TV stations are playing more movies? Watching movies is great for keeping our minds off our troubles. Over in Anecdotal Evidence, Patrick quoted Theodore Dalrymple on art and transience, and I used that quote in my column to note that videos and DVD’s have made movies less transient. I find it strange that an art form so universal and so influential has nearly passed me by, but I am glad that at last I have had a chance to participate in it.

Creating Reality

We have a heavy snowfall warning for tonight, 15 centimeters. Everywhere we went today people would bring the subject up and then immediately say, “But it won’t last long.” This morning the radio announcer twice made the joke that the definition of summer in New Brunswick is “eight weeks of poor snowmobiling.” Once about twenty years ago it snowed on May 23. I committed the fact to memory.

The movie being shot on our street is supposed to take place in March, and all last week they tried to make it look like March by strewing leaves over our freshly raked green lawns (ours was still brown.) They ran out of leaves and so would have to rake up the leaves from one lawn to use on another lawn. They are probably telling themselves that they should have waited.

I told the assistant location manager that I was going to write a column on the movie shoot, and I have been bombarded with e-mails and phone calls. Those movie people sure know about publicity. I will just use the anecdote to begin the subject of movie-making in general.

Making Art

They started filming on our short street last Wednesday, a made for CTV movie, Sticks and Stones. Thursday afternoon we were to see the surgeon to find out the results of the bronchoscope. Thursday was also Bill’s 75th birthday. That morning I broke down briefly and said I couldn’t bear the wait. We looked up the street and saw a lot of commotion, walked up to see what was going on, saw our neighbors sitting on their front stoop, sat with them for an hour, chatting amiably, watching the filming action across the street. One of the crew came and sat with us a while and the location director came too to talk.

When we got back home, our writers group came to sing Happy Birthday to Bill, bearing a rose and a gift certificate from the local bookstore. Then another neighbor came to say happy birthday, bearing chocolates. The location director came to tell us the road hockey game was going to be played in front of our house, filming our house, because our lawn was the only one on the street that is still brown and the action was supposed to be taking place in March.

All of this distraction made the wait bearable. And, miracle of miracles, the news the doctor delivered was good, the best we could have hoped for. Bill’s cancer, as far as can be determined, has not spread, is operable, the size of a marble. He is in good enough condition to undergo surgery. “Surgery is the only chance you have to be around next year.” They will take the top left lobe out. “So, should I go ahead and book the surgery?” “I don’t have much choice, do I.” “No, you don’t.”

When we got home our front yard was teeming with people and equipment, and about twenty little boys with hockey sticks were sitting on the curb. I sent out e-mails with our news, talked to our kids, and then we sat in the living room watching the action through our picture window. Our sons of course are highly amused that just where they played road hockey will be on TV. Bill wrote this poem about 30 years ago.

Roadhockey

The roadhockey game out under my window
Is like the Chinese soup
With grandfather cabbages thrown in
Decades before
It simmers through the years
As the bulbs in the streetlamps
Have been replaced a hundred times since it began

Enter the fray my little son
Little onion into the stew
The original ingredients have long since been devoured
But they have left their legacy:
The game itself, a roiling flowing two-sided thing
And a meaningless astronomical score.

On Being a Man

A four year old daughter of our friends has decided she would rather be a boy. She wants her hair cut short (it is long and easily tangled) and she would like to be able to pee standing up. I agree that the last would be convenient in public restrooms and out in the woods, but for me the best thing about being a man is that I wouldn’t have to carry a purse (pocketbook in the USA). If anyone were to invent an adequate substitute for a purse, he/she would earn my undying gratitude. There is the backpack, but this is even more inconvenient to carry to the grocery store. I have been experimenting with different ways to carry the necessities. Some years ago at a college reunion, I received a passport carrier you hang around your neck as a momento. It almost carries the necessities, and I have been using that recently. The trouble is that it doesn’t carry everything, so that, for example, I found myself at Blockbusters without the list I usually carry of the 50 or so films recommended to me for our new DVD player. As a consequence, we chose three films that proved not to be hits. One was The March of the Penguins. Bill doesn’t like animal documentaries at the best of times, but said he, “This not only was about animals, it was about animals that were suffering.” Another one was a sappy version of Emma in which Mr. Knightly was played by a movie star no one who had cherished the book would regard as even remotely Mr. Knightly-ish. The third one we chose only because it had the word Harvard in it and was in the comedy section, Stealing Harvard, and it proved to be silly and funny, just what we need. Of course if I were a man, I probably wouldn’t have cluttered up my pants pockets with a list of movies. The cardiac specialist who was looking after Bill pulled a lip balm out of his white coat pocket and applied it while he was talking to us. That did make me wonder what else was in that pocket.

Bronchoscope

Bill had his bronchoscopy Friday. The surgeon said it takes about 7 days to get the results of the tests and to phone his office Thursday. He said, “The light didn’t shine through the lesion, which is good, because it shows that it isn’t far in.” I don’t have a clue as to what that means and so cling to the word “good.” Here’s Bill's second Coogler poem.

Everett Coogler as an Emblem of Cosmic Brotherhood

The Everett Coogler who every morning
Unrolls his awning
And opens his stand
And is ready for business
And whatever the day will bring
Stands shoulder to shoulder
And brother to brother
To the Anti-Everett Cooglers
Unrolling their awnings
And opening stands
On the ass-end
Side of the moon Coogler poem.

Everett Coogler

One night 37 years ago, Bill woke me up. “Listen to this.” He read me the first Everett Coogler poem. I thought, He’s gone completely around the bend, but in the morning I realized that wasn’t it at all. He had created a wonderful character and what would become the first of many poems about Coogler. Bill is a wonderful reader of his own poetry, not too dramatic, but dramatic enough, not the usual drone. People laughed uproariously and Coogler became much beloved.

The Lament of Everett Coogler

After
17 years at
The same stand,
I,
Everett Coogler,
Would say,
That life is a stream rushing on,
Alive with
Red
Herrings.

A True Account

Too generous
I threw out stale
Jelly donuts to my
Friends the grackles
Along with their seed

And now one poor
Fellow staggers and falls
His foot plunged deep
In soft raspberry center

Free at last he rolls and flies
Perching one-legged on a birch limb
He cranks the other foot
Up and down in the morning air
To see if it will dry

And yells at me
Shuddering with rage
Or the sheer feeling of repellent novelty
“Do you mind telling me
What the hell this is
I’ve got between my god-damned toes?”

Bill Bauer

The Weather as Metaphor

It snowed last Thursday when we had to go to Bill’s pre-op clinic, and it is snowing again today. In between it has been unusually cold. We are waiting for a date for Bill’s bronchoscopy. At my age I shouldn’t be wishing my life away, but it is hard not to wish the weather would be better and that the bronchoscopy would be over. On the weekend I wished time would slow down because our two sons and their families surprised us with a visit. Fishing season opens on Monday. A friend tells us that this is the first year he can remember when he won’t be able to find a piece of ground where he can dig for worms. I remember the day my mother was buried, April 2, I think it was. A small group of us was standing in the Strawberry Hill cemetery. It was cold, dark, but the birds were singing. The metaphor was apt: a gloomy day, yet with a hint of hope. This late winter is an apt metaphor too; summer will come, it always does, but it is difficult to imagine the experience.

Friends of ours are driving to Moncton today to keep an important doctor’s appointment. Schools everywhere are closed. It is an hour and a half drive. There is a stretch of the highway of perhaps 30 miles where there is no habitation, no exits. What a terrible decision to make: go or not go. Some birds have returned from the south, but they are nowhere in evidence today. On the weekend we saw robins and a cardinal. The grackles are back.

I have just spent some time looking for Bill’s poem about grackles. I haven’t read his poems for a while. They were brought back to me. Every once in a while someone will begin to recite their favorite poem from Bill’s books – the Tantrum Poem, or Everett Coogler, or Unsnarling String. A recent e-mail ended, “Let Bill know that I have been unsnarling a lot of string in the past three months.” I couldn’t find the grackle poem.

Things are Moving

Bill has his consultation with the anesthetist today and will have the bronchoscope done sometime after April 17. I am writing some columns ahead, two so far, and this weekend I will tackle the music one that is giving me so much trouble. I console myself with my past experience that the harder a thing is to write, the better the essay, although on a rare occasion passion has let me write a good one right off the top of my head. I am spending way too much time on these columns, but they keep me concentrating on them for a few hours and not on our problems. I probably am earning about a dollar an hour. Of course when I write novels, I am making about a penny an hour.

A Benefit of Age

I have received the first negative feedback on my column. I am surprised I didn’t receive it before. The president of the Writers’ Federation of New Brunswick denounced me for writing about the spiraling down of the organization. I am pleased with myself because this didn’t bother me at all. In the past I would have been upset. When I said I would write this column, my son said that at my age I had earned the right to write boldly what I wanted. Only one of the six columns, however, has been negative.

I am now polishing a column about the negative impression that the rest of Canada has about New Brunswick and how art contributes to this impression. When we have guests from other parts, they are invariably surprised at what a nice place this is, how beautiful, how friendly and courteous the people are. I was discussing this with a doctor who has come from British Columbia into our neighborhood. I mentioned that when we try to get out of our subdivision onto the busy street leading to the malls, we never have to wait more than a minute; someone always stops and lets us in. His face lit up with a smile because he too had noticed this. He is impressed with how collegial the medical community is.

Once Again With Music

In my six columns I have written about visual art, crafts and literature, but I haven’t written anything about music. I determined I must do something about the lack and started writing about music, but the column seemed thin and whiny. Last week I bought a new book by Daniel Levitin, This is Your Brain on Music, hoping it would inspire me. It inspired me so much that now I have too much to deal with – the piece is thick and unwieldy. I got panicky and wrote another column I had in mind, one I could do more easily. But I have a hiatus because this Saturday the editor decided to devote the whole of Salon, the art section of the paper, to reproductions of the paintings that the Beaverbrook Art Gallery must give back to the Beaverbrook Foundation. So the column for yesterday can be printed next Saturday, I have two more nearly ready to go for the two weeks after that, and I can concentrate on the music one. Music is the art I know the least about, although in my younger days I knew quite a lot. I played the piano (not well) and the baritone horn in the high school band and had a fabulous music 101 course in college. One of the first purchases we made after we were married was a state of the art stereo. But in the last twenty years I have neglected it because I was often asked to write about the other arts (some 80 articles.)

The Beaverbrook Art Gallery, generously stocked by Lord Beaverbrook with wonderful paintings, has been in a hassle with the Beaverbrook Foundation which claims that the paintings weren’t gifts, but loans. Last week the judge ruled that 87 of the paintings in question belong to the BAG and 48 to the Foundation. It is alleged that Lord Beaverbrook’s grandsons want the paintings to sell because they have gone bankrupt. One of the paintings, J M Turner’s Fountain of Indolence, is said to be worth $25 million. It is one that does belong to the gallery. In the past the Foundation has taken paintings from the collection under the pretense that it was going to have them restored, but instead sold them. The judge ruled that all of these belonged to the gallery and the foundation must compensate for them.

Dear Blog

I wonder if I could use the blog to focus on the various subjects of my columns. I could write in a less formal way, be more speculative. At any rate, Happy Anniversary, Dear Blog. Thanks for the good times we have had together.

Anniversaries

Tomorrow is the first anniversary of this blog. It has wiggled and wobbled from subject to subject. What wiggles and wobbles at the bottom of the sea? A nervous wreck. I have got off the subject of tracing my way. I have noticed that other people periodically change the focus of their blogs. I think I will try that, but what should the focus be?

What I didn’t anticipate was the great fun of meeting up with other people and becoming interested in their lives and opinions. I have added and subtracted blogs from my blogroll because I realized after a while that I couldn’t read too many regularly; there just was not enough time. I do occasionally think to myself that since there are millions of blogs, there probably are quite a few by people who would turn out to be kindred spirits. I wish I had kept a journal of how I came to the blogs I regularly read. Usually it was “way leads on to way.” to quote Robert Frost.

I hadn’t remembered until today that I had started the blog on the anniversary of my mother’s death. I don’t know if I was aware at the time, although it was serendipitous because the first few posts are about her naming of me.

Names and Music

Friday I updated my The Writers’ Union of Canada page and today googled myself to see if it was there. The URL for the old one comes up and says it is not longer viable. I saw that there were 90,000 entries for Nancy Bauer, but I continued on for quite a few (400?) and the newly revised web page didn’t turn up. I see by this googling that I share the name with many others, the most prominent being a Tufts U professor. There is even another Bill and Nancy couple who run a farm in the American Midwest. Yesterday in the Globe and Mail there was a review by a UNB professor, Mark Anthony Jarman. He has taken to using this middle name, and I think I know why. I googled him last week for some information for my TJ column and found that there are several writers named Mark Jarman. I had to go quite far in to get the Jarman I wanted. I am thinking now that I should have added my maiden name as my public name on books and articles, but at the time I first published, “poetesses with three names” were satirized. Ah, pride and vanity, what problems you create.

I updated my TWUC page because the organization has now arranged it so that you can do it yourself. You used to have to go through them. I was introduced at a reading last week and realized the introducer had got her information from the page. The photo I had used was now nearly 20 years old.

I haven’t written about music for my State of the Art column because of all the arts, I have the least expertise in it. I decided I should give it a try. I don’t even listen to the late night music programs on CBC because I discovered that music keeps me awake and talk puts me to sleep. We have a new station which broadcasts the Ottawa Senators’ games. I turn it on, and I am asleep in minutes. I think the part of my brain given to music must have atrophied. I was thinking this morning that maybe Bill and I should begin again to listen to music. It might be good for him in reestablishing the synapses that were damaged in his stroke, and it would be good for me to revive my interest in music.

Treasure Hunts

I was thinking today of treasure hunts. When Bill’s mother went into a nursing home, after his father died, we cleaned out their house. Be sure to look everywhere, she said, especially up high, because I suspect your father hid money around. This made cleaning out the house seem like a treasure hunt. We did look everywhere – inside the clock, under chair cushions. We took out the drawers of his desk. No money. He had a strong box that he had had with him since their marriage, 55 years. He kept it in his closet and never told his wife what was in it. Cleaning his closet, she would pick it up and notice that something inside rattled. She never asked him what was in it, but she was curious. After he died, Bill rifled through his desk, found the key and took the key and box to his mother to open. There was nothing in it. What had rattled was the metal divider.

When we were cleaning out Bill’s aunt apartment house, we tackled the cellar, a vast dungeon, full of rooms going back and back and back, packed with stuff. Aunt Elsa had told us that the padlocked cabinet in one of the rooms was her father’s, and she was sure it contained valuable tools. Our friend Louie came with his hacksaw, sawed away at the lock, and finally got it open. Bill and I crowded around, expecting wondrous things. The cabinet was full, but with used plumbing fixtures, some screws, a broken hammer, that sort of thing. We laughed when Louie finally pulled out a key – the key to the padlock.

My neighbor Jack came by for a visit this afternoon. I was telling him of my musings. He had inherited a handsome armoire. It needed repairs, which he made. When his father came, Jack’s wife took him to see the cabinet, to admire the repairs, and told him to look inside. No, he said, he couldn’t. It had been his mother’s, and as a child he had been forbidden to open it. After all those years, seventy or more, he still couldn’t bring himself to disobey.

Gaston Bachelard writes, “Wardrobes with their shelves, desks with their drawers, and chests with their false bottoms are veritable organs of the secret psychological life.”

Labyrinths

I am just getting caught up reading other people’s blogs. Some entries are long and dense, but interesting, so I will go back to read them again. Yesterday a woman who runs a twice monthly reading series asked me to fill in this afternoon for a poet who has laryngitis. This morning I am wondering why I said yes since I have so much to do. I was, however, intending to go to the reading anyway. I decided to read the ailing poet’s poem which addresses another poet, dead more than 20 years. In the poem, Robert Gibbs addresses Alden Nowlan who addresses John Keats and Samuel Johnson. I like the idea of Nancy addressing Robert addressing Alden addressing John and Samuel. A set of nested Russian wooden dolls. Or six degrees of separation. I am going to read an old, unpublished story, partly because I can’t remember which stories I have read publicly in recent times. In the story I am imagining ideal readers, so Nancy will be reading to an audience about writing for an ideal audience. When Alison asked me to fill in for Bob, I thought I would read the beginning of the novel I am working on but that would necessitate my typing it and I don’t have time. I know from bitter experience that I can’t read from my own handwriting. Now I have to steel myself to go down cellar to see if it is flooded. Yesterday and last night we had snow and then terrific rain and melting.

Onion Soup

One of the best dishes I ever made, probably the best one, was French onion soup. When we first moved to Fredericton, we joined the university gourmet group and were members for several years. Once for our final meal of the year I made onion soup for sixteen people. A departing faculty member had given me a huge black iron pot that had belonged to the US Army. Every once in a while, even now, someone will mention the soup. Some people said it was the single best thing they ever tasted. I have never made it again. I used an Escoffier book and a Larousse cookbook. Escoffier recommended first roasting the bones for the stock, several kinds, beef of course, and I think lamb and veal. Some vegetables were roasted too. The resulting stock was so subtle that I can’t even bring it to my memory; I only remember its reputation.

I was thinking of that soup this morning because tonight we will have chicken soup with stock from the bones of the roast chicken we had several nights ago. My cooking has gradually lost its luster. I rarely cook any more for someone who loves food. I love food, but cooking just for myself is too much work. Fredericton has never had good restaurants. I don’t know why that is. We go to one and it is good, and six months later we go back and it is mediocre. Bill loves Italian food, but there has never been a good one here. An Indian restaurant opened here a year or so ago. I was delighted. It was ridiculously expensive and lousy. I didn’t think it was possible to make lousy Indian food. All the effort had gone into the ambience.

The Metronome

We have had warm weather the last month or so. By warm I mean zero or above Celsius. Today it is already 6 above. For an unaccustomed pain in my chest my family doctor sent me to see the cardiac doctor. He put me on a treadmill and said to say stop whenever I wanted. I kept going so that the test would be accurate and because I was embarrassed by my huffing and puffing. He stopped me. He is alleged not to have a good bedside manner, but I like him, mostly because he is reputed to be the most brilliant doctor in our area and that is what made me happy when he was looking after Bill. He has an acerbic sense of humor. He explained that my heart is fine for someone my age, but he said, “What the test tells me is that you don’t do very much.” I had to confess that was true. Dr. S suggested I buy a treadmill, and I probably will do that, but Bill’s cardiovascular system has to undergo improvement too, so ever since the warm weather arrived we have been walking. We will enjoy the walking when the snow goes and we can go along the trails in the park or the river. Now our walk is metronomic and our pleasure is in how virtuous we are and how healthy we will be.

My first controversial column last Saturday so far has only elicited comments from people who agree with me. This Saturday’s column is non-controversial. The editor said that it was “beautifully written.” Another reader said it was “lyrical.” I can see that I won’t be able to keep up writing one every week.

Not Abandoned

I seem to have abandoned my blog. Partly that is because I spend my “good” morning time working on my column. Last week I agreed to write one every week instead of every other week as I had said at first I would do. So far three of them have been published: one about the high price of art, the second on poetry as being more popular in a local context and the third on the getting together of the francophone and anglophone arts communities. I have had positive feedback on them. Two of the people commenting wanted something out of me, however, so I had to take their compliments with a grain of salt. One wanted me to help her get her novel published, and the other wanted me to read the novel she is writing. I no longer read manuscripts except by those whose work I have read and commented on for years. It is hard work and not too rewarding.

I am enjoying the journalism, though, because it gives me something that I must concentrate on and a deadline that makes me do that: a few minutes when I am not contemplating our troubles. I am probably qualified to write this column. I have been involved with the literary community here for 40 years, and I have written about arts and crafts for 25 years so know both scenes well. I get family members to edit for me. I consult with friends. My next column will be my first controversial one. When I was first asked to write, the editor (since replaced) said I should be controversial, “edgy.” I am not naturally an “edgy” journalist, but in this case I feel passionately about the subject. I wrote my first damning review last fall. I got the proofs two weeks ago and realized again that it was very different from what I usually write. Ordinarily I give back books that I don’t like at all. I would rather explicate books than merely review them. I am getting to be a crotchety old lady.