Incorporeal Works

From ghoulies and ghosties and long-legged beasties,
and things that go bump in the night, good Lord deliver us.

Sirens keep going off, up and down the roads around my neighborhood, fire trucks, police cars and ambulances. I have not yet heard the deep whup-whup-whup of the helicopter ambulance, flying some critically injured victim of the normal Friday night attrition on the roads.

The little tricksters and treat supplicants have by now been whisked home; the 21st century is not as kind to young folk wandering their neighborhoods as the mid-century just past was for my generation. There be monsters here. And not those of the fairy tales.

Last year, walking the dog on dark nighttime streets of a wooded neighborhood, an eerie sound between moan and shriek recurred as the dog and I walked along, seeming to follow us homeward. The sound hovered right above us, matching our pace. The dark, leafless trees swayed in a cold wind. I was glad to reach the house, letting Lucy the Wonder Dog into the bright, warm space inside. Later, checking with a bird call site on the internet, I recognized the sound I had heard as the cry of a screech owl. Mystery solved. But the primal, atavistic fear was not forgotten.

Hallowe’en, attenuated with retail and holiday considerations as it is, reminds us of the feeling of the other, the thing that cannot be explained away with identifying a bird call; the feeling of dread so near to the surface of our quiet contentment.

As I walked the dog tonight, I heard no eldritch sound, only the distant amplified sound of a high school band, and cheers from a football crowd. It was, after all, Friday night, as well as Halloween.

The other night I sat with the grandchildren for a few hours, at their house while their mother worked late. Babs had to work, so other than a phone call during which both grandchildren talked full-tilt, and their grandmother got only a word or two in, she missed all the other fun. Both children were wound up, capering and giggling and chasing each other around the house, to ineffectual efforts by their grandfather to contain their energy.

At last, the granddaughter came up with an idea that appealed to her brother and involved a considerable amount of preparation. The two would put on a “show” themed on Sleeping Beauty. My grandson actually acceded not only to the show, but to wearing a “costume” consisting of velour pants and his regular Incredible Hulk t-shirt. He was the Prince, of course. And the granddaughter was a vision in layers of gauzy skirt, multiple necklaces and a scarf. Sleeping Beauty would have been envious.

The grand entrance was announced from the hall doorway by the Prince who then galloped into the living room, followed by Sleeping Beauty, trilling wordless songs. After a few miscues by the Prince at the point when a dance was scripted, finally the two swirled around the living room, the Prince twirling Beauty, and kissing her hand at the end. Then they did the whole thing over again. And over. And over. I applauded each time with appropriate sounds of encouragement. At least they were not leaping from sofa to chair to floor, knocking over random pieces of furniture.

When I told Babs of what she had missed, and described the multiple re-starts, after the Prince kept flinging himself to the floor in fits of giggles, she was quite envious. We laughed. A lot.

Two great show business careers have been launched, I have no doubt.

Exhibition at the Hunter

Five Objects with light right

Here in Chattanooga, a new traveling exhibit opened a week ago. Titled Object Project, works by 15 artists are exhibited, all with an assigned five objects to be included in one or two works (depending on the size) by each artist. My favorite is this one, by Daniel Sprick, called simply, “object project.” Mr. Sprick already has one work in the Hunter’s permanent collection, titled “Summer Solstice” which I very much like, also.

All of the works are interesting and sometimes very good. I have been back twice, once with my beloved Babs, and she also likes the works very much.

One she especially likes is by Scott Fraser, entitled, Three-Way Vanitas, seen at right. I also like this one very much, with its many angles of mirrored images. I like repeated images and mirrors.

After January 12, 2009, when it leaves the Hunter, the Object Project exhibit travels to Englewood, Colorado, to the Museum of Outdoor Art. It is worthwhile to visit, should you be there after February 20, 2009.

CHANTILLY, Va. (AP) — A new drug store at a Virginia strip mall is putting its faith in an unconventional business plan: No candy. No sodas. And no birth control. Divine Mercy Care Pharmacy is among at least seven pharmacies across the nation that are refusing as a matter of faith to sell contraceptives of any kind, even if a person has a prescription.

There have been a number of stories over the past few years about pharmacists refusing to fill contraceptive prescriptions. As far as I know, this is the first story not involving a national chain, such as WalMart or Walgreen’s or CVS. I see that seven, “at least”, other pharmacies are known to be doing this.

Defenders of the pharmacy cite the businessman’s right to define what will be sold and what will not. I am not versed in the regulatory or ethical strictures on licensed pharmacists in this sort of case. I suspect such standards vary from state to state. If there is no regulatory or ethical violation of public or professional standards, I suppose the decision not to provide birth control products, prescribed or OTC, to customers is permissible. Even though the reasoning ignores scientific facts of fertilization in describing birth control pills as “killing babies.”

Interestingly, the store also does not sell condoms. And a Roman Catholic bishop blessed the new store, sprinkling holy water about the premises. Do condoms also “kill babies?”

It will be interesting to see if this store, and others like it, can attract enough customers to stay in business. I personally would not shop at such a store, although I am out of the procreation business myself, being somewhat aged. I don’t consider the underlying motives consistent with my beliefs about the relationship of belief and compelled behavior.

The Master, the Swabber, the Boate-swaine & I;
The Gunner, and his Mate
Lou’d Mall, Meg, and Marrian, and Margerie,
But none of vs car’d for Kate.
For she had a tongue with a tang,
Would cry to a Sailor goe hang:
She lou’d not the sauour of Tar nor of Pitch,
Yet a Tailor might scratch her where ere she did itch.
Then to Sea Boyes, and let her goe hang.

Long ago, I attended a play at the Tivoli Theater in Chattanooga, performed by the University Players of the University of Chattanooga; it was The Tempest, and the above song drew more applause than anything else in the play. Shakespeare might not have liked that result, but as a man of the theater would have been unsurprised. I think. Presumptuous to think for Shakespeare, a monument without a tomb and all that.

Joe Morgan played Stephano, Hugh (a.k.a. Tom) Holt played Caliban, Trinculo I forget. The clowns were the hit of the play. Arlie Herron, an English professor, well-liked and with the respect of his peers, played Prospero with a crystalline delivery that reminded me of a really good Episcopal lay reader.

I haven’t thought of that night for quite a while. I was friends with most of the cast. We all spent many happy hours at the Rathskeller, much missed and long gone, German food and cold beer in a high-ceilinged old building with layers of dust and picturesque objects hanging from the walls. Löwenbräu on tap, back when it was still German beer. Other, cheaper brands for when the funds were not flowing. Ah, what Elysium had we known, Keats would have been proud.

One night I delayed too long in inviting a girl to go home with me from the Rat, and turned from the bar to see her vanishing through the front door with a Dutch exchange student. The Dutch guy liked to call me “Mr. Pickwick” for my resemblance in those days to the bespectacled and portly Dickens comic hero. Lutz Kirchner, was the Dutch fellow’s name, or something like that. I have forgotten the girl’s name. Pity. Faint heart never gets the girl to go home with him.

I turned back to the bar and ordered another Löwenbräu.

A rare day of rain, light and more mist than drops. The moist, cool air and the leaves falling faster with the weight of water makes me think of fall on Lookout Mountain in my childhood. The years-long drought in the southeastern region of the country now continuing makes wet, cool days few, the more to be relished. Some evocation of days when every occurence was new for the child I was, and the changeability of the weather kept the scenes moving.

On the television news this morning, more footage of low water levels in lakes. North Georgia especially hard-hit. No hint of climate change is permissible lest the forces of denial counterattack; “Just normal weather cycles, tree-huggers and lying liberals want to cripple business with regulations and expenses. They all hate America, kill preborn babies and believe we came from monkeys.”

Post-scientific America, the triumph of the Know-Nothings. But I look out my open windows, feel the breezes of autumns past, and enjoy my senses and my memories.

The summer I was twelve, my mother, sisters and I flew out to Colorado Springs to visit my aunt and uncle. My uncle was in the Army, stationed at Fort Collins. My grandfather and grandmother, Boozle and Nana, were also there, renting rooms not far from my aunt and uncle’s house.

My grandfather had retired from the Army January of that year, so he and my Nana were traveling around the country, visiting friends and family and seeing the sights. After twenty years of active duty and constant moving, they had become nomads.

Over that summer, my sisters and I were entertained constantly, with tours of everything from Mesa Verde to Red Rocks Park. Mesa Verde was very old and with a sense of vanished peoples. Red Rocks was a showplace, where Army Rangers put on an exhibition of rock climbing that filled my pre-adolescent head with fantasies of deeds I could never accomplish.

I was sent to a day camp in the arid, rocky country east of Colorado Springs for a couple of weeks, culminating in an overnight in stone and timber shelters, boys and girls sleeping in alternate shelters, supposedly. My sleep was broken repeatedly by giggles and rustlings of covers as the older boys and girls traded bunks. Something was going on here, and I wished it involved me, but I was too young.

Oddly enough, that summer marked the first time I ever saw a deer in the wild. Odd because I was raised in the South, where hunting was a fixture in the culture, where boys were taken on hunts when they were even younger than I was that summer. My father never hunted, other than shooting crows at his father’s farm, which was pest control, not hunting.

My uncle had driven me up to a trout farm in the foothills north of Pike’s Peak, and as we headed back home with a respectable, three-pound rainbow I had caught, we drove through a wooded gap between two ridges, and as I looked up a clear-cut flank of one ridge, a deer crossed the open ground, alight with late sunlight, pausing to look down at our car. Then he bolted across the open space and took his three-point rack into the tall evergreens. I was entranced. That one moment is the center of my memories of that summer.

When my mother returned home with my sisters and me, my father had moved out. A year and more of late-night shouting matches and events inscrutable to me had ended their marriage. The idyll in Colorado was meant to give him time to move out, and give us some time free of friction and fighting.

Nobody gets out of childhood unmarked. But sometimes the pain is leavened with moments such as I had, seeing the deer cross the sunlit glade.

Last night, Beloved Babs and I went to a benefit for the Chattanooga and Hamilton County Bicentennial Library. This was, I believe, the third such event, or at least the third we have attended. For one night, the downtown library becomes a cluster of food, drink and music venues through which guests may wander for three hours, called “Club Lib.” A tremendous variety of food and drink is served up, prepared by Events With Taste, a catering service presided over by Michelle Huffman-Wells, who is a friend of ours.

As in previous years, we met old friends and met new ones, meeting and greeting a cross-section of Chattanooga’s varied population. Some people dress up (we did) and some came in casual clothing. In spite of the proximity of Halloween, we didn’t see any costumes, but there were plenty of treats. For the first time ever, we got to walk out onto the patio off the third-floor offices, overlooking Miller Park and Plaza, ringed by tall buildings. A very cool place. Spotlights traced the sky and projected stars onto the library front.

Great, great event. We will go every year. I hope the event raised a substantial amount for the library; we need a strong library here.

“Personal responsibility!” is an often-heard mantra in the blogosphere, on discussion boards and on talk radio. It is the rallying cry of those who oppose any role for government in cushioning economic shocks for those who have suffered the vagaries of the economy. Even the scale and possible consequences of the present credit dislocation have not blunted the calls for “letting the market work,” i.e., allowing the failure of all the over-extended banks involved in the tangled markets in mortgages and mortgage security bundles. The idea that letting the banks fail would “teach them a lesson,” the “them” presumably being the officials of those banks.

Unfortunately, all the personal wealth of those at the top of the financial hierarchy in this country would not begin to offset the damage already done, even if that wealth could somehow be extracted from the offending executives. Such a prospect would please no one better than the high-priced defense attorneys who would flock to defend the financial mavens.

The markets today went up with as much celerity as they had fallen in previous sessions. As a barometer of real economic health or otherwise, the stock and bond markets do not inspire confidence. I have no clue how this crisis will play out, except to note that the rules we learned in Mr. Fulghum’s kindergarten, especially “clean up your own mess,” cannot be exported into the byzantine complexities of the credit implosion now facing us. We all have to clean up the mess. It is already there, and the buck stops with the taxpayer.

Not just for stumbling across the Americas, but for prompting by way of the Holiday Bill one more day without a Banking Sleighride.

Wall Street and world markets will open as usual, perhaps responding to statements from European governments that infusions of capital into banks are likely. The U.S. money honchos are making similar noises. I am reminded of a New Yorker cartoon dating from the Great Depression, with a little man (Hoover? Don’t remember) peering around a corner, to see an endless succession of corners ahead. Recovery is around the corner, but which one?

I have fretted over the past five years about eroding my retirement monies. Had I saved every penny, and added to my little store, the past couple of weeks likely would have left me in the same sorry shape I find myself today.

I can feel concern for others, strangely enough, who have children still to raise, mortgages to sweat over and face a lifetime in the shadow of this colossal failure of judgment on the part of financial titans. I will have plenty of company in the corners of poorhouses all over the country, but my generation has a shorter time to endure the consequences of economic folly.