And the flag was still there

From "Reluctant Patriot" (Smithsonian):

Though no thoroughly detailed account of the extraordinary moment exists, we do know that Key was still aboard the British ship when he began composing a verse about the experience—and his relief at seeing the Stars and Stripes still waving. In March 1931, this four-stanza poem, originally titled "Defence of Fort M'Henry," would become the national anthem of the United States.

For more about "The Star-Spangled Banner," check out this link and this.

Oh, say, can you see, by the dawn's early light,
What so proudly we hail'd at the twilight's last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars, thro' the perilous fight,
O'er the ramparts we watch'd, were so gallantly streaming?
And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof thro' the night that our flag was still there.
O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

The recommended daily allowance

These two are "lighter" than our usual recommendations, but we're closing in on the unofficial conclusion of summer, and some sit-in-the-glider-with-a-good-book-and-a-fresh-lemonade suggestions are required, I think.

Consider Sudden Sea, which describes the 1938 hurricane that tore across the Northeast, killing more than six hundred people; or Close to Shore, a personal favorite.

Close to Shore chronicles the 1916 Great White shark attacks along the Jersey shore. A native New Jerseyan, I was attracted to the book, ostensibly because it narrated a bit of home-state lore, but just a few pages in, I was riveted by Michael Capuzzo's ability to set the events in their historical context, including his narration of that summer's heat wave, in which infants perished in their mother's arms in the city streets.

An aside: Twists and turns of serendipity define the reader's life, and this reader's life is no different. The heat wave characterized in Close to Shore, of course, reminds me Chicago's killer heat wave, 1995.

If you're up to the task, Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago (Eric Klineberg) will mesmerize the attentive reader-as-armchair-(or glider)-sociologist. Klineberg attributes much of the responsibility for the more than seven hundred deaths-by-silent-killer to "social isolation," which would seem to be an oxymoron in a city the size of my adopted (now abandoned) home-city. But it's not. So many people realized only that they were uncomfortable that summer, not that they were in grave danger.

Biology as destiny

This one will make the attachment advocates squirm. From "The temperamentalist" (Boston Globe):

Although he would hate to hear it put this way, biology does sound an awful lot like destiny in Kagan's new book, "The Long Shadow of Temperament" (Harvard), which he co-wrote with his colleague Nancy Snidman. It comes as the much-honored professor - who in 2002 ranked 22d on one psychology journal's list of the top psychologists of the 20th century, one notch above Carl Jung - prepares to shut down his famous child-development lab at Harvard after four decades. (Kagan retired four years ago and Harvard needs the space. Another infant lab remains open.)

The ancient Greeks were right, Kagan believes. There is such a thing as temperament - although his discussion of innate personality traits relies on EEG probes and brain-stem activity, not any musings on the four humors. The book centers on studies that Kagan and Snidman began in 1986 with 500 infants. Roughly 20 percent of the babies who screamed at toys and other unfamiliar stimuli grew into 11-year-olds who were shy with interviewers and who showed biological signs of alarm in stressful situations. By contrast, 33 percent of the calm, cool tykes grew into composed, sociable preteens - "Clint Eastwood types," as the authors put it, in the case of some boys. "A 45-minute lab observation of 16-week-old-infants revealed dispositions that were preserved in some children for over 10 years," the authors write.

Jane Austen

Something light from the Washington Post (registration = required, free, painless):

Austen, it appears, is our new Shakespeare. In pop culture terms, that is. Two hundred years after her novels were written, she's ascended to that level where her work is widely imitated, flippantly quoted, frequently ripped off and, yes, very much revered -- by those who have actually read her, that is. Cite Jane these days and it's like playing a smart card. Remember how puffed up you felt the first time you quoted from "Hamlet" by heart?

Daytime television

From "Daytime TV Gets Judgmental" at City Journal:

It’s easy to make the case that, in the vast wasteland that is broadcast television (as FCC chairman Newton Minnow had it more than 40 years ago), daytime TV has long been the most barren region of all—home not only to the bathetic soaps, with their ludicrous plot twists, but also to creaky sitcoms, retreads of game shows long since departed from prime time, and featherweight talk shows that feature either sob stories or actors energetically plugging their latest projects.

Yet there is also daytime’s version of reality television. In important respects, it is far more real—and certainly more telling about the state of the culture—than the stuff that goes by that name in the evening.

Reading the article reminded me of the afternoons Family M-mv spent marooned before the Great American Campfire and the blog entry that experience inspired: "This is your brain. This is your brain on television." Heh, heh, heh. I concluded, "If alien life forms have espied us, our television commercials are not what we want them watching." Still true.

The library

Back in June, we extolled the virtues of the formal-dining-room-as-home-library arrangement, in part, to support Laura's position and, in part, to validate our own arrangement.

As it turns out, in our new digs, the formal dining room was, once upon a time, a small bedroom. At some point in the house's recent history, it was converted into a dining room with sliding-glass-door access to a pretty patio and unfenced back yard (which does double-duty as a nature center for us, the city transplants; yes, we are still enamoured of nearly every aspect of our new home — just don't ask me about the spiders in the mailbox or that dark corner in the basement that looks an awful lot like the purposefully obscured final scene in The Blair Witch Project).

So the "dining room or library" debate never raged here. No, it was clear from the beginning that most of our bookcases would end up in the living room, a plan that delighted me. Now I can sit in any one of three comfortable spots and just gaze at my books — thinking, remembering, planning, rediscovering.

It was difficult to capture all of the bookcases: The sun was streaming in from behind me, so I couldn't photograph the room from front to back; and it's difficult to see that we actually created two separate reading areas by backing two bookcases together beside the old, old couch. ("Wear the old coat, buy the new book" is not simply a quaint quotation to us; it is our mantra, as in, "The couch is nearly twenty years old. Replace it or place another book order? Yeah, that's what I thought, too." The back-to-back bookcases idea was inspired, and the results are a room that all of us love.










And the dining room?

Well, two bookcases fit quite nicely, as does the tile-top table. And the room features a closet that was converted into a built-in hutch (of sorts); this serves as the command center for our family-centered learning project, housing such tools as the microscope, globes, atlases, timelines, binoculars, art supplies, crafts, etc. This room is the perfect place for an autodidact to begin the morning — coffee mug in hand, The Atlantic or a bird guide spread out in front of her, and the backyard buzzing with birds that have found the inexpensive but always full feeder hanging on a greased shepherd's hook.

I know I should miss Chicago more and am sometimes startled that I do not — yet, anyway.

"Why Teachers Love Depressing Books"

Did you catch this article in the August 22 New York Times? (Remeber: Registration is required but free, quick, and painless.)

Barbara Feinberg's "Welcome to Lizard Motel: Children, Stories, and the Mystery of Making Things Up" (Beacon Press) conjures up memories of such youthful literary predilections. Feinberg, who runs an arts program for kids, was provoked to write this unusual hybrid of memoir and polemic by the trials of her 12-year-old son, Alex. She had seen him steel himself, again and again, for the joyless task of completing the assigned reading for his "language arts" class, and she decided to investigate how those books could so oppress a boy who otherwise happily gobbled up Harry Potter novels and anything by or about his idol, Mel Brooks.

Her curiosity plunges Feinberg into the contemporary genre of young adult (Y.A.) "problem novels," the bane of her son's existence. These books describe, with spare realism, child and teenage protagonists weathering abuse, addiction, parental abandonment or fecklessness, mental illness, pregnancy, suicide, violence, prostitution or self-mutilation -- and often a combination of the above. "Teachers love them," the local librarian explains as Feinberg scans a shelf of such titles. "They win all the awards."

Most of the books chosen by the English committee at Alex's school are problem novels, and the curriculum proves inflexible. "We can't ever say we don't like the books," Alex tells his mother, because, according to his teacher, "if you're not liking the books, you're not reading them closely enough." The books are so depressing -- "'Everybody dies in them,' he told me wearily" -- Alex insists on reading with his bedroom door open.

Added later:

Now that the DSL is up and running (yahoo!), I've had a chance to visit some favorite web-stops. "The Rage Diaries," which we've recommended before, tackled depressing books yesterday. Check it out.

Einstein was an autodidact.

From "The Patent Clerk's Legacy" at Scientific American:

With little more to show than a rejected doctoral thesis from a few years before, this 26-year-old patent clerk, who practiced physics in his spare time and on the sly at work, declared brashly that the physicists of his day were "out of [their] depth" and went on to prove it. Besides special and general relativity, his work helped to launch quantum mechanics and modern statistical mechanics. Chemistry and biotechnology owe a debt to studies by Einstein that supplied evidence of the existence of molecules and the ways they behave.

Pentomino puzzles

A link to links.

And a book to many the younger set think.

Still on dial-up, although even at this plodding speed, we made a cool discovery...

The Rhetorica Network, which includes "A Rhetoric Primer."

Let's just call a spade a spade.

At Target yesterday, the two littlest M-mvs admired the latest in the seemingly unending line of My Little Pony products: A stuffed Little Pony. "Oh, how cute!" they beamed.

"No, it's not," I countered. "Let's just call a spade a spade. That's the ugliest stuffed animal ever."

Aunt M-mv's eye's widened in alarm. She discreetly advised me that the cliche I'd just uttered was racist.

Huh?

I thought I'd simply uttered a tired (and, hence, lazy) alternative to "Let's dispense with the puffery; that toy is ugly." E.D. Hirsch agrees with me.

But Aunt M-mv is not alone. The folks at Wordorigins.org note that several word-lovers have inquired about the racist nature of the phrase. According to their site, though, "calling a spade a spade" dates back to 1542, while the pejorative use of "spade" (to mean a person of color) doesn't surface until the 1920s. The spade in the hackneyed expression, "Let's just call a spade a spade," then, is nothing more than a shovel.

In their inimitable style, the Mavens tackle "call a spade a spade," concluding, "Few people today would object to call a spade a spade, but some people might, and one should at the very least be aware of that."

Duly noted.

So, if one wants to avoid a (potentially) awkward social interaction (to say nothing of a spoken cliche), one should avoid the expression — or develop a quaint alternative, such as, "Let's just call a chipmunk a chipmunk, shall we?" Or, "Let's just call a prune a prune." Or, "Let's just call a...." Erm, you get the idea.

On the nightstand (under the pillow, in the knapsack, etc.)

As promised, we present the latest installment in what, apparently, is many readers' favorite M-mv feature. Without further ado, here the books that are becoming a part of the geography of our imaginations.

Field Guide to the Birds of North America (National Geographic)
The Sibley Guide to Birds (David Allen Sibley (National Audubon Society))
Yes, one can bird-watch in Chicago, but how wonderful that the birds — so many, many of them! — come to our simple bird feeder in the backyard. The guides above have been constant companions (in addition to said birds) these past few weeks.

We picked up The Ultimate Guide to Backyard Bugs: Garden Insects of North America (Whitney Cranshaw). None of us will ever be mistaken for entomologists, but we’re learning not to squeal at every buzz, zing, and hum.

Close to Home: Things to Know and Things to Do (Elizabeth P. Lawlor) has doubled in perceived value since our relocation. This “Discover Nature” title is arranged in three key sections: the tree canopy, the field, and the forest floor. Yes, we have a little of all three in our corner of the world. Chipmunks, our new favorite visitors, are dubbed “winners at the game of life” in this terrific guide.

This week, the microscope, gift of a generous benefactor, enjoyed its first exercise in its new home. So much to observe! We keep the following two books close to the ’scope:
The World of the Microscope: A Practical Introduction with Projects and Activities (Usborne Science & Experiments)
Exploring with the Microscope: A Book of Discovery & Learning (Werner Nachtigall)

And for those wondering about the ’scope: It's an LW Scientific Observer Series. Wonderful stuff.

The young M-mvs have been reading more than Mr. and Mrs. M-mv, for sure. But we’re slowing recovering our book time. Mr. M-mv, still at sea, was recently presented with The World of Jack Aubrey (David Miller). He says he must study for another certification exam, but this book, subtitled Twelve-pounders, Frigates, Cutlasses, and Insignia of His Majesty’s Royal Navy, provides a delightful respite from his study tomes, none of which, apparently, are worth listing here.

Two lightweight books are keeping me company during the early part of this week: The Bitch in the House (ed. Cathi Hanauer) and Consuming Kids: The Hostile Takeover of Childhood (Susan Linn). (An aside to M., an original and (virtual) card-carrying member of M-mv’s “best and perfect” audience: This book was in my knapsack during a run to Target yesterday. I still ended up with two “Target exclusive” Little Ponies in my cart. What is it about those dumb horses, huh?) For the few who know me a little better than most, you know I’m partial to a little salty talk. It will amuse you to know that something about our current pastoral surroundings caused me to whisper the title of the Hanauer book when requesting it at the information desk at the bookstore which must not be named. (Yeah. We saw The Village this weekend. For the record, about a month ago, I shared with Aunt M-mv that Master M-mv and I were betting that the Shyamalan twist would be akin to that in Margaret Peterson Haddix’s book, Running Out of Time. Heh, heh, heh. Have you read that Haddix and her publisher may take legal action against Shyamalan?)

Speaking of Master M-mv, his literary choices this week are A Separate Peace (John Knowles), Congo (Michael Crichton), Roosevelt’s Secret War (Joseph E. Persico), and The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers (Christopher Volger).

The youngest M-mvs recommend When the Circus Came to Town (Laurence Yep), Stories for Eight Year Olds (Edward and Nancy Blishen), and Chasing Vermeer (Blue Balliet). I thought the latter, which is set in Chicago, would rouse some homesickness in them, but, no. They are madly in love with their new digs. Kids! Who knew?

As always, there are more books, but I am still dialing up, and, lately, well, the birds and insects have been far more compelling than the internet. Let me leave you, as I did last month, with this reminder from an old favorite of mine (yes, a few of us discovered How to Read a Book years, decades before someone told us we should read it):

The mind can atrophy, like the muscles, if it is not used. Atrophy of the mental musceles is the penalty we pay for not taking mental exercise. And this is a terrible penalty, for there is evidence that atrophy of the mind is a mortal disease.

_________________________________
Previous "On the nightstand" entries:
7.19.2004
6.12.2004
5.19.2004
4.22.2004
3.12.2004
2.15.2004
1.26.2004
12.31.2003

Brief blogging respite

Yes, we just took a long one, but

1. we're still on dial-up; the outside gadgetry has been arranged (Yay!), but the rest of the "stuff" has not yet arrived; and,

2. far more importantly, Aunt M-mv is coming! Aunt M-mv is coming!

We have pulled together the source material for our next "On the nightstand" entry, so we'll see you Tuesday or Wednesday next with the list of books that have recently (re)shaped the geography of the family M-mv's imagination.

About us

Welcome!
For those of you who are new to this enterprise, welcome! Among other things, we at "Mental multivitamin" (M-mv) believe that fogged memory and slowed wit are not the inevitable consequences of , say, becoming a parent and/or growing old(er). Exercise your brain — read, play River Crossing, solve the New York Times crossword puzzle, learn Latin.

And take "Mental multivitamin," of course.

The recommended daily allowance
M-mv often includes "The recommended daily allowance," which features descriptions, quotes, and synopses from books (and occasionally films, cds, software, and artwork) that can have the same effect on gray matter as juicing can have on the rest of a getting-older-and-wiser body. If a title tantalizes you, dear reader, thinker, autodidact, click on the link.

On the nightstand
Once a month, we also cobble together "On the nightstand (under the pillow, in the knapsack, etc.)," a snapshot of the books that have recently become a part of the geography of our imaginations. You can find those entries at the links below. Our next installment of this feature will run in August.

Previous "On the nightstand" entries:
7.19.2004
6.12.2004
5.19.2004
4.22.2004
3.12.2004
2.15.2004
1.26.2004
12.31.2003

Write to us
We appreciate your comments, questions, and recommendations, so direct your (civilized) remarks and inquiries to the folks at "Mental multivitamin" by clicking here.

Shameless self-promotion
Finally, if a purchase that can be made at Amazon.com is in your future, please use one of the links here at "Mental multivitamin" (like this one!). No, we're not in this for the money, but it certainly is helpful.

Many thanks, readers, thinkers, autodidacts, and visitors.

The cable guy

No DSL yet, but we have cable.

We were slack-jawed to the point of nearly drooling with... what? awe? amazement? dumb Pavlovian response? when the cable technicians advised us that while we may have arranged for basic service, we’d have premium service until someone came out to fiddle with something in a box high atop a pole further down the lane.

“So, do I pay for that?” I inquire.

“Heck, no! That’s [insert cable provider name here]’s problem.”

“So,” I say, growing more distracted by the twenty-six, thirty-nine, fifty-three, seventy-two (!!) channels the television’s heretofore unused program is efficiently scanning and registering, “how long will” — I gesture at the crazily flickering Great American campfire right in my own living room/library — “this be available?”

“Well, now, could be ’til tonight. Could be ’til next week. Heck, it could be ’til sometime next year.” At this, he and his apprentice begin chuckling madly.

“Would you guys like another glass of water? Or some juice?” I offer, contemplating the angel-demon whose light and shadows are playing across my bookcases and rugs. “How ’bout some Mountain Dew?” They each accept a Dew.

“Now this is hospitality,” says the apprentice. “Wow, ain’t no one offering nothin’ any place else! Sh-, I mean, erm, great. Thanks! Bye now, missus.”

“Sign here,” says the older cable technician. Then, “You all take care.”

And away they drive.

I return to the living room/library, where the three young M-mvs are still standing, mesmerized by the display of color and sound.

Enough. Of. This.

Zzzith.

The television winks out.

We all look at each other and breath as a chorus, “Wow.”

Without another word, we slip into our sandals and pad outside.

Wow.

In a message entitled "That quiet corner"...

R.S., who recently discovered "Mental multivitamin," writes:

You know that feeling when you unwittingly enter a store front? You find it dark, quiet, and smelling deliciously of leather? You venture further in, filled with thrilling anticipation. It's as good as it should be, filled to the ceiling with beautiful shelf after shelf of beloved volumes... then you see the wise old man, be-speckled and deep into a chapter of his own. You find that quiet corner and the smile stretches from your toes to your eyelashes. That's how finding this page felt. I should have known by the mullioned windows (looking for the quote from The Hours about the ["suffocating anesthetic of the suburbs"], I unwittingly entered your store front) it would be that good inside. Thank you. It's good and rare to find such a "store."

What sweet praise. Thank you, R.S. We're glad you found us. Many happy returns.

No consternation (and no DSL)... yet.

Yesterday I noted, "Our urban flight will elicit messages of consternation, concern, and, of course, congratulations." Well, let me share some of the delightful email we've received since confessing that we're a little bit country.

R.T., who noted that she "is also a bit disappointed I won't be able to look you up on our next trip to Chicago. Drat!" writes:

Can you hear the echo off the big buildings?

Congratulations on your new habitat, or should I say, Good luck! Is this job-related or Thoreau-inspired?

I am looking forward to hearing more about your rural experiences once DSL makes its way to wherever you are. I've always wondered if anyone could convince me the country life is for me. My Grandparents, both sets, lived on farms and we grew up visiting them a few times each year. Loved the old porch swing, the starry skies and freedom to run. I think that's it. Oh yeah. The Grandmas made great pies and homemade bread, but those skills were never transferred to me.

At this point, I think you have simply substituted one form of grime for another and left behind the little luxuries and amenities that I enjoy at my ripe old age, but I could be wrong. Undoubtedly kids will love it. I known mine are always asking to live with friends who have done the back to nature thing in order to grow their own food, milk a cow or a goat, have fresh eggs and give up air conditioning and a second car. So far, it only seems like my idea of hell. But I am obviously not the outdoor adventure-type and like critters of all kinds only from a safe distance.

Ahh, but I AM an old-fogey. I'd be interested in having my mind opened. If anyone could convince me, city-gal, you probably could.

Well, R.T., I don't think I'll be peddling the country life the way I pitched Chicago and all of its charms. While I still haven't felt any regret about our decision to, yes, listen to the children and head to a place in which they could run and play and build forts, I do feel a great sense of loss. Adopting Chicago as my hometown became an important part of my, for lack of a better word, identity for the last dozen or so years. Leaving it feels not wrong so much as disorienting and a little sad.

We have central heat and air, believe it or not, and, so far, the littlest M-mvs have been adept at keeping the outdoors outside, so I haven't contended with any increased housekeeping duties. As for pies, well, I think the grocer carries some frozen apple pie with crumb topping. That'll do.

I'll keep you posted as this adventure unfolds. As always, thank you for writing.

J., who asserts that she is "a regular reader of Mental-multivitamin, if not 'best and perfect'!" writes:

I did wonder from your cryptic comments if you were contemplating a move out of the city and now I see it is a fait accompli. Well, congratulations. And may I add, I'm glad you're testing out the non-urban waters to provide vision for what my own life could be in the next year or two. Your Chicago posts have inspired and delighted me and given me ideas for how to better use St. Louis as our classroom. We love the city here. But, we, too, may be heading for the outer-burbs of (*gulp*) Texas in another year, and losing our classroom is my greatest regret. So, I'll look to you for great ideas for this FCLP in the way-out places, too!

Hope you get you DSL and "Law & Order" back soon (at least before the new seasons start up).

Good news! Basic cable will be installed tomorrow. Evening news, "Law & Order," and the Discovery Channel. That'll do.

Thank you for your note, J. You're best and perfect to us.

D. writes, in part:

You have my sincere condolences on the dial-up. We have been without our beloved DSL for nine long, seemingly interminable months. Had we found a place just across the street — the one directly outside our window — we would have DSL, but unfortunately our choice of lodging has placed us in the technological boondocks. I tell myself that this, too, shall pass.

I truly hope you enjoy your new surroundings. We lived in just such a place for a brief time, and were so very happy there. (If it helps, while the house we had is, to this day, "old mr-previous-owner's place", we did eventually get a nod or two in acknowledgment that "old mr-previous-owner" was no longer in residence, and at some point the locals did quit making us feel like squatters in our own home!) It is a wonderful thing to know your grocer and postmaster (or postmistress). Astral events are absolutely phenomenal from the country views. Quiet time on the porch (painted or not) in the evenings with a hot cup of tea and a good book are just delicious. We now live here simply because we must, for the time being, but our hearts sigh for the country life once again. Your children will have new textures and points of reference to enjoy. They'll have the added benefit of knowing two different realms and being able to sample or draw from the best of each.

This bit of encouragement and cheer at your new abode (bookstore in the kitchen and all) doesn't come because I think you may not have thought of those things, but because your enthusiasm for all things urban helped me embrace our move here. We are thoroughly enjoying the museums and shows, the bookstores and festivities that are within our reach for however long we are here. Without your insight (however unknowingly provided), I'd have taken three looks around and decided the lack of decent restaurants, ticks, humidity, crime, noise, and other amenities to be found in Maryland were simply not worth the employment to entice us to stay. Now, however, we view this as a well-funded extended vacation and a wonderful addition to our learning adventure. Thanks.

No, thank you, D., for the note and the validation. (The library is dreadful, by the way, but, apparently, I need only register our new cards with the Chicago Public Library system during our next visit, and we will continue to enjoy borrowing privileges and other patron services.) To be clear, by the way, the books are not actually in the kitchen (which has a brilliant white tile floor — why would anyone do that?). The repairman was en route to the kitchen and came to a full-stop in the library/living room. Given that it we may own more books than the local library, I guess I can understand his confusion. (*wry grin*) Best regards.

D.W., another member of the best and perfect audience, sends this note:

Welcome to the starry night skies and nosey shopkeepers. And the grasshoppers and other nature center worthy finds. Welcome home. I hope it is a great place for you to continue your family-centered learning project.

Our location is just about 30 minutes from Sacramento, where we are museum members, but I often wish that we had lived there BEFORE we moved here. It would be so fun to actually know the great spots, to recognize familiar sites, and to not have to wonder who serves a decent burrito whenever we come to town. But, we have begun to explore more in the last year, and we enjoy our jaunts to The Big Town (as my children used to call it when we would pick someone up at the train station.)

I have always nodded emphatically when reading your comments on living in suburbia. The multi-options of beige homes just weigh me down, and the "standing in my designer bathroom looking into your designer bathroom" has never been my idea of personal space. Now, granted, we do have a neighbor that I would trade for just about anyone driving down the road (and I know that is not a nice thing to say.) I don't appreciate someone that pushes on boundaries, then leans, then pushes again. He would love to sit and chat all day, but he also tells friends that kick up dust that he'll park his car in the way to stop them from driving so d*m# fast on his road. I LOVE my fence, that is for sure. But, even with neighbors that make me wince, I LOVE living here on the country side of town. We are eight minutes from a decent market, we have a great little bakery/cafe where I can sip a cup of french roast and read, and my children have tree forts, bunkers in the woods, a play house (PLEASE don't imagine anything that would ever grace a Pottery Barn Kids catalog — this is a C. creation... not some grown-up version of a play house) and s-p-a-c-e for the moments when siblings, or one's own self, make life feel crowded. They can sit on the fence, watch for hawks with their binocs., or just swing on the swing and watch the light on the trees. I like that they can play outside without someone assuming that they are "public property." I would never have chosen this life, but only because I didn't know that it existed. I would take this, or a little flat in downtown Sac, over the "villages" down the hill that tell you what and when to paint, and how many balls can be resting on your mandatory lawn each evening.

So many questions are now answered. I have been wanting to write and ask about basements in city apartments? Why the internet problems? What could possibly cause you to lose so much sleep? And to request that you brag some more about your always interesting son. What an amazing few weeks you have had.

I just wish I could meet you at the local cafe and hear the story of your move, and how you made such a monumental decision. It sounds like a GREAT story. Hmmmm... maybe I will just to wait and read it somewhere. When it sells, be sure and tell me where to look.

So, welcome home. I look forward to a new M-mv flavor, sans Duke of Hazzard reruns (oh, that made me laugh.) Us country folk can use big words like autodidact, don't you worry none about that.

...

Warm, country wishes (and condolences on losing the proximity to Trader Joe's. Wish I could ship you some French Roast to show my gratitude to you... it is the best!) Reassure Mr. M'mv: You still have "cred" with me.

As always, thanks for getting us, D.W. A real note will follow soon after the DSL folks come to their senses.

Many thanks to everyone who sent notes. (Note to M.: By Thursday, we should have another installment of "On the nightstand." Here's hoping.)

Confessions of a country autodidact

When M., an original and card-carrying member of M-mv’s best and perfect audience, wrote to inquire about my health and well-being, I realized I had been too oblique for my own autodidactic good. (An aside: Yes, W.R. We did notice how many other blogging folk had adopted "autodidact" as their new favorite word. Little is lost on us; we simply refrained from remarking on this particular nugget until one of our regular readers provided an introduction. Heh, heh, heh.)

Anyway...

Obviously, simply sprinkling hints hasn't worked well... or well enough, anyway. For example, chipmunks, which I mentioned a couple of days ago, are decidedly country creatures, whereas squirrels and their not-so-distant relatives, rats (and, it can be argued, pigeons) are clearly city creatures. Get it? And that bit on 7.29.2004 was from Aesop’s fable "The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse." Are you there yet?

If not, we at M-mv will state the (apparently) not-so-obvious: We’re not in Chicago anymore, readers, thinkers, autodidacts, and their little dogs, Toto, too. Nope. For most of the last two weeks, we’ve been lulled to sleep by exquisite night-sky views unblemished by city-light pollution and roused from slumber by the euphony of beautiful birds at our feeder and the chorus of frisky chipmunks.

First impressions?

It smells good in the country. Every day. So far, anyway.

No one drives down a dead-end lane playing rap music at ear-splitting volume. Nope. No bling-bling to make my ears ring-ring.

Basements are sort of scary in a Blair Witch Project sort of way. But they’re cool, too.

The bit of country on which this funny little house sits looks an awful lot like a snapshot of the nature center, only we’re allowed to take home our discoveries. How cool is that?

Grasshopper feet can tickle your ears.



Rabbit ears work just fine in Chicago. Evening news. "Law & Order." Fine. But out here, in a land far, far away? Fuzz. Just fuzz. In fact, the littlest M-mvs were transfixed Poltergeist-style. “So we won’t be watching 'Arthur,' huh?” Um, no. Move away from the screen.

One can get basic cable for $12.99 a month, if the piece o’ country on which one squats is more “town” than “boondocks.” The cable provider is still discussing our designation. Let’s hope a decision is reached before the season premieres of the Law & Order machine, eh?

It costs a good piece of change to have your garbage hauled away in the country. Who-eee!

On the other hand, our auto insurance went waaaay down. Who-eee!

What do we miss about our adopted city, arguably the greatest place on Earth?

Trader Joe’s. It could be a century before Joe hauls his French roast all the way out here. I bought eight cans before we packed the U-Haul (for the fourth time — who knew that we had accumulated so many more books over the past two years?). That ought to hold me until next week.

Proximity to our classroom — the Field, the Art Institute, the Shedd, MSI, the Harold Washington Library Center, the nature center, et al. That said, we’re renewing all of our memberships, and we’ve ordered subscriptions to Chicago Shakespeare Theater's new season. We’ve gone, but we haven’t forgotten. And we never will.

The anonymity. In Chicago, we could — and did — lose ourselves in the crowds and pace. Here, you enter the post office, and the clerk inquires, “So. You’re at the old [insert surname here] place, huh? Ya’ paint that porch yet?” You visit the hardware store to buy some carbon monoxide detectors, and the manager asserts, “Ol’ man [insert surname here] put some-ah these in three years ago. Somepin’ wrong with ‘em already?” You show the appliance repairman into the kitchen, but he falters mid-trek, jerking his thumb at your bookcases and asks, “You got a permit to run a used bookshop outta here? Mr. [insert damned surname here] never registered this place as commercial or nothing. You planning on doing that?” And you lead the computer guy to the workstations and he simply shakes his head when you ask, “How much longer before the DSL is up and running ‘cause the previous owner was never wired for internet, was he?”

We’ve long asserted that we’d choose a Jewel cart parked beneath an underpass before we’d live in the suffocating anesthetic of the suburbs. We stand by that assertion. This place, however, this funny old house in which we’ve arranged our books, binoculars, microscope, computers, rock tumbler, pets, beds, etc. is, for now, anyway, just beyond the reach of the people who favor manicured lawns, Mommy & Me classes, and malls, so no need to make a shopping cart reservation for us just yet.

And for the record, no one was more surprised than we were by the realization that we needed more space and time, less noise and grime.

Our urban flight will elicit messages of consternation, concern, and, of course, congratulations. Admittedly, it’s the consternation that has us a bit worried. As Mr. M-mv said, “We’re going to lose some of our ‘street cred’ now that we’ve left Chicago.” Among some readers, yeah, I guess. Others will get it, though, as they always have. In any event, if we’re still dialing into the virtual world, we won’t be able to reply to every message. Here’s hoping the computer guy can link Ol’ Man [insert surname here]’s place to that DSL that we know and love.

Stay with us, readers, thinkers, and autodidacts. It’s not as if we’re going to push "Dukes of Hazzard" reruns in our RDAs or anything.

Honest.

Argh!

Still struggling to make do with dial-up. Yeah, I know, I know. Earlier this week, I basically said that the internet was nice but unnecessary. Okay. But I want to check my email, blog a bit, and check on the status of an Amazon order. Ordinarily, a three- to seven-minute virtual spin around the neighborhood. But not when you're going, oh, two miles an hour!

[*insert pained expression here*]

I am the steering-wheel-thumping local stuck behind the two retired Bennies stopping and starting their way through Belmar, searching for beach-access parking on a Sunday in August (when, as any local knows, all of the spots were taken by 8:30 a.m.).

Igits.

Oh, well. By the time I arrived at Blogger, I was exhausted by frustration and out of time, so here's a teaser and a link. From "Sick of nature" (Boston Globe):

I am sick of nature. Sick of trees, sick of birds, sick of the ocean. It's been almost four years now, four years of sitting quietly in my study and sipping tea and contemplating the migratory patterns of the semipalmated plover. Four years of writing essays praised as "quiet" by quiet magazines. Four years of having neighborhood children ask their fathers why the man down the street comes to the post office dressed in his pajamas ("Doesn't he work, Daddy?") or having those same fathers wonder why, when the man actually does dress, he dons the eccentric costume of an English bird watcher, complete with binoculars. And finally, four years of being constrained by the gentle straightjacket of the nature-writing genre; that is, four years of writing about the world without being able to use the earthier names for excrement (while talking a lot of scat).

Dial-up or, What I learned over the last two weeks

1. The internet is helpful and fun, but its loss can be shrugged off in the time it takes to consume a small pack of plain M&Ms and a sixteen-ounce Mountain Dew.

2. Books, on the other hand... well, without them, I was weak by day two, bereft by day five, numb by this morning. Today was the first day in two weeks that I could have scored more than three consecutive hours of sleep, but I dragged my weary, pajama'ed bottom to the rocker at 6:01 a.m. and read. Brewed some coffee and read some more. Showered and listened to my news-talk station. Read some more. Yeah. Feeling better. Much better.

3. Chipmunks are not pests, apparently, but squirrels are.

4. Female cardinals are far braver than male cardinals.

5. My son is now, officially, more man than boy. His father and I could not be any prouder of his efforts over the last two weeks. End parental boast.

6. Women detect the odor of natural gas before men do. (I came by this bit of trivia from the gas company representative who waved his magic wand [insert crazy-rapid BEEP-BEEP-BEEPing here] and assured me that, no, I wasn't crazy. Never mind that combined the leaks wouldn't have lit a pilot, let alone caused us harm. I knew I smelled something. Ha!

7. IKEA is a grueling but satisfactory shopping experience. (Speaking of shopping, check out this article. This sentence alone ensures that it's worth the click: "No level of consumption ever suffices, because the social competition is constant." Ayup.)

8. I have crossed some tick mark on the timeline of my life that renders me old enough to be the plumber's mother. This realization has brought many women to their knees... or at least to their mirrors. Not I. Ask Aunt M-mv. It just made me wonder aloud that only last summer (or was it the summer before?) I learned to ride my blue bicycle on a dead-end street named for a president. How could I now be old enough to have parented the young man banging his tool box and ladder down my basement stairs?

9. "Mental multivitamin" has a loyal readership. Many thanks for all of the messages and for the business at Amazon.com. It bears repeating: We didn't begin this project for the money, but it has certainly made it easier to keep going on the rough days.

10. For me, the byline is the most satisfactory aspect of the writing life. Being paid, though, has its own charms, which is why one sometimes sacrifices the byline (as in, for example, marketing and PR gigs and the like). Getting a byline and being paid twice the amount you had thought you would be paid? Next to impossible to get a satisfaction meter reading on that, eh? Heh, heh, heh. Yeah. I'm in writer's heaven.

11. It may be less about where and more about how. I'm still working it out, though. Yeah, that's a little cryptic, even for me, but more some other time.

12. DSL is worth every penny because dial-up is painfully slow. Which brings us back to the beginning, no?

Thanks for sticking with us through the break.

Butt naked

We popped in for just a moment to share this bit of obscurity.

I'm tired beyond measure, and when that happens, the first thing to go is my good attitude. The next? My speech. Slurry. Sloppy. Incomplete. A mess.

So today I'm chatting with Aunt M-mv when the expression "buck naked" is called for, only I insert "butt naked," which worked in the context of the conversation, but, well, is wrong. I thought. (This little confession reminds me that in my much younger days, I was quite certain "nip it in the bud" was "nip it in the butt." Heh, heh, heh.)

Anyway, the Mavens actually tackled "buck naked." This part made me wonder if "butt naked" was really such an error, after all:

Buck naked, slang for 'completely naked' came on the scene in the late 1920's, and the qualified buck-ass naked a bit later. It's one of those terms which is most often accompanied by the irritating phrase "of obscure orig." or "origin unk." Given the preceding array of choices, one might hazard (as only one of my sources did) that the buck in buck naked refers to the color of buckskin, along the lines of "buff," as in "in the buff." But, while we're conjecturing, I might propose another possible etymology. Around the same time that buck naked was making its debut, so was another slang term, bucket, for 'buttocks, rump.' Shorten bucket to buck, and you've got a term for 'ass-naked,' which makes sense in a very, erm, transparent way.

So I Googled and found this:

It is quite possible that butt naked is the earlier form. As a phrase, it not only makes literal sense but we see clear parallels to the English phrases bare-arse naked and bollock naked. A plausible explanation of the buck in buck naked is that it originated as a polite avoidance of butt. The etymologists at The American Heritage Dictionary think that might be the case. Michael Quinion, on the other hand, seems to think buck naked derives from buckskin, but he only mentions this in passing during a discussion of the word buff. Buff, when referring to nakedness, as in in the buff, comes from the similarity of the color of tanned buffalo hide to human skin. The definition of buffalo in this instance is a discussion better left for another day.

You know what? I'll take a good discussion of the etymology of (misused) phrases or obscure words over a boring "Listen to what I did today" blah-blah-blahg any day.

But that's just one autodidact's opinion.