For some reason, out of all
the unread books in my exponentially increasing library,
I settled on Boswell's Journal of a Tour to the
Hebrides as the next in the queue. Anything about
Scotland by a man who knew both Voltaire and Adam Smith
-- you thought I was going to say Johnson didn't you --
has got to be worthwhile. I'm reading it very slowly;
been at it for about 3 weeks now. It's not the weird 18th
century spelling or the long sentences with too many
semicolons so much as the absurdity that's slowing me
down. I love absurdity. I have to savor every bizarre
breakfast table conversation that Boswell and Johnson
have with every laird of every tiny spot on the map of
the Hebrides. Next time I do a travel journal it'll have
to have witty breakfast repartee about theology,
emigration, antiquities, obscure books, and cold sheep's
heads.
Boswell and Johnson have almost
edged Franklin Pierce out of my head, but when presented
with another excuse to mention Franklin Pierce in this
journal, I've got to take it. Christmas is the perfect
opportunity for a Franklin Pierce digression. You do know
that Franklin Pierce was the first
president to have a Christmas tree in the White
House don't you? I can just
picture those little mini-dogs that Commodore Perry
brought him from Japan cavorting around the White House
Christmas tree. Actually he gave one of the mini-dogs to
Jefferson Davis. Not sure of the political significance
of that. Don't know if Perry brought more mini-dogs than
the two he gave to Pierce. It could be that all mini-dogs
in Newport came from Japan on the Black Ships. All things
relate to Rhode Island... but you knew that already. And
of course, Pierce being from New Hampshire and all
there's the obvious Merrimack River connection. Now if I
could just find a connection to Moby Dick I'd be all set.
Speaking of
Franklin Pierce, Tom, that
extraordinary portrayer of local historical characters,
put together a poet/performance piece for the second
meeting of our Thoreau/Emerson book group. He took
sentences -- sound bites really -- from each of the 50
letters in Thoreau's Letters to a Spiritual Seeker
and wove them together into a meditation, which he read
to Ned and me in front of the fireplace. Having Tom read
to you is one of life's great pleasures, right up there
with baseball on the radio, and we were suitably blown
away. We had him choose some poems from Emerson's
Complete Poems and read those to us too. We never
got around to the Divinity School address. That'll have
to wait until next time, which will be either before or
after Ned goes to Brazil to find himself. Not sure Tom
will be back from visiting the Fabulously Successful Eric
and the rest of the clan on the left coast before this
momentous trip takes place. Maybe we should commission
the Fabulously
Successful Eric to write a
screenplay about this and direct it. Do I mean the book
club or Brazil? I'm not sure. Maybe if all three of us
went to Brazil to look for Ned we'd have a better chance
of finding him. Eric as Boswell to us as Johnson... come
to think of it, if Boswell were following Johnson around
in the 21st century he'd either be making a documentary
or posting a blog.
When I was telling Ned about
birding on the East Bay Bike Path with Nancy and saying
that I felt almost guilty when the second wigeon I laid
eyes on was a male Eurasian wigeon, like I didn't deserve
to see it because I didn't have to search through 250
American wigeons one at a time to find it, he said that
sounded incredibly Calvinist. Calvinism in birding, now
there's a thesis topic for somebody out there in grad
school land. I did not, however, feel undeserving of the
two short-eared owls I saw at Salisbury Beach a week
later because I'd made multiple unsuccessful owl-seeking
trips before that. Maybe that is Calvinist. Or
Puritanical. We talk about strange things in that book
group. This ain't La Madre's book group.
Also on the East Bay Bike Path
trip, I saw a pied billed grebe. I've never seen a pied
billed grebe in Providence Harbor before. They're usually
in fresh water. It was hanging around in a small inlet
between some rocks and the Squantum Club. There wasn't
anything particularly Calvinist about that sighting. A
rabbit hopped across the path in front of me shortly
after the pied billed grebe sighting. Didn't mention that
in the book group.
And suddenly it's the day after
the day after Christmas and there's over a foot of
snow on the ground and it's cold cold cold... At least
the nor'easter waited
until the day after Christmas this
time. Driving back up from
Providence yesterday I watched an SUV go off I-495 from
the middle lane right in front of me. And the snow hadn't
even gotten really bad yet. It was that "freeze on
contact" thing. Not good. Once I got home I stayed put
until this morning when I dug the car out and moved it
out of the parking lot before the crazy lady even made it
out her back door. I'm so proud of myself.
It was a quiet post-Christmas
evening of reading Boswell, listening to Ned talk about
going to Brazil, and biting the heads off of gingerbread
men while pretending they were Donald Rumsfeld or Sean
O'Malley alternately. I had this brilliant insight that
Bishop Sean needs Rumsfeld's political advisors. Visiting
the troops in Iraq for Christmas was a brilliant (if
possibly a little calculated) strategy for Rumsfeld to
soothe ruffled feathers and increase his standing in the
eyes of the boots on the ground. Can't say the same for
Bishop Sean with his sudden decision to pit two parishes
against each other in what the local press is calling
"Catholic Survivor" during Christmas week of all times. I
hope I can be forgiven for thinking that Bishop Sean is
doing far more to tear apart the fabric of society with
his clumsy "survivor" strategy of parish closing than all
the gay marriages in Massachusetts combined could ever do
(if in fact you believe that gay marriage is tearing
apart the fabric of community, which I don't but Bishop
Sean does). Not only has the parish closing strategy got
the faithful and their pastors sniping at each other in
the press, which is bad enough for community, but there
are also secondary effects -- or the law of unintended
consequences. Not only is it displacing Catholic worship
but it's also displacing things like food pantries and AA
meetings and all that community stuff we count on
churches for. A friend told me a story of going to a
church where he'd gone to a meeting a couple of weeks
before only to find the church boarded up and no sign of
where the meeting had moved to. Oh, now I'm getting all
worked up again and there are no more gingerbread men
left to take it out on. I ate them all last
night.
Oh, Christmas at La Madre's was
fun. Three people including me got the Stephen
King/Stewart O'Nan book about the 2004 Red Sox season
just like in households throughout Red Sox
Nation.
