MIKE EATS CROW (Several Off-Topic Updates and Commentaries)

An undated picture of Katharine White. Photographer unknown.

Mess and sludge: It's fantastic to be back to normal. After a couple of weeks of sleeping well again, I'm feeling hugely better. My heart issues, which I guess were pretty serious, or potentially so, have all but gone away. I'm sleeping through the night most nights, and I've bounced back amazingly: normal energy is something you don't know you've lost until you get it back. Over the months (years?) that I was being affected by these issues, I was chronically sleep- and oxygen-deprived, which made me run-down and lethargic, and it was affecting everything in my life. I not only feel much better suddenly, I even look healthier in the mirror. Day by day, I'm back to chipping away at the mess and sludge created by neglect when I was "down." It's going to take me a while to get everything set right again, but I'm on the way and making progress.

Dropping in on a whim: The great open secret of all spiritual programs and systems that is that trying to help someone other than ourselves is actually a sure path to our own happiness. It's always been right there out in the open, but it always has also been, and  still is, widely ignored—so strenously ignored it seems like the advice itself must be invisible. As a friend put it once, "I'm really not all that important, but I think about myself all day long." In this time when we're seeing untreated narcissism all around us, when bad actors of every sort are elbowing themselves forward through the crowd to claim undeserved attention and unearned reward, the more moral path is simply to turn our focus away from ourselves and offer it gently to others. Anyway I've been looking for a way to contribute to my local community; and yesterday I signed up to be a literacy volunteer. I don't know what I'm getting myself into. I guess we'll see.

It all happened sidewise: I got an email outlining the stern penalties that would result if I didn't get my car inspected; so I took the car to get inspected; and the inspection station told me my tires would not pass; so I took the car in to have the snow tires put on, because they're newer. Not that we're getting any snow. Anyway, I had an hour and a half to kill, and Literacy Volunteers of Ontario and Yates (local county names) was four or five doors down from the tire shop. I dropped in on a whim, and talked away the whole hour and a half with a guy my age named Phil, who lost three fingers in a lawnmower accident when he was three. He lives in this area with his wife because they find that "people take care of each other here." Before I knew it I had volunteered. By such small sideways steps do our lives follow their winding paths.

Serendipity: I meant to go to a local restaurant alone the other day and found I had left my phone at home, which meant I would have nothing to read as I ate. There is a rather mysterious organization across the street that gives away bread, and I think clothes too, and I had a vague idea that they sometimes put used books out on the sidewalk that you can take for free. So I went in, and they indeed had two bookshelves full of books to give away. One was Onward and Upward in the Garden by Katharine S. White. It collects twenty articles Katharine wrote about gardening for The New Yorker. Gardening as a topic is foreign to me—I can't keep a plant alive when I try—but, as I well knew, Katharine Sergeant Angell White was the legendary Fiction Editor of The New Yorker from 1925 to 1960, about whom William Shawn said, "More than any other editor except [founding Editor-in-Chief] Harold Ross himself, Katharine White gave The New Yorker its shape, and set it on its course." She was married to E.B. ("Andy") White, the author of Stuart Little and Charlotte's Web, who is one of my writer-heroes. I figured the book would have an introduction by Andy White. And sure enough.

I can't resist sharing a sample:

Writing, for her, was an agonizing ordeal. Writing is hard work for almost everyone: for Katharine it was particularly hard, because she was by temperament and profession an editor, not a writer. (The exception was when she wrote letters. Her letters—to friends, relatives, contributors—flowed naturally from her in a clear and steady stream, a warm current of affection, concern, and eagerness to get through to the mind of the recipient. Letters were easy. How I envied her!) But when she sat down to compose a magazine piece on gardening, faced with all the strictures and disciplines of formal composition and suffering the uneasiness that goes with critical expression in the public print—this was something else again. Gone was the clear and steady stream. Katharine's act of composition often achieved the turbulence of a shoot-out. The editor in her fought the writer every inch of the way; the struggle was felt all through the house. She would write eight or ten words, then draw her gun and shoot them down. This made for slow and torturous going. It was simple warfare—the editor ready to nip the writer before she committed all the sins and errors the editor clearly foresaw. Occasionally, I ribbed her about the pain she inflicted on herself. "Just go ahead and write," I said. "Edit it afterwards—there's plenty of time." My advice never had an effect on her; she fought herself with vigor and conviction from the first sentence to the last, drawing blood the whole way.

A tiny nugget of gold, of the sort which often pass by when reading E.B. White. The woman in the storefront said of the book, "that one has been here quite a long time." The book was free, so I donated five dollars to their cause.

Readings: As long as we are so far off topic, here are a few more essays I've come across recently. If you like movies, Molly Ringwald wrote a personal history called "Shooting Shakespeare with Jean-Luc Godard" that is vivid and charming. And if you've ever had an intimate but non-romantic relationship with someone of the sex you're attracted to at your workplace, you'll enjoy "The Bizarre Relationship of a 'Work-Wife' and a 'Work-Husband'" by Stephanie H. Murray. The former from The New Yorker, the latter from The Atlantic.

Eating crow: According to Wikipedia, "eating crow" means being humiliated by being proven wrong after having taken a strong position. Evidently crows don't make good eating, something rural Americans of a century and a half ago might have known firsthand but that we don't know any more, in the same way most of us don't know which plants in the local forest are edible. Supposedly the idiom "eating crow" comes from an 1850 short story, but I haven't been able to find the story. On the matter of compression socks—there's the alternative term I didn't know—I could not have been more wrong. I bought some Wellow socks at the suggestion of James Weekes. And they're great. They've already solved or helped with several long-term problems. Swelling, varicose veins, and my persistent problem with cold feet have all gotten markedly better in just this short amount of time. Plus, they're very comfortable. My only problem with compression socks now is that I didn't try them years ago.

Very little could be further from the topic of photography than this, but, still, I'm glad when I bring these subjects up: I always learn things I profit from. I hope you do, too.

Cheers,

Mike

Original contents copyright 2023 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

Terry Letton: "The story about Katherine’s writing reminded me of my own struggles with writing. In my day it seems like English teachers were not interested in teaching us a useful skill like writing but imparting some supposedly god-given rules about alphabet manipulation. Of course thes 'rules' are nothing but social conventions subject to arbitrary change as society changes. I finally learned to write when I realized that writing is simply talking with a pencil. Clarity of thought is what’s important, not obscure parts of speech."

Comments

[KeithB]

You could have brought it back to topic by taking a picture of your socks.

[John Krumm]

Wonderful post. Your social excursions remind me of the great interview I heard today with Sheila Liming, The Revolution Will Not Be Scheduled. She talks about the radical value and lost art of hanging out with others.

https://thisishell.com/interviews/1555-sheila-liming

[Kirk W]

Thanks for sharing Andy White’s description of Katherine’s painful writing process. I feel much of the same agony when writing for my work, while a letter (or email/text in the current world) to a friend or relative flows so much more freely. I think it’s due to the intimate knowledge of the audience when writing to an individual I know compared to a much broader audience when writing for work or even commenting here. You and the TOP commentariat set a very high bar!

[Peter Komar]

Mike, so glad to hear your health is improving/ improved and yes I’m sure your friends, relatives, and faithful followers of your wonderful site are genuinely happy. Your talent with writing and story telling will make your volunteer activity easy and hopefully rewarding. I visit your site every morning as part of my daily routine, regardless of topic. Keep us all informed, enlightened, amused, educated as long as you can and are willing.
Best Regards.

[Moose]

Congrats, celebratory noises and thanks for your improved health!

"The great open secret of all spiritual programs and systems that is that trying to help someone other than ourselves is actually a sure path to our own happiness."

There are significant belief systems that disagree. They posit that effective help of other first requires helping ourselves.

Some go further, believing that efforts to cure ourselves by curing others tend to actually harm our targets; these failures then reflect back to keep us unhappy.

Way too brief, incomplete, needs a book or three, mentioned only because I disagree with an overly broad, and thus inaccurate, generality. I was actually sort of shocked when I read it.

"It's always been right there out in the open"

I tend to think of the teachings, books, lectures workshops of Pema Chodron, as one example, as out there in the open. You may not. Not my favorite, but, I think, out in the open.

[Patrick Perez]

I'm surprised you didn't mention Andy aka E.B. White's collaboration with William Strunk, Jr. on The Elements of Style. Frequently mistaken for a grammar/usage guide, they insist it is for style usage which may run counter to agreed usage rules.

And don't get me started on how Peter Mark Roget would feel about how the thesaurus is misused.

Patrick

[David Dyer-Bennet]

So glad to hear so much is improving so fast!

[Jaap Veldman]

I think it’s a picture of Kirk Tuck’s wife Belinda, in an ealier life 😊

[LARRY]

You served up a lot to think about, to savor, to motivate, and inform today. I particularly liked the 'elbow" sentence, but I'll set aside several other segments for re-visiting later, too. I enjoy reading literate writing whether it's a crafted essay, book introduction, reminiscence, or just a personal update in an email to a friend. I'm glad to hear you're sorting out your health concerns and feeling better. (I'll investigate the wellow socks.) And, while I came to TOP as an AdAm I regularly share the OT stuff with my professor daughter down in Alfred. Be well.