Jane

Hello from Albuquerque, NM. Yesterday afternoon I rendezvoused with Merry at the airport and now we're sitting at Fred & Mary Upshall's dining room table. Fred's an ALJ here who I met at training last summer. We've been sharing stories about our first year as judges. One odd thing we both noticed was how little our new colleagues seemed to care about our social adjustment to a new city. Had we joined a new law firm we would have been shown around and invited to social events. At ODAR there is almost none of this.

My experience in St. Louis was a little different than Fred's here, because of Jane Lanser.

Every Social Security hearing is electronically recorded. The recording itself is performed by independent contractors called “hearing monitors” who are paid a set amount per hearing. Many of the hearing monitors are retired Social Security clerks who are very familiar with the process. The ALJs have no say in who is scheduled as their monitor, but the cadre is small, so it's easy to become familiar with the unique personalities of every monitor.

I met Jane during my first week at St. Louis ODAR. Jane worked at SSA for many years before retiring and taking up the hearing monitor job. She has a government pension but does the monitor job part-time as a source of “mad money.” Jane has lived a long time in St. Louis. She really, really loves the place and seems determined for me to see it through her eyes.

I have Jane as my monitor about once a week. Every time she's in my court she brings me guidebooks, magazines, flyers, newspaper clippings, handouts, and books that she believed will help me understand all that St. Louis has to offer. If I should happen to express an interest in any particular subject she will search her vast archives and produce relevant material for my review. Her archives are impressive. For example when I was writing the entry on Bevo, Jane showed up with a book on the Busch family and even old newspapers related to the family.

Over time Jane has become my principal guide to all things St. Louis. Jane has informed me in detail on every St. Louis cultural institution. She consistently provides me with insider information on how to get the most out of the many free concerts, Shakespeare in the Park and the free seats at the Muny (a summer outdoor professional theatre in Forest Park). When I was seeking a good restaurant she provided a recent list of the 30 best. One day she brought a magazine article with the 100 things ever St. Louis citizen should see or do. She is an awesome history buff but she loves two things above all else: the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and the Cardinals.

This last Thursday there was an afternoon home game against the Pittsburgh Pirates. The game started at 1:00, my hearings ended at 12:30. Busch Stadium is only four blocks from the hearing office. Jane was my monitor. I immediately knew she was planning to attend the game. She showed up for work in a “Cardinal” red dress with matching red blazer. Each lapel sported an enameled Cardinals pin. She wore earrings shaped like small baseballs with Cardinals in the center. Her tote sported the Cardinals logo done in cross stitch. Her handbag looked like a zippered fuzzy baseball about the size of a basketball. When I left work at about 3:30 the game was just getting out. The Cards won. I spotted Jane, her gray hair hidden under a Cardinals cap, in the celebrating crowd streaming out of the park. Her dress was distinctive, but every fan had their own bright red outfit. Downtown was awash in a sea of red. I waved to Jane across the street.

Jane also reports to me on every Symphony concert. She was particularly enraptured by the recent appearance of Nadia Solerno-Sonenberg. She also introduced us to the fine community orchestra at Webster University in which her daughter-in-law has played for many years.

Thanks to Jane our move has been enriched and we feel more at home.

On another note, I'd like to thank everyone who responded to last week's posting on cognitive surplus. I must have accidently hit on a topic with resonance. To clarify, I did not mean to suggest that TV never be used for entertainment, nor did I mean to suggest that if everyone turned off the TV that there would be a huge increase in Wikipedia entries. Thanks to everyone who wrote back. I plan to do more with that piece when I get the chance.

Now, off on our drive back to St. Louis.

Death of a poet

I did not know Hayden Carruth died last fall until yesterday.

He was probably the only winner of the National Book Award to ever live in Munnsville, NY.

I spoke with him a few times in his later years.

He read poems at the Oneida Community Mansion House and had coffee with us.

One Christmas I unexpectedly received a package containing a note and video tape of him reading. He said I should stop by his place on the Bear Path. I never did. He scared me too much. I didn't think I could hold down my end of any conversation with him. So I never stopped to see him and now I never will.

His struggles were mighty. He made poems out of everyday common life with uncommon grace.

If you have not yet read his poems, please do.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/01/books/01carruth.html (Times obit)

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/hayden-carruth-poet-who-produced-work-of-unapologetic-affection--despite-lifelong-struggles-with-mental-illness-950819.html (long and interesting obit from London)

Wild hickory nuts

Today is my sixtieth birthday. This momentous event has put me in mind of the many unique and interesting people with whom I have had the good fortune to have shared some time. Here's a short remembrance sparked by a recent event.

Merry and I made our first expedition into the Ozarks two weekends ago. We spent two sunny warm autumn days exploring and stayed overnight at Rock Eddy Bluff Farm near Dixon, Missouri. Our accommodation was an old-fashioned log cabin complete with luxury outhouse, gravity feed sink, gas stove and solar powered LED lights. The broad porch overlooks a deep hollow leading down to the Gasconade River. Sitting on the porch in the late afternoon sun we were surrounded by a forest of tan leaves of many hues from the various oak trees with a few hickories mixed in.

On our walk to the river I discovered a spot where freshly fallen hickory nuts covered the ground. Merry gathered some to take home. This put me in a mind of how I came to meet Euell Gibbons.

Back in the fall of 1967 I was attending Bucknell University as a sophomore history major. My roommate for that semester was Eric Jones. Where I grew up (Hanover, PA) there was no one like Eric. Eric was a full-fledged Quaker from Philadelphia. He had shaggy hair and wore handmade sandals with socks, all the time, everywhere, in all weather. He talked about the Philadelphia Folk Festival and coffee houses. He introduced me to what he termed “real folk music," in other words, something besides the Kingston Trio and Peter, Paul & Mary. He had attended private Quaker schools in Philadelphia and invited me to the local Friends Meeting. I was not particularly interested.

Not interested until he casually mentioned that about once a month after Friends Meeting Euell Gibbons led a hike to gather wild foods followed by a “wild dinner.”

I knew about Euell Gibbons from my Boy Scout days. I had read and re-read his classic, Stalking the Wild Asparagus. I loved his folksy style and the way he expressed his clear affection for the outdoors. I did not know he lived in Central Pennsylvania. I jumped at the chance to meet him.

A few weeks later I went to a Quaker meeting for the first time with Eric. It was not what I expected. After a few minutes sitting quietly one person after the other stood to talk about their favorite Bible verse or their interpretation of their faith. I had thought Quakers just meditated until the spirit moved them These Quakers were downright talky.

I looked around the room but didn't see anyone that looked remotely like what I imagined Euell Gibbons to look like. After the service a tall, gaunt man stood and invited anyone who wanted to go along for a walk to meet him outside. It was a cool sunny late fall day. I remember we walked along a railroad track outside of town. Euell seemed to know the name of every plant. Every few feet he would stop, pick up a plant, explain what it was and how it could be eaten. We gathered what edible plants we could find and put them in buckets. At the end of the walk the buckets were taken back to Euell's farm where we all pitched in to make a big salad, soup and some roasted root vegetables.

I went on several of these walks during that year. I got to know Euell fairly well. It surprised me that he smoked cigarettes and that pizza was his favorite food. At that time he had just recently become a minor celebrity. Until his “Stalking” books became a success he led a pretty hard life. His wild food hobby had started as a real necessity during the dust bowl when his family lived in New Mexico. He claimed to have bummed around the country after leaving home as a hobo for years. He was a long time lefty in the Woody Guthrie vein. He and his wife were steadfast members of the Quakers and of the local peace movement. I remember him as a pretty humble man who never did much to make himself stand out.

A few years after I graduated I was pleasantly surprised to see that Euell had been invited to write a couple of articles for the National Geographic and that he appeared on television on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson and on Sonny and Cher. I was a bit surprised to find him pitching Grape Nuts in a TV commercial in 1974 during which he uttered a phrase I never forgot. When describing the taste of Grape Nuts he said in his Will Rogers voice, “Reminds me of wild hickory nuts.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XJMIu18I8Y My friends and I laughed. Some moaned that Euell had “sold out.” Personally I knew he had lived a hard and principled life. I was happy he had achieved some small measure of fame and economic success.

Euell died in 1975 from an aneurysm secondary to his Marfan’s syndrome. Although it's been more than 40 years since I met him, I still hear his voice and feel his influence every time I take a walk in the woods.

Wise Ass Historian

This last Wednesday Merry and I attended a reading and book signing by Sarah Vowell at the Mad Art Gallery in St. Louis. To be honest I was only vaguely aware of Sarah Vowell and had never read anything she wrote, but Mer had seen her on John Stewart, and assured me I would enjoy the occasion.

What an evening of discovery. The Mad Art Gallery is located in the Soulard neighborhood, one of the oldest intact areas of the city next to the big Anheuser-Busch brewery, near the Mississippi. The Gallery was created out of a very classy 1930's art deco police station. As you walk in you see that the giant Sergent's desk, surrounded by tons of polished brass grillwork, has been transformed into a bar. The original terrazzo floors are in good shape as is the original lock-up, open for inspection. The main room held about 200 folding chairs and a “paint-by-numbers” exhibit of familiar masterpieces (Mona Lisa, Warhol's Marilyn, etc.). It filled up fast. Looking around we felt we must have a good deal in common with many of the people in the room.

The event started pretty much on time, apparently a mid-western trait. The nervous, fast talking owner of the gallery welcomed everybody. Then the “events coordinator” of Left Bank Books, a local independent book store and organizer of the Great River Writers events, took the stage to vent some of her incredible, bubbly energy. Finally, the director of the Honor's College of the University of Missouri, St. Louis, took the podium to introduce the writer. After patting himself on the back for five minutes, droning on and on about his program [Why doesn't someone tell too-full-of-themselves college professors that normal people are just not that interested in them? UMSTL, I mused, how do they pronounce that? I later learned the correct pronunciation is “ums-stil”] he finally yielded the stage to the honored guest.

Sarah Vowell is a short, pale woman with dark hair cut short and blunt. There is something of a goth look to her. She has a slight vocal tic and speaks in bursts. She read from her latest book, Wordy Shipmates. She is terrific from the first sentence. Now mind you, Wordy Shipmates is a retelling of the earliest history of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Ms. Vowell not only likes and deeply understands these quintessential religious fanatics, she makes their story interesting, and at times funny.

During the question and answer section, I realized why I like her so much. She has taken the time to truly understand who these people were, how they lived, why they thought the way they did, then she successfully tells us why we should care about any of that. The message of this book, it seems (I have not read it, yet), is simple – we have inherited our deepest assumptions about democracy from those crazy Pilgrims. We owe it to ourselves to know something about how and why they managed to survive.

What sets Sarah Vowell apart from other historians and other writers in general is her desire to understand exactly how other people live, then to explain why she cares about what she has discovered. She does this in an easy going, irreverent way. To get a sense of what I'm trying to say here I recommend you take a look at this clip of John Stewart interviewing here recently about this book:

http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=187572&title=Sarah-Vowell

Near the end of the program a high school social studies teacher asked Ms. Vowell how to make teaching about early America interesting to 11^th graders. In reply, she allowed that this may be a nearly impossible task, but suggested keeping the focus on the people, their oddities, their foibles, and their unique perspective. This perfect answer reminded me fondly of our friend, Kathy Sabino, who labors mightily in this field at Hamilton High. It is, in the end, the task of us all to understand why and how others have come to different conclusions about important human issues. To the extent each of us personally succeeds in such understanding, we make a civilization out of the ant heap. This wise ass historian is doing what she can to help.