52

I considered writing a poem about my 52nd birthday, but maybe I ought to let it happen before trying to write about it. So here's some other stuff, personal and not, found with a Google search of "52":

• I turned 52 years old at 1:57 a.m. I was awake until 1:22 and then woke up for a moment at 2:22. So I slept through the birth moment, which was probably not a bad thing, given that 1:57 a.m. in 1958 was very likely a damned traumatic time for me.
• http://52brews.com/
• Year 52 (LII) was a leap year starting on Saturday of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Sulla and Otho (or, less frequently, year 805 Ab urbe condita). The denomination 52 for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar era became the prevalent method in Europe for naming years. (from Wikipedia)
• In early October, when I started Weight Watchers, I had (approximately) 52 pounds to lose in order to achieve my lifetime target weight of something in the 190s.
• 52 was a weekly American comic books limited series published by DC Comics that debuted on May 10, 2006. 52 consists of 52 issues, published weekly for one year, each issue detailing an actual week chronicling the events that took place during the missing year after the end of Infinite Crisis. The series covers much of the DC Universe, and several characters, whose disparate stories interconnect. (from Wikipedia)
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJgvJvIo2-U 52 Girls (B-52s)
• US 52 in Iowa http://iowahighways.home.mchsi.com/highways/us52.html
• I have 52 weeks to be 52.
• The 52nd song on my writing web site list: "Soul Mates" http://faculty.etsu.edu/codym/song_soul_mates.htm

Last but not least, Psalm 52 from The Message (large print edition):

A David Psalm, When Doeg the Edomite Reported to Saul, "David's at Ahimelech's House"

Why do you brag of evil, "Big Man"?
God's mercy carries the day.
You scheme catastrophe;
your tongue cuts razor-sharp,
artisan in lies.
You love evil more than good,
you call black white,
You love malicious gossip,
you foul-mouth.

God will tear you limb from limb,
sweep you up and throw you out,
Pull you up by the roots
from the land of life.

Good people will watch and
worship. They'll laugh in relief:
"Big Man bet on the wrong horse,
trusted in big money,
made his living from catastrophe."

And I'm an olive tree,
growing green in God's house.
I trusted in the generous mercy
of God then and now.

I thank you always
that you went into action.
And I'll stay right here,
your good name my hope,

in company with your faithful friends.

Anno 1621: First Thanksgiving

What follows is from William Bradford's Of Plymouth Plantation, his history of the pilgrims who settled in Massachusetts in 1620:

They began now to gather in the small harvest they had, and to fit up their houses and dwellings against winter, being all well recovered in health and strength and had all things in good plenty. For as some were thus employed in affairs abroad, others were exercised in fishing, about cod and bass and other fish, of which they took good store, of which every family had their portion. All the summer there was no want; and now began to come in store of fowl, as winter approached, of which this place did about when they came first (but afterward decreased by degrees). And besides water fowl there was great store of wild turkeys, of which they took many, besides venison, etc. Besides they had about a peck a meal a week to a person, or now since harvest, Indian corn to that proportion. Which made many afterwards write so largely of their plenty here to their friends in England, which were not feigned but true reports.

Bradford makes no particular mention of a feast, with or without the native population, only that after that first brutal winter (the starving time) they had enough to eat for the winter of 1621-1622. Bradford's account characteristically celebrates subsistance but also acknowledges that the land of plenty isn't a land of endless plenty.

Apparently the foundation of the Thanksgiving feast and the comes from a letter written by Plymouth Plantation resident Edward Winslow and sent to an acquaintance in England. The letter is dated 11 December 1621, but no specific date is given for the event:

Our harvest being gotten in, our Governor [Bradford] sent four men on fowling, that so we might after a more special manner rejoice together, after we had gathered the fruits of our labours. They four in one day killed as much fowl as, with a little help beside, served the Company almost a week. At which time, amongst other recreations, we exercised our arms, many of the Indians coming amongst us, and amongst the rest their greatest king, Massasoit with some 90 men, whom for three days we entertained and feasted. And they went out and killed five deer which they brought to the plantation and bestowed on our Governor and upon the Captain and others.

There you have it. Happy Thanksgiving to all and to all a good feast!

Early Birthday Surprise

I arrived at Honors House this morning to find that the several of the students had been up to something. They'll be gone from campus on my birthday--on Thanksgiving this year--and decided to decorate a little bit before they left. This is my office door in the old house. The floor upstairs was full of "Happy Birthday" balloons, and red and yellow streamers flew in the breeze at both entrances. They even threw one of the smallest kids in the program up on the first-floor roof to tie streamers to the downspouts that run down from the third floor to the second.

from Tuesday, 17 November 1987

I'm back in Nashville and looking forward to the holidays when I can get out of here again. Things here are okay but a lot of little turns out to be a bigger bother sometimes. One problem is with work. It's now slightly strained between Cathi and me after I told her a few weeks ago that I would prefer she think of herself as my publisher and not as my manager. That didn't go over near as well as I expected and I wasn't even expecting it to go over well. She was hurt, thinking, I suppose, that strong belief and money spent make a manager. They may make one but not necessarily a good one. I had hoped not to put all my eggs in one basket again and it looks like, for better or worse, I've done just that. I feel good about it except I always have that nagging feeling that the money is about to stop. I imagine at my contract's end Cathi will have my catalog and will probably try to sell it while I walk away and try to do whatever is next. I can't say that I'll be sorry. She has been a good friend but she has never been that real to me. . . .

My car broke down finally an it took $225.96 to replace the distributor. I was back in Percy-Warner Park when it happened and had to walk out to Belle Meade to call a tow truck for the car and Kevin to come over and get me. I put the bill on my folks' Mastercard and will pay them off for it over the next couple of months.

Hopefully I can write a little when I'm home. I haven't written one thing since I moved into this little place in August. And you know how I get when I'm not writing.

I also just want to be home in North Carolina again. I've been on two trips lately but I haven't seen NC since the latter part of August. I can hardly wait. . . .

Mom and Dad and Pansy and Edison came down here to Nashville at the end of October. They were here for three days and had a good time I think. We didn't really do that much together except go out and eat. They visited tourist shops and the Grand Ol' Opry on their own. One night we had dinner with Mark, Becky, and JB at the West End Cooker and that was good. . . .

In other news, one week from tomorrow I will be 29, my last stop before 30's. I'll try to think about it and fill you in on my feelings but I can say right now I don't feel very complete. . . .

One week from tomorrow, in 2010, I'll be 52, and I feel mostly complete.

Franklin (NC)

My colleagues and I were returning to Tennessee from Georgia and chose to take the scenic route up Highways 441 and 23. In Franklin, North Carolina, we saw these bumper stickers attached to vehicles sitting side by side in front of us at a traffic light: the car on the right, "Home Improvement Begins with the King James Bible"; the car on the left, "Extremely Rightwing" and "God Bless Our Troops . . . Especially Our Snipers."

Atlanta

I'm in Atlanta, Georgia, at the annual conference of the South Atlantic Modern Language Association (SAMLA). This morning, at the first session of the conference, I presented a paper on Spokane/Coeur D'Alene author/filmmaker Sherman Alexie's 2002 film The Business of Fancydancing. As is usual, I didn't finish writing the paper until an hour or so before the panel began, so I hadn't eaten anything. When the session ended at noon, I walked out along a cold and windy Peachtree Street (NE) and after a couple of blocks found a little place called Noodle. After taking a seat at the bar, I looked at the menu only for a moment before something caught my eye: a bowl of kimchi fried rice for $9. I could add beef to it for $2, so I did and then added a Korean beer called "Hite." Good lunch!

Afterwards, I returned to the conference hotel for the session that began at 2:45. Because of my strong interest in the work of Nathaniel Hawthorne, I attended a panel focused on his last completed novel The Marble Faun, published 150 ago in 1860. It was a fine panel with three insightful and interesting papers. Having been somewhat bitten by the poetry bug in October, I couldn't help write down some thoughts that came to me during the session.

At SAMLA, 2:45-4:15

We sit in this small room
on an unnumbered floor
in a hotel in downtown Atlanta,

a room filled with a few ordered chairs
and fewer scattered people.
Two smart plain women and a pretty
nervous one read essays
on the beautiful Nathaniel Hawthorne.
I nod, nearly dozing, thinking I must
read his Marble Faun again.