Author Archives: sydlogsdon

66. Five by Dickens

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DSCN3975 Everybody knows the story of Scrooge. Everybody from Alistair Sim to the Muppets to his namesake duck has played him. I won’t waste your time talking about the story, but have you read him?

Everybody knows Dickens, but did you like him when you met him? I didn’t, in high school. Great Expectations was the most boring, pointless, excruciatingly unending experience of my reading life. My only expectation was that it had to end eventually, and my only hope was never to have to read Dickens again.

A Christmas Carol isn’t like that at all. It is a joy to read.

Marley was dead, to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it. And Scrooge’s name was good upon ‘Change for anything he chose to put his hand to.

You can’t beat writing like that. And it’s short; it makes its point and shuts up.

There seems to be something magical, or at least natural, about novella length. A Christmas Carol and The Old Man and the Sea were both novellas, and either would have been destroyed if it had been stretched out to novel length.

(TOM&TS a novel? Forfend! You’d need the heart of a bookseller to make that claim.)

Dickens was in financial and artistic trouble when he wrote A Christmas Carol and it was the making of the rest of his career. You can get the whole story of its origin from either The Man Who Invented Christmas by Les Standiford or Inventing Scrooge by Carlo De Vito.

A Christmas Carol was prefigured by the story of Gabriel Grub, chapter 29 of The Pickwick Papers, a story within a story which is often reprinted separately today under the title “The Story of the Goblins Who Stole a Sexton.” Old Grubb was so miserable that he chose to spend Chrismas night in a graveyard to avoid human contact. Goblins caught him there and put him through miseries which led to his redemption. The parallel is obvious.

After the ringing success of A Christmas Carol, Dickens wrote another Christmas novella during each of the succeeding four years. These five little books were published together during Dickens lifetime as Christmas Books. That version, with original illustrations, is avaliable from the series The Oxford Illustrated Dickens.

That volume often appears in bookstores seasonally, but you don’t have to seek it out. There will be some kind of Dickens Christmas collection every year. I have in front of me A Christmas Carol and other Christmas Classics, 2012, Fall River Press, which has the five novellas and seventeen other Dickens seasonal stories. Again, however, there is nothing special about any particular version. The stories have been around a hundred and seventy years and they don’t change.

Yesterday, I saw this year’s version in Barnes and Noble, leather bound, red, with gold and white pen style illustrated cover. This version is called A Christmas Carol and other Christmas Stories. It looks like the kind of book you would put in the living room to impress your snooty guests, but the stories inside don’t care about the cover.

As a point of honesty, I slipped into the B&N website just now to confirm my memory. This version was the 300th book that came up when I searched Dickens Christmas. Obviously more people buy Dickens than read him.

A few years ago I decided to read one of the other stories each year at Christmas time. That isn’t as logical as it seems, since Christmas is not a time of leisure. I eventually got through three and a half of the other four. I read The Chimes first and enjoyed it. It was something of a Christmas Carol reprise, and not as good as the original, but worth reading. A Cricket on the Hearth was once the most popular of these books. I didn’t get through it, not because I wasn’t enjoying it, but because that was the year time did me in. I still plan to read it someday. Maybe June would be better. The other two were worthwhile but not earth shaking.

For the sake of completeness, the Dickens Christmas books, in order, are:
     A Christmas Carol
     The Chimes
     A Cricket on the Hearth
     The Battle of Life
     The Haunted Man

Symphony Christmas, 8 of 10

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Because I intend to publish the novel from which this excerpt comes, Symphony Christmas will not be placed in Backfile.

They left together in Carmen’s car because they had a date to do some Christmas shopping at the mall. Neil had to get gifts for his mother and grandfather because this year school was running all the way to the twenty-third. He would have a day to drive to Oregon and no time to shop once he got there.

While they were walking through J. C. Penney’s, Neil said, “You know Rosa Alvarez?”

“Sure.”

“If you had to, could you pick out clothes that would fit her?”

“I guess so. Why?”

“She’s kind of chubby.”

“I know what she looks like. Why did you ask if I could pick out clothes for her?”

“Do you think her parents would mind if I bought her a jacket? She has been coming to school without one and it is really getting cold in the mornings.”

“I’m sure they wouldn’t mind, Neil. I could let them know so they won’t buy her one for Christmas, if they had planned to. When did you decide to do this?”

Neil shrugged, feeling embarrassed for no good reason. “I don’t know, she just looks so miserable every morning. She always heads for my room to warm up.”

Carmen smiled. “She doesn’t come there just to warm up. You have a fan club.”

That embarrassed Neil even more and Carmen laughed again.

She bought the jacket for him. It was nothing Neil would have chosen, but she assured him it was stylish as well as warm. He bought lesser presents for a dozen of his other students whose parents were poor. Carmen said, “Can you afford all this?”

“The only other people I have to buy for are my mother and grandfather.”

“And me!”

“Well, that goes without saying.”

“Say it anyway.”

He faced her suddenly and drew her back between some racks of clothing. His face was serious as he said, “Carmen, you are very precious to me. If I haven’t said it before, I’m saying it now.”

“Wow!” She put her hand on his chest and kissed him quickly. Then she pulled away and said, “People are looking. I don’t want the kids to catch us necking behind the lingerie.”

Neil was a little hurt by her response, until he saw moments later that she was wiping a tear from her eye. Sometimes – often – he didn’t know what to make of her.

“Carmen, I don’t want to give these presents at school. I don’t like to have the other kids feel that I’ve singled some of them out. Can you help me see that they get them?”

“Do you want to take them to their homes?”

“I’d rather stay behind the scenes. Could you see to it that they get them? Or I could take care of the little ones, but would you see to it that Rosa gets the jacket?”

“Why don’t you do it yourself?”

“I don’t want to intrude.”

She looked closely at him and said, “Are you sure that’s the reason?”    continued

65. Winter Solstice

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DSCN1841The calendar says “first day of winter”. The astronomically inclined say “winter solstice”. Since this is the day that the sun appears to be as far south as it ever gets, it bothers me sometimes that the first day of winter (speaking with a northern hemispheric bias) comes when, by the sun, winter should be half over. That feeling comes of having a certain kind of over-picky mind; pure experience, of the shivering kind, recognizes that there is a delay effect in seasonal changes. Meterologically speaking, the phrase “first day of winter” fits pretty well. It’s going to get a lot colder before it gets warmer again.

What if it didn’t get colder, or warmer? What if we had no seasons? What would that do to your heating and cooling bills? What would it do to your wardrobe? Would you even wear clothing?

It’s easy enough to arrange; just choose a planet with no axial tilt. Like Cyan.

Late in the novel Cyan, while some of the scouts are on a rescue mission to save a group of Cyl (non-human natives) by transferring them to the southern hemisphere, we get a detailed picture of what Cyan looks like.

In the cockpit, Debra was alone with her thoughts while Tasmeen attended to piloting the landing craft.  The sky outside was black with stars. She had never expected to see the stars from space again. Beneath them, Cyan spun lazily. Clouds blanketed various portions of the temperate zone where humans lived, and only a bit of the torrid zone which was the domain of the Cyl. Further north than that, where Keir and the children were, clouds massed high and storms raged.

The lower latitudes passed beneath them. This was the band of eternal desert, where every island and fragment of a continent was dry lifeless rock studding a lifeless sea. There were few clouds here, but ahead of them now was the equatorial cloud band. The heart of the great heat engine that was Cyan, where the water steamed in the relentless light of Procyon A, pumping moisture into the atmosphere and sending it northward and southward, over the lifeless bands too hot for coalescence and on up toward the dry Cyl lands and the wet human lands and the great snowcapped poles.

They passed the clouded equator, the southern dead zone, spiraling down toward the southern torrid, the zone where neither Cyl nor man had ever set foot, and where the Cyl could live secure from the depredations of man.

Aside: Cyan was originally scheduled for publication in January, but has been pushed back to April or May.

Symphony Christmas, 7 of 10

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Because I intend to publish the novel from which this excerpt comes, Symphony Christmas will not be placed in Backfile.

The morning after his candy trick, Stephanie had come to him with a proposition. Her church collected cans for the needy every Christmas. She thought their class should do the same thing.

Neil thought it was a wonderful idea. He called Mrs. Hagstrom and discussed it with her to make sure that the parents would not have any objection. The biggest problem Stephanie’s project presented was identifying the needy in the community and getting food to them without putting them in the spotlight.  Fortunately, Delores Zavala had lived in the district all her life and knew every adult, child, car, cat, dog, and everyone’s financial condition. She proved invaluable and Stephanie turned out to be an eleven year old dynamo. Within three days she had organized all her friends, and their friends, and their friends. That meant every child in the sixth grade. Two weeks after the idea was born, there was a seven foot stack of canned goods in the corner of Neil’s classroom.

*****

December was a busy month for them all, but particularly for Carmen whose mother became ill and began to take all her spare time. After two weeks Carmen was looking tired and complaining that she wasn’t getting any Christmas shopping done. Neil offered to sit with her mother to give her an evening off. Carmen accepted and Neil found, to his surprise, that Maria de la Vega spoke no English. Carmen had been so much at ease in her job, and so confident in the world she shared with him, that he had assumed her family was educated and English speaking.

He ended up having a great time. Mrs. de la Vega was past the worst of her illness and her zest for life had returned. She waited until Carmen had gone out, then got up and cooked Neil a delicious Mexican meal, ignoring his protests, and carrying on a one sided conversation in Spanish. Only their gestures and laughter were bilingual.

Carmen chewed him out royally for letting her mother out of bed. Neil said, “How was I to stop her?  Carmen had to admit that it would have been impossible.

Several days later, Carmen came in to see his can tree. She had only just heard of it from Delores. She said, “Why didn’t you tell me what you were doing? I would have ben glad to help.”

“I really didn’t do that much,” Neil explained. “Stephanie Hagstrom and her mother were the force behind it, and Delores agreed to do the distribution for us.”

“How did you ever get it started? I’ve tried to get my seventh graders to have some social conscience all year, and I’ve gotten nowhere.”

Neil explained about the candy trick. She said, “Good. Good. We need more of that kind of thing.” Then she gave him a dazzling smile, looked around to see that no students were near, and gave him a quick kiss.

“”What was that for? Not that I’m complaining.”

“That, Neil McCrae, is because you are a nice guy.”

“It took you long enough to notice.”

Her gaiety went away. Neil said, “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Are you sure?”

She nodded. “Someday I will,” she promised, “but not just now.”   continued

Symphony Christmas, 6 of 10

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Because I intend to publish the novel from which this excerpt comes, Symphony Christmas will not be placed in Backfile.

Elanor has just realized something the other kids missed.

Elanor beamed.

Stephanie half raised her hand, withdrew it, then raised it again. Neil was pleased at this crack in her normal self-confidence. He nodded, and she said, “I guess it was fair that you gave the poor kids more candy. But now you said you are going to make it all even.”

“That’s right, I am. I do like to be fair.”

Stephanie squirmed in a perplexity of near understanding. Every atom of her body was involved in the moment. She said, “But then – why did you do it?”

“I didn’t do it for the poor kids.”

She just shook her head. She still didn’t get it.

“I did it for the rich kids.”

She was still blank, but trying so hard to understand.

“I did it so the kids who always get everything could just once, in one tiny way, know what it feels like to see others get something they want while they get nothing.”

Neil instructed his class to evaluate the lesson. If they wanted, they could look at it like Mr. Campbell would, or they could tell how it had affected them personally. Most of them wrote willingly; kids always do when they have something they really want to say.

That night he read their papers. Stephanie had said:

I always get a lot for Christmas and for birthdays. I always say thank you to my parents. I really do appreciate them. They are very good to me and I know it. 

Sometimes I see other kids parents being mean to them. They won’t let them play baseball or buy them things and I think how sad it would be to be like that. But sometimes I guess they don’t have much choice. Like if they have lost their jobs and they don’t have much money. I think it would be sad to live like that and I am glad my Daddy has a good job so we can live in a nice house and have nice things.

Your class made me see what it would be like to not have anything and to see other people get things. I wouldn’t like that, but I guess I needed to see it, so thank you Mr. McCrae for showing me.

Rosa had written:

We used to have alot at Christmas until my daddy lost his job, but we are still luky I guess cause we have more than some other poeple have  We hav plenty to eat even if it is beans alot of the time.  I like beans anyway  and if I don’t get nothing for chirismas this year thats alright because I got alot last year.

It would be easy, Neil thought, to see Stephanie as spoiled and Rosa as some kind of angel, but that wasn’t so. They were both just sweet eleven year old girls who hadn’t had much experience in the world. Giving them some of that experience was Neil’s job.    continued

Symphony Christmas, 5 of 10

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Because I intend to publish the novel from which this excerpt comes, Symphony Christmas will not be placed in Backfile.

The class couldn’t decide whether to be upset at having to wait to read their papers, or happy at the thought of getting music instead of work. The last few students put down their pencils and Neil started the tape. Garfunkle sang with sweet melancholy about Mary, born in a trailer, who shone like a gem in a five-and-dime store. Without the music, the words would have meant little. With the music, it became a lament for loneliness and abandonment that even eleven year olds could understand.

After the last chord had died away, Neil shut off the machine and began to rewind. Laura Diaz said in a small voice, “Mr. McCrae, can we hear it again?” A dozen of the students added their appeals to hers.

“Sure,” Neil agreed. “First let me give you these. I typed up the words and ran them off so you could understand them better.”

This time through about half of the children followed the printed sheets as the music played.

“That was neat!”

“Yeah, but sad.”

“Neat but sad is exactly what I think of it,” Neil agreed. “Does anybody want to hear it one more time?”

They did, and it carried them to the break.

*****

When they came back, Oscar Teixeira accused him of deception by announcing, “Mr. McCrae, this wasn’t a real party and I never did get my candy!”

“You’re right. It wasn’t and you didn’t. This was something I cooked up to teach you something. We will have a real party on the twenty-third, and you will get your share of the candy in about five more minutes.

“Meanwhile, I want you all to think back to how you felt when you got your candy.”

Their faces told him that they remembered, and he could plot who had and hadn’t gotten candy by their smiles and frowns.

“All right, who can tell me why I gave more candy to some than to others?”

“‘Cause you wanted to,”  Tony replied.

Neil ignored him. Finally Sean Kelly said, “You gave lots of candy to the good kids and not much to the ones who aren’t good.”

“How much did you get, Sean?”

Those who sat near him and had seen his single piece of candy, laughed. Sean held up one finger.

“Sean, do you think you are a bad kid?”

“Well, I have been getting in trouble with Duarte.”

“Yes, you have, but that doesn’t make you a bad kid. And that wasn’t why I distributed the candy the way I did. I had another reason in mind.”

Duarte said in sudden disbelief, “You gave the Mexican kids more than you did the white kids!”

“Did I? If I did it was an accident. Or rather, it was because my reason has something to do with how your parents live.”

Suddenly Elanor had a realization  She shouted out, “You gave the poor kids more than you did the rich kids!” Then she raised her hand, because she had forgotten to do so in her excitement at understanding something the “smart” kids had missed.

“Elanor, you are absolutely right.”    continued

64. ‘Twas the Season (post 2)

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DSCN1839 Yesterday, I left you shivering, but I don’t want you to get the wrong impression. I didn’t hate my childhood on the farm – I loved it.

But I wouldn’t do it again for a billion dollars.

Our Christmas was not typical because we worked every day, and because my parents were committed Southern Baptists. So was I, except at the end, and even then I was a closet unbeliever. They never asked, and I never told, so even during my last two years at home I went to church three times a week, sang the hymns, prayed aloud when called upon (that was particularly hard) and lived a Godly life.

My parents appreciated Christmas, but not as the secular holiday it has become. They saw it as a celebration of the birth of Christ.

There was no Santa in our house, although no one was offended when someone sent a Christmas card with the old fellow flying his sleigh. From my first memory, I knew Santa was only a myth that other parents told their children about. It was fun to hear about Rudolph in the song on the radio, but at home we sang Silent Night and O Little Town of Bethlehem.

We had a tree, decorations, Chiristmas cookies, presents, lights, ornaments, and all the rest. But nobody came down the chimney, and the presents were labeled from Mom and Dad, or from Grandpa, but never from Santa.

We didn’t do Christmas morning anyway. We opened our presents on Christmas Eve after the evening milking and supper were over. That was a matter of practicality. Christmas morning, like every morning, began with three hours in the dairy barn.

It was still fun. One year Hallmark came out with lick and stick ribbon, and taught classes in how to use them. My mother took the class and taught me. That year all the presents I wrapped were decorated with ribbon snails and ribbon roses.

It was fun, but it wasn’t jolly. My parents were quiet people, and since I had no brothers or sisters to bounce off of, I never learned to be boisterous. Even today, when I see people cheering on their favorite sports team, I have no real understanding of why they act that way.

There was no Christmas service at church unless Christmas happened to fall on a Sunday. The business of the church, we were reminded often, was not fun and games or helping our neighbors with their troubles. A good Christian might help a neighbor in need, but the church did not. The church was in the business of saving souls, and nothing else.

If Christmas fell on Sunday, the sermon would begin with the story of Christ’s birth, but somewhere around the middle it would morph into hellfire. The only reason the birth of Jesus means anything, we were told, is because of the crucifixion and resurrection at the other end of his life.

Still, I enjoyed my life and I enjoyed Christmas. If it looks a bit grim in hindsight, at the time it just seemed normal.

Recently, PBS did a special on the Pilgrims. They were the no-fun champions of the world, ranking right up there with jehadis. As I watched, I was amused by the knowledge that it only took a couple of generations for their offspring to kick over the traces and become Baptists, because even that seemed like more fun.

Eventually, I left home for college in Michigan. The first year I was there we got the snowstorm of the century, 24 inches in 24 hours. The campus was snowed in for a week and I loved every minute of it.

The summer after, I met the girl who would become my wife. She was filled with a massive and infectious sense of joy. We were married in 1969 (post 27.  That Was My Childhood) and that first Christmas was wonderful beyond anything I could have imagined. So were the next forty-four. Likewise the forty-sixth, when it comes next week.

Symphony Christmas, 4 of 10

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Because I intend to publish the novel from which this excerpt comes, Symphony Christmas will not be placed in Backfile.

Neil has distributed Christmas candy unevenly around his class of sixth graders.

“Mr. McCrae,” Stephanie Hagstrom demanded, standing bolt upright beside her seat in surprise and dismay, “what are you doing?  You can’t give some people more candy than others.  You just can’t.”

All the children were looking at him now. He nodded sagely and said, “Why can’t I?”

“It’s not fair.”

“Why do I have to be fair?”

Tony Caraveli was probably the only one enjoying the exercise. He had a pile of candy and he liked confusion. He shouted out, “Because the school board will get you for it.”

Neil had to grin. “Tony, you have a beautiful sense of how things really work. You are right. The school board would get mad at me. But what if I chose to ignore them?”

“You won’t.”

That part of the conversation wasn’t going where Neil wanted it to go, so he turned back to Stephanie who was still standing in the aisle looking like Liberty Leading the People. He asked, “Why do I have to be fair?  Is life fair?”

“Yes,” she said defiantly.

He raised his eyebrows and invited the rest of the class to comment. They all but shouted Stephanie down, and the essence of their opinion was that life was not fair. “All right,” he said, “I want you to think of one time when life was not fair to you.”

Almost every hand went up. Neil waved his arms and said, “Wait! Just wait. I want you to take three minutes to think of the very worst way life has been unfair to you. Now think!”

They couldn’t wait. They couldn’t stand it. They twitched; they seethed; they bubbled. It was like watching a pressure cooker. Finally Neil said, “Okay.”

This time, every hand went up, but Neil simply got to his feet and began distributing paper. “I want you to write down what you just thought of,” he said, and a collective sigh rolled through the room. 

“Mr. McCrae,” Bob Thorkelson whined, “can’t we just tell you?  Please.”

Neil shook his head.

“Please!”

“Write it.”

They knew from long experience that there was no appeal to the command to write. They took up their pencils and within seconds the room was silent except for the scratching of graphite on paper.

Meanwhile, Neil got his tape deck out from under the desk and put the Garfunkle tape in it. He had already cued it to the second cut on the back side. When most of the students had laid their pencils aside and raised their hands again, Neil said, “Since it’s a party, I thought we’d have some music.”

“Mr. McCrae,” Tanya wanted to know, “don’t we get to read our papers?”

“Later.”    continued

63. ‘Twas the Season (post 1)

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DSCN1795A white Christmas – it’s a cultural heritage, even for those who never share it directly. Hawaii and Florida get their snow on TV and Christmas cards. Californians go to the mountains where the snow is cold and deep, then return home and string Christmas lights on their palm trees.

During my childhood, Oklahoma was on the border of the snowfall. We had snow, but it was rare and sparce; never fluffy, but hard and small like buckshot. We occassionally had no-school days because of snow, but not for reasons you could anticipate. An inch would fall during the night, accompanied by monster winds. Come morning, the fields would be blown brown and bare, and all that snow would be deposited in the roadways, trapped between the barbed wire fences on either side, three feet deep and impassible.

I do remember that the front yard was once covered with snow, an inch deep held up by the brown, dead grass. It was a chance to make my first snowman. I rolled snow for what seemed like hours and finally had stacked him up three feet high – a lumpy, anorexic figure with stick arms and nose, rock eyes, and a borrowed hat. Unfortunately, the whole yard was rolled bare to make my snowman.

Oklahoma in winter was brown everywhere – except where it was green. There were fallow fields, winter stripped trees, prairie grass pastures cropped close and brown by cattle, but there were also field of winter wheat. Planted in the fall and harvested in the spring, those fields were as green as Ireland throughout the winter. Our dairy cattle were grazed on winter wheat. It was a major boost to our income, but what green wheat did to their digestive output I won’t detail in a family friendly post.

For two thousand years, Christmas has been part of the agricultural cycle of the seasons. Even in the sixties, the seasons ruled our activities. In spring, we harvested winter planted crops and planted for the fall harvest. In summer, we bailed hay both commercially and for ourselves. The cattle were bred to drop calves in autumn. Through the summer they were mostly dry and needed little care, but they came into milk production just as the last fall harvest was over, and kept us working – and earning a living – through the long months of winter.

And it was work; and it was cold. The coldest I remember was five below, but zero was not uncommon. That might not seem like much, but come along for the ride.

Each day began about 4:30 when my dad opened the bedroom door and growled, “Get up!” in a voice you wouldn’t even consider not obeying. I would spend the next half hour crouched in the living room in front of the space heater putting on three layers of clothing, warming each piece individually. I don’t know why I bothered; the wind pierced to the skin within the first five seconds of leaving the house.

Morning milking took about three hours. Unlike the other seasons, I didn’t have to go get the cattle; they were waiting impatiently for the grain they would get while they were being milked. I won’t describe the process again (see post 47). The floor was concrete, deep frozen overnight, and the cold telegraphed up through thin boot soles all the way to your knees. At least when I had to walk outside, I didn’t sink; the mud-manure mixture was frozen to brown cement. When the milking was finished, my dad would drive out into the pasture to distribute hay while I stayed behind and washed up all the milking machines, strainers, and milk cans. Then it was a mad rush through breakfast and a bath (twice a day, every day, you can figure out why) in order to dress and catch the bus for school.

I loved school, and not just because I was scholarly by nature. It was warm inside.

Home in the afternoon, with an hour to do my homework, then out to the barn to do it all over again.

Every day, seven days a week, all winter. Including Christmas.   More tomorrow.