November 2021 – Page 2 – Musings from Brian J. Noggle

I’ve Seen That Happen Live

November 18, 2021 Brian J. Noggle

A couple months ago, I went into the Republic Walmart as it was in the middle of its reconfiguration, and they were jacking up whole aisles and moving them around. I was having trouble finding things that had moved, and I could not help but wonder if they had moved things I was looking for to places I’d already looked. It was like shopping in the Cube with slightly less deadly traps.

I’ve seen this slow reconfiguration of Walmarts in my area over months, so I’ve been largely non-plussed by the Empty Shelves At Walmart stories–I figure that they’ve been running the shelves down to have less to move. My Pricecutter grocery store has been pretty topped up, so I haven’t worried too acutely (although I have laid some stuff up). We’ll see as the moving aisles calm down whether I was right about the Walmarts.

“Did you find everything?” a checker at my home Walmart asked. “No,” I said. A couple of weeks later, the cats are happy to learn that I finally found where my home Walmart has put the cat food.

I noticed that my home Walmart has expanded the self-checkouts, but still has a number of manned checkout stands. But they’ve staggered them like Target has been doing for years, and they’ve reduced the height of the point-of-sale shelves, probably to improve the visibility and discourage shoplifters. However, I wonder how many small businesses that make the impulse purchase tchotchkes that you used to find on these shelves are faring with the reduced shelf space. Or if it’s just slightly diminishing profits from some Chinese conglomerate.

Buy My Books!

On Secondhand Lions (2003)

November 17, 2021November 17, 2021 Brian J. Noggle

Book cover This film was one of the reasons I started accumulating VHS cassettes and DVDs. When I wanted to see this some time back, I could not find it on the streaming services at all nor was it at my local video store. I realized how captive I was to these services, and I’m the sort of guy who wants to watch what he wants to watch, not just to watch something and will pick something from what’s available.

So: It is a coming of age story set in the, what, 1950s? 1960s? The uncles fought in World War I. I think it’s the late fifties, which would have made the distant uncles almost sixty. Which is not that old, but would seem so from the perspective of a young man. At any rate, the son of a floozy gets dumped on the doorstep of the aforementioned uncles who live in a falling down house in Texas. The uncles are rumored to have a great stash of wealth on the property, and the mother thinks it would be nice if the boy ingratiated himself to the uncles and/or found the loot. The uncles are not sure what to do with him, but since he annoys the other gold-digging distant relations, they decide to keep him around.

The uncles had a previous hobby of shooting at the traveling salesmen who came onto their property having also heard the rumors of their wealth, but the boy convinces them to perhaps spend a little of that money, which leads them to some whimsical spending, including on a lion that they hope to hunt. Instead of a mankiller, though, they end up with an aging lioness retired from circus duty, which the boy then adopts and feeds.

When buying Purina Lion Chow, one of the uncles has a spell which puts him into the hospital, but he checks himself out. At a diner, they encounter four greasers whose behavior the uncle corrects, leading to them trying to brawl and knife him–but he wins against the four, even giving the knife-bearer advice on attacking with the knife and giving him the knife back to try again. He then disarms the kid again, and after beating them all, he invites them home for dinner, after which he will give them the Being a Man speech. Meanwhile, the other relations, disappointed to learn at the hospital that “He’s gone” did not mean “dead,” go to the uncles’ house, and the spoiled children release the lion accidentally, and it hides in the corn patch that the uncles, starting their life as retired gardeners, planted.

The boy follows one uncle to a secret room under the barn, where he espies a large amount of cash, some spilling out of bank bags. When the floozy returns with a man she describes as a private investigator, he tells a story that the uncles are bank robbers, so the boy should out with the loot’s location. When the boy remains loyal to the uncles, the “private detective” starts beating the boy, only to have the lion come and maul him. The floozy mom tries to take the boy away with the mauled man, but he tells her to leave him, and he does.

This is the first flashback: The story has a wrapper from a presentish day after the boy, now a man, receives a call that his uncles have died. So he is reliving the story of his raising.

The film has another flashback in the flashback, as one of the uncles tells him the story of their roving in Africa after World War I, his brother (the other uncle’s) romance with a pretty Northern African princess, and how they eventually came to steal her away from a prince–with several thousand pieces of the prince’s gold. This flashback is interwoven with the other and presents a story of how they got the money without bank robbery. At the very end, when the boy/man reviews the scene of their accident (at ninety-something, they tried to barnstorm through a barn in a biplane that they built from a kit thirty years before, they missed and hit the barn), a helicopter lands and a North African or Arab steps out–he had heard their names on the radio, and remembered stories his grandfather had told of the only men who had bested him–proving the story his uncle told was accurate.

So the film has many layers. It’s not only a coming-of-age story for the boy, but also a coming-of-a-certain-age story for the uncles who are getting middle aged and need to learn to enjoy that stage of life. So it’s got a message for young people, and a message for their parents. It’s PG, too. I watched it with my youngest, with my older boy popping in at the end to provide his sophisticated Twitch Stream Commentary. Which is unfortunate: He is at an age and mindset where he cannot take in experiences like films without feeling the need to offer his take on things, verbalizing twee things to debunk and denigrate the film as it plays. My youngest, my film buddy, has shown a little tendency towards this when his brother is around. Hopefully not too much.

Because this self-involved ironic stance is really taking a bit out of the shared cultural experience, a set of allusions and common metaphors that help bind a community.

Or maybe I’m just an old man kvetching, but I because I watched this film this week, I was able to catch the reference at At any rate, Wilder, Wealthy and Wise today:

How many firefighters will quit rather than get the jab? How many EMTs will simply walk away rather than submit to it? By my count, the number is not insignificant, and these are crucial jobs if you like keeping your house not burned up like and would like granny to get to the emergency room in some other fashion than you tossing her into the bed of the pickup after you move the Purina® Lion Chow™ out.

So much of this will go over my boys’ heads when they’re adults. Except nobody will make allusions like this in the future. The future will have all the depth of Idiocracy.

I get a little money if you click here and buy:

Buy My Books!

A Questionable Study

November 16, 2021November 15, 2021 Brian J. Noggle

Volcanic climate impacts can act as ultimate and proximate causes of Chinese dynastic collapse.

It’s not that the ruling regimes became corrupt and unable to manage or perform the necessary government duties. It was the volcanoes.

I just glanced at it, and I can’t help note that all the data stops at 1911. What, no earthquake in 1949? Weird that when the technology and recorded history gets better at recording actual volcanic eruptions, the charts stop.

I am skeptical about anything about China, especially speculative scientific work by Chinese scientists or historians.

(I saw the link somewhere else first, but it also appeared at Instapundit where Professor Reynolds uses it to advocate for space colonization.)

Buy My Books!

They’re No Rocket City Trash Pandas

November 15, 2021November 15, 2021 Brian J. Noggle

The Beloit Snappers minor-league baseball team finally unveils its new nickname:

A long-gestating rebrand is finally complete for the Beloit Snappers, who announced Monday that their new mascot would be the “Sky Carp.”

Before you ask, a sky carp is a slang term for a goose that doesn’t migrate for the winter.

So why did they change the name? (He asked innocently, but since the article does not say why, he assumes it is because Snapper is also slang for something.)

(As you might remember, gentle reader, the Rocket City Trash Pandas are my favorite minor league baseball team, and it looks like they actually finally got to play this year.)

Buy My Books!

A Weekend’s Work

November 15, 2021 Brian J. Noggle

Last year, my beautiful wife ordered me a cord of wood for Christmas so we could burn wood fires. In the past, I’d had Duraflame logs or small bundles of wood I bought at the grocery, so it was even more pleasant to have a wood fire going every evening at Nogglestead. And it helped with the propane costs as the wood fires heated up the bricks and slowly released the heat overnight, limiting the amount our furnace ran.

Being this is 2021, man, and the last two years have kicked my hoarding and stocking up instinct several notches (to 11), this year I ordered 3 cords of wood before the winter from the local arborist (whose radio ads I’d heard decades ago in St. Louis–apparently, it’s at the least a regional chain). We might only burn a little over a cord and a half, but I’d rather have wood on the pile that I don’t use this year than need wood I don’t have in January if propane is not available. Yeah, I might be going a little crazy, but at best (or perhaps worst) my estate sale will look like a fully stocked grocery and home supply store.

The arborist sold the wood in “bags” of about a third of a cord each on pallets, and it took three trips to two different locations of the arborist to bring me three cords. The arborist had a dump trailer, which meant nine pallets of wood were dumped at the end of my driveway.

The wood came on Thursday, which gave me a chance to pick up some additional cinderblocks on Friday. And then, on Saturday….

Well, on Saturday, I warmed up with a martial arts class, had a bite to eat, and then the boys and I got to stacking.

We spent four hours on Saturday, almost until sunset, before I called a halt. Although I had thought we could condense nine “bags” of wood to seven pallets, apparently my stacking is not as tight as it could be. It took us longer than it should have because the oldest found lots of work that was not moving or stacking the wood, including hamming it up for his beautiful mother who took thirty-some minutes of his running monologue of what he was doing. Also, the boys liked to throw wood; in clearing the pallets, they threw some of the wood in the direction of the opposite of where we were stacking it. And instead of using a wheelbarrow to move it, they preferred to throw the logs into a pile three feet from where it lay and have me come to that pile, which was ten or twenty feet from the wood pile, to get the logs to stack. Well, we all got our exercise.

On Sunday, we picked up a couple more cinderblocks to make room for two more pallets to stack the wood on. Using the wheelbarrow, we finished the last half cord or so in about an hour.

It looks nice.

Strangely enough, although my fitness tracker says I walked ten miles between pile A and pile B, I only got a couple minutes’ worth of exercise.

As I said, although it’s not my primary heating source, I am happy to have the wood in case I need it.

My beautiful wife did not ask me how I knew how to stack wood; if she had, I would let her believe it’s because I am a man, and not because I read homesteading blogs.

Buy My Books!

I Can’t Wait To See What It Says About Sawyer, Hurley, and Freckles

November 15, 2021November 14, 2021 Brian J. Noggle

Lost memoir paints revered philosopher John Locke as ‘vain, lazy and pompous’

Just kidding. After the last season of that show, I can’t be arsed to rewatch or think much about it except to make gag blog posts.

(Headline via Powerline’s The Week in Pictures.)

Buy My Books!

Book Report: The Hirschfeld Century by David Leopold (2015)

November 14, 2021November 13, 2021 Brian J. Noggle

Book cover As I mentioned, I own an original Hirschfeld. A Matt Hirschfeld, Al Hirschfeld’s considerably younger second cousin also from St. Louis. So when I saw this book at ABC Books, I had to have it. Well, I had to have it because I’d run out of monographs to browse during football, and I didn’t make it into the Better Books section of the Fall 2021 Friends of the Library book sale (where the Art section is). So I paid $15 for this book instead of two or three. Also, note that the art monograph section of ABC Books is getting pretty thin these days as the Martial Arts section is. Make of that what you will.

This is a 300+ page comprehensive review of Al Hirschfeld’s work including a biography and plenty of images. Hirschfeld had plenty of biography–he started drawing in the 1920s and lived into the 21st century, so he had a lot of ground to cover. He worked mostly with entertainment subjects, starting with plays but also moving into movies and then television, and he made a really good living at it. To make a short story long, that’s it. His style evolved a bit, as he sought to really condense shape and movement into the fewest lines possible, so while he was never really as busy as the old timey illustrations you find in classic literature or, say, the children’s works illustrations by Mercer Mayer, Arnold Lobel, or Maurice Sendak, by the end of his career, his works are very sparse indeed. To ill effect, I might add. And although I could recognize some of the notables he illustrated, the captions helped a lot–not only because the personages might have peaked decades before I was born–well, mostly because of that.

So an interesting perusal–a bit text heavy for pure gridiron browsing, I had to take this one to the chair to complete it. As I mentioned, it’s as much a biography as a monograph. But worth my time, and yours, too, if you’re into pop art from the 20th century.

I get a little money if you click here and buy:

Buy My Books!

Not Like The Old Days

November 11, 2021November 11, 2021 Brian J. Noggle

Next buyer of Prince Charles’ $6.7M former home must let him fish there:

Prince Charles’ glorious former home is up for sale for the first time since he sold it over 27 years ago — but there’s a catch.

Listed at nearly $6.7 million, the next buyer must be OK with his royal highness stopping by to fish.

The listing explains that since the home was built in 1906, it has been owned by the Duchy of Cornwall — an estate that funds “the public, charitable and private activities of the Prince of Wales and his family,” according to its website.

“A quirk remaining from the previous ownership allows his royal highness to retain the right to fish on the property’s riverbank as long as 24-hour notice is given,” a representative for the real estate agency, Knight Frank, told Insider.

In the olden days, of course, the kings and princes could do that at any home they wanted. They were all the king’s fish, after all.

Buy My Books!

Also On This Day

November 10, 2021 Brian J. Noggle

I know it’s the birthday of the United States Marine Corps.

But it’s also the anniversary of the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald.

Of course, that reminds me that it is my father’s birthday. After my parents divorced and we moved to Missouri, I would hear this song on the radio (or once on my mother’s newly acquired Reader’s Digest Blowin’ in the Wind boxed set of LPs–which I still own of course), and I would remember to call my father (collect) to wish him a happy birthday. I probably tell you this story every November, gentle reader; thank you for indulging me.

He died at 47. I cannot imagine him or my sainted mother as elderly.

Buy My Books!

Book Report: Rogue Warrior: Vengeance by Richard Marcinko and Jim DeFelice (2005)

November 9, 2021November 8, 2021 Brian J. Noggle

Book cover My review of Terra Nova: The Wars of Liberation mentioned Marcinko (mainly, how “sir” is pronounced “cur”). So when I spotted an actual Marcinko on the shelves, I picked it up.

The other Rogue Warrior novels I’ve read were Marcinko and John Weisman, and I noticed a marked difference in the books. This one is a little thinner on the depth; fewer asides, perhaps less research, more akin to a basic modern thriller or fat men’s adventure book than the previous books. So I didn’t like it as much for that reason.

In it, Marcinko and his group are doing some Red Cell work for the Department of Homeland Security. In the first set piece, they infiltrate a moving train containing dangerous chemicals, and although they do not harm it, they find someone else has set charges to blow it up. Someone from his past, who seems to know Marcinko and his M.O. very well, taunts him as he works on other Red Cell messages. Is it a former colleague? A well-funded terrorist group? Why not both? A couple more set pieces later in various locales, at the finale we find that it’s a sister and brother from Vietnam who’ve been told that Marcinko was responsible for their American father’s death, and they’ve lived their lives for revenge–and they’ve caught on with an actual terrorist group whose attack they will use as cover for their titular vengeance.

So it’s a bit, erm, twee. Even the Marcinkoness of the book is tuned down a bit. I was disappointed. It looks like I’ve read most of the Weisman collaborations already, and that the balance of the Rogue Warrior books are this new guy. Which might be part of the reason that I don’t find them in the wild at book sales. Although the greater reason is probably that I don’t generally look over the fiction sections at the larger Friends of the Springfield-Greene County Library sales.

I get a little money if you click here and buy:

Buy My Books!

Forget the Night Light

November 9, 2021 Brian J. Noggle

I dunno why Facebook thought I was in the market for this:

But I’ve got all the navigational beacons I need for my darkened household.

I would, however, be interested in a book on D&D Furniture.

What, you don’t look at the books in advertisements? You probably don’t go right to the bookshelves when you first visit someone’s home to see what they have, either.

Buy My Books!

What the Ruck Was I Thinking?

November 8, 2021 Brian J. Noggle

On Thursday, we picked up our packets for this weekend’s Ruck n Run, a 5.56k in support of local veteran’s organizations. It had two options: To run, or to ruck, which involved carrying a backpack with 45 pounds in it and stopping at five stations on the route to do 25 push-ups, 25 jumping jacks, 25 mountain climbers, 25 squats, and then 25 burpees.

When signing up for the event, I guess I was feeling frisky, because although I signed the youngest and my beautiful wife up for the run, I signed myself up to be a rucker.

Ruck roh.

I had to run to Walmart on Friday to buy a backpack, and the event organizer wanted to collect canned goods, so I bought 48 15oz cans of chili to fill the backpack. I did the math: 15 oz by 48 is 45 pounds, and it was heavy. I started to question my sanity and whether I could actually do it. But then I realized that 15 ounces measured the contents of the cans, but the steel was something else. So I weight the backpack and took out ten pounds of chili.

And I spent Friday worrying how I would do, and if I would even finish the event. The ruck was definitely an unknown, and my training regimen has been spotty for a couple months at least. Okay, since the summer some time. I have done a couple of events–a stair climb, a martial arts testing–that gave me trepidation because I did not train for any of them.

And in all the cases, I did okay.

I started walking instead of running on Saturday morning, and I was pleased to see some other ruckers walking.

I did have a glitch: At the second station, I dropped my backpack behind me and did 25 fast jumping jacks. I grabbed my gloves and the backpack behind me and started putting it on as I was going. I got a couple hundred yards down the road, and someone grabbed me by the backpack. “You’ve got my ruck,” some humorless fellow said, and indeed, he had put his backpack next to mine, and as I was not familiar with my new backpack, I grabbed his instead of mine. So I gave the humorless fellow his backpack and ran back to get mine. On all the other stations, I put the backpack in front of me.

The course was an out-and-back course; as I came to the crossroads where my oldest was posted (a volunteer in his JROTC uniform), I ran up to him and reached out for a low-five. When he returned it, I told him we were a tag team, and he was in–as I made like I was going to unbuckle my pack. I hit the fourth station, squats, and had no problems. So I started run/walking. The fifth station was burpees, which I did in four sets: 15, 5, 3, and 2. And I ran most of the rest of the way, passing some other ruckers. I was going to sprint the final leg, especially as a trio of ruckers I’d just passed picked it up near the finish line, I dipped my shoulder on one stride, which put 45 pounds of chili on that side of my back all of a sudden. So no sprint, and I let those kids go ahead.

Official time says 1:01, but my watch said 54 minutes.

Regardless, the answer to “But did you die?” is no. It wasn’t even as bad as I feared.

But I really do need to get back into the good habit of getting some workouts in.

Buy My Books!

Bring Your Papers

November 7, 2021 Brian J. Noggle

Missouri Job Center to host healthcare hiring event on Tuesday, nine employers expected to attend

They’ve certainly made room for new hires with all the firings for not being vaccinated even though the former employees worked through the worst pandemic EVER!!!! without dying.

Buy My Books!

He Prefers The Trapster

November 6, 2021 Brian J. Noggle

Jim Treacher, a RINO who probably wanted Hillary to win, said:

Yesterday I joked about Marvel giving Paste-Pot Pete his own movie because they’re running out of decades-old comics characters to exploit. Well, the joke’s on me, because Marvel just announced a 2022 Halloween special for Disney Plus that will feature… Werewolf By Night. If the character’s name confuses you, he’s a werewolf. Who comes out by night. Which is redundant if you’re at all familiar with the werewolf legends, but whatever.

C’mon, man, he preferred to be called The Trapster.

But if when it comes to Z-level Marvel characters who I’d like to see, it would be The Fabulous Frog-Man or Speedball.

Of course, they would probably be on Disney+, which I won’t subscribe to, or released in theaters, and I’ve been over super hero movies for some time now. So it wouldn’t matter much to me. And given the things I’ve recently picked up in the dollar comic boxes at Nameless City, I might be over comics too.

Which leaves me more time for men’s adventure paperbacks, I guess.

Buy My Books!

Book Report: Fugitive Blues by Debra Kang Dean (2014)

November 6, 2021November 6, 2021 Brian J. Noggle

Book cover I probably could have added when I mentioned that I bought this book two weeks ago that I would probably read it soon; chapbooks are good browsers while watching football, and I did read this while watching some football.

This chapbook contains poetry with a little more perspective than something written by younger poets, so some themes about getting older instead of just trying to find someone or dealing with someone. The poetry styles range from a bit of concrete poetry–where the arrangement of the words on the page make designs or pictures–to longer-lined pieces. More modern than mid-century Formalism, unfortunately, but overall it was okay.

Which might be damning with faint praise, but I read a lot of bad poetry and a little good poetry, and this book lies in between.

I get a little money if you click here and buy:

Buy My Books!

On The Secret of My Success (1987)

November 5, 2021 Brian J. Noggle

Book cover Gentle reader, I must have gotten this videocassette when it was new, probably purchased in 1990 or 1991 at the Suncoast Video at the now shuttered Northridge Mall in Milwaukee on one of those Friday nights when I would cash my grocery store paycheck right there at the store and then hope on the #67 bus to blow all that (not much) cash at the mall.

Holy cats, I watched this movie over and over in those college years. And what 80s kid wouldn’t? Michael J. Fox plays the Michael J. Fox character, a recent college graduate who moves to New York City. When his promised job is eliminated based on a hostile takeover, he has to find a job elsewhere–and he gets hired in a corporate mailroom by a roundabout “uncle.” He sees his dream girl, played by Helen Slater, gets seduced by his “aunt,” and impersonates an executive during a period where the corporation is also the target of a hostile takeover.

As my beautiful wife was away overnight attending a conference, the oldest and I watched this movie on a school night. The boys are familiar with the Night Ranger song “The Secret of My Success” because it is on my gym playlist which plays in the backup truck when we’re in it. He was rewarded with the song over the main titles, and it was the best part of the film for him.

Watching old favorites like this with my boys makes me review them with a bit of distance, and I can see a little more why he might not like it as much as I did. After all, he did not grow up wanting to be a Michael J. Fox character, a smart, mostly morally good, and plucky boy who wins out in the end. The equivalent of a Dickensian protagonist, perhaps, cut down to under two hour films. This movie basically cobbles together some 80s tropes, playing off portrayals of New York and big corporations uninformed by actual experience with both, and it features a couple of montage sequences over soundtrack entries that did not chart.

But it does have Helen Slater.

Continue reading “On The Secret of My Success (1987)” →

Buy My Books!

Good Book Hunting, November 4, 2021: Redeemed Books

November 5, 2021November 4, 2021 Brian J. Noggle

It has been a very long time since I’ve been to Christian Publisher’s Outlet/Redeemed Books, the Christian new and used books store here on the south side of Springfield. I used to go there all the time for the teacher thank-you gift cards, before I learned that Mr. and Mrs. E. of ABC Books were attendees of the same church. Unfortunately, they have moved to another church now, but I’m still one of their best customers. As to CPO/Redeemed, I was scheduled to pick up race packets at the Hurts Donuts across the street and had some time to kill, so….

Well, some time to kill is where I get into trouble.

I got:

A CD set called The History of the Medieval World by Susane Wise Bauer. Whether she is a new Norman Cantor or not, we shall see.
The Ornament Keeper by Eva Marie Everson, a Christmas novella to put on top so that I can easily find one to read this year. You know, it was shopping at CPO for Christmas gifts back when it was across the street that I started the Christmas book tradition. So it’s come full circle.
How To Read A Book by Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren. My youngest and I have had a running joke about How to Read a Poem and how it ruins poems. So when I spotted this book on the cheap books rack, I got it and left it in the seat where he would sit when we got around to picking him up.
A Dickens of a Cat and Other Stories of the Cats We Love edited by Callie Smith Grant. It has a cat on the cover, and it has cat stories. Also, it was on the cheapish rack.
Trivial Pursuits: Why Your Real Life Is More Than Media, Money, and the Pursuit of Happiness by Ian DiOrio. I bought a couple of Christianish self-help books.
Home Song by Thomas Kinkade and Katherine Spencer, but mostly Katherine Spencer, one suspects. It is not a Christmas novel, unlike A Christmas Promise by the same authors or All Is Bright by Katherine Spencer, but it is a Cape Light novel which is the Kinkadeverse.
How To Lead When You’re Not In Charge by Clay Scroggins. Might be helpful. I’ve often thought of writing a book with my brother about being a good sergeant.
Start by Jon Acuff, apparently another Christian self-help book. This one was on the $3 shelf; I saw many others on the full price shelf, so undoubtedly I will come to discover non-collectible errata or giant Kool-Aid stains somewhere.

So not a book sale-type stack, but still enough things to keep me busy for a couple of weeks a couple of decades from now, perhaps.

I expect I will run the CDs through the car speakers after I finish a study of Voltaire, and I am making sure to leave the Christmas novella out so I can read it this year. But as to the others–who knows?

Buy My Books!

The Body Counts of Marching Band Competitions; And Thank God It’s November

November 4, 2021 Brian J. Noggle

Oh, my goodness, thank goodness it is November; I can come in out of the rain and the cold.

October was given over to marching band competitions and football games and cross country meets. So, basically, I was living six day weeks, since Saturdays were given over to travel and one or the other. To begin the month, we drove down to Joplin for a cross country meet, drove back in driving rain (which washed out our chance to go to the Pumpkin Daze festival in Republic on our way back). The end of the month featured a whole lot of cold and rain, summarized a bit below.

Continue reading “The Body Counts of Marching Band Competitions; And Thank God It’s November” →

Buy My Books!

Book Report: I Marry You by John Ciardi (1958)

November 3, 2021November 3, 2021 Brian J. Noggle

Book cover I had not heard of John Ciardi before, but he was a thing in the early middle 20th century, poetry editor for Saturday Review (ask your great grandma during a seance), director of a major writers’ conference, and host of a CBS television show. Of course, he is mostly forgotten now as poetry has fallen from public consciousness and before that because he was a “formalist” which meant his poetry was pretty good, and although he lived until 1986, the crap Beats and everything thereafter artists who infested poetry after the 1950s toppled his status.

I actually read the title poem to my beautiful wife as well as another (“For My Son Jon”, I think). So if I’m reading the poems out loud to a pretty girl, you must accept that I really, really liked it.

You can find a sample from this book, “Most Like An Arch This Marriage”, at the Poetry Foundation, and you can use it as an example of what I like: Long lines, complete thoughts, rhythm, rhyme, some interesting turns of phrase. Not as much interline wordplay as I do these days and it has the pacing and punctuation that can lead to a pompous Poet Reading instead of a street poet/poetry slam performance (although like some works by Edna St. Vincent Millay, some of these pieces could lend themselves to theatrical delivery).

I picked this book up at ABC Books at some point, and it not only rewarded me enough to continue to take five dollar fliers on poets I don’t know and might come to love, but also makes me want to find more of his work. But sixty-some years later, it’s probably hard to come by, although this hardback is in good shape with a mostly intact but inkly defaced dust jacket. Ciardi, Brian J., remember Ciardi.

I get a little money if you click here and buy:

Buy My Books!

Two, Nan. Two.

November 2, 2021 Brian J. Noggle

I just read a collection of military science fiction (Terra Nova: The Wars of Liberation), and I’ve mentioned I have been plinking at a novel of military science fiction (tentatively entitled The Saviors From Mars Deep, spoiler alert).

But as it is November and the National Novel Writing Month, and all the lesser cool kids want to write a novel this month (the greater cool kids are novelists who write a book every month, like a lot of the newer additions to the blogroll).

Instead of writing a whole novel, though, I thought perhaps I would open a couple of novels I’ve started in various windows to switch between them every day and maybe build a habit of writing. One of the aforementioned new additions (Peter Grant? One of the members of the Mad Genius Club?) mentioned that that particular writer tends to have multiple projects going on at any given time and switches between them as the mood strikes. So I thought I would give that a real try.

In one window, The Saviours from Mars Deep (what, the English spelling? Does that mean something, or is it misdirection?). In another, Wraith, which I conceptualized in college (the air field in the book was originally Timmerman Field, walking distance from where I lived in college and the landing place of the only plane I’ve ever flown–briefly–but that’s another story, and not one to impress my cousin who just got his pilot’s license). And then….

Looking at the file names and dates, I found another, more recent entry: Canny, Awake!. I apparently typed the first sentence of that in April.

As you may recall, gentle reader, my poem “Canny” appeared in There Will Be War Volume X. The only poem in the anthology. The reason why I call Jerry Pournelle my editor, although not many kids these days know who Jerry Pournelle was. Also, perhaps a reason why I think I might already be a mil sci fi author.

So. I have two mil sci fi books in the works and one horror.

Okay, I could also open up my fantasy novel, Second Coming or Beyond the Range (it has had a couple of titles in the twenty-some years I have had it in various word processor file formats, probably starting with LotusWorks in the middle 1990s). I have a couple whole chapters of it, and my beautiful wife has read them and wants to know how it ends even before I got to how it middles. So perhaps I should open that in another window.

How’s it going, you ask?

Well, I have added two and a half sentences to Canny, Awake! Which is more than I have added in the last seven months. So, it’s going better. Although I have spent an essay-length amount of time and writing talking about maybe writing instead of actually writing.

Speaking of military science fiction, Wombat-Socho discusses a post on science fiction for the strategist and mentions a short story, “The Road Not Taken” by Harry Turtledove, whose outline I remembered from reading the science fiction magazine in which it appeared when it was new in the November 1985 Analog magazine. I’ll have to look to see if I still have it; although I don’t think I carted it off with me to college, I did inherit a collection of digest magazines from my sainted mother that might include it amongst the Alfred Hitchcock and Ellery Queen mystery magazines of the era. I have actually recounted this particular story (“The Road Not Taken”) to my boys relatively recently (given the age of the magazine, the boys themselves are relatively recent).

Also, I would be remiss not to wish luck to other people striking out on the NaNoWriMo journey like K1 or K2.

Buy My Books!