Author: Brian J. Noggle

Kim du Toit decides if he has to go into Witness Protection Program, he wants to go to Traverse City, Michigan.

You know, I was just in Traverse City last year for a couple of hours, and it’s got Horizon Books as you might remember.

But it also has a good hat shop just down the street from Horizon Books, and I spent enough time dithering over whether to buy a new fedora with a liner that we overstayed our parking meter and learned that Traverse City has a very convenient Web site for paying your five dollar parking meter fines.

Also, it has snow in the winter.

I mean, it’s not Wisconsin, which is God’s best creation, but it’s not Minnesota. Or spit Illinois.

So if I could not choose Wisconsin, and I probably could not because I go on about it all the time, I’d take witness relocation in Traverse City or even Petoskey.

While the northern part of the nation is having a snowy winter like I used to know (Milwaukee has been getting hammered, and not just in the beer and brandy sense) and even the St. Louis area has been seeing a snowy weather pattern like I remember from the late 1980s and early 1990s (this weekend’s forecast: Storm to drop 3-5 inches of snow and wind in St. Louis on Sunday, then temps bottom out).

But here in Springfield, we rarely see that much snow. We’ve had a couple of snowyish winters at Nogglestead, where we’ve had a couple of snowfalls of a couple of inches that has stuck around for a couple of days, but this year, we’ve fallen at the lower edge of all the precipitation-producing weather events which now bear names for some reason. This means that we’ve gotten rain or, sometimes, a glazing of ice.

My children have had, what, three or four “snow” days this year based on a slight accumulation of ice that has generally cleared by midday. Once, all the schools called the night before precipitation based on the meteorologists fantasies, and we got a little rain before a nice day.

On Thursday, they were off again based on a little ice.

The poor lads don’t get proper snow for their snow days. They don’t get to go out and play in the snow, build snow forts, have snowball fights, or sled (just kidding–they’ve never owned a sled or even snow boots because what’s the point of it in Springfield?). They go out, play like they’re clearing the ice from the driveway and deck using a variety of gardening implements (remember, as a parent, I must make things explicit, such as “Do not chop the hoe down on the deck.”) Then they come in, ask for some hot chocolate like they’re in the Alps or something, and then they want to go to a pizza buffet, which we often can since the roads are clear by lunch time.

Meanwhile, I’m reading the snowfall totals in places I’ve lived previously, and I’m all:

For some reason, my ten-year-old son decided to bid on some gold-painted near-filigree Christmas decorations in a silent auction last week.

Which he won. He’s giving one to his grandmother, but he’s got the other in his bedroom.

Of course, I had to state clearly, “Do not sleep with the Christmas decoration.”

Because just about everything ends up in their beds, and they routinely sleep on books, radios, flashlights, decorations, radios, electronic devices, and, well, anything that they can bring or sneak into their room.

Of course, my clear statement of the rule does not mean that they will not sleep with the Christmas decoration at some point or another. But I try.

Also, you are correct in noting that the decoration is covered in glitter. I had almost run out the stray glitter clock on the Christmas cards–although just last week I picked up a speck from the pile of papers on my desk that predates Christmas last year, the sightings were fewer. But the church bundled the Christmas decorations with other auction wins, and one of them is on my desk atop the aforementioned pile of papers, and it is shedding bits of gold glitter that I’ll wear for month to come.

I was digging through a box of old photos looking for something, and I came across an old black and white photo of my maternal grandmother.

In this photo, she’s got to be in her thirties or forties.

And I couldn’t help contrast it with this photo from last year of my paternal grandmother:

My grandmother is 93 years old, and clearly she’s very vital. When I too infrequently talk to her, she laments that she can only mow her lawn or work in the garden for a couple of hours without needing to take a break.

But she does not look fifty-some years older than my other grandmother in the first photo.

What accounts for this? A dated hairstyle and glasses, a prim smile of the capital-A Adult from the middle of the last century (the smile itself a relative innovation, at least as far as photos are concerned) contrasted with color and a more modern hair style? Good genetics? Healthy living?

I don’t know, but I do know that I’m hoping to channel my Nana more than my Grandma, as the latter died like so many of her line at age 60 after a long battle with cancer.

The first lines of Endymion:

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.

Clearly, I feel the same way about things, which explains, partially, the neglected Personal Relics category here.

Also, initial impressions of Endymion: It’s “La Belle Dame Sans Merci” but stretched into three or four Netflix seasons.

on Facebook regarding my recent purchase of a triathlon suit.

I will compete in my third Y Not Tri indoor triathlon in April, and it will be my sixth overall triathlon. Up until now, I’ve done the triathlons in swim trunks which has been a little uncomfortable at times.

But in the class I’m taking at the YMCA ahead of the Y Not Tri is going to feature swimming every night, so the coach encouraged us to wear triathlon suits so we could go right from the swim at the beginning to biking or running drills without losing too much time in between.

So since I had a couple of gift cards to a local bike shop that is clearing out its triathlon gear, I picked up a triathlon suit. An XXL, by the way–although the sizes said I should fit into an XL, I did not, which explains why I already have a triathlon suit I do not fit into in my drawer. Well, that, and the fact that I twice ordered sizes too small through another local bike shop and only returned it once. Come to think of it, I only got that one because my beautiful wife had gotten me a gift card before my first triathlon so I could pick up a suit.

At any rate, as I completed the transaction, I quipped that the next big step would be to wear the thing in public.

“Everyone has one,” he said, and he was right: When I go to triathlons, I have been one of the few not in sleek bits of moisture wicking fabric, much less sharkskin apparatus.

But it’s still weird to me on two levels.

First, it’s odd to put on a different uniform of some sort. I remember when I started my first job as a grocery store bagger whose uniform included a blue vest (and a dress shirt, dress pants, and dress shoes–it was quite a different era). That was odd. And I remember when I became a produce clerk and wore an apron. That felt weird. Looking down, it looked like a dress, and it kind of bound up the long strides I normally take.

When I stepped out onto a martial arts mat for the first time in a gi, I was really self conscious as well–even though everyone else was wearing a gi, I was not used to seeing myself in one. It passed, of course, and now I’m about the only one on the mat in a full gi as the school has started allowing people to shed the jacket and train in one of the school’s t-shirts. Come to think of it, I was the last bagger to wear the blue vest, too, when the store lightened up and let the utility clerks get by with just a shirt and tie.

Second, I guess it means I’m serious about it, and I have to stop thinking of myself as a lucky amateur, a walk-on that’s doing better than the extras in the film of my life should expect. My first try at martial arts, I didn’t buy a gi–I was a poor English major working at a little above minimum wage and could only sort-of afford bujitsu classes without the official uniform. It only lasted a couple of months, and I wore the black sweat pants I bought for nights at the Missouri Bujinikan Dojo to bed for decades after. But the gi and the triathlon suit represent an investment, emotional as well as financial, in hobbies that I’ve avoided for most of my adult life.

But I’m pretty sure that it’s because I think I look silly in them until I’ve worn them a couple of times in public.

Was I self-conscious about my hat back in 1994? Perhaps.

And in conclusion, I have no conclusion. Thank you, and try the veal.

Technically, this is not a book report, as I listened to the abridged form of this book on tape. No, really, on tape. I procured it sometime in the misty past and saved it for such a time as I would sit down around an old cassette deck to listen to these things. Fortunately, though, instead of waiting for that time, I bought a user vehicle with a cassette deck in it, and I got to listen to this audiobook, which I had filed with our Teaching Company Great Courses.

Which is not; whereas those are taught by professors with some experience in making material interesting, this is a book read. So the language is more book language than spoken language, and it sounds like it. Olympia Dukakis reads it pretty flat.

So: Why do the Greeks matter? I guess the book makes the case that Ancient Greece is the font of all Western thought, especially when blended with the Judeo-Christian tradition coming out of Israel in the early A.D.

The book recounts tales from Greek mythology and turns its attention in turn from story-tellers, poets, philosophers, and statesmen with a little bit about the military history, but it’s not the focus. It’s a high level summary, with plenty of time spent on pederasty and glowing reviews of the statues of young men. This, combined with the infrequent use of casual vulgarity for no other reason than signal the author’s authenticity and twenty-first century sensibilities, led me to stop listening to the course when my children were in the car.

Oh, and it does get a little left towards the end with a bit of misdichotomization between the Classical Greek and the Christian worldviews, and I didn’t have to see the date of the book’s publication to know what strutting, smirking simpleton contrasted unfavorably with Pericles and Kennedy. To be fair, Kennedy doesn’t measure up to Pericles as a stateman for the ages, either. Also, I’m not sure how you say the classical Greeks were more into “social justice” than the Christians, but I’m well-educated enough to perhaps write a counter-argument were I needing to publish or perish or convinced that anyone at all would read, much less be convinced, by my effort.

So at best, you can revisit some things you should probably already know about Greek history (although perhaps the book’s target audience, possibly those educated in the latter half of the twentieth century, wouldn’t).

It’s a pretty good indicator, again, of why I should really travel a little further afield of classical history when I’m picking out things to listen to in the truck. I remember more when I start out knowing less, and that seems a better use of my time.