I Now Strut Like His Daughter When I Enter a Room

Some unexpected guests joined Professor Robert Kelly live on BBC News earlier, as he spoke about the current situation in South Korea… pic.twitter.com/XVXbj4zEJh

— RTÉ News (@rtenews) March 10, 2017

The best TV moment of the decade.

Pungent Realizations from the Past Year

Actors, when they’re not on stage, are boring. They are especially boring when talking about acting.  They are also always acting, even when offstage.

Additionally, white cars are boring.

Politicians are always running for a higher office, regardless of what they say to the media.

I enjoy reading old, very authoritative, articles from the media and scientific community about the Arctic hellscape in which we will all be living by the year, um, 2020.

The spiritual/philosophical development of non-theists ended around the age of seven.

Ivy Leaguers have massive holes in their common knowledge.

Newer clergy have massive holes in their knowledge of liturgy, parish budgets, and hand tools. Also, their preaching isn't proclamation, but often a lecture based on the op-ed page of The New York Times.

The Cleveland Browns will always, always stink.

Easily, Since It was Other People’s Money

How Did Detroit Schools Spend $286,596 On LA Conference?

Contemporary Gender Terminology is Harder than Quantum Mechanics

Transgender man gives birth to non-binary partner's baby with female sperm donorhttps://t.co/llwQD5LZ5Z pic.twitter.com/PjfQK9sumS

— Daily Mirror (@DailyMirror) December 28, 2019

Seriously, I'm going to need to sit down with paper and pencil to work this one out.

Evergreen Advice

Taiwan president channels HK protests in appeal for votes: 'Don't believe the Communists'

Just keep a lid on it until after next month; that is, after I’ve left Taipei.

As Dad Would Note, It’s a Thin Line Between Physics and Spirituality

Parallel worlds exist and interact with our world, say physicists

The Dog's First Christmas

She also played one of the sheep in the parish's Christmas pageant.  Honestly, I know exactly how she feels.

What Else Would They Think Christmas is About?

The Washington Post, which just happens to be the newspaper of record for the capital of the most powerful country on Earth, decided to devote some effort and column space to let everyone know that the true meaning of Christmas is that the leader of that nation is a super-mean man whom they don’t like.

Our elite class is as infantile and supercilious as the one whom they loathe.

Please Don't Give Western Media/Politicians Ideas, China

China will rewrite the Bible and the Quran to 'reflect socialist values'

Of course, many of my ordained colleagues already think that Jesus was a socialist, so this may be moot.

All World Leaders Should

Boris Johnson: We will stand up for persecuted Christians

Thursday's Place: Hodad's

We were with a guy who called himself Daytona Dave, although he wasn’t from Florida. He was a local and, since we were surfing in the Ocean Beach section of San Diego, the nickname was either ironic, geographically illiterate, intentionally alliterative, or weirdly demented.

Actually, it was probably “all of the above” because, you know, he was from Ocean Beach.

For a surfer, San Diego is perhaps the nicest city in the United States, or at least was before the California Assembly decided that it was their mission to enact a brace of state laws designed to limit enterprise and innovation and drive the sane to Texas. In those days, the latter months of the 20th century, it had a funky laid-back essence that made one feel as if pleasantly abiding in a Jimmy Buffet or Kenny Chesney song.

Ocean Beach itself was the counter-culture area of a city that was fairly counter-culture itself. Maybe it was counter-x-culture. On a stroll from hotel to surf one would encounter proto-hippies, bikers, semi-employed pool boys [and girls] experimenting with the latest leaves from Hawaii, the occasional 18-window VW Microbus, disreputable musicians who were puzzled to be outside during daylight, and all of the other social detritus from a place where energy is never wasted on anything that doesn’t delight [or dull] the senses.

It was here, along a beach where the surf gang known as the Coronado Gypsies easily co-exists with Marines from nearby Camp Pendleton participating in amphibious landing training, Dave was kind enough to seek permission from the locals to let us spend some time on their waves, as long as we didn’t drop in or cut in line. We were grateful for that, not just because California surf gangs are notoriously territorial, but also because we encountered some wild lefts that day that were in that perfect four foot range with a steady hydrostatic dynamic that left us in the pleasant state of exhaustion.

It also left us hungry, and again this is where Daytona Dave turned up trumps. Before there was Five Guys, Smashburger, In-and-Out Burger, and all of the other meat sandwich places that have popped up over the years since, if you wanted meat, but not a steak, in a sandwich, but not from McDonald’s, and you were in Ocean Beach, there was only one place to go.

During a regular session, a surfer will burn approximately 250 calories an hour while in the water. [You thought it would be more, didn’t you? There’s a lot of waiting in surfing.] We had been in the water for about seven hours, since shortly after sunrise [which is backwards in the Pacific; maybe the only discomfiting feature since part of the fun of East Coast surfing is being in the water as the sun rises from it] and all I had eaten since 6am was a Pop Tart that hadn’t even enjoyed some time in a toaster. [That stuff about surfers being vegan and macrobiotic and all that jazz is largely hype; I’ve never seen a collection of physically active people eat and drink in as unhealthy a manner.] Well, it had been smeared with some Vegemite.

This meant that by 2pm I had burned around 2000 calories and was beginning to feel it. My surf buddy, AJ, is eccentric in his eating habits anyway, and was perhaps feeling it more than I was since his breakfast had been a bowl of lime sherbet covered in caramel sauce. All Daytona Dave could say, prone on his board in the sand, was one mumbled word: “Hodad’s”, Of course, the place of legend. That would be perfect.

However, we weren’t the only ones to think of Hodad’s that day, or any day, as it is so popular that, even if unsure of its exact location, one simply looks for customers literally lined up around a corner, waiting to either eat at a table or order a loose meat staple.

The original site of Hodad’s was just across from Ocean Beach’s primary lifeguard tower, which meant it was a holy grail for the hungry surfers. However, the youngest son of the owners had the opportunity to move it to the center of OB’s action in the main part of town and found that, while it was still convenient to the beach, it was also convenient to every other person, from bankers to parolees, who was hungry. With the move, the mom and pop diner eventually would hire over twenty people to cater to the rich variety of customers.

Here’s an appreciation from one of San Diego’s small, free newspapers:

Hodad’s welcomes you to come as you are – no shoes, no shirt, no problem – a beachgoer’s dream come true. The walls of the burger joint are covered with photos, artwork, road signs, and license plates – everywhere the license plates. Reading the vanity plates is an experience in itself. The street facing wall is open to the outside at counter height. Seating is an eclectic mix of options. Sit at the window counter, high-top or low-top tables, communal tables, an indoor counter, in booths covered with Hodad’s stickers, or even in the front seat of a van.

A beach cruiser hangs from one wall. Surfboards, skateboard decks, and lifeguard flotation devices are suspended from the ceiling. Like any good diner, Hodad’s giant wall menu is framed in red neon. An actual street sign stands in one corner. The high-energy diner reflects the fun-loving, casual beach personality of the neighborhood.

It’s actually best not to wear too much, or at least not wear anything nice, as the burgers are large and sloppy and the milkshakes are large, thick, and sloppy. While we had to wait about an hour on the sidewalk before we could get to the counter, it wasn’t wasted time as we heard about nuance in body art from a couple of tattoo artists who were also waiting; why certain motorcycles are nicknamed “bobbers” from a member of the Hell’s Angels Berdoo chapter, and catch some suggestions about solid investments from a guy from the local Charles Schwab office.

In short, it was everything one expects a beach joint to be: A respite during a surfari that offers interaction with all of the other people who find sustenance in a liminal setting, one that emphasizes a place to interact without pre-judgement and in an open and convivial manner. Plus, the burgers are better than anything I’ve ever had at either In-and-Out or Five Guys. There was this place in Circular Quay in Sydney, Australia, though, that made this fantastic thing called an Aussie Burger, but that’s for another day.

We know it's not Thursday, but consider this like Page Six in the New York Post.  That section is never on page six of the newspaper. - ed.

Mainly Because He Works at It

Why David Suchet Makes the Perfect Hercule Poirot

A Pungent Cinematic Translation

"Inspired by true events" means, "This is complete fiction but we needed to have the veneer of reality to compensate for an inept, uninteresting script".

This Week's Winner of the Professor Moriarty Award

Bank employee steals $88,000 from vault, posts it on social media

I was really surprised to discover he doesn’t live in Florida.

All He Did was Create a Nerd Box in His Garage, He’s Not a Philosopher-King

Bill Gates innovative educational plans don’t work.

No, It Doesn’t Cause Me Any Distress at All

An academic in the UK says that the insults “geek” and “nerd” should be criminalized as hate crimes because they cause distress to people with high IQs.

These people love to ban and punish. It gives their life meaning. Forgive the crudeness, but my only response to wokescolds is LOLGF.

If You Care About the Climate, You Must Always Be a Misery

Dining out, booze and sweets give a higher carbon footprint than meat eaters https://t.co/QLjB4k54mk

— Daily Mail Online (@MailOnline) December 20, 2019

A Pungent Observation

The recent weeks of Impeachment Kabuki Theater have distracted the political and media class from instructing us in theology this Christmas.  Until now. 

I see that Jesus and his family are once again serving their Protean duty by conforming to whatever 21st century secular political ideology is held by the politician/journalist leading the instruction.  Usually also serving as a weapon against those who hold an opposing ideology.  It's all so tiresome.

She’s Got a Point

Wokeness isn't some abstract social ethos, untethered from political economy. It's an ideology of the professional classes, it assists them to discipline and manage the subaltern ones, ie helps elites maintain the status quo.
It is a class politics—ruling class politics.

— Aimee Terese (@aimeeterese) December 19, 2019

Christmas > Whatever that shopping thing is all about

For sizable majorities of Americans, it’s no contest again this year: Jesus wins over Santa, and “Merry Christmas” beats “Happy Holidays.”

A Pungent, and Apolitical, Observation

We probably need to teach Civics in public school again, as it's remarkable how many people think that impeachment means removal from office.

Serenity

An Injection of Reality

We’ve just had the best decade in human history. Seriously.

Please read the whole thing.

I Recall Vox Suggesting That Unemployed Coal Miners Could Learn to Code

Your turn, now, kids.  #learningtocode

For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction -  Isaac Newton

Ours is Truly the Culture of Panic

Tide Pods, Nazis, and Bees: The Top 10 Moral Panics of the 2010s

Ohioans in History

Wright brothers fly first airplane, December 17, 1903

For Those of Us Who Suffer Linguistic Panic in Those Trendy Coffeeshops

On Both Sides of the Atlantic, the Party of the Working Class Finds That Class Distasteful

Most troubling in all this is the way in which anti-working-class bigotry is now laundered through apparent anti-racism. Despite the clear decline in racism in recent decades, the cultural and political elites have carved out a narrative that it is worse than ever before, particularly among Those People who drive white vans, support Brexit and dislike Jeremy Corbyn. In doing so, alleged left-wingers have made class hatred respectable and anti-racist politics look cut-off and vaguely ridiculous. Which is bad news for both class politics and anti-racist politics.

That the left needs to learn lessons from this historic defeat is obvious. What I’m wondering is if they are even capable of doing so.

Or, as overheard while in line at the DMV, "Why do them Democrats keep yelling at me?"

Then Why Did You Take the Nomination Away from Hillary?

Barack Obama, On Behalf of All Men, Says to Women: 'You're Better Than Us'

This, More Than Anything, Explains Our Contemporary World

The post-WWII order is ending — and nothing has replaced it.

The kids are all right

Why more and more young Americans are becoming entrepreneurs

Vanilla Feminism

Taylor Swift: I’d Be ‘The Man’ If I Were A Man

Well, you’d be the tedious man.

Actually, since you’re so corporate, you’re more like Mr. Jones in Dylan’s “Ballad of a Thin Man”.

A day in the life when you work with musicians

 An e-mail exchange, initiated after 10pm:

Dude: Dude, I just bought a (third-hand) guitar at a pawn shop with your name on it. What can you tell me about it?  (Sends photo.)

Us: From what we recall, it was given to a charity for auction about thirteen years ago. It’s made out of high-quality walnut and we put the best hardware we had at the time into it. If you purchased it for under $500, you got a deal.

Dude: Dude, it has a small crack in the neck. What should I do?

Us: Those guitars were designed to be serviced easily and with a variety of aftermarket parts. The neck bolts on with four screws and a face-plate. If you see an aftermarket neck you like, odds are it will fit easily and you can replace it very simply yourself.

Dude: What are its dimensions?

Us: Well, since every guitar is handmade, I’d have to take it apart and measure it to be exact. In general, the neck should have a 42mm width.

Dude: Don’t you make necks?

Us: We don’t make bolt-on necks anymore. We make fitted necks that are proprietary to the guitar’s design. Aftermarket necks are a better price and similar quality to anything we would have made, anyway. Let me see if I have something leftover from those days and, if so, I’ll let you have it.  [The neck ordinarily retails for $99]

Dude: Dude, your customer service sucks.  YOU SHOULD FIX THIS FOR FREE.

Us: So did Picasso’s. Besides, you’re not a customer. A customer is someone who gives us money for our labor and services. Be patient and I’ll get back to you.

Dude: DUDE, YOU HAVE NO INTEGRITY AND THIS SAYS A LOT ABOUT THE QUALITY OF YOUR WORKMANSHIP!

Us: So, you don’t want the free neck, then? You know, because of integrity and all.

Dude: [crickets]

They learned how to do this during the Vietnam War

Confidential documents reveal U.S. officials failed to tell the truth about the war in Afghanistan

Everything old is new, again.

Well, Her Parents are Communists

Greta Thunberg tells cheering crowd 'we will make sure we put world leaders against the wall' if they do not tackle global warming as she attends climate protest in Turin

If you scratch a militant environmentalist, you’ll find a totalitarian. Green is the new red.

Everything Old is New Again

Yukio Mishima: Japan’s Cultural Martyr

I've always been fascinated with Mishima, but my Japanese students in the '80's and '90's were embarrassed by him and would just shake their heads when I mentioned his name.  With an increasingly hostile and militant China threatening the Pacific Rim, with or without the help of our National Basketball Association, the Japanese are beginning to re-discover the need for their samurai past and its values.

Endorsed

Boys actually need more masculinity

Thursday's Place: The Golden Lamb Inn

In 1871, a prominent attorney*, Clement L. Vallandigham, decided to engage in a dramatic ploy to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that his client was innocent of murder. Since Vallandigham’s alternate theory was that the victim had accidentally killed himself with a pistol as opposed to having been plugged by his client, Vallandigham practiced what was to be his courtroom demonstration repeatedly while in his comfortable quarters at The Golden Lamb Inn in Lebanon, Ohio. In order to make the demonstration as realistic as possible, Vallandigham made sure that the gun he was using was loaded.

Ultimately, while practicing his summation, Vallandigham successfully proved that the victim could have accidentally killed himself. Vallandigham did so by accidentally shooting himself to death with the loaded pistol.

It may have been the first example of the notorious “Ohio Man” syndrome, where events collide in such a way as to make even a Roman farce appear more realistic. [See "Florida Man"] The fact that this occurred at The Golden Lamb, the state’s oldest hotel still in operation, just gave it all a certain splendor.

Founded in 1803, the year that Ohio became a state, the venue is signified by the facsimile of a lamb rendered in gold paint, designed to be recognized by those who could not read. While originally a log cabin that also served as the first owner’s residence, as the town of Lebanon grew, situated as it was on the coach road between Columbus and Cincinnati, the inn became a more stately and comfortable house, with multiple floors and a tavern and stables adjacent. This was aided considerably when the Lebanon was named the county seat and the courthouse was built directly across the street in 1805.

In those early days, guests would find a menu that boasted what was still standard, buckeye fare even in my childhood: Deer, beer, cornbread, and apple butter. Since bears were a plentiful nuisance in the area, they were added to the menu, too. As the state was growing with Eastern states’ population moving to lush farms that were free of rocks and filled with loamy soil, The Golden Lamb became a meeting place and clearinghouse for information, organization, and occasional political mayhem. The first inter-continental roadway, the Lincoln Highway, which would eventually extend from Atlantic City to San Francisco, was plotted over a hot dish of bear at the inn.

As the Shakers were making their peaceful, non-violent presence known in Lebanon, they would provide the inn with the comfortable chairs and sturdy tables that would be enjoyed by the diners and guests, some still in use to this day.  This would become all the more necessary as the inn would become a meeting place for the bellicose realities of a growing republic, serving as the staging area for soldiers, beginning with the War of 1812 and continuing through to the U.S. entry into World War I.  To entertain the numerous guests, the inn began to offer musicals, freak show acts, and singers and performers of various types and quality. This necessitated the construction of a stage and, thus, The Golden Lamb became the area’s first theater.

DeWitt Clinton, surveying for his canal system, several English lords on a hunting trip, and many of Ohio’s remarkable, early politicians and orators would make their way to the inn. [In the late 19th century, William Clements, a Methodist circuit horseback lay preacher related to The Coracle, would also spend some time there; just not in the tavern.]

Notoriously, Judge Charles R. Sherman, the father of General William Tecumseh Sherman, would die in his sleep while a guest at the hotel, leaving his nine-year-old son in the temporary care of strangers. Over the years, Charles Dickens, Samuel Clemens, James Garfield, Rutherford B. Hayes, Warren G. Harding, Ulysses, S. Grant, William McKinley, Martin Van Buren, William Howard Taft, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Horace Mann, Ronald Reagan, and George W. Bush have all been guests.

[As Ohio has produced eight U.S. presidents, all but two have stayed the night.]

Because of this association with the movers and shakers [and Shakers] of the burgeoning Midwest, to this day no politician striving for office, even on the national stage, can afford to skip a visit to The Golden Lamb. The inn has hosted virtually every potential nominee for president from both parties since the late 19th century. In fact, within the Buckeye State, it is considered unlucky not to stop there and enjoy, if not a hot plate of bear, then the inn’s “Couscous, Mushroom & Vegetable Cobbler”.

So complete is the inn’s association with national politics, that its current owner is also a U.S. senator.

If you are a fan of bucolic, almost-hidden small towns of charm in the Midwest, Lebanon should not be missed; and, if staying there, while there is a perfectly serviceable Holiday Inn down by the interstate, The Golden Lamb does allow one to interpenetrate with a great deal of early, and not so early, American history and flavor. At less the $150 a night, it’s a bargain.

The fact that the inn is supposedly haunted by some of its former guests and, hence, popular with obtuse television ghost hunters, just makes the whole proposition that much more piquant.

*To our knowledge, Vallandigham was the only person to run for a U.S. governorship while hiding out in a foreign country.  He was in Canada shortly after The Civil War, mainly because he supported the Confederacy and Ohio was a pro-emancipation state.

When the Ruling Class Becomes Distinct from and Disdains Those Whom They are to Serve, This is Inevitable

The revenge of democracy

On Second Thought, I Don't Miss Australia All That Much

A Melbourne childcare centre has ditched Santa and replaced him with a 'Sustainability Pirate' so 'everyone feels welcome regardless of their beliefs'. pic.twitter.com/Pb6geTUC9D

— Sunrise (@sunriseon7) December 11, 2019

Divine Privilege

Jesus Criticized For Culturally Appropriating Human Nature

A Longer Read for Percy Fans

Walker Percy Ponders The Joy And Risk Of Naming The World

All Ahoo

Work, health, and travel realities are messing up what was once the rhythm of production for The Coracle, so we apologize if postings are more random than usual.  No place or biography this week, at least not yet, but we'll get things together eventually and post what we have when we have it.

( "All ahoo" is an old Royal Navy expression indicating disorganization on deck.)

I Concur

The Person Of The Year Is Not Greta Thunberg. It’s The Hong Kong Protester

This is the Single Best Advent Gift Ever

My own jar of Vegemite:

I've Seen this Error in Church Bulletins

Local paper prints ad for ‘Pictures with Satan’ at Christmas parade

This is Priceless

A thoughtful person makes reference to the work of C. G. Jung and the poorly educated media children, who don't know what he's talking about, cram his statements into their tedious identity box.

He’s spent more than half a century in Hollywood, but Billy Dee Williams was still surprised. 

 The legendary actor — the essence of black masculinity with his velvety-smooth, bedroom-ready voice, which carried over into a ubiquitous Colt 45 malt liquor campaign in the 1980s — gave an interview to Esquire magazine about his role as smuggler Lando Calrissian in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, which lands in theaters Dec. 20.  

 In that interview, the 82-year-old actor said, “And you see, I say ‘himself’ and ‘herself,’ because I also see myself as feminine as well as masculine. I’m a very soft person. I’m not afraid to show that side of myself.” Media outlets — so many media outlets! — picked that quote up and ran with it. Williams, they reported, is gender fluid. People praised him. Oh, how they praised him.  

Thing is, Williams has no idea what that means.

Continuing Signs of the Apocalypse

Walmart is now serving KFC’s fried chicken-scented firelog

A Parish Responds Appropriately to a Betrayal

“Hi, Nathan,” said Brian Shrader, a deputy with the Brown County Sheriff’s Department. “Remember me?” 

“Yeah,” Stang replied. It was Shrader who had interviewed him after an appalling act of vandalism at St. David’s Episcopal Church, where Stang played the organ and directed the choir. On the Sunday morning after the 2016 election, Stang had discovered the church’s walls defaced with black spray paint: a swastika, along with the words “Heil Trump”....

Please read the whole thing, even though the journalist struggles mightily to lay fault with the miscreant’s mother, the Christian response of the congregation is admirable.  It's always tricky when a church hires non-theistic staff.  They never quite seem to get what the church is about.

Regrettably, what is left unsaid is that the hate crime hoax essentially destroyed the congregation.

Michael McCurdy

"You just shook the hand that shook the hand of a man who shook the hand of Wordie."

"Who's that?"

"He was with Shackleton."

"Ah."

With that, I was introduced to Michael McCurdy, an artist whose work you have probably seen time and again, especially if you're an avid reader, but whose name, like that of many commercial illustrators, remains obscure in some corner of an etching.

Our paths crossed in a manner that was familiar during my Berkshire years, where people of artistic accomplishment and those, such as myself, of less artistic vocations lived together in the quiet and bucolic town of Great Barrington.  This was in the days just before the flood of New York-based weekenders invaded; the days before artificially inflated real estate prices, before the need for seven sushi restaurants in a town of 7000, before the traffic jams and sour tempers.

As I was still a faculty member and not yet a school administrator, I had summers that were organized around fishing, hiking, and an awful lot of reading.  With that loosely structured schedule, it was not uncommon for me to stop by Arlo Guthrie's place, as we were neighbors, to look at what he had done to transform an old Episcopal parish into a music library and performance venue, to give a ride to the 20th century's most seminal news photographer, to nod at Hugh Downs as we bought newspapers on Main Street, and to have Don Westlake detail the plot of his latest "Dortmunder" novel while seated next to me at a restaurant.  [Yes, I'm a name-dropper.]

Meeting Michael was even easier, as he was a member of my wife's parish choir and I would see him at coffee hour on those stray Sundays when I wasn't substituting for a vacationing rector or vicar.  As noted above, our first meeting came after my wife had made reference in a sermon to my habit that particularly hot and humid summer of reading tales of Arctic and Antarctic exploration.  Although an obscure interest, I found an academic colleague in McCurdy, who was researching what would become the one children's book that he both wrote and illustrated, Trapped By The Ice, the story of Ernest Shackleton's ill-fated, yet ultimately remarkable and stirring, voyage to the South Pole.

During the course of that and many other seasons, Michael would introduce me to his long and accomplished history of work and art.  McCurdy lived in an old farmhouse on the outskirts of town with a barn that had been transformed into his studio [a video of which is found below from when he was visited by Martha Stewart as part of her eponymous TV show].  He still had, on one of the shelves, the toy printing press, a childhood gift of his parents, that had ignited his interest in what would become his life's work.

Video:
Martha Stewart takes us into illustrator Michael McCurdy's studio to learn about his process of making woodblock print illustrations.

It should be no surprise, I suppose, that he was interested in the people of a former age, as he always seemed to me more of a man of the earlier part of the century.  Born into comfort, educated by the best of private schools, a prep school art teacher for a time, and a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War, he and his family repaired to the Berkshires where the children could be raised in peace and he could build not only his artistic reputation, but a publishing concern that would match art and verse with works both contemporary and classical.  Once, while at a particularly stunted house party, when the conversations were halting and awkward, Michael simply sat at his host's piano and began to play a variety of music, from common to classical, that resulted in people unwittingly singing from the Episcopal Church's hymnal [the 1940 edition, too].

As with any artist, we could prattle on about him, but displaying a sample of his creations would be more interesting [click to enlarge, please]:

While the woodcuts are his best-known medium, I've always been partial to those watercolors that illustrated his children's book about Shackleton, as that simple volume was the result of many, many of our conversations and some interesting and fun correspondence with the survivors of the survivors of the expedition.

McCurdy's collected works may now be found mostly in the archives of the Boston Public Library; illustrations and broadsheets from his publishing company are housed at the University of Connecticut's Dowd Research Center.  Many of the works that he illustrated are in print, still, and can be found in bookstores both on-line and physical, particularly The Bookloft in Great Barrington, which has always been partial to local writers and artists.

Around the time our family left the Berkshires for the Litchfield Hills, Michael was diagnosed with a degenerative nervous disease that would ultimately rob him of his ability to create and to make a living. With that knowledge, to which I and others were sworn to secrecy so that he would be able to gain work until it was no longer possible, we spent a long evening at dinner in his farmhouse [with some rather good scotch, I seem to partially recall].

At one point of the evening, observing the sun setting over the mountains, he asked, "Did you ever just want to get on a road north and drive until it ends?  Just to see how far it would take you and what you would see?  I guess that's the role of the artist, isn't it?  To supply that wonder.  To take someone wistfully to another place; a place unfamiliar but within their own imagination."

Thursday's Place: Chelsea Hotel

It was, in its prime in 1885, the tallest structure in New York City.  When I first moved to the neighborhood, just a block away from the Hotel that resides on West 23rd Street, I thought that I had never heard of it.  After a very short time, and with the aid of local amateur historians, I realized that the Chelsea Hotel was known to anyone familiar with 20th century words and music; or even notorious deaths.

Perhaps we should get the lurid stuff out of the way first.

In October of 1978, Sid Vicious, a resident of the Chelsea Hotel who was a member of the punk rock group, The Sex Pistols, and who is generally regarded as the worst bass player ever to have appeared on a stage, woke from a heroin-induced coma to find his girlfriend, Nancy Spungen, stabbed to death in the bathroom.  It was a great mystery who had done this to her.  [No, it really wasn't. - ed.] Not long afterwards, after subsequent arrests and a couple of suicide attempts, Vicious killed himself.  Thus, the Chelsea Hotel was lodged in the cultural consciousness of my generation.

For the generation before mine, it was the suicide of Charles R. Jackson, the author of the harrowing novel The Lost Weekend, that marked the hotel's infamy.  Others have died there, as well, some infamous, some notorious.

However, as it was a residential hotel, it is especially known for those who have lived there and, importantly, have created there; whether in the arts, literature, music, fashion, or film.  If ever there were a location that served as the nexus for the overlapping counter-culture in the mid-century, it is within the ancient edifice, complete with wrought-iron, faux balconies.

Here's a brief list:

Mark Twain
O. Henry
Dylan Thomas [He died there, too; after drinking way too much at the White Horse Tavern]
Arthur C. Clarke [He wrote the novel, 2001: A Space Odyssey there]
Sam Shepard
Arthur Miller
Tennessee Williams
Jack Kerouac
Brendan Behan
Thomas Wolfe
Valerie Solanas [Apparently, she was some kind of writer; chiefly, she is known for attempting to assassinate Andy Warhol]
William S. Burroughs
Allen Ginsberg
Gregory Corso
Lilie Langtry
Eliot Gould,
Leonard Cohen,
Janis Joplin,
Tom Waits,
Patti Smith,
Jim Morrison,
Iggy Pop,
Jeff Beck,
Dee Dee Ramone,
Cher,
Édith Piaf,
Joni Mitchell,
Bob Dylan,
Robbie Robertson,
Alice Cooper,
Bette Midler,
and
Jimi Hendrix

So, imagine how much of our cultural treasure has been written, composed, painted, or filmed within that building.  There are, or were, bronze plaques by the entrance dedicated to the poets Dylan Thomas and Brendan Behan, both of whom were residents.  As it's been some years since I was last in that neighborhood, and as the hotel is on the National Register of Historic Places, I'm sure others have also been mounted.

There is much to be read online about the Chelsea and its habitues; since Robert Mapplethorpe, the controversial photographer, lived there, as well, there are ample, artistic photos also to be found that illustrate the creative life in that splendid, sometimes luxurious, sometimes seedy, building.

Some stray pictures:

Nice, vintage entrance that I hope survives its recent renovation

In my day, the early 1980's, it was at the height of its seedy chic, as evidenced by this room

Although Dylan, wearing what must have been his great aunt's hat, found it a good place to play sock drawer basketball

A lobby like no other

See what I mean?

Leonard Cohen has a song, one of his best known, about a brief time he spent there with Janis Joplin, but it contains a lewd lyric and, hey, this is a family weblog.  It's called Chelsea Hotel No. 2, if you wish to hear it.

Here, instead, is a family friendly song by Joni Mitchell about awakening at the hotel:

Affirmed

Yeah, a Millionaire

Actor Mark Ruffalo endorses Bernie Sanders, calling him 'one of us'

A Book Recommendation

Sacred Liberty: America's Long, Bloody, and Ongoing Struggle for Religious Freedom

Sacred Liberty offers a dramatic, sweeping survey of how America built a unique model of religious freedom, perhaps the nation’s “greatest invention.”

These are Really...Ah...Impressive

102 Media Mistakes

The average cost of a journalism degree is $154,532.  Most of the reporters with whom I worked in the '70's were high school graduates; all of the reporters with whom I worked would have been mortified to make such errors.

I'm Glad to See I'm Not the Only One Discomfited by Those Who Make a Holiday an Opportunity to Mock and Attack Family Members

What sort of man wants to be known for making fun of his grandfather to score political points on Twitter?

A shallow man? An insubstantial man? A jerk? They all might apply to one degree or another. How about: a man whose tribalism has produced a unique form of political sociopathy, wherein he cannot see people who hold contrary ideas as anything but objects to be manipulated for amusement and personal advancement. 

He knows people will take offense, but they’re the wrong people, because MAGA amirite? Anyone who doesn’t appreciate the lulz is, at the least, MAGA-adjacent, so screw ‘em. Anyway it’s not about his grandfather, you morons, it’s a meta thing on his kind. It’s a bit, and gramps is a prop.

Don’t you get it? GRAMPS IS A PROP! IT’S A BIT! It’s a zing! Aimed at all those other people who truly deserve contempt because they dismiss Greta.

A Pungent Observation

The people who lately have told me that we would be a better society if government were in charge of every aspect of our lives are middle-class whites who have never been on a tribal reservation.  If so, they would see what life under total government control is like.  It does not look preferable.

No One Wants Them To, Anyway

Today’s Yale grads aren’t qualified to lead in the 21st Century

Continuing Signs of the Apocalypse

Willie Nelson has quit smoking weed

Another Sign of the Apocalypse

America braces for possible french fry shortage after poor potato harvest 

Either that, or it's because of global cooling warming climate change disruption.

Unsurprisingly

Should be “who won’t”, but why quibble?

Endorsed, and from Personal Experience

Opinion: The road to riches is this simple: Drive a crappy car

Needlehooks

White liberals deem that any speaker’s references to personal responsibility brands the speaker as bigoted. Black people cannot afford to buy into the white liberal agenda. White liberals don’t pay the same price. They don’t live in neighborhoods where their children can get shot simply sitting on their porches. White liberals don’t go to bed with the sounds of gunshots. White liberals don’t live in neighborhoods that have become economic wastelands. Their children don’t attend violent schools where they have to enter through metal detectors. White liberals help the Democratic Party maintain political control over cities, where many black residents live in despair, such as Baltimore, St. Louis, Detroit, Chicago.

This is an interestingly disruptive age where even traditional, monolithic political demographics are shifting.

Tales of the Post-Christian Age

“Thanksgiving is the time to fight with your family” is certainly an original notion.  Does the staff of The Nation need psycho-therapy?  Their familial relationships seem pathologically bellicose.

A Pungent Question

Would it be wrong of me to switch a life-long devotion to the Cleveland Browns to support the Pittsburgh Steelers?  No, no, family. Just kidding.

For reference:

3. The loss to Pittsburgh showed how something remains amiss with the Browns in terms of having a heart and a single purpose. After the game, Pittsburgh coach Mike Tomlin said: “We were looking to strike a blow for team in these circumstances and stand up for the game of football.” 

6. I wrote the Kitchens column before he wore the “PITTSBURGH STARTED IT” T-shirt and before Damarious Randall was left back in Cleveland. Those were more signs of the team’s immaturity. Then it showed up on the field. After taking a 10-0 lead in the middle of the second quarter, they were outscored, 20-3, for the rest of the game. 

12. The Browns have some big names and Pro Bowlers. But they are 5-7, despite acting at times as if they are 9-3. It’s a group of underachievers. There’s a sense at least some members of the coaching staff are over-matched. 

13. Kitchens talked about “learning experiences” after the game. He talked about “matching the intensity” of the Steelers for the entire game. My sense is he doesn’t know what to say about some of the problems facing the team.

I resist criticizing coaching as I'm hopeless in calling football plays, but I can't help to notice that the Browns head coach is not just inexperienced and immature, but he's charmless and dull-witted.  That may explain a lot about the locker room's weird shenanigans.

As with the author of the article quoted [who is a peer, a fellow Crash Street Kid*, and someone with whom I have an acquaintance], it is the die-hard fans for whom I have sympathy.


*Cleveland reference that requires more explanation than I have time for this morning.  Suffice it to say that Terry and I are neighborhood guys.

Oops

U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy voted by absentee ballot in the Nov. 5 election, but his vote was not counted because – unbeknownst to the senator – his name had been moved to the inactive voter list.

Well, Murph, you actually have to live in the state you represent, not just say you're looking to live in the state.  Fortunately, as a senator, you are not required to have a functional knowledge of the law.

The European Settlement of the "New" World was Complicated

THE MIRACLE OF SQUANTO’S PATH TO PLYMOUTH

I Still Miss Australia

“If they don't like it, stuff 'em”: Farmer gives a hilarious response as he refuses to put out his cigarette after journalist asks him to extinguish it

Also, he’s not a farmer, Daily Mail. He’s a drover. That’s different.

Wait Until They Find Out the Religion of the Child Whose Birth is Being Celebrated

NORWEGIAN MAYOR ASKS CHURCH TO REPLACE STAR OF DAVID DECOR, CITES ISRAEL

The Future is Chicken

The future is young — unless China says otherwise.

DC Comics has removed a piece of artwork from social media that was meant to promote a new Batman comic after Chinese critics claimed the artwork showed support for pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong.

The image by artist Rafael Grampa shows a version of Batwoman holding a Molotov cocktail in front of pink lettering that says: “The future is young.”

I Wonder What the American Version of this Poll Would Reveal

Three quarters of young Britons have never heard of Mozart while one in five think Bach is still alive, poll reveals

In the U.S. version, nearly all respondents would ask "Who's Mozart?" followed by, "Who's Botch ?"

Because Old Europe is Decadent and New Europe is Filled with Hope and Energy

Why is there more intellectual freedom in Bucharest than Cambridge?

It's a Midwestern Thing, You May Not Get It

Florence Teeters, 104, Bags Buck To Become Wisconsin’s Oldest Hunter

Not Just in Narnia

The Prophetic C.S. Lewis

Lewis cited an old theological question: “It has sometimes been asked whether God commands certain things because they are right, or whether certain things are right because God commands them. With Hooker [Richard Hooker, the Anglican theologian], and against Dr. [Samuel] Johnson, I emphatically embrace the first alternative. The second might lead to the abominable conclusion … that charity is good only because God arbitrarily commanded it — that He might equally well have commanded us to hate Him and one another and that hatred would then have been right.” It was dangerous to believe that sheer will, even God’s will, can be the ultimate source of right and wrong.

Sorry, But We Don't Need Any More White Saviors

Our people have been ill-served by politicians for as long as that elite class has plagued American culture.  There is absolutely nothing this gesture does for those of us who live in the 21st century.

How about you do something about health insurance costs, eh?  That was something else you and yours "fixed". 

Of course, that would require actual work and intelligence, whereas pandering to tribal Americans is so much simpler.  Also, this doesn't atone for the fake Indian routine that you relied upon for your employment and wherewithal.

Maybe We Could Trade Yale Students for Them

Hong Kong protesters throw red, white and blue bash to celebrate US support

Ah, Thanksgiving. Another Recipe.

As noted in yesterday's post, I'm not a big fan of turkey.  I don't mind it in a deli sandwich, in fact I used to enjoy one planted in a kaiser with homemade mayo and plenty of freshly ground pepper that was constructed by a now-defunct deli in Grand Central.  That, and a bag of cheese waffles, used to be the highlight of my weekly Friday journey from the city to Fairfield County.  However, I think the full bird is too much fuss to cook and too bland a meal around which to build a holiday.  It's telling when the stuffing is usually far superior, unless some lunatic puts water chestnuts in it.

When I was growing up with the Indians on the frontier, we would enjoy the annual Thanksgiving deer hunt and savor the fresh meat from our kills as our dinner.  [Although Grandma always had a half-dozen of Grandpa's chickens on reserve in case we came home without a trophy.]  It's best I not share that info with the more genteel folk with whom I spend my current days, though.

The cousins with our Thanksgiving entree

In addition to our traditional fish tacos, we've also enjoyed steamed lobster and lobster pie a few times over the years, especially on those lucky occasions when we've been able to spend a couple of days on the shoreline.  A couple of years ago, having just returned from Australia, we brought with us the recipe for the single most glorious sandwich ever invented.  My only regret is that one cannot buy either Carlton Draught or Victoria Bitter in the United States, as those two beers complement it perfectly.  [Foster's is not Australian beer; it's canned in Pittsburgh.]

Here's the recipe, and be prepared to open your mind to new gastronomic possibilities.  

Behold, Crocodile Bob's Aussie Works Burger:

Ingredients [serves four]:

1 pound ground beef 

1 large onion, sliced 

4 eggs 

4 slices Canadian bacon 

4 pineapple rings 

4 slices Cheddar cheese 

1 (8.25 ounce) can sliced beets, drained 

4 slices tomato 

4 lettuce leaves 

4 Kaiser rolls, split 

ketchup (optional) 

yellow mustard (optional) 

dill pickle relish (optional) 

mayonnaise (optional) 

Directions:

Preheat an outdoor grill for high heat.

When the grill is ready, lightly oil the grilling surface. 

Form the ground beef into four patties, and grill for 5 minutes per side, or until cooked through.

Meanwhile, melt butter in a large skillet over medium heat. 

Add onions, and fry until soft. 

Remove the onions from the skillet, and crack the eggs in the same skillet over medium heat. 

Cook until the yolks are solid, turning over once. 

Remove eggs, and set aside. 

Place the Canadian bacon in the same skillet, and fry until toasted. 

Remove the bacon, and turn the heat to high. 

Quickly fry the pineapple rings in the bacon drippings just until browned on each side.

Assembly:

Set bottom of kaiser roll on a plate,

1. top with burger, 

2. a slice of cheese, 

3. a slice of Canadian bacon, 

4. one fried egg, 

5. fried onions, 

6. a slice of beet, 

7. a slice of pineapple, 

8. a slice of tomato, 

9. and a leaf of lettuce.  

Serve to those shocked with wonder.

Since this year my wife and I are on our own for Thanksgiving, a first in our marriage, we're going to spend the day digesting this 920 calorie delight by raking some leaves and watching any team but the Cleveland Browns play football.

The staff of The Coracle will take tomorrow off.

A Thanksgiving Recipe, Part One

Since people ask me what we do for Thanksgiving [I know you're just being polite, but be careful what you ask for], there is a particular dish that I like to prepare to either delight or horrify those with whom we share the holiday. [If you're looking for a turkey recipe, you've come to the wrong place. We never eat turkey at Thanksgiving. What are we, a buncha Congregationalists?] The recipe and preparation instructions follow:

Surf City Curbside Fish Tacos

Ingredients:

1 lb of fresh swordfish steak
Salt and pepper
Olive oil
1 doz corn tortillas
Vegetable oil or butter (optional, depending on how you heat your tortillas)
Lime Mango sauce [see instructions]
1 ripe Avocado
Cabbage or iceberg lettuce
Cider vinegar
Salt

Prepare the sauce. This can be done either the simple or the complex way. The simple way is as follows:

1. Go to Stop and Shop
2. Buy some lime mango sauce in aisle 6

You may use it as a marinade for the fish and then, with the addition of some sour cream, use the remainder as the sauce for the finished dish. Naturally, don't use the sauce in which the fish has been marinating for the presentation sauce. At least, that's what Jenni always tells me. What she doesn't know won't hurt her.

The more complex way is to do the following:

Place two ripe, peeled and pitted mangoes and some lime juice [two limes or equivalent] into a food processor and blend until pureed. If the sauce is too thick, add a tablespoon or two of cold water. Stir in one diced jalapeno with seeds and skin removed [unless you like four-alarm sauce, like I do, in which case toss the seeds and skin into the whole shebang] and there you go. Save it until taco construction.

Prepare the cabbage and avocado. Thinly slice the cabbage and put it in a small serving bowl, sprinkle it with cider vinegar (about a tablespoon) and salt (about a teaspoon). Mix in the vinegar and salt. Peel the avocado and remove seed. Chop and reserve for later.

Heat the tortillas. There are two ways of doing this.

1. Simply heat them in the microwave for 20-25 seconds on high heat, on top of a napkin or paper towel to absorb the moisture that is released.

2. Or heat a cast iron skillet to medium heat. Add a teaspoon of oil to the pan or spread a half a teaspoon of butter on one side of one tortilla. Place tortilla in the pan (butter side down if you are using butter). As the tortilla sizzles, flip the tortilla with a spatula so that the other side gets some of the oil or butter from the pan. Continue to flip every 10-30 seconds until the tortillas begins to develop air pockets, after about a minute. You can always skip the butter or oil.

Remove the tortilla from the pan and place it folded on a plate. If the pan is large enough you can prepare two or more tortillas at once. Continue until all the tortillas (estimate 3 per person) are cooked. Set aside.

Cook the fish. Soak the fish fillets in cold water for at least one minute. Pat dry with a paper towel. Heat a large stick-free skillet to medium high heat. Add a couple of teaspoons of olive oil to the skillet. Place fish on skillet. Cooking time depends on the thickness of the fillets. A thin fillet may take only one minute on each side to cook. A thicker fillet may take a couple of minutes. Fish should be still barely translucent when cooked. Break off a piece and test if you are not sure, or give it to your cat and see what he does with it. Do not overcook the fish. When done, remove the fish from the pan to a separate plate. Sprinkle with salt and pepper to taste.

Place the plate of tortillas, fish, the sauce, cabbage, and avocados on the table and let everyone assemble their own. You go to a separate room where it's quiet and watch a football game. Preferably, Ohio State, since Princeton's season is over.  Or maybe stream Endless Summer and look at photos from Hawaii, Fiji, and Australia.

Sooth

Given all this – given the undeniable momentum and power of movements towards fairness and righteousness and equality, given the ubiquity of this movement in every single aspect and institution of this city, how is it possible that it still feels like such an awful, intolerant, racist, sexist, Islamophobic, homophobic, anti-indigenous (sorry if I missed anyone) hell hole of a city? 
The answer to that is actually pretty simple. The misery, the injustice, doesn’t exist in spite of all the social justice activism, it exists because of it. And truthfully, as my own subtext from the preceding paragraphs indicates, it doesn’t actually exist at all.

Please read the whole essay.  It's remarkable.

These Guys are Getting Annoying

The Chinese Govt Is Scanning Churchgoers’ Faces, Fingers

An Obituary of Note

Fiery theater, film critic John Simon dies at 94

I was acquainted with him through a mutual friend.  Personally, I always got along with him.  Besides being a critic, he was a brilliant scholar of comparative literature.

Note: This is by a Climate Change Activist, BTW

Why Apocalyptic Claims About Climate Change Are Wrong

Neo-Marxism is an Ideology for Puzzlewits

This is what art appreciation has come to: a PC prism through which a painting, a work of literature or even a popular song must be scrutinized for racism, sexism, gender bias or just plain hurt feelings.

New York museums haven’t banned anything yet. But look out: Metropolitan Museum of Art director Max Hollein told The New York Times that, “Art cannot solely be perceived in regard to its beauty and craftsmanship. You also have to evaluate it in light of its political messages.”

A Pungent Observation

Glaciers have been diminishing for the last 12,000 years, so it must be the fault of...(spins Wheel of Blame)...CAPITALISM!

About That Yale vs. Harvard Halftime Protest

"Activism is a way for useless people to feel important....” -Thomas Sowell

Tales of the Post-Christian Age

How app culture turned astrology into a modern obsession

Some of My Tribal Brothers and Sisters are Narcissistic Dullards

SO LONG, SACAGAWEA

John Updike

Most of American life consists of driving somewhere and then returning home, 

wondering why the hell you went.

"I seem to have an upset stomach.  I should never eat on planes."

With that statement, John Updike, at the time a well-known novelist and short story writer, very much the toast of the Eastern literary establishment, parted the curtain and took his position behind the podium at the center of the stage.  For an hour or so he read from his collected works, answered questions from a crowd of mostly students of our Jesuit university, and offered piquant observations on contemporary life, human relations, and God.  As a graduate student, and a member of the "lecture committee" that arranged his appearance, I was pleased at the general response and delighted to meet him

Then, rather quietly, he asked if someone might drive him to the hospital as he thought his appendix had just burst.  He was almost right about that, as it turns out; it was certainly just about to; and, as loyal readers of The Coracle may have guessed, given my past history of being in cars with racing drivers, bishops, academics, and musicians, I was the guy who drove him to the emergency room.

If I were to write an autobiography, I think I would entitle it Karma's Chauffeur.

John Updike was something that is virtually non-existent in our flat, superficial, and spiritually retarded age: a man of letters who was also a person of the spirit.  How he got to that place of metaphysical realization, and the guides whom he used to nurture it, should be of interest to those charting a spiritual course through our post-Christian reality, displaying what literature once was and might be again.

Updike was born in middle class comfort to educated and capable parents.  As an only child, he was indulged, particularly by his mother, a writer of limited success but, apparently, boundless energy who instilled a love of words, sentences, and paragraphs in her son.  Even her typewriter and paper became for Updike symbols of comfort.  Graduating as valedictorian from his Berks County, Pennsylvania high school and earning a degree in English at Harvard, Updike starting writing for the Harvard Lampoon, a periodical he served as editor, and, upon graduation, for The New Yorker.

Honing his style, and making important contacts in the publishing world, Updike drew from contemporary voices in literature such as Salinger, Cheever, and Nabokov, and was grounded in the classics.  Almost on schedule, with the advent of the 1960's, he found himself in the midst of a profound spiritual crisis.  While he had been raised a Christian [or, as a Congregationalist, close enough] and had maintained the ethos of the faith, like many others of the era he found traditional spirituality lacking for the Atomic Age.  It was then that he turned for direction and some sense of intellectual solace to the works of the theologians Karl Barth and Soren Kierkegaard.  That brought a greater, and much more resonant, quality to his prose.

As Barth and Kierkegaard both stressed God at work in the here-and-now, with the sheer impossibility of ever completely knowing God, and that such attempts at knowledge would be thwarted if one used only the tools of intellect and logic, Updike sought to create a character who would be both typical of the towns in Pennsylvania and Massachusetts that he knew, yet evocative of the spiritual quest as it was encountered in the second half of the 20th century.  Thus was born Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom, former high school athlete, suburban husband and father, and Toyota dealer.  Through four novels, from Rabbit, Run in 1960 to 1990's Rabbit at Rest, Angstrom comes to represent the experience of the middle-class Protestant through the Camelot of the Kennedy's to the Reagan presidency, all the while taking into account the remarkable changes in culture, mores, and world view.

There were other characters, of course, such as the rebellious teenage store clerk in "A & P" and the blocked writer, Henry Bech, the protagonist in a trilogy of novels.  [A note of interest, mainly to me:  Once, when speaking with my wife's cousin who, like my wife, had attended a women's college in the South, she recounted the time that Updike came to address the literary society in the college's refined and elegant sitting room.  I had to smile as not only did the cousin remember Updike's joy at being surrounded by lovely and gracious Southern women, but he also wrote a barely fictionalized scene of the same in one of the Bech novels, with his writer-hero realizing the same delight at a fictional college.]

Beyond Rabbit and Bech, though, the recurring character in an Updike novel is always some representative of 20th century standards, losing his or her way in the maze of conflicting ethics, attempting to find a true sense of love and purpose in the midst of existential chaos.  He made this philosophical/theological situation so familiar that it is nearly a cliche, even aped by nostalgic television shows like "Mad Men".

That night, in the car on the way to the hospital, we got to speaking of saints like Teresa and Updike became quite jolly thinking what it would be like for a 20th century Lutheran or Congregational pastor to suddenly announce to his congregation that he was having religious visions, hearing divine voices, and occasionally levitating.  His temperature was a little high, I guess.  We both laughed at what the reaction of congregations and bishops might be.  The only difference from the time of St. Teresa was that the clergy-person would be thought schizophrenic rather than demonically possessed.

"Of course, an Episcopalian would be defrocked, as that would be tantamount to cheating on a golf score."

Updike would continue to write at his self-imposed schedule of one book a year, a daunting expectation for any writer, but certainly testimony to how much he enjoyed creating characters and placing them in ordinary, and sometimes ordinarily remarkable, circumstances.  I attempted to count the number of published works that Updike produced, from novels and short stories to poetry and non-fiction appreciations, but stopped when I realized that his non-fiction alone accounted for six bound collections.  Suffice it to say, he was a writer of broad ability and deep talent.

He died in 2009 at the age of 76, succumbing to the long-term effects of cigarette smoking.  According to one of his nurses, he carried a bemused expression with him even past the point of mortality.  More than anything else, that bemusement captures the attitude and experience of a post-modern Christian.