"You want it to be one way. But it's the other way."
It’s Thom’s 21st birthday. Boy, did that come fast. I was under the impression we just brought him home from the hospital. (Of course, my time sense is getting severely telescoped these days. Seems like I can still see the dust rising from the ’69 Cubs team falling on its face.)
Anyway, he’s up in Eugene, where birthday weather will be overcast but maybe not rainy. TB, have a great one, and I’ll wait till you’re back down here to toast the day.
A family legend that I believe is true: Our grandfather, Edward Daniel Hogan, was born on Leap Day. Our grandmother, Anne O’Malley, was born in 1898, and hearing that I always figured Ed must have been born in 1896 or 1892. But having seen his grave, finally, and having found him in the census, I see the real date was 1888.
In 1930, he was listed as a bank auditor, probably at the First National Bank of Chicago; our stern grandmother is listed unsoberly as “Annie,” and her occupation is clear from the presence of three children in the downstairs flat at 8332 South May Street: our mom, who was just four months old the day the census enumerator visited, and her brothers Bill — three years old — and John, who was two. Upstairs were Ed’s parents, Timothy J. (listed as “freight clerk-railroad”); Annie, his wife, who was actually named Anniestacia; and Ed’s sisters, Catherine and Betty. Catherine was 30 and her occupation is listed as “stenographer-abbatoir”; I’ve always heard she worked for Armour–you know, the meat company–but this is the first I’ve heard that stenographers worked in abbatoirs. Betty is listed as an office clerk at a bank, and I don’t know which one.
It’s always a little thrilling and a little strange to encounter family characters in a setting like this. Some of them we’ve only heard about. We never knew Mom’s dad and granddad or her brother John — they died long before we came along. But I do have memories of his mother, Annie, who still lived in that upstairs flat when we were very young. And much clearer memories of the rest of them.
Ed, though–today is the twenty-ninth passing of his actual birth date. I think. If he were in any position to appreciate it, I’d tell him happy birthday.
Technorati Tags: leap day
Just one small birthday wish to cast out into the universe: January 9 was our Uncle Bill Hogan’s birthday. I can and have summoned up lots of labels for him, Catholic priest and communist being two of them. He was also a committed Chicagoan, a lover of ideas, a reader, a selfless devotee of the human cause. And most of all, as I’ve said many times before, an optimist, a real believer in the possibility of making the world a joyful — not just less miserable — place for everyone. He would have been 81 today, I think. Happy birthday, Uncle Bill.
Before we get to the subject at hand, let me try out my innovative new (yes, both new and innovative) holiday greeting on you: Merry HannuKlausZaa. Call in or write with your comments.
Above: The morning-after paper bags. A few of them got a second night of life in front of our house and a couple others on the block. Most of them are going to recyclingland.
Beautiful day here. Sunny and 60, then cloudy and cool. That’s cool by local standards. North America to our north and east is another story. Wales, too. To wit, in the words of a story I’ve read often at this time of year:
“The silent one-clouded heavens drifted on to the sea. … We returned home through the poor streets where only a few children fumbled with bare red fingers in the wheel-rutted snow and cat-called after us, their voices fading away, as we trudged uphill, into the cries of the dock birds and the hooting of ships out in the whirling bay.”
“Fumbled with bare red fingers in the wheel-rutted snow.” That evokes a hundred dark winter afternoons. My hands hurt just reading it.
After the day here, night. One more walk with the dog before turning in. And so too in Wales, where that story ends:
“… And then I went to bed. Looking through my bedroom window, out into the moonlight and the unending smoke-colored snow, I could see the lights in the windows of all the other houses on our hill and hear the music rising from them up the long, steady falling night. I turned the gas down, I got into bed. I said some words to the close and holy darkness, and then I slept.”
Very little music here tonight. A few carol verses from a couple across the street, a couple tunes on my iPod — that’s what Santa brought me — and that’s it. But the darkness is close and holy even without the blessing of song. ‘Night, all.
Technorati Tags: berkeley, berkeley luminaria, luminaria, xmas
We’re late with the tree this year. Kate and I went out and bought it yesterday from a place on University Avenue run by a San Francisco outfit that tries to help our burgeoning population of ex-convicts stay straight. We didn’t decorate until tonight, though — late tonight.
(And now, it’s tomorrow already. Christmas Eve. On Saturday evening, I turned on an acoustic music show on one of the local FM stations, KALW, and there was a song about bells playing. Kate, hearing the word “tintinnabulation” recognized right away that the lyrics were from Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Bells.” I thought, but didn’t say, that the singer sounded like Phil Ochs. We were both right. The poem and the song start with a lightness not often associated with Poe:
“Hear the sledges with the bells, Silver bells! What a world of merriment their melody foretells! How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle, In the icy air of night! While the stars, that oversprinkle All the heavens, seem to twinkle With a crystalline delight; Keeping time, time, time, In a sort of Runic rhyme, To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells From the bells, bells, bells, bells, Bells, bells, bells— From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.”
The poem gets darker as it goes along. The song is on iTunes. I want to say “amazingly, it’s on iTunes, but I guess it’s not so amazing anymore.)
Technorati Tags: xmas
Today: Barbecued bird. Here is today’s indispensable advice (with accompanying video).
The blog: It has been going four years today. Which is shocking, considering that it hasn’t yet swayed the course of the planets, the Earth’s magnetic field, or empire. I’ll keep trying. And thanks for reading.
Today II: For a lot us us, today will always be that day. And to mark the occasion, The New York Times publishes yet another (but brief) consideration of what happened.
Today III: And what else? The kids will be here — I never thought I’d hear myself say that. I’ll talk to the rest of the family, wherever they are today. And that’s enough to be thankful for right there.
Technorati Tags: berkeley, thanksgiving
Just one thing: Twenty-eight years ago, early on a Wednesday morning, I became a dad. Or maybe the better way to say it is that I started to become a dad. Eamon, it’s still quite a journey. Happy birthday!
Here’s one way to tell if you rely too much on four-letter words, and in particular the strongest Anglo-Saxon variety beginning with the letter “F”: your dog reacts when you say them. It’s no surprise that dogs react when they hear angry language; they may not understand the words literally, but they’re faultless interpreters of tone and mood and body language. But the last time I was around a dog on a daily basis, back when I was a kid, really, I didn’t pick up so much on how dogs responded to the tenor of someone’s speech. Since Scout has been around, nearly a year and a half, I’ve been surprised to find that he’s really put off when he hears me swear. Today, driving home from picking up the van at the garage, I made an angry comment about one of my fellow drivers. Scout had been sitting next to me, but he immediately got down and went to the back of the car; he didn’t want to be around if I was pissed off. He also seems to be especially sensitive to hearing the F-word; maybe it’s because he hears it only when someone is really angry. I don’t know. But it’s something I find myself more and more conscious of; again, I don’t know, but maybe it’s because he reacts so viscerally and visibly. Ironic that it has taken a dog, and not wife, kids, siblings, parents, coworkers, softball umpires or other unfortunate ear witnesses to demonstrate the emotional effect of my swearing habit.
Scout, outside the Subway sandwich place in Willows. I like the contrast: ultraserious dog with goofy chicken toy. He (the dog) has proven to be a great traveler. We’ve been up and down I-5 to Eugene about half a dozen times with him so far, and he’s pretty patient with the whole process.