Incident Report

Posting a day early because, duh

There’s a story here. My daughter prefer I not tell it.

Once upon a time, being a newspaper columnist was the dream. It also was the nightmare. A column is a difficult gig to do well and people burn out fast, then stay too long¹. Almost all columnists had some kind of gimmick for when they needed to phone it in. (Except my dad. My dad never phoned it in.)

“Incident Report” is now the official phone-it-in-mode of Shaved Meats, Piled High, a bunch of discrete, well, incidents, to get me — us? — through November. Or maybe just today.

Incident #1: I HAVE A COVER.

And it’s gorgeous. I cannot get over the perfection that is this cover, which a) signals I am doing something different, a so-called cozy² and b) has so many shrewd details. That little splash! The words “A novel” along the bow of the ship! It looks like a vintage travel poster, one I want to own.

Incident #2: YEP, I’M STILL DOING MOD PO.

I’m one week out from completing my second tour of duty in the free, oh-so-free, absolutely free MOOC Modern Contemporary Poetry, aka ModPo. A year ago, I bragged in this space that I sometimes went to Zoom discussion meetings (known as office hours) up to twice a week. This year, I averaged four per week. One week, I attended three in 14 hours (5 p.m EDT, 10 p.m. EDT, 7 a.m. EDT)

I don’t write poetry. My standing joke is that I respect it too much. But I enjoy constraints, in writing and life. One example: I am not allowed to spend anything on the costumes I wear for Halloween; I have to use things I already own. This year, I chose to dress as a beat poet — turtleneck, beret, oxblood Dr. Martens’ lace-up boots³. Then I hung up a sign, promising to write poems for those who chose to forgo candy, setting up a manual typewriter on a stool.

A shocking number of people asked for poems. (“Poems.”) Very few of them knew that I am a writer. (“Writer.”) It was a kick. They all got candy, too. I’m not a sadist.

And the funny thing is, because I gave the poems away, in the moment, I can’t reconstruct most of them. Here’s one I remember, however, where the prompt was “Samba.”

Samba

Rhumba

Cancan

Can Can Can

INCIDENT #3: TAKE ME OUT TO THE BALLGAME!

Sorry about the hair

The new AVAM show — Good Sports: the Wisdom & Fun of Fair Play — is up and I love it; this is the outfit I wore to the opening night party. (I was cosplaying as a 1920s golfer.) I’ve given a few tours so far and it’s interesting to me that baseball isn’t particularly interesting to our young visitors — or even some of the old. But you don’t have to be a baseball fan to admire the beautiful portraits and linocuts by Morgan Monceaux, or the intricate designs that a minor league umpire, George Sosnak, made with India ink, transforming baseballs into objects that one visitor likened to Faberge eggs. I could share some photos here, but I want you to go see them in person.

Incident #4:

Such weird stuff happens after someone close to you dies. You’re bopping along, doing fine, and then someone/something trivial breaks your heart. I fell apart when Southwest Airlines sent my mom an email asking her to take advantage of some new deals.

My mom flew Southwest exactly once, in the spring of 2016. I booked her flight, so I set up an account for her, but linked it to my email. It’s not Southwest’s fault that I bawled — but I bawled.

The thing I always remember about that trip is that my daughter and her father breezed through security because they had frequent traveler status. I did, too, but of course I stood with my then 85-year-old mother in the longer line. In the time it took us to get through security, my kid and her dad ATE AN ENTIRE MEAL AT THE SILVER DINER.

And when I was stuck in that line, I felt I had an insight into the minds of those who feel they’re falling behind through no fault of their own, who assume that others are getting ahead of them because they’re cheating or gaming the system. It’s not fun to lose one’s privileges even when, as in my case, it’s voluntary. It’s interesting to me that people who find life-long privileges eroding don’t think to question the existence of those privileges, but instead demonize those they believe are usurping them.⁴

Not sure why that’s on my mind today.

From “Make Way for Tomorrow,” which Orson Welles said could make a stone cry.

Read/Reading: So.Much.Poetry⁵. A Circle of Quiet, Madeline L’Engle.

Rereading: Emily of Deep Valley, Maud Hart Lovelace. (Jia Tolentino wrote about this novel’s immigration plot in The New Yorker in 2017.) Baja, Oklahoma, Dan Jenkins⁶.

Me, me, me: See my beautiful cover above.

1. If you came here to find out what columnists I was going to mock, I love you for your pettiness. Buy me a beer one day and I’ll let loose.

2. Defined as a traditional mystery, light on graphic violence, language and sex.

3. Not quite correct, but it was a good look.

4. Also fascinating to me how angry some people get at the customers who avail themselves of capitalism/frequent traveler programs to receive preferential treatment in TSA lines.

5. That’s a link to the supplementary reading for the second half of the course.

6. Wildly inappropriate by today’s standards, just lots of words and attitudes that are no longer acceptable, but Jenkins clearly isn’t endorsing those attitudes and the central story of a barmaid who wants to write country songs has a genuine sweetness to it. I’m reading it because it reminds me of Texas and the young woman I was when I first read it, and I need to remember those things for the book I’m writing.