The funny thing about awards is I never get tired of them. Recently I was nominated by Tom of Tom Being Tom–although I sometimes suspect Tom of being someone else, but then when I look closer he just turns out to be Tom but wearing a Thanos mask for some reason, but that’s another story–nominated me for the Blogger Recognition Award. And I’d like to thank him for the award. In fact I’d like to thank him so much I’ll just say, thank you, Tom. It’s nice to be recognized. It reassures me I’m still recognizable even after the surgery. I’d also like to thank all the little people including, but not limited to Merry, Pippin, and tardigrades.
One of the requested responses when one is the recipient of a Blogger Recognition Award is to provide an origin story. Well, mine is so common as to be almost cliche, but I’ll offer it anyway.
It was in Poughkeepsie in August, 1920–I forget the exact date, but I was leading the field in a goldfish-swallowing contest. I was so far ahead, in fact, that more goldfish were needed, so a batch that had been bred in a Revigator was provided. Having been thoroughly irradiated these goldfish had developed mutant powers which they passed on to me.
Another requirement is that I’m supposed to offer two pieces of advice, but, really, once I’ve told you that if you ever want to bury a body in a shallow grave you should use quicklime, what else do you need to know?
Here’s some advice: take wooden nickels. I know the expression used to be “don’t take any wooden nickels” but when was the last time someone offered you a wooden nickel? The last time I was offered a wooden nickel was in Poughkeepsie in 1920–in fact a bag full of wooden nickels was the grand prize in a goldfish swallowing contest, and now they’re antiques and worth about a dollar each, which just goes to show you.
I seem to have splintered off from the main topic, so let me close with a bonus word of advice: don’t hem your skirt with chewing gum in the summer.
The final step in this process is that I’m supposed to nominate other bloggers, and at least for this award, unlike some others, there’s no maximum, which is great because I feel there are so many bloggers that are deserving of recognition, but at the same time I never want anyone to feel obligated to respond in kind. Some may even respond in unkind if they felt obligated, and I’d rather go around handing out wooden nickels. So I’ll just conclude by saying that you should feel recognized if you’re so inclined, and don’t if you’d rather not, and always go out on a song if that’s your style, but you don’t have to if you don’t want to.
Sorry about the conclusion. It’s still a work in progress.
I have a long history of rejections. It started in high school, really, when I took my first creative writing class and we were assigned to not just write stories but also submit them, because that was part of the process. The teacher would give us her copy of the latest Writer’s Market, back when it was only a printed and bound book, and we’d go through and try to find magazines that sounded like they’d accept our stories. I had phenomenal luck: every submission I sent out would come back with a note that the magazine had just gone out of business. Technically it wasn’t a rejection but it wasn’t really an acceptance either, and it happened so many times I started to think I was causing it. I even thought about setting up my own business getting publishers to pay me not to submit to them, but that’s another story. This continued through college. There weren’t so many bankruptcies but I did start to build up a nice little collection of rejections. And my friends who were also aspiring writers all said the same thing: you’ll be able to wallpaper your room with rejections before you get an acceptance. It was just the nature of things that rejections would outnumber acceptances. It’s true, but I think we also kept repeating it to assure ourselves that we had to keep trying. I had a few successes along the way. I won the $500 first prize in a poetry contest and was supposed to be published in an anthology, but the publisher went bankrupt before they could publish it, probably because they shelled out $500 bucks to some schmuck who wrote a poem. After college the trend continued. A local magazine had a writing contest for several years and every single year there was a first prize, a second prize, a third prize, and then there was me, a runner-up. I started to have weird dreams about always being a nominee, never a winner. I still submit my work because I still think that’s part of the process. I’m in a writing group and whenever I’m asked if I’ve had anything published I always say, “No, but I do have a nice stack of rejection letters.” At least that’s what I did say. A few months ago Tara Caribou of Raw Earth Ink requested story submissions for a new anthology. She’s an amazing poet and writer whose work I really enjoy so I was intimidated but thought, well, it’s worth a try. I expected the usual: a few months of waiting before the inevitable rejection. Except that’s not what happened. A funny thing about technology is that a writer can now submit something and get an answer within a few hours. So instead of a rejection a few months later what showed up in the mail was a copy of Static Dreams, volume 2.
Turn to page 29 and you’ll find this:
On Tuesday there was a gryphon on the roof.
To read more you can buy the book. So I’d like to thank my wife, who did the initial editing, Tara Caribou for being both a great writer and editor–Static Dreams volumes 1 and 2 have some really good stories–and my next door neighbor for providing the voice, if not the actual character, of the gryphon. In a not so surprising twist on the same day the book arrived in the mail I got an email from another publisher turning down a story I’d submitted. And I can accept that.
Every year on the first night of Hanukkah I take a few moments to remember what I learned from a squirrel. This is a revised version of an annual tradition.
Gassing the woodchucks didn’t turn out right.
The knockout bomb from the Feed and Grain
Exchange was featured as merciful, quick at the bone
I have a contract with the squirrels. They may not consider it legally binding but it should be understood by both of us that they’re supposed to stay out of the attic and not come in to make nests in the insulation and chew the rafters and wiring. Since I can’t retaliate by moving into their nests in the trees I reserve the right to set traps in the attic.
A few years ago I woke up to squirrels or mice or used car salesmen or some other kind of vermin scrabbling around in the ceiling over my head. I set traps in the attic and whatever it was avoided the traps and went away. I like to think it or they saw the traps and said, “Holy mackerel, let’s move to some place safer like a nuclear reactor!” This is the way it should work. In December, though, a few dumb squirrels moved in and were holding cocktail parties well past midnight. I announced the terms of our agreement very loudly as I set out traps smeared with peanut butter. I didn’t really want to set the traps, primarily because that meant going up in the attic, which meant climbing that rickety wooden ladder. The ladder has two warnings on it. One, in huge print, says, “Failure to use ladder correctly could result in damage to the ladder!” As far as I can tell “failure to use ladder correctly” means dousing it with gasoline and setting it on fire. The other warning, in fine print, says, “Oh yeah, you might also hurt yourself, so please take off those stupid slippers and put on some real shoes.” But the real problem is I don’t like heights, or, to be more specific, landing at the bottom of them. I get the shakes when I stand on a chair. Once in the attic I’m fine because I’m on solid ground again, or at least solid plywood over that insulation that looks like cotton candy but tastes much better. It’s the climbing part that gets to me, especially since I have to use at least one hand to carry the traps. I use the spring bar traps, the kind that used to be sold under the slogan, “Build a better mouse trap and the world will beat a path to your door.” For the squirrels in the attic I used the larger ones. The slogan for the large ones is: “These will cut your fingers off.” I could pride myself on being able to set these traps and position them with the steady hands of a neurosurgeon or bomb defuser, but there’s nothing good about any part of the job.
In her poem “Woodchucks” Maxine Kumin, who is Jewish, goes from killing the woodchucks with poison gas to picking them off with a gun. She says, “the murderer inside me rose up hard,/the hawkeye killer came on stage forthwith.” There’s one old woodchuck who manages to escape, and she concludes, “If only they’d all consented to die unseen/gassed underground the quiet Nazi way.” It’s not a perfect metaphor, although if it were it wouldn’t be a metaphor. The only perfect metaphor that I know of in English literature is, “a rose is a rose is a rose”. There is no justification for the Nazi concentration camps. The woodchucks, on the other hand, threatened Kumin’s food supply, or at least her rhubarb and brussels sprouts. Interspecies violence is, like it or not, part of nature, and often fundamental to survival. The squirrels don’t know this, of course, any more than Kumin’s woodchucks who saw her garden as an open buffet. When I set traps for the squirrels it wasn’t because of an irrational and unnecessary prejudice against them. It was because they could chew through an electric cord and burn the house down, which would mean we’d all be out of a place to live. And I hoped the squirrels would see the traps and leave. Unfortunately it didn’t work that way. I took several squirrels, their necks broken, to the garbage. When I found them they were dead, and I always hoped the end had been quick.
Then one night I found a squirrel still alive in one of the traps, struggling to get away, but badly injured. Its body was twisted and there was a gash down its back where the hard metal rod had cut it. I knew I couldn’t let the squirrel go. Even if it survived its injury, which wasn’t likely, even if it avoided being run over by a car, even if it escaped neighborhood dogs, stray cats, coyotes, foxes, owls, hawks, even if it wasn’t attacked by other squirrels, it could get back into the house. And if it didn’t it would spend whatever life it had left in excruciating pain. I’d caused it to suffer and I had a responsibility to end that suffering.
I knew all this, but I wasn’t looking forward to what I had to do either. I put the trap with the squirrel still in it into a white plastic garbage bag and took it out to the driveway. I got a shovel out of the basement. The squirrel struggled a little in the bag, which I appreciated because it told me exactly where to hit. I wanted to make this as quick and merciful as possible for both of us. I nearly lost my nerve at the last minute. My wife had suggested I use a hatchet, but I didn’t want to do that because I’d actually have to look at the squirrel.
A history teacher once told me that Mary Queen of Scots, as she approached the chopping block, turned to her executioner and said, “Be mercifully quick.” Her request apparently made him lose his nerve; it took him three tries to finish the job.
After the clang of the shovel faded, I heard music. Someone a few houses away was in their backyard practicing “Jingle Bells” on a flute. For some reason this song always makes me think of people and woodland animals sharing the sleigh ride together, a sort of Eden with snow and blinking lights. The sun had just set, and in the stillness I realized that in some houses and places of worship the first candle of the menorah had either been lit or was about to be lit.
I’m not Jewish. I’m not even religious in any traditional sense, but I know Hanukkah is a holiday that celebrates hope and perseverance. It’s about a miracle of light and life–one day’s worth of oil burning for eight–coming to people who have just been through darkness and death. It’s a celebration by people who survived an all-out attempt to wipe them off the face of the Earth. I first learned about Hanukkah when I was a teenager, and met a rabbi as part of a Boy Scout project. I was supposed to learn about a religion other than my own. I was raised in a very relaxed Presbyterian church and could have chosen just about any other church, but I had a vague understanding of Judaism and wanted to know it better. I went to a local temple one afternoon when it was empty. First the rabbi took me to his office and started asking me questions. How long had I been a Boy Scout? What was my project about? Why had I chosen Judaism? It was nice to have an adult take an interest in me but also confusing. I knew “rabbi” was the Hebrew word for “teacher” and I was there to learn, not talk about myself. When he asked if I knew anything about Judaism I panicked. I should have done some cursory background reading before coming, I thought, or something. I admitted I really didn’t know anything and prepared myself for his disappointment. Instead he smiled.
“There’s no sin in ignorance.”
Suddenly I felt relief. I’m sure adults had told me that before, but it was not what I expected, especially from a teacher. I spent most of my youth feeling like I was supposed to know things that I’d never been told; everything seemed to be a test, and I frequently thought I was failing. At that moment I felt assured that it was okay to not know anything as long as I was willing to learn.
“Do you know any Jewish holidays?” he asked.
Since I’d learned about Passover in Sunday school I didn’t think of it as a Jewish holiday. Instead I said, “Hanukkah,” which I knew sometimes overlapped with Christmas.
“Do you know the story of Hanukkah?”
I still didn’t feel great about not knowing anything, but he smiled again and told me the story of the Maccabees, and the destruction of the temple, and how the oil that was only supposed to last for one night burned for eight, and Hanukkah is the celebration of this miracle.
Then he took me into the main sanctuary and showed me around. It was very much like other churches I’d been in, very much like the Presbyterian sanctuary I went to every Sunday, in fact, with pews and a raised section at the front, but with slightly different decorations. He explained about the Torah, how the ark that holds it is positioned so those who face it are facing toward Jerusalem. Then he pointed upward to the Eternal Light. It was just an electric light, made to look like a flickering flame, but the specifics didn’t concern me. I was captivated by the symbolism. I had only a vague idea of how unkind history, particularly the 20th Century, had been to the Jews but here, I thought, was the central symbol of a belief system built around hope.
In college I took a class on Judaism, and attended services at the local synagogue, and Passover seders in the spring, and, with a friend, lit the menorah candles for Hanukkah. One day while I was doing research for a paper in the synagogue library I sat in on a talk the rabbi gave parents about coping with, and hopefully preventing, teen suicides. He was emphatic that “l’chaim”, “to life”, wasn’t just a toast made at meals but a philosophy, that to be a Jew meant taking joy in life.
Before the talk started I happened to be reading about Hanukkah traditions, and how, over a thousand years ago, two rabbis, Shammai and Hillel, had competing ideas about how Hanukkah should be celebrated. Rabbi Shammai said all candles should be lit on the first night and then one extinguished on each night as a literal representation of the diminishing oil. There’s a strange beauty in Shammai’s literalness, and I assume the growing darkness would end with a grand blaze. Rabbi Hillel said that one candle should be lit each night so on the final night all eight candles would blaze with glory. Instead of increasing darkness there would be growing light and hope. Hillel’s tradition is the one that’s survived.
None of this has anything to do with the squirrels, but it all came to me anyway. I was extinguishing a light, but I was glad there were others, in other houses, being lit against the darkness.
As I emptied the trap at the edge of the circle of light from the patio it seemed like the universe was conspiring to make me feel bad about what I’d done, but I accepted the responsibility. I’d even say I welcomed it, even if I wished the epiphany had come more easily. I can rationalize until I’m blue in the face. I can say that even though one-fourth of all mammal species are presently in danger of extinction squirrels aren’t one of them. I can say that at least I’m not actually harming another person, and that through history people have done terrible things to other people with less justification than I have for killing the squirrels in the attic. Nothing I can say changes the fact that, hokey as it sounds, I don’t want to be directly responsible for the deaths of squirrels. I don’t think squirrels are a cornerstone species, or that the disappearance of Sciurus griseus would tip the balance and lead to the extinction of homo sapiens, but being too casual about extermination threatens us all. As long as the traps were killing them I could shirk responsibility. I was just a caretaker; the traps were doing the work. When the trap failed, I had to face my own role in squirrelicide.
I realized I’d have to take the ladder outside, quit my whining about my fear of heights, find where the squirrels were getting in, and seal it up. And ultimately the problem wouldn’t be fixed until we put on a new roof. It was up to me to keep them out, because ultimately that was the only way to prevent more deaths. I’m pretty sure that, somewhere in the contract, it says that I’m responsible for this because I’m the one with a memory, a conscience, and, for that matter, a big warm attic full of nesting material. It must be in the fine print.
And now, since Hanukkah is a celebration, here’s something that I hope will bring some light to the darkness.
“Hanukkah came early this year! Which it sometimes does.”–Richard Lewis
Every year the office where I work holds a holiday party. Well, technically it’s me and my coworkers, not the office itself which, being a large open space, is great for facilitating parties but terrible at planning them and when there’s a potluck only brings a measly tray of pencils.
Since I’ve worked in the same place for several years my name has gotten on a lot of mailing lists, and I’ve noticed that companies sometimes send stuff addressed to me. Technically I’m not allowed to accept gifts from companies it’s a non-profit organization—and also we have a generic holiday party because it’s a non-prophet organization, but that’s another story—although most of the time it’s little stuff: a few measly pencils, a writing pad. One company sends several calendars with a medieval painting for each month and if I ever leave this job I’m gonna find a way to get on their mailing list.
And most of this stuff—especially the calendars—I pass on to coworkers. Also I’m not in a position to make any purchasing decisions so I can honestly say I’m not influenced by any of it.
Last year as the holidays approached a box addressed to me landed on my desk. It was from a company we do business with and it was unusually large. I assumed it was swag I could pass around to my coworkers. When I opened it I found this:
In the lower lefthand corner you’ll see a ruler I got from somewhere, or that maybe was something the office brought to a potluck, just to demonstrate that this is at least sixteen inches of baklava. And I’m a bona fide baklavaholic. Or baklavolic. It’s an amazing food: crispy and chewy and sweet and nutty, and great for winter which is balaclava weather, but that’s another story.
Still I knew it wasn’t technically for me and that I shouldn’t keep it for myself even after I opened it and found this:
That’s eight different kinds of baklava.
So I contributed it to the holiday potluck. I didn’t say I brought it and left it very discreetly among the homemade items, and some other store-bought items that others brought.
I feel slightly guilty that my contribution wasn’t purchased, although it is the spirit of the season to not just receive but also give. And if I should feel guilty about anything it’s that I sampled every type of baklava myself. Some of them twice.
This repost is one of my annual traditions. Happy Thanksgiving to everyone except those in countries that don’t celebrate it and the Canadians who are heathens who have Thanksgiving before Halloween .
It has been celebrated as a federal holiday every year since 1863, when, during the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a national day of “Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens,” to be celebrated on the last Thursday in November.
It was even worse than last year. I know every time my family gets together we fall into certain patterns, but that never makes it easier. This time it was even worse because just getting to my parents’ house was such a pain. I thought I’d carriagepool with my younger brother and his wife, but they went up early so that fell through. Then I thought I’d beat the traffic by setting out at dawn, which was such a great idea everybody else in Richmond had it at the same time and the horses were nose to tail, stop and trot, for miles. Finally I got there a little after ten in the morning and my older sister came out already holding a glass of blackberry wine and when she hugged me I could tell it wasn’t her first one. She asked me how things were going and then didn’t wait for an answer and ran back into the house to tell everyone I was there.
I should have known I’d be walking into an argument in the foyer, the way my family is. It’s just what it was about that threw me. My kid brother had this crazy idea for a new way to cook a turkey, leaving the feathers still on and roasting it in the coals of a fire. Well, it sounded pretty stupid to me, and I wasn’t surprised to learn that the neighbors tried the same thing last year and burned down their stable. But I didn’t want to side with my father either. So I said it had been a long trip and I needed to visit the outhouse and slipped out. Well, there was a line at the outhouse: two of my nieces, three cousins, all four of my brothers, and my sister was already in there getting rid of some of that blackberry wine. So I went back inside to see what was going on.
In the parlor my mother was putting together some kind of monstrosity with dead leaves and dried berries that she said she was going to put in the middle of the table.
“Where’s the food going to go?” I asked.
“Well, we’ll move it before we eat.”
I was going to ask why she’d bother to put it in the middle of the table if she was just going to move it again but decided against having that discussion, so instead I sat down and leafed through a broadsheet that was handy.
“The other men are organizing a game,” she said. “It’s some new sport called foot-ball. You should go and join them.”
Well, she knows I’ve never been athletic, but when I protested she got put out with me and said, “It’s your Uncle Wilkes’s idea. You know you’ve always been his favorite. You really should go and do it just to please him.”
FINE.
Well, when I came back in my sister just cackled and toasted me with another glass of blackberry wine. All my mother could say was “Don’t get any blood on the carpet,” and my older brother kept telling me to stop being a sissy and just put some salve on it. Then Aunt Gerda said pinch the back of my neck and tilt my head forward and Uncle Wilkes said no, put pressure between the eyes and lean back, and then my cousins got into it so there had to be a family brawl about that. A day later and I’m still bleeding. So much for the salve. I’ll have to make an appointment with Dr. Samuel Mudd when I get back.
Then Uncle Aloysius had to start in Daniel about supporting the Whigs and Elizabeth about Suffragettes, just trying to start an argument. Fortunately they didn’t rise to the bait.
Then I tried to head off another argument about who’d have to chaperone the kids’ table by volunteering, but my father cut that off.
“No, no, I want John seated here on my left. After I sent him to that fancy and very expensive school so he could waste his time studying the dramatic arts and oratory he should be well-equipped to deliver the traditional Booth family prayer of thanks.”
Traditional since last year, he means. Then my kid brother kicked me in the shins which I know was his way of saying “Don’t start anything”. I kicked him twice as hard in the shins which was my way of saying, “I wasn’t going to,” and then kicked him again to say, “Hurts, don’t it?”
All this might have been a little more bearable if my sister had let me have some of the blackberry wine.
I swear I’m going to get that Lincoln for making us do this.
“If it is the unknown then how do we know about it? We don’t know.”
-Craig Ferguson
I’ve always had a fascination with the paranormal. When I was a kid I loved ghost stories even though they also terrified me and contributed to my fears of things under the bed and in the attic at the end of my closet. As an adult I’m a skeptic, but an open-minded one. I’m familiar with the saying that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, but I’m not sure what defines “extraordinary” in a world where sharks have been around longer than Saturn’s rings. What I’m getting at is that, if confronted with a genuine paranormal experience, I’d be willing to shift my definition of what’s normal. So far, though, I feel like I’ve never had anything close to a paranormal experience. Well, I’ve had experiences that were close, but never managed to be quite there.
One of my most memorable almost-encounters was during a sleepover at my friend John’s house and we started talking about The Bell Witch, a story of a poltergeist that tormented the Bell family in northern Tennessee in the early 19th century. One of the stories that’s sprung up about The Bell Witch is that if you go into a dark room with a mirror, close your eyes, and turn around three times while repeating “I hate The Bell Witch” when you open your eyes you’ll see her looking back at you. This is similar to the legend of Bloody Mary, although she’s supposed to show you your future . what exactly The Bell Witch looked like no one knows, but we all talked John into doing it, since he was the biggest skeptic and also it was his house. He went into the bathroom and turned out the light and we all crouched down at the door listening to John repeat “I hate The Bell Witch”. Then he came out and we all wanted to know if he’d seen anything.
“How could I?” he said. “It was dark in there.”
Before that there was the time I was playing a game with some friends at a picnic table in someone’s backyard. We had a Ouija board box on the table and a girl who lived in the neighborhood saw it and yelled that we were playing the Devil’s game. And she was right. Someone had put the Monopoly board in the wrong box and a game where the goal is to bankrupt your friends by building hotels on Ventnor Avenue has got to be inspired by Satan.
Perhaps my strangest experience, though, was at Camp Ozone. All the boys were hanging out in our cabin one night when the girls from the cabin next door came over and we all decided to sit around telling ghost stories which, I know, might sound more than a little paranormal, but we were eleven, so I guess the hormones hadn’t kicked in yet. I’m not sure where our counselors were—probably off doing something normal.
Then one girl, Angela, got one of the boys, Michael, to lie down in the floor and got the rest of us to sit in a circle around him.
“Now,” she said, “I’m going to tell the story of the day Michael died,” and Michael was either really easygoing or just completely unused to having any girl pay attention to him because he stayed right where he was. If anyone starts talking about my death, even hypothetically, I’m outta there. Angela explained that the story would put Michael into a trance, and then she started to talk about him riding his bicycle, which was pretty funny because she’d seen him swim so she must have known he wasn’t coordinated enough to ride a bicycle.
“And then he ran into a fire hydrant,” she went on, and we all looked at each other knowingly because we’d also seen Michael swim so this was completely believable.
“His body sailed up into the air.” Angela lowered her voice as she continued. “He turned as he fell and his head hit the pavement with a sickening crack. When the ambulance arrived he was pronounced dead at the scene. His body was zipped up in a bag and taken away. The funeral was held the next day. Michael’s body was placed in the ground and began to decay.” Angela was speaking in a whisper now as she repeated, “began to decay…began to decay…”
She leaned down and said, “Michael, can you hear me?”
Michael didn’t move. I think he’d fallen asleep.
“Now everyone,” Angela commanded, “put your hands under him and lift him up.”
And we did. Michael felt very light and his body was rigid, because he weighed about ninety pounds and there were eight of us around him, and if he slumped we would have dropped him, which is why the great mystery of it all to me is that I have no idea what any of that was supposed to prove.
And that concludes the 2019 Halloween Parade, although, as always, the final word goes to Lou Reed.
This year, 2019, is the 200th anniversary of the first publication of the first installment of The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent., by Washington Irving, which included his short story Rip Van Winkle. That other short story he’s known for, The Legend Of Sleepy Hollow, would be published in March 1820, but the residents of Sleepy Hollow, New York are already celebrating. They even got a more than twenty-year jump on celebrating when they changed the name of their town to Sleepy Hollow. It had been North Tarrytown, which sits, well, north of Tarrytown, the former home of Washington Irving. And that’s okay. Places change names all the time. You may have heard that old New York was once New Amsterdam, but that’s another story. I was introduced to The Legend of Sleepy Hollow when I was a kid and saw the Disney animated version in school–several times, in fact. From kindergarten on it seemed like my teachers would show it at least once a year, usually around Halloween, or when they didn’t have anything planned, or when they wanted to keep us occupied long enough that they could slip out for a drink. I loved the Disney version, which is really good, but Disney also has a history of playing fast and loose with the source material. (If Kipling had been alive in 1967 the cartoon of The Jungle Book would have made him roll over in his grave.) So I put off reading The Legend of Sleepy Hollow until college and it tickled me to see just how closely Disney hewed to the original, even keeping the ambiguous ending. And Washington Irving turned out to be an interesting guy–more than just the answer to the question, “What is the name of our first president, Seymour?” He was born in 1783 when the United States was barely a country. Most Americans think of July 4th, 1776 as the day it all started, but there was a lot of back and forth and Amerixit took at least as long as Brexit probably will. George Washington had finished generalizing and was a few years away from presidenting when he met his namesake at a New York inn, which Irving would have been more excited about if he hadn’t been less than a year old. At fifteen Irving left New York City because the Big Apple had the yellow fever, a little like Boccaccio’s Decameron before him or Poe’s The Masque Of The Red Death after him, and decided to tarry in Tarrytown where the countryside inspired some of his stories. He already knew he wanted to be a writer, and, after writing a slightly tongue-in-cheek history of New York City “from the beginning of time” under the nom de plume Diedrich Knickerbocker, and working as an editor, he went to Europe at thirty-two and stayed there for seventeen years. His family wasn’t happy, but he said he was determined to “return to the smiles, rather than skulk back to the pity of my friends.” And he succeeded in spades. Before Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Stein, and others Washington Irving was the original American expat writer. And he wrote the original American Halloween story. Charles Dickens has been credited with inventing the modern Christmas holiday–not the date, but the way we celebrate it now–but Irving, whom Dickens consulted about American Christmas traditions–did as much for Halloween, even if he doesn’t mention the holiday in The Legend Of Sleepy Hollow. Consider his description of Sleepy Hollow, a place sealed off from the rest of the world.
Local tales and superstitions thrive best in these sheltered, long-settled retreats; but are trampled under foot by the shifting throng that forms the population of most of our country places. Besides, there is no encouragement for ghosts in most of our villages, for they have scarcely had time to finish their first nap and turn themselves in their graves, before their surviving friends have travelled away from the neighborhood; so that when they turn out at night to walk their rounds, they have no acquaintance left to call upon… The immediate cause, however, of the prevalence of supernatural stories in these parts, was doubtless owing to the vicinity of Sleepy Hollow. There was a contagion in the very air that blew from that haunted region; it breathed forth an atmosphere of dreams and fancies infecting all the land.
Sleepy Hollow is a primarily Dutch community, with traces of Native American history, but Ichabod is an outsider; from New York he works as the village schoolteacher. He wants in, though, and thinks the key will be the hand of Katrina Van Tassel, a beautiful village girl. The story not so subtly suggests, though, that Crane’s interest isn’t matrimony so much as inheriting the wealth held by Katrina’s father. When he arrives at a party he heads right for the food.
There was the doughty doughnut, the tender oly koek, and the crisp and crumbling cruller; sweet cakes and short cakes, ginger cakes and honey cakes, and the whole family of cakes. And then there were apple pies, and peach pies, and pumpkin pies; besides slices of ham and smoked beef; and moreover delectable dishes of preserved plums, and peaches, and pears, and quinces; not to mention broiled shad and roasted chickens; together with bowls of milk and cream, all mingled higgledy-piggledy, pretty much as I have enumerated them, with the motherly teapot sending up its clouds of vapor from the midst—Heaven bless the mark! I want breath and time to discuss this banquet as it deserves, and am too eager to get on with my story. Happily, Ichabod Crane was not in so great a hurry as his historian, but did ample justice to every dainty.
Sounds like a Halloween party, doesn’t it? And then there are the ghost stories, especially that of the Headless Horseman, a Hessian soldier–Irving’s mix of characters also reflects the new American melting pot–who lost his head to a cannonball and goes riding at night in search of it. And yet he’s not entirely a scary character. Brom Bones, a rowdy village guy who’s competing with Ichabod for Katrina’s hand, says he met the Horseman one night, “and offered to race with him for a bowl of punch,” but the Horseman disappeared–as he always does–at the church bridge. Ichabod’s not as brave or as skilled a rider as Brom and he disappears that night after meeting the Headless Horseman, but Irving leaves it to the reader to decide what happened. As a kid watching the Disney version I thought Ichabod was the hero of the story–Tim Burton’s version, which plays fast and loose with the source material but is pretty good on its own, makes this even more explicit, turning him into a proto-Sherlock Holmes–and that his disappearance and possible death was tragic. As an adult I see him differently. He’s greedy, even a little sneaky, and wants to marry into a wealthy family so he can quit his job as a teacher. So what happens to him in the end? I think his head proved unworthy, but only the Headless Horseman could tell us, if he could speak.
Chances are you’ve seen the viral video of a guy who had a surprising final messages for the mourners gathered at his funeral. If you haven’t take a minute to watch it. I’ll wait. It’s not like I’m going anywhere.
The guy is, or rather was, brilliant. Or maybe it’s just me, and most of the people at his funeral. There’s nothing funnier than playing on our worst fears, although modern embalming techniques greatly reduce the odds of being buried alive, and cremation reduces the odds even further.
Premature burial was, however, a great concern at one time, especially in the 19th century. This may be because booming populations forced the moving of a lot of cemeteries and the disinterment of their occupants because if you’ve seen the film Poltergeist you know that building a home over a cemetery is a terrible idea, but that’s another story. The belief in premature burials was so pervasive that in 1828 the city of Frankfurt in Germany required that all mortuaries be under the charge of a medically trained cemetery inspector, and all bodies were watch continuously for three days before burial. Exceptions were only made if there was obvious decomposition.
Some of this fear was probably unnecessary. Although there were cases of people in deep comas reviving and conditions like catalepsy that could cause the appearance of death another source of the belief in premature burial was claw marks on the insides of coffins, as though the interred were trying to get out. As Vampires, Burial, and Death by Paul Barber points out, it’s unlikely that a living person sealed in a casket would wake up—the buildup of carbon dioxide would keep them unconscious—and corpses tend to move around a lot as they decompose. You may have heard that your hair and fingernails keep growing after death. They don’t. The skin around them contracts as the body loses water so it just looks like they’re growing. As corpses break down they may claw the insides of their coffins. Corpses also make noises as they decompose, giving rise to the belief that vampires can be heard chewing their shrouds.
And then there’s Poe’s The Premature Burial, probably the most famous story of someone who’s not ready to go just yet. Premature burial features pretty frequently in Poe’s stories: Ligeia, Berenice, and The Fall Of The House Of Usher all involve early internments, and in The Cask Of Amontillado the not so lucky Fortunato is deliberately buried alive. But The Premature Burial is the one that gives away almost everything with the title, and starts with a warning that there are “certain themes of which the interest is all-absorbing, but which are too entirely horrible for the purposes of legitimate fiction” then proceeds to talk about those themes. Poe draws on a wide range of gothic sources, from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein to the less well-known Vathek, and offers a lengthy account of people who weren’t quite dead yet. In fact the story seems to go on a little too long because, you know, the dead can get pretty chatty.
Anyway I thought I’d take the excuse, like I need one, to consider some famous cinematic and literary blobs.
The Blob (1958)-The emperor of all blobs. The original film is one of my favorites. Some horror fans rank The Blob as the worst movie monster of all time because it lacks any personality, but the film cleverly makes a group of teenagers, led by Steve McQueen, the real focus of the story. It combines classic ’50’s paranoia and fear of conspiracy–see such non-blob related films as Invasion Of The Body Snatchers and Invaders From Mars–with an increasingly influential youth culture. It’s both an interesting meta-commentary on generational transitions and a reminder that the kids are all right. And it has the catchiest theme song of any horror film.
The Blob(1988)-The thirtieth anniversary remake doesn’t work quite as well for me, but it’s a fun ride, and the recreation of that famous movie theater scene is even more terrifying when update.
B.O.B. from Monsters vs. Aliens (2009)-Also known as Benzoate Ostylezene Bicarbonate B.O.B. proves that brains are overrated which, interestingly, is also true in the case of slime molds. They can learn and transmit what they’ve learned to other slime molds and just looking at real slime molds I can believe they’d also have the voice of Seth Rogen.
Jell-O-I’m including Jell-O on the list because it’s horrifying. I’m with Winston Zeddemore on this one, and also my grandfather who didn’t like Jell-O because it “looks nervous”. And it was some kind of bona fide mad scientist who looked at a horse’s hoof and said, “What if I boiled one of those and put fruit chunks in it?”
Lichen from Interstellar Pig by William Sleator (published 1984)-Even though the lichen from Mbridlengile in this young adult novel isn’t described as a slime mold or blob it behaves like one, bubbling along as it feasts on all organic matter in its path. If you know a young adult reader who likes science fiction give them the gift of this novel about a teenage boy who accidentally draws the Earth into a cosmic game of death and destruction.
The other day I was browsing a local market. Well, actually I was looking for something specific but I completely forgot what it was I was supposed to get because I turned a corner and there was this:
And I said, no, no, no. That is wrong. That is wrong on so many levels. Specifically it’s wrong on three levels. Or five in some years, and really it should be five all the time, but the powers that be, or rather the powers that produce, only occasionally release two of their charges.
If you’re wondering what I’m talking about, and if you don’t know, don’t worry, because most of the time I don’t know what I’m talking about either, I turned another corner and there they were.
Yes, it’s that time of year again: time for Count Chocula, Frankenberry, and Boo Berry to make a welcome return appearance. Fruit Brute and Yummy Mummy remain in the vault for at least another year, which is sad because they could tie in nicely with The Addams Family too. And it bugs me that you have to download the pumpkin carving stencils, but not nearly as much as the fact that the clock on the back of the boxes goes to thirteen but skips from one to three. Why, cereal box artist, could you not have a clock with thirteen hours?
The Monster Cereals are the only ones that deserve to be called spooky because a Monster Cereal commercial gave me nightmares when I was a kid and, let’s face it, no matter how you dress ‘em up Froot Loops are never going to be spooky. You could pour live maggots over your Froot Loops and it wouldn’t make them spooky, although it would make them taste better and be a great way to add protein to your breakfast, but that’s another story. And if Tony The Tiger got anywhere near The Addams Family he’d be skinned alive and turned into a rug. And I have no idea what’s going on with Apple Jacks, a cereal whose mascots appear to be a walking stick insect and a shrunken head. Okay, that is a little bit spooky.