[lit-ideas] Re: Flew: The Obituary
- From: Mike Geary <jejunejesuit.geary2@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 5 Jun 2010 15:35:32 -0500
DR:
"Cordwainer Smith was a nom de plume. The guy's real name was Paul Myron
Anthony Linebarger. You knew that, right?"
Interesting. Back in 1970, having decided that I was decidedly a danger to
society as a teacher, I left teaching to work as a cameraman and film
developer for WREC-TV in Memphis (now it's WREG, in case anyone wants to
test my veracity). It was the most boring job I've ever endured. The
majority of everyday was spent sitting around waiting for something to do,
and while waiting having to listen to my immediate supervisor Roy Dickerson
relive his experiences at the Battle of the Bulge, again and again and
again. The man's life had come to halt in 1940-whatever. His favorite "war
is hell" story was about shooting a German woman hanging clothes on
clothesline -- a terrible, terrible thing, nevertheless, she might have
been signaling the enemy. But I digress -- at WREC-TV the main man, the
does-it-all-man, was John Linebarger. A young but very competent fellow,
and yet, like me, not so much groomed for the corporate world.
Nevertheless, more groomed than I, every five minutes, it seemed, over the
intercom came an announcement: "Call for John Linebarger on line 3" -- or 4
or 5 or 6.
I still believe that he was calling the studio from the studio requesting to
speak to himself. It kept his name on the marquee. I have to hand him
that. After a year, I quit that job.
I wonder though if John might not be kin to Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger.
Life seems to have a strange predilection for wrapping around itself. Or
more than kin, perhaps John is a nom de oeuvre of Paul Myron Anthony
Linebarger. This world is full of surprises.
Mike Geary
Memphis
On Sat, Jun 5, 2010 at 2:22 PM, David Ritchie <ritchierd@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>wrote:
>
> On Jun 5, 2010, at 12:28 AM, Mike Geary wrote:
>
> In re: flying fleas.
>>
>> The ditty was a favorite of my mother's. She would use it to distract my
>> brother and I when we got at each other. I used it to the same effect with
>> my kids and now my grandkids.. Yes, I too flinch at the idea of fleas
>> flying, and these day I have to explain what a flue is. But Ogdan Nash was
>> not one whit bothered by flying fleas. The ditty is originally his or so
>> I've come to understand.
>>
>>
> Folk on the web do attribute this to him. Freebase says it's in a volume
> titled, "Bed Riddance." Thus am I robbed of the notion that the spiff, six,
> matching, red volumes in my possession are the "Complete" Ogden Nash. Oh
> woe, woe and thrice woe.
>
> Our times will be in books interred
> As the era of the eaten word,
> So tell me why should I alone
> Be unprepared to eat my own?
>
> Here's the consequent discovery in Freebase. There's a box on the side
> that says, "Related Topics." In Nash's case they are: Francis Scott Key,
> Milton Friedman, Cordwainer Smith and Edgar Allan Poe. Why not a banana,
> too? Or a flue?
>
> Cordwainer Smith was a nom de plume. The guy's real name was Paul Myron
> Anthony Linebarger. You knew that, right?
>
> David Ritchie,
> marveling at sunshine in
> Portland, Oregon
>
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