Dear Lawrence,
I am not a fighter, but I do recall one incident from, I think it was sixth
grade. A chubby, astigmatic, unathletic kid, I was picked on by a bully who was
bigger and stronger than I was. On the back of a comic book I read an ad about
judo classes that included instruction on a basic move. The next time the
bully attacked me, I stuck my foot behind his knee, pushed, and knocked him on
his ass….then ran like hell. Anyway the bullying stopped.
At college I did a couple of quarters of judo to satisfy a PE requirement. That
is when I had a genuine moment of Zen. A white belt total novice I was put up
against a green belt who was much bigger and stronger than I was. When we
grappled I gave up and shut my eyes, thinking “Let’s just get this over with.”
I totally relaxed and the next thing I knew the big guy was flying over my
shoulder and landing with a thud on the mat. Never happened again.
Another difference, my parents celebrated their sixtieth wedding anniversary.
My wife and I celebrated our fiftieth in 2019. All of our siblings (one
younger brother, now gone, for me, four younger brothers for her, have stayed
married to their first spouses. Makes us outliers in today’s society.
Anyway, I ramble on…
Stay safe.
John
On May 12, 2021 00:36 +0900, Lawrence Helm <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, wrote:
John,
Yes, you are right. I too have known English majors who did not seem very
interested in their subject. It was notoriously thought that English was an
easy major if all you wanted was a degree. One fellow, Alex D., whom I've
mentioned before, a longshoreman whom after graduating told me that he
intended to remain a longshoreman had little interest in English literature.
He was interested in Communist literature. He had a guru on the docks,
another longshoreman who advised him to get a degree. I never understood why.
If his guru expected big things from Alex, that expectation, along with most
other American-communist expectations, was to prove a failure. Alex would
regularly get into accidents while drunk and escape jail-time with the help
of a clever lawyer. In one memorable incident, Alex was on a dark mountain
road when he ran out of gas. He got out of his car, staggered back down the
road and lay down some place dead drunk. A woman came driving up the road,
struck Alex's car and was killed. An outraged district attorney charged Alex
with vehicular manslaughter, but as Alex's lawyer argued, one can not be
convicted of this crime unless one is driving, and Alex was clearly
not-driving at the time of the accident. The fact that he was drunk was
irrelevant.
Alex and I eventually got into an argument about something. He took a swing
at me, while drunk, and of course missed. I twisted his arm behind his back,
turned him over to his outraged wife (outraged because she agreed with Alex
about whatever it was we were arguing about) and urged her to take him home.
My next door neighbor at the time, a fireman who occasionally worked as a
longshoreman later told me that Alex warned him never to get into a fight
with me because I was an extremely good fighter.
My career as a fighter, however, was not anything I could boast about, but I
did have a few successes. After our mother divorced my father, she got a job
as a checker in the Foodman Grocery store; so after school my sister and I
took a bus to the "Extended Day Care," where the women in charge drank coffee
inside while we in the yard outside did pretty much whatever we wanted. One
kid was an aggressive bully. One day he picked a fight with my sister. On the
one hand my sister and I never got along that well, but on the other I didn't
want this kid to beat her up; so I pulled him off and he and I began to
fight. In the course of our fight he caught his finger on the barbed wire
fence surrounding our play-ground. The EDC women came out, called an
ambulance and sent him off to the hospital. His parents apparently thought
the EDC a dangerous place; so he never returned. In a letter to my sister a
few years ago I reminded her of that incident. Even though we never got along
well when we were small there was this one time I stuck up for her. She
though wouldn't give me that. She said I pulled him off of her because I
liked to fight. Well . . . I did sort of like to fight . . . so I didn't
argue with her.
Lawrence
On 5/10/2021 10:43 PM, John McCreery wrote:
Nice, very nice, indeed.
That said, on the dying soon after retiring front, literature vs
engineering may not be as important as total commitment to a job that makes
post-retirement life seem meaningless. I think of Kazuhiko Kimoto, the
Senior Creative Director who hired me and was my boss for many years at
Hakuhodo, Japan’s second largest advertising agency. Kimoto, with a degree
in American Literature from Tokyo University, spent every day, Sundays
included at the office. His life was work, whiskey, cigarettes, and
occasional games of Go. He was said to have a family, but we never got to
see them. He died within three months after retiring in his sixties.
Lots of varied interests, physical activity and a long happy marriage…I was
the fat kid, total anti-athlete when I was younger. Now my day begins with
yoga, qigong, and kettlebell. In other respects, hanging in as 77
approaches, I see a lot more similarities between us than when we were on
political opposite sides during the Iraq War.
Stay safe. Stay well. Give us more to read before you go.
John McCreery
On May 11, 2021 11:53 +0900, Lawrence Helm <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
wrote:
In the May 7, 2021 issue of The Times Literary Supplement is a review by
Hal Jensen of The Midlife Mind, Literature and the art of Ageing by Ben
Hutchinson. Hutchinson recommends the reading of literature as an aid to
help one endure ageing. The specifics of what he recommends seem to be
the reading (with the help of Hutchinson's advice) some of the authors
included in any "Great Books" program.
Jensen writes ". . . Hutchinson settles into his main workout routines.
These consist of chapters on Dante, Montaigne, Shakespeare, Goethe, the
Victorians (George Eliot and Henry James), T. S. Eliot, Samuel Beckett
and Simone de Beauvoir. For each, Hutchinson begins with a
biographical-critical-historical survey of the author, with a close look
at how they wrote about -- or out of -- those nebulous and crisis-ridden
middle years."
Further down Hutchinson writes, "Each chapter ends with a look at a
literary legacy and asks what lessons these writers can provide for our
journey through the middle, Dante teaches us how to start again while
still in transit, Goethe shows the value of restless curiosity, Eliot
demonstrates the potency -- and necessary difficulty -- of late changes
in belief, and Beauvoir the benefits of gender awareness when ageing. . .
Still, I can't help wishing he had left out the 'Lessons' altogether.
They sound glib and patronizing . . ."
Hutchinson's audience would seem to be those in his age group, i.e.,
people in their 40s, who have not encountered the classics, and are
worried about growing older. Jensen makes short work of Hutchinson and
concludes, "I respect Hutchinson's desire to help, but I have probably
learned more about time and mortality from working on my allotment than
from any amount of reading. When it comes to dealing with middle age --
and I say this well aware of my audience -- books are not enough."
I had a long career in engineering but along the way anticipated that
when those with degrees in Engineering retired with no
clearly-thought-out plans, I would be able to retire to the pleasures of
reading.
One might object that formal engineers might have adequate plans for
retirement as well. My own observation has been that many, maybe even
most, don't, or at least didn't (I retired in 1998). I recall an
engineer, Jim C., who was pointed out to us as having the perfect
engineering work-ethic. He had no outside interests. Engineering was his
whole life. About a week after his retirement, he unexpectedly died.
An engineer I knew much better, Ray L., spent weekends and vacations
building his retirement home in Northern California. I was shocked when
he died unexpectedly before he had a chance to enjoy his new home.
These, and others, were cautionary examples, but perhaps anyone who is
educated in what was in the past considered to be a "trade," is at risk,
mentally and perhaps physically, when attempting to prepare for
retirement -- at least more so than in a Liberal Arts major.*
I did take to heart the examples of people I worked with. Among other
things, I had a list of authors I didn't get a chance to read while I was
in school, and worked my way through that during lunch periods, weekends,
etc. for several years. To respond to Jensen (although I don't know what
his "allotment" is), I did have a lot of physical interests. I was a
free-diver (managing to keep my freezer full of fish during many years)
and a hiker (even to the guiding of small groups up into the San Gabriel
and San Bernardino mountains). But I anticipated that in my old age I
would do less diving and hiking and more reading and so congratulated
myself that unlike Jim C. and Ray L. I was educated well enough to (in
retirement) engage in elaborate, self-devised reading programs with
relative competence (joining Jensen in feeling no need of Hutchinson's
"lessons."
Lawrence
*How does one with an English major become a competent enough engineer to
have a modestly successful career and a better than average retirement
benefit? I can take no credit for that. I feared I would never graduate
from college if I majored in a subject I wasn't interested in. And so I
refused to worry about getting a job until after I graduated. Then I went
through an employment agency who reviewed my qualifications and sent me
to Douglas Aircraft which at the time was being criticized by the Air
Force for sending them poorly written engineering documentation. The
chief engineer ordered Douglas administrators to find recent college
graduates capable of understanding engineering who could also write.