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Here is a very short poem by Scottish poet Robert Burns (1759-1796) just in time for Thanksgiving. The “Selkirk Grace,” as it is known, is usually recited before the first course is served at a Burns Night celebration.
Some hae meat and canna eat, And some wad eat that want it; But we hae meat, and we can eat, Sae let the Lord be thankit.
You might want to say these words at your own Thanksgiving feast as you remember those whose hunger continues unabated, holiday or not.
English Poet Philip Larkin (1922-1985)
The reputation of Philip Larkin seems to grow year by year, to the extent that he is considered one of the best British poets of the last century. Here is one of my favorites among his poems:
This Be the Verse
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats.
Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.
U.S. Troops in Vietnam
“Pinkville” is the name that the soldiers who fought on the ground gave to the villages around My Lai, site of the 1968 massacre in which hundreds of Vietnamese civilians were killed in 1968. It is an area well described by Tim O’Brien, whose books on the Vietnam War from the point of view of the troops on the ground are probably the best books to read about the war as it was fought.
O’Brien started in 1975 with his own experiences in the war, set forth in a book entitled If I Die in a Combat Zone, Box Me Up and Ship Me Home. He asks “Can the foot soldier teach anything important about war, merely from having been there? I think not. He can tell war stories.”
And that’s exactly what O’Brien does. The stories are all true in his first book, with only the names of characters being changed.
Then, in 1978, he wrote Going After Cacciato, the first of two fictional works about the war. This was followed in 1990 by The Things They Carried, which is my favorite of his books.
Whether writing fiction or straight memoir, O’Brien is a powerful writer. In If I Die in a Combat Zone, there is a chapter entitled “Step Lightly” about the different kinds of land mines used by the Viet Cong. The most horrifying of these is the Bouncing Betty:
The Bouncing Betty is feared most. It is a common mine. It leaps out of its nest in the earth, and when it hits its apex, it explodes, reliable and deadly. If a fellow is lucky and if the mine is in an old emplacement, having been exposed to the rains, he may notice its three prongs sticking out of the clay. The prongs serve as the Bouncing Betty’s firing device. Step on them, and the unlucky soldier will hear a muffled explosion ; that’s the initial charge sending the mine on its one-yard leap into the sky. The fellow takes another step and begins the next and his backside is bleeding and he’s dead. We call it “ol’ step and a half.”
Yipes!
Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832)
I cannot help but think that that the literary reputation of Sir Walter Scott will continue to fade. After all, he can be diabolically difficult to read. His Guy Mannering: or The Astrologer (1815) is written in English, a broad Lowland Scots dialect, thieves cant, with numerous quotes in Latin, French, German, and Dutch.
Just the Scots itself can be challenging to most readers. The following terms were excerpted from the 20+ page glossary: aiblins, awmous, bestad, braw, camsteary, clanjamfray, eilding, fow, fremit, gumphion, niffer, sapperment, unco, and waf. In addition, my edition (Penguin) has some sixty pages of detailed end notes.
And yet I think that Scott is one of the finest novelists of the 19th century. The plot line of the book is a bit ridiculous. And there really isn’t a central character (not even Guy Mannering himself). At different times, the reader is confused whether to follow Mannering, Godfrey Bertram, Meg Merrilies, Vanbeest Brown, Dandy Dinmont (not a dog), or the eccentric lawyer Paulus Pleydell.
But if you are willing to take the trouble of trying to understand Scott, the rewards are great. He wrote so energetically, and his knowledge of Scots law is so impressive, and his language so vivid that the two weeks I spent reading the novel were an unalloyed pleasure from beginning to end. Even his descriptions of the wild landscape around Solway Firth are worthy of note:
Do you see that blackit and broken end of a shealing?—there my kettle boiled for forty years—there I bore twelve buirdly sons and daughters—where are they now?—where are the leaves that were on that auld ash-tree at Martinmas!—the west wind has made it bare—and I’m stripped too.—Do you see that saugh-tree?—it’s but a blackened rotten stump now—I’ve sat under it mony a bonnie summer afternoon, when it hung its gay garlands ower the poppling water.—I’ve sat there, and I’ve held you on my knee, Henry Bertram, and sung ye sangs of the auld barons and their bloody wars—it will ne’er be green again, and Meg Merrilies will never sing sangs mair, be they blithe or sad. But ye’ll no forget her, and ye’ll gar big up the auld wa’s for her sake?—and let somebody live there that’s, ower gude to fear them of another warld—For if ever the dead came back amang the living. I’ll be seen in this glen mony a night after these crazed banes are in the mould.
Again, Scott is a difficult author, but I think demonstrably a great one.
I Yearn for the America That Had Bugs Bunny as Its Hero
I love watching old cartoons from Warner Brothers and the Fleischer Brothers. They spoke of a wisecracking America that doesn’t exist any more. It was good to be represented by such originals as Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck. Alas, now we are more represented by a fearful Elmer Fudd. Oh, he has guns galore, but he always loses in the end.
Bugs is like one of the trickster gods of many cultures around the world, including those of some North American Indian peoples. Take the Norse trickster god Loki, for example:
In Norse mythology, Loki is known as a trickster. He is described in the Prose Edda as a “contriver of fraud.” Although he doesn’t appear often in the Eddas, he is generally described as a member of the family of Odin. His job was mostly to make trouble for other gods, men, and the rest of the world. Loki was constantly meddling in the affairs of others, mostly for his own amusement.
Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd
I find my early cartoon heroes such as Bugs Bunny, Popeye, Betty Boop, and even Speedy Gonzales are representative of a country that is comfortable in its own skin. Unlike Elmer Fudd, who always takes the trouble to dress like a bold hunter, but who, in the end, is chicken-hearted.
And I’ll best anything that Elmer has a red MAGA hat in his closet!
My apartment is home to my collection of books, five to six thousand volumes in all. In addition to my library, which is dedicated to my collection, I have crowded book-cases in every room of my apartment, including the kitchen and bathroom.
There was a time when I could not visit a bookstore without buying several new or used books. In addition, I purchased books from EBay, Abebooks.Com, and a fair number of other Internet book dealers.
Right now, I am reading with great enjoyment Walter Scott’s Guy Mannering; or, The Astrologer (1815), the second of his Waverley Novels. Forty or fifty years ago, I would think nothing of trying to find the complete works of any author I liked. In fact, at one time I owned a complete hardbound set of the Waverley Novels. Now I only have some twenty selected titles—but in nice editions. In this, I resemble Dominie Sampson in Guy Mannering:
The lawyer afterwards compared his mind to the magazine of a pawnbroker, stowed with goods of every description, but so cumbrously piled together, and in such total disorganisation, that the owner can never lay his hands upon any one article at the moment he has occasion for it.
Guilty as charged! But now that I am approaching my eightieth year, I would like to find a good home for most of my books. It helps—sad to say—that bookstores, in disappearing from the landscape, furnish less of a temptation.
Tomorrow, I will travel downtown to return some library books (and get some new ones). I will be strongly tempted to visit the (appropriately named) Last Bookstore at 5th and Spring Streets and check out their more obscure Sir Walter Scott titles, such as Peveril of the Peak, Count Robert of Paris, Anne of Geierstein, and The Fortunes of Nigel.
But, really, who am I kidding? Will I really read all of Scott’s novels? If I live long enough, I sure would like to try. But why buy the books when I can check them out of the Central Library or download them on my Amazon Kindle. Old habits die v-e-r-y hard.
Dr. Michio Kaku, famous American physicist and futurologist, probably said it best:
We have to realize that science is a double-edged sword. One edge of the sword can cut against poverty, illness, disease and give us more democracies, and democracies never war with other democracies, but the other side of the sword could give us nuclear proliferation, biogerms and even forces of darkness.
This double-edged quality affects us on an everyday level as well. Take computers, for example. Technology seems to promise us so much, but delivers so much frustration. For example, under no circumstances would I purchase an automobile whose electronics are so complicated that even experienced computer users are frustrated getting them to work properly without expending undue effort.
The average home computer user is presented with an infinite number of options as to which application software to use. But is he or she able to make wise decisions in this area? The temptation to go cheap or free is overwhelming.
I have one friend who loaded his computer with open-source word processing and portable data file (PDF) systems, only to spend untold hours trying to make it work with the operating system and with all the other software on the computer. He has recently uninstalled most of these cheapster programs.
A year ago, I bought a data tablet that actually had no user manual available on the Internet, or anywhere else. I got it to work … sometimes. I have since laid it aside with some regret.
At the same time, I have benefited from sturdy software like Microsoft Office and Adobe Acrobat. I manage to get a lot done on my computer, but dread having to face operating system upgrades.
I have always loved this poem by Robert Frost:
Acquainted With the Night
I have been one acquainted with the night. I have walked out in rain - and back in rain. I have outwalked the furthest city light. I have looked down the saddest city lane. I have passed by the watchman on his beat And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain. I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet When far away an interrupted cry Came over houses from another street, But not to call me back or say good-bye; And further still at an unearthly height, One luminary clock against the sky Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right. I have been one acquainted with the night.
UCLA’s Ronald Reagan Medical Center
My recent stay at the Intensive care Unit (ICU) of UCLA’s Ronald Reagan Medical Center taught me some home truths about medical care in America today. If you are there because you show symptoms of one of the major diseases which could lead to death, you will likely be well cared for. I am talking about heart disease, cancer, Covid-19, preventable injury, stroke, respiratory disease, and so on.
But if your problem is of a more unusual nature, requiring a specialist to be on call that is not in the top ten leading causes of death, things can get a little dicey. The first time I showed up in an emergency room for an Addisonian Crisis was eighteen years ago in San Diego. I was admitted to the Tenet Hospital in that city and was assigned to a physician who insisted on testing me on bodily functions I no longer had. He repeatedly refused to talk to my endocrinologist in Los Angeles, Dr. Julia Sladek. Thereupon, Dr. Sladek urged me to check out of the hospital against the advice of Dr. X, who was not only incompetent, but willfully stubborn.
Even in Los Angeles, the first time I checked into the UCLA Medical Center with an Addisonian Crisis, I was kept there for several days being tested every which way by a team of cardiologists, oncologists, etc. until someone finally listened to me and called in an endocrinologist, who hailed from India. She knew at once what was happening, saw that I was over the crisis, and had me discharged from the hospital in record time.
Fortunately, that visit is now a matter of record and is consulted every time I am admitted to any UCLA hospital (there is also one in Santa Monica). I am no longer poked and prodded beyond my endurance for days while a series of well-meaning doctors who know little to nothing about panhypopituitarism (which is to say, complete lack of a pituitary gland).
In fact, I didn’t see an endocrinologist my last two visits. Thank God for those computer records!
Wednesday, November 1, 6:00 AM
Life is strange when you don’t have a pituitary gland. Mine was removed by surgery in September 1966. On Wednesday I woke up early to go to the bathroom. After I did by business, I got up and … and … and …
B L A C K O U T
When consciousness returned, I was bleeding from a large bump on the left of my forehead and I felt as if one of my ribs was broken. Imagine Martine’s surprise when she woke up to go to the john about an hour later! There I lay, covered in blood and unable to raise myself due to (1) pain from my broken rib and (2) general weakness due to adrenal insufficiency.
Without a functioning pituitary, one has no thyroid function, no sex hormones, and—oh, yes—no adrenaline. All those have to be supplied from outside the body. Those early morning hours can be killers. Ingmar Bergman had a good reason to call it “The Hour of the Wolf.” At my request, Martine got me a glass of water and five 10mg tabs of Hydrocortisone.
Eventually Martine has to call 9-1-1 to get an ambulance. I couldn’t just lie on the bathroom floor forever. The emergency medical technicians took one look at me, hoisted me up, and trundled me of to the UCLA Medical Center, where I spent a couple of days in the intensive care unit and an observation ward.
I strongly suspect that this is how I will leave this world. At some point, the adrenal debt will be too high; and there will be a general system shutdown. Not a particularly painful exit.
For the time being, I’ll still be here. I hope.
Tarnmoor 
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