Assignment April 6

Henry James, ‘The Bostonians’: (re: the 1979 film adaptation starring Christopher Reeve and Vanessa Redgrave) …after she had asked (Matthias Pardon her agent) how many 1000’s of dollars he expected to make on the suffrage lecture circuit.

“For Miss Verena it depends upon the time spent. She’d run for ten years at least. I can’t figure it up until all the states have been heard from,” he said smiling.

“I don’t mean for Miss Tarrant I mean for you,” Olive returned with the impression she was looking him straight in the eye.

“Oh as many as you’ll leave me,” Matthias Pardon answered, with a laugh that contained all, and more than all the jocularity of the American Press.

“To speak seriously,” he said. “I don’t want to make money out of it”

“What do you want to make then?”

“Well I want to make history; I want to help the ladies”

“Ladies,” Olive murmured, “what do you know about ladies?”


[In the kitchen of their gated community the parents of a college Sophomore attending Carlton are having a chat about politics before the husband Roger heads off to his job in the city as a marketing consultant in St Paul. His wife Amy of some twenty odd years sits at the table sipping her morning brew reading an article on “best interior lighting schemes” in latest edition of Better Homes and Gardens. It is December 2008. She is a professional designer; and has her own business]

Shaking her head “The American public made a huge mistake rejecting the McCain Palin ticket”. What makes you think that honey he thinks about the statement and what it insinuates He fills his insulated mug from the Mr. Coffee before heading out the door. It is a clear twenty degree day according to KSTP. The Wolves, Gophers and Wild have all lost ground in the last week. ‘People have an impression that a woman is not capable of being President; in an emergency, in case something happens to him. Like an assassination or something. -Oh that’s not true, there’s more to it than that. Like what? He would be checking the Smith Barney indices later to see if their mutual fund suffered any more damage overnight. Well it seems more like an arrangement that the American public is not quite ready for yet. Ms. Sara just hopped on board a sinking ship with a golden parachute and life preserver and it rocked the boat too much said Roger choosing not to open the latent topic way when they had hashed, diced minced it enough since November It’s not an insult to women in general; she’s doing all right as an Independent. She’ll recover her losses.. That’s crap. Are you suggesting that she was a pawn in political scheme to throw he election to the liberals (?) I wouldn’t think of it. the strategy wasn’t very well thought out; she didn’t have support from either the left of the right; that split the conservative vote in a close election.

“That’s absurd every woman in America should have voted for her.”

“ But they didn’t…that’s the problem”

[ the jocular husband gives his wife a peck on the cheek as he heads out the door of their townhouse in North Oaks to his job in the city, driving his 2006 Lexus leased from Denny Hecker Enterprises]

Family Heirlooms (re: Mind and Nature by Gregory Batson)

Back in the nineties I was spending some time landscaping the grounds of what had once been my Grandad’s home in Big Stone; nestled one plateau above the basin of the great river valley, remnants of Lake Aggassis archeologically; first parent and basis of the rich river bottom soil in the farthest meadows of the State. Forty miles to the west you could see the yellow foothills of the Rockies beginning in Summit.

At various times the basic structure of the house changed. First it was a medium sized church. Before Carnegie came to town it became a library. Once a one family rambler or six bedroom convertible; a huge unheated closet at the east end that doubled as an extra bedroom; 3 stained glass windows in the attic; the west facing one stolen (replaced by plywood) at various times a house for two adults and twelve children, two baths eventually: seven males and females coming and going continuously to morning Mass, school, work, sports events, Stations of the Cross in Lent. I spent the autumn days repairing the crumbling steps up to the vestibule sided with white metal; in the sidewalk; re spacing the spirea hedge; repainting the street facing side of the building corvette gray; by now the previous structure had evolved into a three apartment ‘condominium’: that at various times housed two boilermaker foremen; a union steward pipe fitter his wife and small daughter. An ironworker and his apprentice son; once upon a time LeAnn living in the back apartment with her little girl.

Having experienced the ocean up close and physically: the view across the river valley and swum in its fountain springs and even though there’s a lot of sludge on the sand bottom now: there is no comparison. I’ll take the provincial, parochial turquoise blue, green and yellow landscape scene either east to Jake Sutton’s golden soybean field across the ravine or west in Fall over the river panorama landscape that remains as beautiful as any portrait painter except Van Gogh could imagine on any given sunny day: cloudy or not. And just as alive, natural, haunting, dangerous … I have known a greater number of people that drowned in the river than people who drowned in the ocean.

Over several weeks I composed and revised a poem dedicated to the serene chorus of the autumnal frogs: “Hail, Green Frogs of Ixtophleeown!”: (facing the frost)… croak on intrepid warriors of dawn…” Humming to the old Hank Williams classic as I composed “there will be no teardrops tonight” there will be no, on and on. In the background I imagine Patty boy playing Irish fiddle like a redwing black bird in the early morning light. I was enjoying the Euripides version of the phantom ‘Helen’ moving on to Egypt after the fall of Troy: one scene at a time.

The fall colors held on beautifully in dense Burr Oaks and Maples, robust conifers sparkled in the autumn sun never losing their leaves; as sunlight refracted off the lake filtered between rustling trees; like a horizontal mirror that filled the landscape, as I whizzed past the stiff red dog woods along the lake road that stood starkly against the dry grass. The wind was still until the second week of November; On the 15th a steady north gale howled down the 36 mile still unfrozen lake.. Bruce Hagevik former resident of the city stage manager ({“Our Town”{) 1975 ace reporter on WCCO, reported a blizzard with white out conditions in western Minnesota. Highway 75 is closed. Local radio station KDIO was off the air: the transmission in his deep voice announced: school closed, “the radio tower was down; toppled by winds in the night as high winds gusting to 45 mph pummeled the town exposed on a cliff in the plains. 20 foot waves slammed into the pierre lathering off a season’s accumulation of pigeon dung; the temperature dropped twenty degrees over night; and left 7 inches of fresh snow.

But the weird thing was that night as the winds that battered the house were dying down; I had a dream: here -I was hopping in the snow along the north side of the converted church: as a white rabbit - recalling Robert Grave’s White Goddess images, I reviewed the literature: the hare, the lapwing and the roebuck. Vaguely recalling the Battle of the Trees, the mystic shaman themes. For a moment I was alive in the archetypal world of being. It woke me up. For that instant I knew what it was like to come out of hibernattion: not a bad life after all. Not that much different than mine.

Been there done that? I guess not. Being in one of those dreams you don’t forget in its realism; its naturalism: the most remarkable sense of peace on earth I ever felt… immediately I fell back asleep; and might not have remembered the dream ever: just a blip on the radar, buried in the hole of the unconscious never to erupt again perhaps; except imitating Henry Miller’s seismographic needle I record events if I think of it record it at least in the diary of my mind; experts say try to remember your dreams by thinking about them when they occur. Take notes: I would have forgotten that one for sure as it was so brief: a flash dream I call them. It would have been buried and other wise receded forever into the subconscious, the collective unconsciousness, nature, a momentary eruption never to be recalled again…

Validating the dream was not among my immediate goals the morning after the first major a storm of the theatre of seasons. And I had already forgotten it by 9 a.m the next day, except…that: In my parka, and boots, with a hammer and some tacks in hand, I was repairing the damage to the house, hauling broken tree limbs out of the yard. I happened to wander over to the exposed north side of house to replace ripped plastic window sheathing that flapped and tore as the wind battered the house until 3. before the blizzard fell silent. There not really to my surprise it was confirmation; I discovered at the spot on the side of the converted church that just happened to be the exact place between the lilacs and the house, where the dream occurred: there was a fresh set of rabbit tracks that disappeared in the snow. I checked them more than once for just to believe what my eyes had seen. The tracks were completely gone within a few days as the daytime temperature rebounded back above freezing by Thanksgiving.


The Emerald Rosary: (Grandma went ballistic…)

I was pretty young at the time, three at least; because I learned more after those days; and wouldn’t have done the things I did: I only came up to about Dad’s hip; sometimes I would tag along hunting with him as far as I could go along a worn path at the edge of the deep ravine we made forts, and caves in on the edge of, -carrying his double barrel on his shoulder watching him descend into the ravine in back of our house wearing full hunting gear. Around supper time he would bring home a dead pheasant or two.

My brother was a rascal; I caught him lighting matches around the propane tanks trying to blow up the house; he got whipped for it good at least once; he deserved a licking; he got in trouble a lot in those days I was the watchdog because our Pekinese Dusty would always run away; get lost dull dog.

One Sunday we were over at grandma’s house for an Easter Egg hunt with my eight cousins and my two brothers Patty wasn’t born yet; there were a lot of relatives around including my aunt who I had a crush on; she was just a couple years older than me.

For some reason both my grandma’s believed I was more righteous compared to my brother; and, rightfully so.

One time to prove how spiritual I was grandma brought down a sparkling emerald Rosary from her bedroom jewelry box below the mirror on her dresser where I knew it was laying. She had a sheriff badge in there too.

Us kids were going to have cake and grape koolaid from a big punch bowl with ice in it for lunch after the egg hunt; in front of everybody in the dining room Grandma handed the sparkling Rosary to me saying Tony knows what to do with it don’t you Tony: as I lifted it up over my head with both hands to place it around my neck Grandma went ballistic:

“Ahh,! no no not that way….”

She screamed, raging mad in an instant; grabbing the necklace off my neck with cold sharp fingers before it settled in place snapping it off my head cradling it in her hands; Oh my God she thought I had defamed the Blessed Virgin who I didn’t know who I didn’t know who that was. My Aunt Kate who I loved was there for me and wasn’t much taller stepped in for me calmed her down; he’s only a kid mom; no harm done.. Some of my older aunts walked it off with Grandma into the kitchen; I think she was shaking mad…..

I was always afraid of Grandma Dad’s mom after that until I grew up; there was some apprehension some stance there she never noticed it. And later she let me know I was her favorite grandson (some died young) of my dad. I did disappoint her that one time; but, after that incident she liked me better; was trying to make up too; this is how I grew up before I was five and never forgot that lesson. If I had placed it around my neck I always wondered if I would have become inflamed like Hercules when he put on Deianira’s cape and might not be here today.



Déjà vu all over again

I was tempted many times to quit; to end my relationship with the idiot savant my adult education project: ex corrections inmate. His writing from incomprehensible gibberish as one Federal judge called it improved slightly over five years; his hopeless dejection feeling like a bum in the gutter disappeared; the voice he chose to address the post judgment world in was 'vaguely expressive, mechanical': intolerable. Now he was back in the saddle: running the show: writing (the) wrong stuff consistently, to judges, lawyers, anybody who would read the stuff; burying my key defense points (Rule 35, coram nobis) in zeal to exculpate and at the same time exonerate himself: to go beyond freedom and dignity.

Most times respectfully letting me know he doesn’t need my ideas except as window dressing on his. In his generalizations, the brash sassy personality (of the rich kid he once was) re-emerged in his writing. Along with total inability to separate subjective from objective in writing; his voice whaled, whined and cried out for justice inappropriately, mixing and mashing stiff and formal sentences. Mangling traits of content, organization style…conventions (mechanics, usage, grammar) Using phrases with scintillating word choice describing ‘axiomatic infractions’ ‘juxta-position’ ‘illicit and insidious acts’ against him done by his district judges and attorneys; expositing the events that befell him: it was not his fault. That was out of the question. At best his writing growled with an adult voice, vocabulary and sentence fluency of an eighth grade student who could care less about such traits in written communication. I had long before given up on the idea of ‘editing’ his work because I couldn’t stand to read beyond his first paragraph that was always the same

My client basically informs me constantly me with his attitude, tone, purpose and behavior he has learned enough to function in his society from another teacher: thank you for your efforts. We made it to appeal. We lost. It’s his turn now.This is a guy I know who gained celebrity in junior high for walking out of band practice with his trombone on his shoulder after being bawled out by the director for not learning his part; he was reliving the past.
What have I unleashed on the world? This is hogwash says Nabokov!


One night around Christmas 2009 after I had spent the evening agonizing over failures of progress, deciding to quit case writing for good: how to exit the fiasco with some grace; I couldn’t stand it anymore facing the cockerel character, the rich kid going through a few ups and downs, with a personality only a mother could love, the regression, the repetitions, the generalizations to a fault that bordered on solid misunderstandings of law of up to six pages: the ultimate English teachers nightmare. Falling asleep on the uncomfortable hideabed I had a cauchemar.

“ I was standing at a dry bar talking to my old friend Dave H__ (my client’s name is ‘Dave’ also); who as kids we believed was the most marvelous athlete in our town. Starting at guard in the State basketball tournament as a sophomore; replacing our most valuable player Jackie Blink who broke his leg in the final quarter of the regional finals. We knew him as a young man who could hit a golf ball straight as an arrow 300 yards; and descend in a beautiful arc hook dropping the ball 3 feet from the hole on a 290 yard par 4. Only Tom Watson could hit a golf ball like that.

The weird thing though was Dave H__ had been dead ten years; dying of liver failure and the bottle before he reached fifty; he was swindled by his partners and lost the family soft drink bottling business; in the dream I was telling him the exact story I told my client: how our great baseball team was headed to the district finals: it was my sophomore year I had started every game at second base: hadn’t made an error all season; had a number of bases on balls, some bases reached on errors: but I was batting .000; it was embarrassing. The team needed my glove only. Heading into the District Finals we were confident having hammered Granite 12-0 in the conference earlier in the season.

A sharp pain and stiffness in my lower back had been plaguing me for several weeks before that tourney game. Never had anything like it before: I was so stiff I couldn’t run, bend over in the field or swing a bat with any authority without a seriously sharp stab in my lower spine that felt serious. My back would loosen up a bit after several hours of practice but I could slack off at practice; nobody noticed. Coach had other worries like who was going to pitch that game. I hated pain; and, notified the coach who I admired and hated to inform; he didn’t advise me to visit the doctor. Coach believed I should tough out the pain, play through it. He didn’t want to hear of my ‘injury”. My old man thought the same if I told him which I didn’t. I kept the stiffness to myself not letting anybody else make the decision.

We went into that game needing my one skill, - to play my game with the glove: defense. Ron__ counted on me I never knew why until that game; but when I told him I couldn’t play second that afternoon he was more than disappointed: I had made the coach I admired and delivered papers to for years, angry after he gave me the great opportunity to play as a sophomore. The coach knew he had to play my substitute; another of my best friends a senior (excellent at cribbage, and pool who I later roomed with in college). Mick H___ had polio when he was kid; and had a stiff rod in his back so he could barely bend over (either, ever). I was thinking maybe Mickey deserved to start the last game of his career and his senior year. That I still had a few games ahead of me entered my decision to take a seat on the bench for the last game.

The Kilowatts were a lot tougher in the District Finals; it was a pitcher’s duel between Arlen Larson and our slow lefty Milt Henningson: the score was tied 2-2 bottom of the ninth. With a man on second two outs bottom of the inning, their ninth batter slapped a grounder toward my sub at second; who didn’t move a step right or left: as the slow hit baseball rolled between his legs; he chased it to the outfield grass, turned and fired home, but the runner on second who was running on a full count and two outs scored on my friend's error. The game winning single went through my wicket; I could have easily made that play as I had a hundred times before. My sub lost the game: the team lost because I sloughed off: I never got over it; and never sat out another minute of sports stories because of an injury”

When I started up from the dream in the morning light, I immediately recalled my conversation with my client and was determined I could never give up on the case despite how awful it was working with a slightly illiterate corrections inmate who was manipulating me