Well, I'm All Better

 What a difference a year makes, in lots of ways.

insomnia

I've been battling this beast for many years, mostly as the result of a longtime prescription given to me by a doctor who should have known better. Whatever beneficial effects it had for me also seemed to have turned off for a long time the switch in my brain to indicate sleep. At one point, it was five days without a wink: in New York City. We were staying with a friend in a 1.5-room fifth floor walkup on Madison and 82nd in mid-February. The apartment had no real walls so I couldn't really get any privacy even to read, and it was too cold to walk to Washington Square and back, and I'd have felt perfectly safe doing so. But dying of hypothermia is one of my few fears (death itself is not one of them), and I didn't really want to risk it. And I was kinda lazy. But it was the kind of wakefulness like Malcolm McDowell in A Clockword Orange with revulsion therapy. My eyes seemed propped open.

A good thing is that, over time, I've learned or trained myself not to ruminate. I don't lie awake thinking about the mess I've made of my life, or why I didn't ever allow myself to learn to waterski, or what bills remain unpaid, or the debts I owe to an alphabet soup of governmental agencies and financial institutions. I lay mostly in silence, although in the last year I've added Nichiren Buddhist chanting to the mix. Music, darkness, heavy food intake don't help. Nam Yoho Rengo Kyo has passed a lot of hours.

I just went to Sheetz for a footlong meatball sandwich, at 4am, hoping some gut loading would do the trick. Occasionally it does, but tonight I'm not so sure. Antihistamines, even industrial amounts of prescription medications don't often help much.

Side note: one of my readers once inquired where you get a meatball hero at 4 a.m. I explained that when you live within 2 miles of a decent interstate exchange anywhere in the South, you can get just about anything you please. Don't even get me started on Buc-ees, the closest of which is about 240 miles NW of here. As the billboard says, "If you know, you know."

The reports say that insomniacs underestimate the amount they sleep, and that's probably true. But most of my nights, to the extent I sleep at all, it's never a deep sleep, and the only reason I know I've been asleep is that I'll remember fragments of a dream. But still wake up tired. And if I feel like I've only gotten 1.5 hours of sleep and it's really 2.5, well, that ain't helping.

And once 6am hits, forget it, and it's getting perilously close to that now. My options are to take another pill, hope it helps, and maybe my mascot won't wake me too much to cater to her every need. They don't call it "hounding" for nothing.

Used to be, in my younger days, I'd just stay awake all night working. Don't even care to do that anymore, and unfortunately or not, I don't have the four-foot-high stacks of paper to plow through that I used to. They provided some sense of security, anxiety, and something to do all the same time. 

And everyone else whose name is Land, at least those I'll lay claim to, sleeps like a charm. Mi esposa can get her eight hours in, and then a few more during the day, maybe a few times a day. This isn't necessarily a good thing at all, given the overall picture, but it does make for some jealously on my part. And there's nothing like watching a basset sleep. Completely given in to pure bliss.

I used to tell a friend that sleep was the highest one could get, which perhaps explains my pursuit of it.  His question, a reasonable one: If you're asleep how would you know? But one fascinating experience with lucid dreaming a few weeks ago convinced me that, in the right moment, sleep could be quite damn exhilarating.

I also used to say that my lack of sleep make up for my excess of it between the ages of 16 and 25. But that karma's been paid back, in spades, many years ago.

I'd love to check into a sleep clinic and just stare at the monitoring people for eight hours.

And I've asked my doctor, whatever happened to sedatives or barbiturates? I guess those are just for the hospitalized these days. I've wished for such action before, with horrid results. But now that I need them, insurance do not allow for it (credit to S. Q. Liquor). 

Anyway, time to determine the next step. I do have a relatively quick book on crosses to get through, and if it wasn't accompanied by one of the most twisted style guides I've ever received, the job might even be easy.

A basic rule: Whenever clients say a project should be easy, most of the time they are lying, I hope unintentionally.

Signing off, if not exactly out.

As the Late-Night Talk Show Hosts Say, "And We're Back."

My pal at one of my publishers said I seemed like a happier person when I was posting to my blog. (I didn't bother to mention the details in which my life's gone to hell since then.) I'm going to attempt again to do so, but it'll be repurposing my daily emails. All will be scrubbed for personal items and, maybe, too-personal revelations, so apologies for any duplication my readers may encounter. But my voluminous email output, since I eschew social media, are my running diary and journal; God only knows if my longsuffering esposa ever happened upon my email and text messages she'd be horrified, and since she only remembers what happens in the present as long as it involves her resentments against me, she'd have plenty of fodder to keep her mind occupied, when she's not chatting with catfishing randos in Egypt. That was yesterday's joy. 

So, reinstallment one of an attempt to keep my vast readership of maybe half-a-dozen—on a good day—forthwith. You get what you pay for.

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[In reference to a job offer] Sign me up.

I'm scheduled for surgery on March 14, but Anthem Healthkeepers is fucking me over in astoundingly creative and infuriating ways, so I doubt that date's gonna hold, if it takes place at all, at least with my preferred provider. All Anthem cares about is that my "ventral hernia repair with possible component separation" is done in Virginia, even if that means it's done by a team of snake handlers, barbers, and meth freaks with switchblades and their filed-down vampire teeth, as long as they are in-network. 
But if by some divine intervention (your most unexpected words, given that "it's all fiction") it takes place, I am motivated to have the decks cleared by March 12, since I have to make my way down to Charlotte by myself on March 13 and am horrified to find out that Greyhound doesn't deliver. I guess the days are over when they'll take you anywhere. I was hoping for some interesting adventure. So it'll be a one-way plane ticket arranged by my elder issue, since online booking of air travel might as well be trying to negotiate a Sanskrit-to-Koine-Greek translation for me. Last time I tried to book a plane flight online I think I bought six round-trip tickets, only two of which were necessary. I wrote the other ones off as probably taking too much time and effort to unravel them.

My early March is kinda thin right now anyway, and a 150-page scriptural index shouldn't present much of a problem.  If there's any way you can unearth it from your designer in late February so that I can get it in by the end of the month and not wait 66 days for payment I'd be most appreciative, but I understand if not.

Hope all's well with you. I sure could use me some Bagel Bitch right now. Some of mi esposa's friends claim to be coming up from Atlanta in mid-March for an early prebirthday visit with her, and her Christmas-celebrating Jewish friend will be bringing deli, but it ain't the same. I eagerly await our move to northern Virginia, which may take place sometime this year, when I'll be only 4.5 hours from real NYC bagels and a decent slice of thin and greasy pizza. First stop, though: Dorothy Day's gravesite on Staten Island, at Our Lady of Perpetual Sadomasochism convent, or whatever it's called. Funny if you look it up on Wikipedia. Notables buried there are St. Dorothy-in-waiting and a passel of Staten Island mobsters, which is par for the course. Ah, home.

So, these emails, for as long as I keep it up, will be written with an unidentified third-party reader in the background -- and since you and maybe my other managing editor pal and my brother are the only ones who ever seemed to read the damn thing, I guess you'll find a few things new. But I might post everything, inshallah.

Peace and love,
bl

Haven't Been Here in a While

In the words of Warren Zevon in his own version of "Poor, Poor Pitiful Me," "I don't wanna talk about it." I will say that things are a whole lot different now than they were just prior to my 59th birthday, the dateline of the prior post. Yow.

The hands-down best part of the changes is that I recently became a first-time grandfather, so wonderful things do happen. Our son and daughter-in-law have decided that once our granddaughter has a recognizable face, she will also have no social media presence. They won't be posting pictures for public viewing, and I'm sure it'll be a long time before their child does. And my kids are not Luddites by any means, DIL included. Nor do they particularly put themselves out there, at least via the only medium that I very, very occasionally access: the much-dreaded Rat's Nest; both sons have abandoned it, and our daughter-in-law might post twice or thrice a year. I think they do Instagram stuff, but I don't really know (or know what that is) nor do I care. All three can stare into their phones for hours with the best of them, although the new parents now have a better way to spend their time.

And no photo of my most brilliant and beautiful granddaughter will appear here, because it wouldn't last long anyway. Scroll down a little and you'll see that Blogger has scrubbed the picture of the mascot and me, for godsake. I'm not sure which of us triggered the facial recognition bots. Google years ago wiped out from this blog the photo of the czarina and me with John Cale . . . and also wiped out, at least on my side, the same photo as an attachment to an email to an author in Israel, for whom I was writing an index. Thankfully the author did receive the email and the photo deletion didn't until occur until sometime down the line. But it still makes you go hmmm, as some long-forgotten sort-of comic would say.

Just got through the leanest month in the modern history of LandonDemand. September's already looking better, which isn't saying much, unless folks bail on me. It's happened before. Or something is moved to next season. Or a well-known university press gets a job back three weeks early—a true sign of my lack of stuff to do—but the Holy Grail known as the Purchase Order Number has not yet been assigned. And I start what becomes a string of worldwide emails to get one. I mean, talk about no good deed goes unpunished.

On the other hand, with this same press, I once filed an invoice on Thursday morning and was paid late that afternoon, direct depozick [sic]. So I can't really complain.

I just realized that the insomnia I've been battling for much of this year could have been spent right here. Anyone out there reading this is very, very lucky that I've not happened upon that notion before now. I've been unleashing the word horde (thanks, Wm. S. Burroughs) upon any poor soul who'll stand still long enough. (See paragraph 1.)

And no more comments. Sorry. The spammers are getting past the meager defense that Blogger provides. I'm always available via landondemand@gmail.com, often too much so. Write me, especially if I don't know you.

Mascot in situ

With employee.

Priceless

Harking back to the Steal This Book posting of a few days ago. The book includes a section on Chicago with very specific addresses and place descriptions that I figured would interest my older son, now about a five-year Chicago resident (is that possible?).

I found, of course, a free digitized version online and sent him the link with instructions where to find the Chicago information. In scrolling through, I found this gem. If I have to explain it to you, don't worry about it. Or look up the trial of the Chicago 8 (or 7).

I wonder if I picked up on this when I was 12 years old. I probably didn't read any of the Chicago information. New Yawkers just don't do Chicago. But they should.

Chicago has a number of good law schools and you can often get some assistance or referral by calling them and speaking to the editor of the law school paper. You can go to the bathroom for free in the Julius J. Hoffman Room at Northwestern University Law School.

Right on Time

Tere came home today, finally. And within the hour, both cats were at the door.

Now, Elvis . . . he would have stayed away for three days, come home immediately after we opened a can of tuna, and proceeded to lecture us for 10 minutes on the indignities he faced while we were gone.

End in Sight, It Must Be Right

Two weeks in, and my wife appears to be headed home later today (Monday). Fingers are crossed. I'm spending the night here, writing an index in a dark hospital room in the middle of the night. It's about 10 degrees outside. Tere is resting quite comfortably, and I've managed to find 9 hours of music-type sounds that mimic our backyard, once you filter out the barking dogs, whom I hope to spring on Tuesday from a week of boarding, which followed a week of bizarre nonroutines for them. Poor puppies. But Tere's got something to listen to overnight instead of the occasional person hollin' oudda they head.

Our outdoor cats (in my mind, they're outdoor) seem to have flown the coop. While I feed them, I'm sure they know that Tere is their main advocate, and they probably sense she's not there. And once the dogs were boarded, the cats didn't have much entertainment or other warm bodies to rub up against. But I kept putting food out, and they'd show up occasionally. Not so much the last few days.

World's Handsomest Mutt Zooey doesn't pay much attention to the felines, but the hound and the gray cat, Suzzy, are buddies. Suzzy and Maggie, our little tortoise-shell beast, are both hunters and pretty clever, and I have no concern that they could survive outdoors. Maybe someone else has taken them in and is letting them pee on their valued rugs.

Once Tere and the dogs are repatriated to the Commonwealth, with my luck the cats'll show back up.

I remember when we left Florida 19 years ago, we had a crazy indoor/outdoor cat that we hoped wouldn't show back up when moving day came. She'd disappear for a week or two at a time, so long absences weren't uncommon, but by the time I finally pulled up stakes, four weeks had passed since I last saw her. Probably nabbed by a hawk or decided to seek higher ground on the mainland. I remember leaving the house for the last time, thinking, Georgia, please don't show up. Because if she did, I'd have been compelled to take her with me. I am not going to knowingly leave a pet behind, even a cat that could survive perfectly well on the North Florida coast surrounded by seafood, barring outdoor dangers. In 33 years, we've only ever lost one cat to a car, and it was a great cat. Poor Hobbes. And poor Otis, another great animal and Elvis's mentor, probably succumbed to the circle of life near the marsh, or he started walking back to Atlanta, when we moved to Fernandina.

We had Elvis for 19 years, and after him, I'm pretty ambivalent about cats. If one's around, that's fine, but it better be doing its business out of doors. Every. Goddamn. Time.

Today's Peek into Gaming, and a Family Update

Along with hunting, opera, beekeeping, marathon running, and a thousand other diversions, gaming has absolutely no place in my life. Thus I am amused in the course of my online editorial gig to come across statements such as:

Unlocks Dead Ops Arcade and Presidential Zombie Mode (where you can play as Nixon, Kennedy, Castro, or McNamara)

On another note, the czarina is presently hospitalized and in the hands of the diagnostic geniuses at Bristol Regional Medical Center. Let's all hope for the best.

Well, Thank God That's Over

Christmas.

While it does usually result in some pleasurable moments, overall it's a season to loathe.

I spent a very nice five days in Denver with what constitutes pretty much the entirety of my family: my wife, our two sons, one daughter-in-law, and one daughter-in-law-apparent. While having such a small group keeps things simple, there's a little melancholy from not having a larger gathering. But both sons are with people who have large families -- and they can have them.

Neither my wife nor I came from small families, nor over-the-top large ones. We had our healthy share of aunts and uncles and cousins, and even siblings, growing up, and I knew all my grandparents into my teens. But now, for a variety of reasons, really it's just the two (or four) or us. Our kids have never had the regular presence of any family members during their lives, except for their parents and their maternal grandparents, until they passed last decade. They have exactly one first cousin, who is two years younger than me.

We went dogsledding in Breckinridge, Colorado, and I nearly only screwed everything up once, which isn't a bad percentage. Lotsa fun, and being around more dogs than people is always a good scenario. And those dogs love what they are doing and certainly lead healthier lives than I do.

But Christmas. What it's come down to is that I just loathe retail—and really, Linus, in 2018, that's what it's all about. And it's a secular holiday. Just ask any non-Christian if Christmas affects their lives. Then go ask someone at the Freewill Pentecostal Holiness Church of God the last time they had their lives interrupted by Yom Kippur.

Well, then again, Yom Kippur only covers two days. Christmas starts the day after Labor Day.

State of the Mascot

If you think taking a decent selfie with a basset hound might be hard, try walking one.

And a Happy Hanukkah to All

Shiksa goddess and I just lit the first night of Hanukkah candles. Each year when I put out our Hanukkah flag, I am reminded of the time that our flag was set on fire. This was not a random occurrence; the perps were former classmates of my older son. Nor was it isolated: a few years later, another of his former classmates left a flare on top of one of our cars. Even though I got the license plate as it drove off, the police said that the plate itself was not an indicator of who left the flare. When I asked if the owners had reported the car stolen, no answer was forthcoming.

We'd taken these boys on vacation, etc. Hate conquers all.

And from the "Oh, that's no big deal; boys will be boys" department, in eighth grade, when the class was asked in art class to do something in the style of a well-known artist, the latter perp did a Warhol Campbell's Soup can, with the final s in Campbell's and the first s in Soup in the style of the Schutzstaffel. Nothing to see here; move along. When I saw the reports from Charlottesville in 2017, I could clearly imagine that kid's face among the tiki lights.

Such it is that, after 58 years and in this time in our nation's history, I'm fairly damn proud of Jews making it this long—and to be one of them.

I remember the words of my dear great-aunt Etta Kaganov: "Bobby, it doesn't matter what you say you are. When the Nazis come back, they're gonna get you too."

Not if, but when. 

Aunt Ettie was one of a kind—and probably no small influence on where I've ended up in my life. Aunt Ettie was a New York City schoolteacher for 50 years or so. When I was four years old, she used to take me to her principal and others in the school system who didn't believe I could read the New York Times at that age. Now I'm scared to look at it.

Still haven't seen the news. That's since November 7. Shiksa goddess and I were going out to eat yesterday, and I noticed the flags were at half-staff. She told me that H.W. had died, figuring I'd at least want to be informed of that and that it wouldn't harm me too badly. I had some problems with H.W. (I don't think any former CIA chief should be president), but in retrospect, he may have been the last of the liberal Republicans—at least in the 1980 primaries. What I'd give for a few of those right now.

How to Explain Capitalization Choices to Your Family

The notion expressed in the title might seem silly, except for the fact that my son and daughter-in-law are high school English teachers. Well, and consider the fact that my sons, certainly the one who has become a teacher, never came to me for a writing or editing question. My god, the only thing in life I can actually help them with . . .

The only pieces of writing I've seen of my younger son's were a paper or two my wife liberated from his apartment one time while staying there when he and our future D-I-L were out of town. The reports that always came from his teachers were that they wished he wrote more. He presented his ideas with such economy of language that, while answering the questions, his assignments rarely approached the word limit. Could be worse problems.

So, while walking down the streets of Denver, my daughter-in-law mentioned that she and a student were having trouble deciding on capitalization of a certain term or category of terms. I tried to explain not only the proper approach (AP and Chicago agree) but that they really didn't have to puzzle this crap out for themselves. While Grammar Girl is pretty neat, so's your old man, so to speak.

As are these resources. The list is cribbed from the AP Stylebook. Thanks in advance to AP, which has not granted permission to reprint, but which has also of late realized the value of the serial comma. Mirabile dictu.

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AP Stylebook editors refer to the following resources to help guide style decisions. If you do not find your answer in the Stylebook, try checking one of these other sources. You can buy them for yourself using the links below.

First reference for spelling, style, usage and foreign geographic names:

Webster's New World College Dictionary, Fifth Edition

Other references for spelling, style, usage and foreign geographic names:

American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition

Concise Oxford English Dictionary: Main edition 12th edition by Oxford Dictionaries (2011) Hardcover

Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language

National Geographic Atlas of the World, Tenth Edition

The Elements of Style, Fourth Edition

The Chicago Manual of Style, 17th Edition

For aircraft names:

IHS Jane's All the World's Aircraft 2014-2015: Development & Production

For military ships:

Jane's Fighting Ships 2016/2017: Yearbook

For nonmilitary ships:

LLOYDS REGISTER OF SHIPS 1989-90 (3 VOLS A-G/H-O/P-Z)

For railroads:

The Official Railway Guide: Freight Service Edition,The Bulk Connection March/April 1990

For federal government questions:

Congress At Your Fingertips 115th Congress 1st Session 2017

For non-U.S. government questions:

Political Handbook of the World

The CIA World Factbook 2017

For religion questions:

Handbook of Denominations in the United States 13th Edition

Other references and writing guides consulted in the preparation of the AP Stylebook:

The Careful Writer

More Language That Needs Watching

Watch Your Language: a Lively, Informal Guide to Better Writing Emanating from the News Room of the New York Times

THE WORD: An Associated Press Guide To Good News Writing

Modern American Usage: A Guide

A Dictionary of Modern English Usage, Second Edition

Fowler's Dictionary of Modern English Usage

Harper Dictionary of Contemporary Usage

Newton's Telecom Dictionary

Dictionary of Problem Words and Expressions

Words into Type

I've Been in a Mood

I'd say it started about two weeks ago. The czarina had gone off to Atlanta to stay with friends in their recently rebuilt home in what used to be a fear zone close to downtown. When our friend moved there 25 years ago, Domino's wouldn't deliver. Now, it's great. The czarina left essentially to lay eyes on our older son, who was there to be in a wedding of some people he'd met while acting. We hadn't seen him since, uh, July, and before that it was way back in, uh, June. Yeah, well, whatever. 

A hurricane was moving through Atlanta, so the wedding was moved across the street. It was supposed to be where the czarina and I were hitched, oddly enough. Our son was going to be a groosman at the same place. They still dressed there, and the restaurant, now under a different name, had at least one Thornton Dial on the wall, as well as some other cool stuff. Mitchell had everyone talking about the art.

I was here in Bristol, baby, with the shedding menagerie. My father's eighty-fifth birthday would have been the seventh of the month; my work game has been off; the electronic gig had backed up two weeks of work into about four days, on top of the usual Lucy and the chocolates; mid-October was coming; eating, sleeping, basic maintenance, all shot to hell . . . I'm down to 177, and the last time I saw that, I was on my way to 145. Couple years after my mother died. "Lotta ins and outs. Lotta what-have-yous."

So—how much you getting paid for this?—I just sent off an index for a book to a company that has certainly in some way affected your life in a significant way (this readership's life) with ramifications, published by a university you know, by some coeditors who are or were the equivalent of C-suite gentlemen in this particular field. "Not exactly lightweights," judging from their bios. 

I'm feeling a little better having accomplished something, and I guess I was feeling my oats. This was after asking the receiver of the invoice if I could send and he could process speedy delivery. I've never worked with the guy or any of these people before, except the press, which won't be involved until I send the index to them author-approved.

Nine hours after the fact, I'm rereading the email I sent them. I guess it's professional enough. The letter is verbatim from Gmail. I love it because I can use it again and again. Absolutely generic, except I did take out the name of the university. It's somewhere east of the Mississippi, I'm pretty certain.

A peek behind the curtain. The underlying tone is, "I really hope you leave this thing alone." I'm almost scared to send off an index anymore. It's also coming up on the one-year anniversary of that experience. I'm not sure I ever addressed that incident in this space. Lordy. Pathetic. Talk about some horseshit scholarship. 

+++

Hi, all. First, thanks again for your patience, and apologies for the earlier bait-and-switch.

I've attached the index manuscript as well as a marked-up PDF noting some things I saw along the way. You've probably already caught most of these issues while reviewing the page proofs.

From looking at your distinguished bios, I'm guessing y'all have been to this rodeo before, but a few notes:

* Multiauthor books present a challenge in that different chapters, especially if they've been printed elsewhere before, might refer to the same concepts using slightly different language. I've tried to consolidate different terminology here, so please keep an eye out for where I may have misinterpreted. I've also presented a lot of cross-references but may have missed opportunities for additional ones. Feel free to add.

* Another challenge with this type of book is avoiding the rabbit hole of trying to present data in the index in addition to the conceptual items. Of course, with an index, a guide to the book's data is not desired. The index would become unwieldy very quickly, and it's also against standard indexing practices, as XXUP's guidelines aver.

* If you want to make or handle any changes on your side, please do so, although track the changes so that I can see what you've done, to ensure that the index still adheres to standard protocols.

The deadline for the press is Monday, 10/23. Hopefully you'll find the index to your liking and any back-and-forth will be brief (although, of course, the index needs to satisfy the authors, within reasonable constraints). I do have a few very minor queries in the index. If you could address to those, I'd appreciate it. They may result in no changes at all.

If you have any questions, let me know. Thanks for an interesting read.

Just a Matter of Time

What was the old saying? If you sit on the Left Bank long enough, you’ll eventually see someone you know? That might not be exactly right, but the point’s made.

We have a friend who’s about the same way. No matter where you go in the world, eventually you’ll run into someone who knows him. (Then again, a few of his friends [including the czarina and me] think he may work for The Company -- and if you have to ask, forget about it.)

With all the books I work on, and especially with the nature of my more regular clients, it was only a matter of time before I hit upon a reference to a particular distant cousin of mine. Actually, this same press (it’s Yale) has printed at least one volume of the correspondence between the two people mentioned below. The second one is, indeed, a cousin. No joke. And let’s just say that not all of his accomplishments were as attractive/admirable/mentionable in polite company as putting marble and chandeliers in the subways of a particular city. A more notorious part of his resume is responsibility for the deaths of about 20 to 30 million people.

I've known my whole life the guy was a badass (and he just died in 1991), but I didn't know that his range extended as far as Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright.

You can pick your friends. . . . And for any people I've ever worked with who might say my editorial tendencies can be a bit authoritarian, well, consider the blood that runs through my veins.

In June 1931, at a “special plenum of the central committee of the All-Union Communist Party,” Stalin and his deputy in charge of the Moscow region, Lazar Kaganovich, had announced that the Communist Party had renounced all “foreign theories” of both urbanism and disurbanism, including those of Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright. Instead, the new focus would be on Moscow as a model of the urban “socialization of everyday activities,” with Kaganovich in charge of its development.

(l–r) Cousin Lazar (and yes, there's a family resemblance with my maternal grandfather, Morris "Spike" Kaganov), Uncle Joe 

Cultural Interlude: Mandolin Orange, “Wildfire”

Judging from blog 1.0 (2007?–July 2017), Google is eventually going to scrub YouTube videos from here, so I won’t bother posting a recording of the song. I’ll leave that to interested readers.

I live in Bristol, VA, which, along with Bristol, TN, is the official Birthplace of Country Music. Translation: here, in the late 1920s, Ralph Peer came to record Appalachian and southern white folk music in the form of the Carter Family, Jimmie Rodgers, et al., which kicked off the chain of events that eventually led to Nashville.

Third weekend of every September, Bristol hosts the Rhythm and Roots Reunion, which started the year we moved here with a few stages and small crowds. Seventeen years later, it draws about 50,000 to 60,000 people over the course of three days and is a legitimately good time. Downtown Bristol, inside and out, is turned over to about 20 music venues.

On the recommendation of an old and dear friend, I went to see Mandolin Orange a few weeks ago. Usually I don’t pay attention to lyrics that much anyway, and when it’s a band you’ve never heard on an outdoor stage, you’re lucky to understand much of anything.

But Mandolin Orange falls somewhere around alt bluegrass and lo-fi, so picking up the words wasn’t hard. One song caught my attention, and the more I listened, the more I was amazed at what I thought I was hearing. A week or so ago, I went online to look at the lyrics. I wasn’t disappointed. Reading them now brings tears to my eyes. And the recurring line has become a bit of a mantra for me on many different levels. “It should have been different. It could have been easy.”

I’m New York City born and bred, as were my parents and one set of my grandparents, so I have no dog in this hunt. But I married a woman who qualifies for Daughters of the Confederacy and who was born in Montgomery, AL, and raised there and in Atlanta. The Virginia/Tennessee line is the farthest north she’s ever lived. I think she’d have mixed reactions to this song, even though she’s as progressive as the day is long. I don’t have mixed feelings at all.

Mandolin Orange: If someone happens to direct you to this post or you find it on your own, thank you, thank you, thank you.

It should have been different. It could have been easy. And I’m crying as I type. (Lyrics printed sans permission of the artists. I hope they and the Google don't mind.)

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Brave men fall with a battle cry
Tears fill the eyes of their loved ones and their brothers in arms
So it went, for Joseph Warren

It should have been different, it could have been easy
His rank could have saved him, but a country unborn needs bravery
And it spread like wildfire

Wildfire
Wildfire

From the ashes grew sweet liberty
Like the seeds of the pines when the forest burns
They open up, grow and burn again
It should have been different, it could have been easy
But too much money rolled in to ever end slavery
The cry for war spread like wildfire

Wildfire
Wildfire

Civil war came, civil war went
Brother fought brother, the south was spent
But its true demise was hatred, passed down through the years
It should have been different, it could have been easy
But pride has a way of holding too firm to history
And it burns like wildfire

Wildfire
Wildfire

I was born a southern son
In a small southern town where the rebels run wild
They beat their chest and they swear: we're gonna rise again
It should have been different, it could have been easy
The day that old Warren died, hate should have gone with it
But here we are, caught in the wildfire

Wildfire
Wildfire

My Master's Thesis: 1 of 2

I went to graduate school for exactly one day.

Back in my full-time employment days, I was writing and editing textbooks and examinations for a university-level business and insurance education program. Next up on my work list was a three-year project editing (and occasionally writing) a textbook on accounting in life and health insurance companies. Of course, I'd never taken an accounting course and knew nothing about life and health insurance. I was 25 years old. The company wisely hired wordsmiths and would teach them about business subjects; easier than hiring business gurus and teaching them how to write.

So, the SVP of the division decided I should go get an MBA in accounting. Uh-huh. I'd considered graduate school once before -- for about 10 minutes, when I saw that the University of Oregon offered an MS in journalism. More than the idea of getting a journalism degree, I liked the idea of having a master's in science after almost failing 10th-grade biology and never taking another science course after that. I wasn't bad in math. Other than earth science, the rest of it may as well have been in Sanskrit.

Get an MBA? Well, that means taking the GRE. Thankfully, I'd spent the last 18 months helping develop standardized tests, so I knew the form much better than when taking the SATs.

[Fun fact about your blogger and the usefulness of the SAT as a predictor of future success. My top SAT scores after three tries were Math 670, Verbal 520. 520. After three tries. One time I posted a 420 Verbal. These are generally not the scores of someone who ends up years later working for such outfits as Oxford, Yale, and Johns Hopkins UPs -- and a few theological presses of equal heft.]

I did pretty well on the GREs and was admitted to the MBA/Accountancy program at Georgia State University. Attended class one day. At almost exactly the same time I started dating my future wife and realized where I'd rather be spending my free time. I went to the SVP, who was all about professional development and education, and explained I simply couldn't return to school and was prepared to deal with the consequences. There were none, other than my subsequent marriage.

So now I occasionally very lightly fantasize about graduate school, and I've mapped out one of my two possible theses:

1. "The Hunting Cap and Alienation in Mid-Twentieth-Century American Literature: A Study of Chapeaux in Catcher in the Rye and A Confederacy of Dunces."

2. A data study on women scholars who cite virtually nothing but other women scholars. Sistahs are doing it for themselves, I s'pose.

A (Temporary?) Return to the Blog World

In the interests of equal time, as I memorialized my mother a few years back on what would have been her 80th birthday, here I honor my father, Ronald Marvin Land, who would have been 85 years old today. He passed away earlier this year. Some people say that when you lose both your parents, you're orphaned. I think that's nonsense, but losing them both does make you grow up in a different sort of way.

The image below is after our younger son's high school graduation, 2011. In this photo, my father was 78. I should look so good at 58; well, actually, I might look quite like that in a few months. Lately I've been mistakenly repeatedly for someone in his mid- to late 60s. Relative to the image below, I've lost the facial hair, the glasses, and about 55 pounds. Not that it helps much.

Above and Beyond

In the midst of about 40 hours of doing nothing but fixing bibliography and notes for a massive volume. The book was translated from the Italian (and translated into Italian originally from probably five different languages [damn overachievers]), and I'm searching the Webz looking for translations of Italian, French, and Spanish (so far) minutiae, like documentation abbreviations. If I had a foot in the door in Sanskrit, I'd be there, too.

And I'm listening to Keith Jarrett at present. I can't tell if his groaning is his groaning, my stomach, or the mascot whining.

The Gift That Keeps on Giving

In this case, my elder issue. One nice thing about raising kids with a diverse musical palate (pallet? pallette?) is that they have enough time to keep you apprised of the really good stuff you miss.

Oh. My. God. This is what's happening in my head:

The Necks 30th Anniversary Concert

My son's name is Mitchell Land. If you're in Chicago, look him up and see if he's playing anywhere, either by himself or as (with) Joey Mitchell, whom (or which) you can find on the rats' nest (Facebook).