Easter and My Baptism, April 2019

4/20/2019: Woke up about 5:30 AM and knew I was awake. Read Bible and prayed Rosary, straightened around a bit, then was able to get some sleep for about an hour. Got up about 8 AM and got dressed, caught up Diary. About 9:30 AM went in and checked the ham, what it weighed and so on, to know when to start it. About 11 AM they [the Shanafelts] went out for breakfast. I made the deviled eggs, then split and buttered the rolls. Throughout the day I made tea, mashed potatoes, put the ham in at about 1:30 PM, and made the green bean casserole and the gravy, and took out the cranberry sauce. Kaitlyn got here at about 3:30 PM with her dogs. Totally by chance Kenny called me, and I was able to tell me I was getting baptized today, and he and Kay both heartily congratulated me. Fred called Andy for rotation just before we were ready to eat, but he got back about 4:30 PM and we ate. Everyone agreed it was a superior production. I went rather light to not be too full. At 5:30 PM I went in to rest a bit, then showered and got ready. Mike [Stewart]called at about 6 PM to check in, then I went and sat on the porch a little before 7 to wait; many cardinals swooping and singing in the trees before me. Mike came, he gave me a card and a rosary, and we went to St. James. First we went and sat in the church, with a few people getting things ready, then we went outside where the fire to light the new Paschal candle was kindled. S&A, Kelsey, her Ryan, Kaitlyn, and Kameron arrived, and we directed them in. It was a beautiful calm clear evening. We processed in and took our seats, the church dim and solemn, and we passed the light to others’ candles. The church was lit up; we rang bells, and there was music. The time came when we went up and give our testimony (for the liturgy) and I started out by saying that if anyone doubted miracles still occur, I was in front of them actually talking to a crowd. Afterwards several people told me they were touched by my words. I went up and was baptized (in my stocking feet); some of the water was from the Jordan. I took my baptismal candle up to the altar. There was confirmation of vows for Shauna and Amy and their husbands. There was the big moment when I finally shared in the Eucharist, and my long journey was finally fulfilled, praise God! We were dismissed. I felt at first that I wanted to go home, but then Mike and I ducked into the fellowship hall, where there many presents given me, and congratulations, and we had cake! Mike finally got me home about 11:30 PM, and S&A were in the kitchen having Second Supper. They congratulated me too, and I saw Kam, and then I headed inside. I did some Bible reading to help me wind down, posted GKC’s “The Convert” on Facebook, where I saw Isabel congratulating me too. Hit the hay and was finally able to wind down.

 

The Lord of the Rings: The Stairs of Cirith Ungol (Part Two)

 

The Tale

The rock beneath trembles and quivers, a great rumbling rolling through the ground under them, echoing in the mountains. From far over the black mountains a great red light leaps into the sky, lighting the low cloud cover. And the tower of Minas Morgul answers the signal with a flare of livid lightning and blue flame, leaping from the city and its surrounding hills. The earth groans.

Out of the city comes a great mingled cry as of birds of prey, the ‘shrill neighing of horses wild with rage and fear,’ and a rending shriek rising to a piercing screech beyond hearing. The hobbits put their hands over their ears and cast themselves to the ground. ‘The terrible cry ended, falling back through a long sickening wail to silence.’ Frodo looks up to the walls of the evil city. Its cavernous gate is open, looking like a gaping fanged mouth, and an army is pouring forth from it.

It comes in an endless black stream, lead by a great cavalry of horses. At the head rides one greater than all the rest: completely black but crowned with a flickering light. As it nears the bridge leading out of the fortress, Frodo gazes at the figure in dread.

‘Surely there was the Lord of the Nine Riders returned to earth to lead his ghastly host to battle? Here, yes here indeed was he haggard king whose cold hand had smitten down the Ring-bearer with his deadly knife. The old wound throbbed with pain and a great chill spread towards Frodo’s heart.’

 

The Rider halts just at the bridge, and the host stops behind him. Maybe it was the nearness of the Ring that troubles the wraith, the menace of a great power entering his domain. He looks back and forth, seeking the cause of his uneasiness. Frodo cannot move or stop staring: more than ever he feels the call for him to put on the Ring.

But now he feels no answering call in his will to put it on. He knows the Ring will only betray him, and he has not the power to match the Witch-king. But a great power from outside seems to be moving his hand toward the Ring against his will. With some effort he moves his hand to another object: the Phial of Galadriel, almost forgotten until now. Clutching it seems to drive the temptation from his mind, and he sighs and bows his head, released from the evil fascination of the Morgul-lord.

The Wraith-king spurs his horse forward and the host follows behind him. ‘Maybe the elven-hoods defied his unseen eyes, and the mind of his small enemy, being strengthened, had turned aside his thought.’ Anyway, he is in haste. His Master has given the call and he must march with war against the West.

Finally he passes, ‘like shadow into shadow.’ The army follows, rank on rank, in what seems an endless stream. ‘So great an army had never issued from that vale since the days of Isildur’s might; no host so fell and strong in arms had yet assailed the fords of Anduin; and yet it was but one and not the greatest of the hosts that Mordor now sent forth.’

Bits and Bobs

I think we can safely assume that the ‘red flash’ from Mordor comes from an eruption of Mount Doom, controlled by Sauron, who, as Galdor noted at the Council of Elrond, ‘can torture and destroy the very hills.’

The black horses of the host are no doubt bred from the beasts stolen from Rohan, where Saron’s agents always chose the black ones to take. They have been brought up to endure their unnatural riders, both orc and wraith, but they still squeal in pain and fear.

The Lord of the Nazgul wears ‘a helm like a crown,’ which to me recalls the famous headgear of Richard II the Lionheart.

Reproduction from a Famous Statue in London

Frodo’s will, though he still feels the temptation, has grown since their last encounter at the Ford of Bruinen. But the power of the Wraith still almost overcomes his body. Perhaps this is a foreshadowing of events to come at the very Crack of Doom, where Sauron’s (and the Ring’s) power is greatest. The Phial seems to strengthen Frodo and perhaps the elven-cloaks foil the Witch-king’s eyes, but they are headed to where ‘all other powers fail.’

The Witch-king can sense something, some power, but can’t pinpoint it as the Ring. Apparently, someone needs to be wearing it before anyone is ‘aware’ of it; Gollum, when he had it, was sheltered by being hidden under the mountains. As it is, the Wraith-lord can’t stop to investigate, the war (and Sauron’s command) is pushing him on.

Watchers of the Jackson films, note: the Witch-king sets forth on a horse. He is not yet remounted on a Fell-beast.

Alice in the Archive … A Gathering from the Niche

If you had asked my opinion of Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll when I was a little kid, it probably would have been much the same as Alice’s in the frame above from MAD magazine. Something about John Tenniel’s classic illustrations remains a little disturbing, though I have grown fond of them.*

The impression probably wasn’t helped by the 1933 Paramount Pictures black-and-white production. It boasted a host of star power, but most were unrecognizable behind their grotesque masks, prosthetics, and plain-de-ole puppetry.

The cast included W. C. Fields, Edna Mae Oliver, Edward Everett Horton, Cary Grant, Gary Cooper, and Sterling Holloway as the Frog Footman. Billy Barty was one of the cards.  I remember watching it on a holiday visit to Nanny’s old house.

I never saw the Walt Disney version as a whole until years later, but of course it always had a presence in snippets on The Wonderful World of Disney and in various comics and other products. It was represented on our old kids' records by a rather slow (by our standards) rendition of the opening theme. It probably would have been better represented (to children) by The Unbirthday Song.

A more complete engagement with Alice came when we went to see the 1972 British produced musical version at the Palace Theater. We came away from that with a souvenir pamphlet and a new family rhyme: ‘Brer loves Pam, Brer loves Pam, Kenny loves Alice in Wonderland.’ At this distance, I can’t see anything wrong with Fiona Fullerton as Alice; perhaps it was something about her eyebrows. It too had a host of famous actors (who we didn’t know at the time and who were also covered up under their make-up) like Michael Crawford, Michael Hordern, Peter Sellers, Roy Kinnear, Spike Milligan, Dudley Moore, Ralph Richardson, Peter Bull, and Flora Robson.

Even in middle school I already considered the book ‘too childish’ to read, but in high school, a sudden ambition to be a ‘fantasy expert’ pretty much demanded I should at last give it a go. Fortunately, they had a nice big edition illustrated by Libico Maraja whose style I found to be classically engaging.

By the time I was in college I had an old secondhand copy Illustrated Junior Library edition (I remember because it was one of the 20 books I would take if I was going into space - there was no Kindle yet) which included both Alice in Wonderland and Alice’s Adventures Under Ground. In time I also got Lewis Carroll’s own abridgement of Alice for the Very Young,

the first edition of the Annotated Alice (1960, by Martin Gardner),

and The Complete Works of Lewis Carroll,

with a forward by Alexander Wolcott.

But I gave The Annotated Alice (along with an Annotated The Hunting of the Snark) to my brother Kenny when I got The Annotated Alice: The Definitive Edition (1999). According to Wikipedia, there is an even fancier one out now: “In 2015, The Annotated Alice: 150th Anniversary Deluxe Edition was published, combining the previous works of Gardner and expanded by Mark Burstein, president emeritus of the Lewis Carroll Society of North America. It includes features such as more than 100 new or updated annotations, over 100 new illustrations by Salvador Dalí, Beatrix Potter, Ralph Steadman, and 42 other artists and illustrators (in addition to original art by Sir John Tenniel), and a filmography of every Alice-related film by Carroll scholar David Schaefer.”

Alice in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll, Illustrated by Greg Hildebrandt. A simply enormous (but not thick) Unicorn Publishing House edition, otherwise uniform to other volumes illustrated by Greg that they’ve published. Nice faux-leather binding. All the usual charms of a Hildebrandt book, with its color and solidity, but reproduced perhaps a little too large for its own good.

And speaking of films, for a time, I had Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland (2010) on DVD, but I gave it away. To adapt Tolkien’s words on another matter: “Tolerably good fun; especially for those who have not read the book.” I’ve never seen the sequel Alice Through the Looking Glass (2016), but I do have two action figures.

I also have Dreamchild. Dreamchild (1985), purports to tell the story of the widowed Alice Hargreaves, the erstwhile little girl on whom was based Alice in Wonderland; she is traveling to the United States on an invitation to celebrate the one hundredth birthday of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll) at Columbia University. She is accompanied by the (fictional) orphan girl Lucy, who is wooed by a down-on-his-luck journalist in an effort to gain access to and exploit the elderly Alice. As Mrs. Hargreaves travels down the rabbit-hole of 1930's America, she has dreams about encountering the characters from the stories and has childhood recollections about her friendship with the eccentric Oxford don. Although having conflicting memories of affection and ridicule, eventually she comes to a clearer understanding and reconciliation with her past and the loving friendship of the lonely Lewis Carroll.

Coral Brown plays Alice Hargreaves, Amelia Shankley the young Alice, and Ian Holm is Lewis Carroll. Jim Henson's Creature Shop provides the Mad Hatter, March Hare, and other characters from the book. Peter Gallagher and Nicola Cowper play the journalist and the orphan companion in the tacked-on "romantic" subplot. The main interest of the movie is, however, neither that nor the hallucinatory episodes of fantasy creatures, but the memories of Alice as a little girl, and her complicated (and controversial) relationship with the man who immortalized and idealized an aspect of her character in a classic work of children's literature.

*I remember we had an old LP of children's stories that included an adaptation of Alice. Once upon a time I found a picture of the album cover, but I can't for the life of me locate it. If I do, I'll put it below.

Found it, and in a better resolution! And a Marvel comic book adaptation (by Doug Moench):

Oh, Those Windy Willows! ... Gathered from the Niche

I suppose my first encounter with some form of Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows was in 1970, when I was six. There was a Rankin/Bass (then called Videocraft International) TV show called The Reluctant Dragon and Mr. Toad Show. It was not too successful. “The show was a flop and canceled midway through its first season, airing from September 12 until December 26, 1970. A year later, ABC aired reruns of the show on Sunday mornings on September 12, 1971. The show is partially lost, as only 8 of the 17 episodes have been recovered as of February 17, 2024.” – Wikipedia. I liked it okay.

My next encounter was in 3^rd Grade with the 1949 book The Adventures of Mr. Toad (illustrations by John Hench), released in connection with the Disney feature The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (about these two ‘fabbaluss figgahs’). I think I saw an abridged version of it before in the big Walt Disney’s Story Land book. It was the illustration that really drew me in, though I didn’t see the actual animation until years later.

It wasn’t until middle school that I finally read the actual book of The Wind in the Willows, and it was in a similar edition with these illustrations, though hardback whereas mine is softcover. I came to love it very much. It was a part of the same imaginative matrix, along with The Hobbit, The Sword in the Stone, The Dark is Rising, and so on, that was brewing inside me at the time.

It was in high school that I finally read an edition with the classic Ernest H. Shepard illustrations. They were enchanting. Shepard had gone to visit the aging Grahame before he started drawing. Grahame showed him around the actual landscape that he had set the story in. Since then, Shepard’s drawings have become as connected with the book as Tenniel is with the Alice books.

In 1980 I got the beautiful Michael Hague edition. Over the years I got an Airmont Classics copy

and a paperback of A. A. Milne’s play adaptation, Toad of Toad Hall (since shadow libraried) from secondhand shops.

This is the play that Tolkien mentions in his essay On Fairy Stories: “Naturally only the simpler ingredients, the pantomime, and the satiric beast-fable elements, are capable of presentation in this form. The play is, on the lower level of drama, tolerably good fun, especially for those who have not read the book; but some children that I took to see Toad of Toad Hall brought away as their chief memory nausea at the opening. For the rest they preferred their recollections of the book.” This beginning has a child dialing a daffodil as a telephone.

I finally got what must be the crowning edition of all editions, The Annotated ‘The Wind in the Willows’. Full of pictures by a plethora of illustrators, dripping with notes (of course), and filled with details about Kenneth Grahame and his life, it tells you anything you might wonder about the book and more. 

In time, I did get a copy of Disney’s The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (one of my few Blu-rays)

and lastly and most recently the 1987 Rankin/Bass special, which, in a manner o’ speaking, rather neatly brings me back to where I started.

Side Note: I recently learned that it was originally going to be titled The Wind in the Reeds (no doubt after that passage in the chapter ‘The Piper at the Gates of Dawn’) but had to be changed at the last moment because of the immanent publication of a book by Yeats titled The Wind Among the Reeds. I think that the change was fortuitous (if a little puzzling to some readers) because of the more euphoniously memorable alliteration of The Wind in the Willows.

Friday Fiction: Guest Writer, Mike Babel

 

THE CALF

 

     The smell of the rain hung heavy in the air. Papa and I walked down the dark, rutted cow path.

     "It would have to happen on a night like this," Papa said, spitting tobacco juice into the Johnson grass alongside the dusty path. He reached into the baggy pockets of his overalls, pulled out an old, long-handled flashlight and shone it into the weeds. "I sure was countin' on sellin' that calf," he said quietly.

     I nodded, glancing down at my watch. In half an hour Gail would be waiting for me on her porch, smelling sweet like Dove soap in her soft white sweater and her plain brown shoes, a bread wrapper full of popcorn for the drive-in popped and salted and ready for us to eat held under her arm.

     "How long do you think this is going to take?" I asked.

     The old man turned and looked at me. He was dressed in his old gray overalls, shiny and slick from wear, and the khaki baseball cap he had worn when he had pitched softball for Cordova Road High School many years ago. He looked at me and rubbed his chin, and I could hear the scrape of his whiskers against his old, hard hands. "I figure it'll take as long as it takes," he said, spitting tobacco juice into the silvery, moonlit path.

     "How did ya find out he was gone?" I asked, changing the subject.

     "Cow came up by the house at feedin' time lowin' all sad and I figured something must be wrong."

     The old man swung the flashlight from one side of the path to the other. "Then he didn't come in for feed at all and I went out callin' and he didn't come in ..." He seemed to spot something in the mesquite across the draw we had been following, squinted at it for a moment, then changed his mind and went on. "I was figurin' on paying off the tractor this year, too," he said.

     "Maybe he ain't dead," I said. "Maybe his head is just stuck in the fence boards or he got caught in the mud down by the creek or somethin'."

     "Maybe," the old man said, chewing his tobacco fast. "I hope like hell he ain't."

     Overhead, thunder broke the silence of the pasture as the dark clouds began to drift in. I glanced down at my watch. In fifteen minutes, Gail would be on her porch.

     We found the calf lying in the bend of the wash where it began to slope down to meet the creek. Papa shone the flashlight on its broad red back until he reached the shoulders where the typical blaze of Hereford white was.

     The beam of light glinted off of a pair of green, watery-looking eyes, then found the bloody, sharp-nosed face of a possum. The possum hissed once and was gone in a scuttle of toenails against the gravel of the wash.

     "Goddam varmint," Papa said, pulling the baseball cap from his head and crushing it in his hands.

     I slid down the gravel side of the wash and knelt down by the calf. Its neck was twisted at an impossible angle and it already had the curious, stiff-legged rigor mortis that cows always get when they die. The hole where the possum had been was wet and dark in the now faint moonlight.

     "Must have just broke his neck," I said, standing up and dusting off my hands on the side of my jeans.

     Papa squeezed his cap between his big hands and spit the whole wad of tobacco into the darkness. "Got three months of grain and two months of hay in him," he said. "And the son-of-a-bitch goes off and breaks his goddam neck."

     I could sense the slow anger building in the old man.

     "Yeah," I said noncommittally, glancing at my watch. Then the clouds sailed over the moon and the pasture was washed in deep, well-bottom darkness. I looked up the side of the wash at the old man. The iron-gray stubble on his chin and the tobacco juice shiny on his lips were the only light things in the darkness of his face.

     "Goddam," he said, crushing the cap between his big, hard old hands.

     I looked up at him. "Still going to be able to pay off the tractor?" I asked.

     "Don't know," he said.

     The pasture was silent, as if waiting for the storm overhead to break and get it over with.

     "We could get another one," I said. "We could buy one pretty cheap down at the auction in town Tuesday and have it raised up good and fat by spring."

     The old man shook his head. "Somethin' would happen. He would just fall in a wash again or the anthrax would get him or he would drown in the creek."

     "We could watch him real close, Papa," I said.

     He spit on the ground. "Somethin' would happen. Somethin' always happens when you're poor."

     As he stood there the rain broke, falling softly at first, then getting harder and drumming against the dried, packed dirt of the draw. For a moment Papa was silent, looking at nothing, and all I could hear was the sound of the rain in the Johnson grass and the faraway lowing of the cow and for that moment I was afraid.

     Then he put the cap back on his head and stuck his chin into the rain. "Guess we better go back up to the house and get a rope and the pickup," he said, hunching his shoulders against the rain. "We got to pull him out of there or he'll wash into the creek and foul the water and kill the rest of 'em. We'll need the big rope at least, maybe some chains. Reckon he'll be pretty stiff and hard to move by now."

     I bit down hard against my teeth and he turned suddenly towards me. "Less you got somethin' else to do?" he said.

     I thought of Gail and of the wildflower-shampoo smell of her hair and the soft place where her neck curved to meet her shoulder where my hand fit just right and of the salty taste of the popcorn. Then I looked at Papa, small and old against the rain.

     "Naw," I said. "I ain't got nothin' else to do."

     We walked back to the house in the rain and it was very dark. Papa kept the flashlight off and in his pocket, and I thought about what I was going to tell Gail.

 

                   -- Mike Babel, ARENA 1980, PERSONA 1982                  Winner, Gates Thomas Award for Prose 

 

Notes

I figure Mike was trying to process his complicated feelings about Pop, our father's fatalism and his discouraging outlook on life, his lack of vision or any interest in his children's future. Pop had made his own way in life and expected us to do the same. He had to actually struggle against his own father, and had no other pattern to measure fatherhood against. Mike was desperately trying to come to terms with him, to some understanding. I wonder what both of their lives would have been like if they could have come to some sort of peace earlier.   

Playing with Dollies: The Shadow Toybox

Back in the day, when I was still an actual child (say the mid-Seventies), we managed to get our hands on exactly one MEGO Oz doll, the Cowardly Lion. I, of course, would have preferred the Tin Woodman. In time, the figure was nicknamed Otis, and lost most of his accoutrements, except his bodystocking. His remains remain to this day.

Later (say the late Eighties), when the Oz Multi Toys line rolled around, I had to get them (except for the girl Munchkins, and, maybe, the Winged Monkey? - hard to remember at this late date), despite my dissatisfaction with their dolly format. It was Oz! For the longest of time they were stored in the Old Toybox when I was still at Loop Drive. Sometime in the Nineties or early 2000's I gave them to Kelsey and Kaitlyn (still with their boxes), and now they are stored in Susan’s attic.

Much the same origin and fate apply to the Biken Express Seven Dwarfs, which I had to have, because, you know – Dwarfs. 

From the Shadow Library: A Man for All Seasons by Robert Bolt

• The Duke of Norfolk: Oh, confound all this. I'm not a scholar, I don't know whether the marriage was lawful or not but dammit, Thomas, look at these names! Why can't you do as I did and come with us, for fellowship!
• Sir Thomas More: And when we die, and you are sent to heaven for doing your conscience, and I am sent to hell for not doing mine, will you come with me, for fellowship?

 

I Have Hague Memories ... Gathered From the Niche

 

"Michael Hague (born September 8, 1948) is an American illustrator, primarily of children's fantasy books. Among the books he has illustrated classics such as The Wind in the Willows, The Wizard of Oz, The Hobbit and the stories of Hans Christian Andersen. He is known for the intricate and realistic detail he brings to his work, and the rich colors he chooses.

"Hague trained at the Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles. He lists his influences as the comics series Prince Valiant and the works of Disney, Japanese printmakers Hiroshige and Hokusai, and turn of the 20th century illustrators Arthur Rackham, W. Heath Robinson, N. C. Wyeth and Howard Pyle." - Wikipedia.

He's also illustrated an armload of other books. But the weird little thing I'll always associate him with is this line of plushies done in 1980, available (but not bought) at our little local toy store Yellow Brick Road, based on his illustrations for The Wind in the Willows.