Pot Luck Supper

I thought I was sitting in the middle of a Tinkers's page-long passage describing (brilliantly) the words and laughter from a conversation past remaining in the air, floating around and up and down on air currents.

Sitting on one of our four Plantation-style chairs, upholstered in grayish aqua and white paisley fabric, in my living room. The round wicker coffee table in front of me had just hours ago held trays of parmesean cheese cubes, proscuitto and salami circles, spinach-artichoke dip with crackers. Next to me sat dear Beth and Mike, all of us sipping full glasses of Pinot Grigio. Catching up on the day, waiting for the first guests to arrive.

Now I sit there, just Mike in the house with me. He's getting a dog biscuit for Sporty, I can hear the clink of the biscuit jar. It is quiet. The lights are still dim. I'm pooped.

I can see the words floating around up there, spiraling up into the air of the 22 foot peaked ceiling, over the white trusses crossing from lake side wall to front courtyard wall. I can see the sentences. Then the laughter. The emotions are thick like a tiny cloud caught up there.

I love gatherings.

"I sang with Barry Manilov!"
 "You mean you were pregnant when you got married?"
 "Abbey the English Bulldog."
"He's buying a used car in Chicago."
"First tap dancing, now this."
"What, she's a prostitute?"
"There are more females than males in college today, why?"
"Sweet tooth."

We missed those who couldn't make it. Pot Luck Suppers are so cool. A construct all their own. As a child, I went to so many at our church. Mom made macaroni and cheese. And we would learn of so many cutting edge recipes at those Pot Luck Suppers. These were the years before Food TV and internet searching for recipes. Then our recipes were either handed down verbally mother to child, or gleaned from those handful of trusty cookbooks such as Joy of Cooking or Bennet Farm Cookbook. Seven Layered Salad! Cool Whip Jello Mold! Chicken with Broccoli and Creamed Mushroom Soup!

Pot Luck Suppers have evolved. Starting with a spread worthy of an apartment off the Plaza Popoli, we savored cubes of aged Parmesean, surrounded by the spread of cured Italian meats. Retro Artichoke-Spinach Dip with Wheat Thins. Rounded off with Camembert and a Boursin. Self service drinks in the living room Pinot Grigio, Chardonnay, Cabernet, and sparking waters was an experiment by the hostess, and I think it worked. Got us meandering out of the kitchen.

For the mains, we had garlic and rosemary Turkey Tenderloins, marinated Flank Steaks, Chicken Greens Salad, Orzo/Feta/Asparagus/Peppers Salad, Roasted Cauliflower and Broccoli, Butter Lettuce with Fruits and Nuts. And the grande finale was a Made-from-Scratch Chocolate Cake w whipped cream frosting, strawberries and vanilla ice cream. Oh man. Savor that coffee or peppermint tea, this was quite a feast.

We all fit at one table, and some enjoyed a spell outside on the porch. It was mentioned that it would be fun to do this every quarter, not only every year (or two or three.) Great idea.  Who will put it into action? Mike and I agreed, everyone is so nice, and such fun to be with. Thank you all for these moments of gathering. I just love them!

Tinkers (Entry 2) ... Borealises

This is an addition to the previous blog on Tinkers, by Paul Harding.

Oh I can hear it. Some of you are saying, WHAT? There's more to say about that mess?
Yes there is.
Because others are saying, YES, THANK YOU! I didn't want the conversation to be over.

The Borealises.

As I said before, or I meant to, this book is as if I were allowed to be inside a man's brain as he was dying. What would he be thinking? What is so core to your life that you would think on it those last few days? And, how would you think on it? He rambles, he hallucinates, he imagines, he remembers. He yearns to reunite with the father that deserted him. He wants to relive the moments that were strong emotional moments. Positive and negative.

The six Borealises, to me, lent some structure to this book, to this collage of memories. Here's my thoughts, by no means proven. Just opinions.  Did the author intend this structure, I don't know. As an engineer, when I see something repeatedly inserted into a book, I want to know WHY? The Radical Horologist's ramblings were good to highlight some of the themes, but these Borealises seemed to have more of an outline purpose. Maybe, maybe not. See what you think.

What is a borealis? Literally, borealis means "pertaining to the north wind."

 It is also short for the Aurora Borealis, which is the spectacular light show in the sky caused by collisions of charged particles with our upper atmosphere.  Quite dramatic. Nature and electricity combining to a dramatic moment? Reminds you of epilepsy?

So our author creates six short Borealis passages read by the grandson to George as he dies. Written into a journal by Howard or by George. I think they were written by George. Not positive though.

We start out the book with calm, peace, order. We meet Howard. He is a hero. He pulled Gilbert's tooth, put out a fire, fished the drowned child from the creek.His son George is dying peacefully, surrounded by family. All is orderly in the world.

The first Borealis is Cosmos Borealis. Cosmos is a harmonious system, such as our universe. Nature in harmony, the opposite of Chaos.

"Light skin of sky and cloud and mountain on the still pond. Water body beneath teeming with reeds and silt and trout.. Skin like glass like liquid like skin; our words scrieved the slick surface.."

The world is calm on the surface. Nature is supreme, with humans just barely an influence compared to nature's momentous and eternal workings.

"What is it like to be full of lightning? What would it be like to be split open from the inside by lightning"

Bam. Howard's world changes in an instant. But the cosmos doesn't change a wit. We don't experience his epilepsy as vividly as in later pages. Here we listen to Howard's attempt to understand his seizures. This violent force of nature that comes literally into Howard's life and changes it unalterably.  Talk about 'man versus nature' battle.

 Sam gives George a shave. He bleeds. Howard is on his cart, it is evening.

The second is Crepuscule Borealis. Twilight, dusk. The gloaming.

"1. The bark of birches glows silver and white at dusk. The bark of birches peels like parchment. ... 4. Foxes keep to the shadows. Owls look down from branches..." 

Talking about clocks, trying to capture time. Talking about George's headstone after he dies.

This is the twilight. Darkness is about to happen.

Third is Tempest Borealis. Violent windstorm.

" 1. The sky turned silver... The wind blew and the trees showed the silver-green undersides of their leaves.... Lightning crawled down the mountain and drank at the water, lapped the shallows with electric tongues, stunning bolt-eyed frogs and small trout and silver minnows. Thunder cracked like falling timber and shook the cabin as it clapped the water skin."

The violent windstorm of Howard's adult life/ of George's childhood. Howard makes a nest, creating beautiful order from nature's leavings. Then has a seizure. He has an ache in his heart. Upswelling of emotions. He loves his family so dearly. We are with him as he watches George release the dead mouse on a birch canoe of flames. Then Howard's violent seizure where he bites George's hand. Howard abandons his family rather than be sent to an asylum by his wife.

Next we see the windstorm of Howard's childhood. His own father faded, probably with dementia. He was taken away by his wife and four friends. Howard searched long and hard for him in the woods, and there experienced his first epileptic seizure.

These two windstorms / tempests provide us some dynamite passages.

On family and generations and memories:
“Because they are like tiles loose in a  frame, with just enough space so they can all keep moving around...which  will generally stay together but move about within another whole and be mingled with in endless ways of other people's memories, so that I will remain a set of impressions porous and open to combination with all the other vitreous squares floating about ..... and to their great-grandchildren, I will be no more than a tint of some obscure color, and to their great grandchildren nothing they ever know about, and so what army of strangers and ghosts has shaped and coloured me until back to Adam, until back to when ribs were blown from molten sand into the glass bits that took up the light of this world.... ” 

On dementia:
"The world fell away from my father the way he fell away from us.  We became his dream."

On wisdom looking at youth:
"So there is my son, already fading... even thought Howard understood, too, that the fading was yet to begin in a any actual sense, that at that moment he and his son, the father standing in the dimness, the son kneeling and partly obscured by the charred door, were still only heading, not yet arrived, toward the point where the fading would begin."

Perspective, it's how you process what your senses provide you:
“Howard thought, Is it not true: A move of the head, a step to the left or right, and we change from wise, decent, loyal people to conceited fools? Light changes, our eyes blink and see the world from the slightest difference of perspective and our place in it has changed infinitely: Sun catches cheap plate flaking--I am a tinker; the moon is an egg glowing in its nest of leafless trees--I am a poet; a brochure for an asylum is on the dresser--I am an epileptic, insane; the house is behind me--I am a fugitive. His despair had not come from the fact that he was a fool; he knew he was a fool. The despair came from the fact that his wife saw him as a fool, as a useless tinker, a copier of bad verses from two-penny religious magazines, an epileptic, and could find no reason to turn her head and see him as something better.” 

Fourth is Cometa Borealis. A comet is a small solar body made of ice and dust and rocks, which usually has a tail. We think of them zooming through our night sky, with their tails trailing behind.


"We entered the atmosphere at dusk. We trailed a wake of fire... We barely caught a glimpse of the darkening world below us before we burned away to nothing."

What tail do the windstorms leave? Here the tail is Howard's life in Philadelphia.  We are left to imagine the emptiness of George growing up after Howard's leaving. There's talk of a clock's escapement mechanism. Constructing a bird's nest (order from nature's chaos.)

Fifth is Domestica Borealis. Home. Family.

"1. New Year's morning we watched crows collect tinsel for their nests.... 3.  We lashed fishing line to playing cards and raise a house...."

The universe is compared to a mechanism like a clock, with celestial gears, spinning ball bearings, hands orbiting like planets, etc. The reassurance of nature's cycles and repetitions, the deeper mysteries which "puzzle and beg for consideration."

January 1972 Howard dies. Day Six, maybe it's 2009, George is dying. George's spirit is leaving its temporal home.

Megan leaves for her home in Pittsburgh, Howard for his family in Massachusetts.

And sixth is Homo Borealis. Humans.

"1. We kicked the bark of dead trees and the soft wood beneath was as pale as sawdust and sometimes covered with strange designs...We sensed, finally, the foolishness of attributing the unknown to secret cabals, to conspiracies. Everything was almost always obscure. understanding shone when it did, for no discernable reason, and we were content.... 5. When it came time to die, we knew and went to deep yards where we lay down and our bones turned to brass... Our ribs were fitted as gear teeth and tapped and clicked like tusks., This is how, finally we were joined."

George dies.

The last thing he remembers? George remembers Christmas dinner, 1953. Howard arriving unexpected at George's home. He sees his father for the first time in thirty years. Only a few words spoken. Nothing of importance. Then Howard leaves.

Well, George is only imagining this reunion with his father. Before he dies, which memories are real and which memories are dearly wished hallucinations? Is it the inherent goodness of life that allows George to experience his father returning? Think of the hours and hours George would have pictured this. Longed for this. Dreamed up scenes in which the ending moment was his father's return to the family. So here, his last thought, was "remembering" his one heart's desire.

And his one heart's desire wasn't a thing. It was a person. It was love.

I had better end on that note.

Tinkers, Paul Harding (Entry 1)

The first Friday of the month is my favorite day of the month. It's book lunch day! I get to gather with fourteen of my dear friends, and talk about a book. This is our 21st year. How cool is that?

Today there were thirteen of us. French Onion Soup, Curried Chicken Salad and Salmon Salad, Green Bibb lettuce, a plethora of muffins. And Cinnamon-y Apple Crisp.

The book, Paul Harding's Tinkers.

GEORGE WASHINGTON CROSBY BEGAN TO hallucinate eight days before he died. From the rented hospital bed, placed in the middle of his own living room, he saw insects running in and out of imaginary cracks in the ceiling plaster. 

I want to write down some of our thoughts, and some links which threw some light. Not exhaustive. Please forgive my omissions.

You could tell some of us weren't thrilled with the book, so we started the conversation (after the soup, during the salads) with going around the table rating the book. If the book had mixed reviews right off the top, this is a good way of starting. You stated your rating on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being "Best book I've ever read I'm buying ten copies and giving them to everyone I know" and 1 being "What was he thinking?" And you added a few sentences of defense for your rating.

This moves along, because we all know we want to hear everyone. We were split. One 10, a couple 8's, a few 6's, and many 2's. And one 4 3/4.

All agreed the writing needed some editing.  Pretty amazing that he would win a Pulitzer Prize with confusing tense changes, some sentences running on a bit too long, and several discussions loosing the reader in the dust.

Some thought it was morbid. Others that it was hopeful and comforting. Depends on what's going on in your life right now, perhaps, that gives you one filter or the other for reading this book?  Or just plain it hit you that way.

All also agreed there were moments of brilliance, of poetry, of sentences and paragraphs and descriptions you wanted to hold onto.

Then we talked about the structure. We don't have a list of questions. I try to guide the discussion a little, but not much. Usually each book grabs different people to think up questions or discussion topics. Every month a few people come with paragraphs to read from the book, or insights gleaned while reading. We want this to be a book DISCUSSION group. Conversation with the book as the topic, and also as a launching pad. How did this book affect you? This takes thought time. Challenges us to stretch. Fun stuff.

So the structure. Not apparent to all.  Doesn't hit you in the face as a fast plot line. We came to think the author collaged this as the mental ramblings of George dying over the 8 days.


George Crosby remembered many things as he died, but in an order he could not control. To look at his life, to take the stock he always imagined a man would at his end, was to witness a shifting mass, the tiles of a mosaic spinning, swirling, reportraying, always in recognizable swaths of colors, familiar elements, molecular units, intimate currents, but also independent now of his will, showing him a different self every time he tried to make an assessment.

I read in an interview that the first scene the author wrote of this book was the scene of Howard abandoning his family... when George is 12.  Right after Howard bites George during a seizure. Right after Kathleen props the Insane Asylum brochure up on his dresser.  In the published book, this scene is in the middle-ish of the book. So we could say the author doesn't demand linear chronology in his own life.

 Interview by Powells.

After much discussion, much thought, much much discussion we postulated a plot line. For those of us who like to give order to things. We like crossword puzzles, we have all our pens in one place on our desk, etc.

The plot line of the book could be George traveling from age 12 through the moment of death.  The terminal stop at the end of his life journey is reuniting with his father. The reunion at the very very end (according to an author interview) was totally imaginary in George's mind. In life, they never reunited. WOW. Think about that.

Take another minute and think about that. His entire life's journey, through  trials and tribulations and joys and celebrations, was to heal the sacred relationship that was broken in childhood, with his father.

Now do some of the passages in the book come alive to you?

And how powerful that this reunion is only in his mind. Even at the last moments of life. Only in his mind. How strong his need for this healing was, that his mind was remembering his desires as fact.

Interview in Open Loop Press, Dec 2009

Looked at the passage on life being tiles. Our tiles fade. Other's memories fill in the porous tiles of our past lives.
 “I will remain a set of impressions porous and open to combination with all of the other vitreous squares floating about in whoever else’s frames, because there is always the space left in reserve for the rest of their own time, and to my great-grandchildren, with more space than tiles, I will be no more than the smoky arrangement of a set of rumors, and to their great-grandchildren I will be no more than a tint of some obscure color, and to their great grandchildren nothing they ever know about, and so what army of strangers and ghosts has shaped and colored me until back to Adam, until back to when ribs were blown from molten sand into the glass bits that took up the light of this word because they were made of this world . . . ” 

Vivid descriptions of the epilepsy seizures.

Reminiscent of Moby Dick, the book held insights into clocks. Time passing, clocks, nature, the cosmos....

We saw kindness in the family, George and his sister, his wife, his kids and grandkids. So there must have been love, forgiveness. George must have been an okay person. Must have grown past his father biting him and leaving him and his mother who wouldn't talk about the illness.

“Boy to his dying grampa: "I am a century wide. I think that I have my literal age but am surrounded in a radius of years. I think that these years of days, this near century of years, is a gift from you.” 

 Here's another passage we read.

“Howard thought, Is it not true: A move of the head, a step to the left or right, and we change from wise, decent, loyal people to conceited fools? Light changes, our eyes blink and see the world from the slightest difference of perspective and our place in it has changed infinitely: Sun catches cheap plate flaking--I am a tinker; the moon is an egg glowing in its nest of leafless trees--I am a poet; a brochure for an asylum is on the dresser--I am an epileptic, insane; the house is behind me--I am a fugitive. His despair had not come from the fact that he was a fool; he knew he was a fool. The despair came from the fact that his wife saw him as a fool, as a useless tinker, a copier of bad verses from two-penny religious magazines, an epileptic, and could find no reason to turn her head and see him as something better.” 

George was fading, receding, dying. There was acceptance. Something reflecting Buddhism we said. The connection of each of us to the unity of all. 

“Hands, teeth, gut, thoughts even, were all simply more or less convenient to human circumstance, as my father was receding from human circumstance, so, too, were all of these particulars, back to some unknowable froth where they might be reassigned to be stars or belt buckles, lunar dust or railroad spikes. Perhaps they already were all of these things and my father's fading was because he realized this: My goodness, I am made from planets and wood, diamonds and orange peels ...” 


Touched on the Borealis notes lending structure to the passage of time in the book. And to the Radical Horologist's highlighting of the themes.

Bookdrum,  go to this website to read factual insights on items mentioned in book.

Read a few more sentences and passages that hit us.  This book is a meditation on living, and on dying. Not a book to read on an airplane or while on an exercise bike.

 It's a book to savor bit by bit. To put down and think about what he just said. Talk to someone about it. Think a little more. Then pick it up again.

Definitely talk to someone about it. 

It's not fast food. These words need to be savored.  Not for everyone, at all times. You will know.

Friday night. Need to get into the kitchen to feed the troops. Well, the two of us. Still need to get into the kitchen. Bye for now...