Category: Stuff Larry Sez

He really deserves his own blog, but I don’t see it happing.

Not Monday, but…

Posted on by Meryl in Poetry, Stuff Larry Sez

I will be rafting next week, so this post is for next Monday.  I saw this lovely lobster poem in Sean the Sharpener’s morning missive–poems about crustaceans. I had previously posted Nemerov’s wonderful lobster poem. Kay had an “s” on flamenco, which I ruthlessly and presumptuously removed. I hope she doesn’t mind. Also in Sean’s post was a link to a Robert Johnson tune,

I enjoy Robert Johnson’s music, but to me every tune of his seems the same, which I mentioned to Larry. “But that’s because when Alan Lomax recorded him, he only wanted him to play the blues,” said Larry. “He played all kinds of music, popular tunes, dance tunes, whatever people wanted, but that’s the only recording of him we have.”

He went on to tell me that when Lomax’s recording came out, in 1961 it had a huge influence on the Rolling Stones and other rock groups in England, which then came back across to influence American rock and roll. Robert Johnson was almost unknown when he died, and for decades after, but when that record came out his influence was huge.

“Too bad he’d already sold his soul at the crossroads and died,” I commented, referring to a legend about Johnson.

“Well, at least he attained an aristocratic place in hell,” was Larry’s quick response.

All this to bring you this little poem:

Crustacean Island

There could be an island paradise
where crustaceans prevail.
Click, click, go the lobsters
with their china mits and
articulated tails.
It would not be sad like whales
with their immense and patient sieving
and the sobering modesty
of their general way of living.
It would be an island blessed
with only cold-blooded residents
and no human angle.
It would echo with a thousand castanets
and no flamenco.

Kay Ryan
from Elephant Rocks

 

Monday Bonus

Posted on by Meryl in Stuff Larry Sez

It’s been ages since I’ve printed anything Larry said, but this evening, I asked him a question about the man who recently repainted our fence. It’s been a week and he hasn’t come around to collect his fee.

“Should I email him and ask him about it,” I wondered aloud, “Or just wait, because it’s not my problem?”

“B,” Larry responded.

Then, over dinner he told me about Ian and Sylvia. you may have heard their 50’s hit, “Love is Strange.” It was a long and intricate story that lasted all through dinner. I had just finished an article in the New Yorker about Agnes Caillard, a philosopher, and her idea of “aspirational love,” love as a sort of ladder towards the best vision of yourself. Certainly this long, rich  intertwining of my life with Larry has been that.

Rainy morning breakfast–distraction from the election

Posted on by Meryl in Stuff Larry Sez

This morning with the rain outside and the election looming, Larry came to breakfast with a story about Warren Buffet. He met with Jeff Bezos at some point and Bezos said, “You’re investment strategy is so simple, why doesn’t everyone try it?” Buffet’s answer, “Because no one wants to get rich slowly.”

He also told me that he effected a rule change for his over 55 softball league, the Walnut Creek . The leadership team had made a rule that you can’t tag out a runner to first base. There are many rules like this that are designed to avoid too much contact between older and somewhat fragile players. Larry said the rule made sense that the first baseman shouldn’t be able to tag the runner out, as he might be sweeping back from a wild throw, and there could be a collision, but that if the pitcher could pick up a poorly hit ball and simply step up to make a tag of the runner, that should be allowed. He said of all the rule changes that were voted on at the meeting, his was the only change accepted. Yay for super Larry, who still plays softball at 80!

Whatever happens today, at least I live with someone I love who makes me laugh.

Au revoir Little Richard

Posted on by Meryl in Stuff Larry Sez

Although I’m posting this in Stuff Larry Sez, Larry is not the protagonist here (though he did know Little Richard’s last name)–just forwarded on an email from a friend about Little Richard. Here’s someone‘s story:

I recorded little Richard for a commercial about 30 years ago. He nailed the commercial in two takes… Total pro. But… He wore so much cheap rose perfume that it actually bonded with the diaphragm of the microphone, and could not get the aroma out!

With only a faint hope for success, we wrapped the microphone in plastic and sent it back to the manufacturer, and told them of our plight. What we got was a picture of a guy in a Class-3 hazmat suit, holding the bag, along with completely refurbished microphone, and a letter that said they used their “least senior engineer“ to perform the “Rose-ectomy” and “decontamination protocols” were adhered to with “utmost security precautions”.

The band in the great beyond just got better.

Larry at the breakfast table

Posted on by Meryl in Stuff Larry Sez

As background to this anecdote, yesterday both Larry and I read Mark Jarman’s excellent essay on Gilgamesh from his forthcoming book, Dailiness, which I will be reviewing. If you don’t know the Sumerian epic, Gilgamesh, it’s the oldest written story we have, in which a king and his friend kill the monster Humbaba.

This morning we were discussing, over fresh eggs and wonderful toast, the lack of acknowledgement and apology for our national racial history. I have just finished the Bryan Stevenson book, Just Mercy, and listened to him on Preet Bahara’s podcast. In addition to his work with unjustly incarcerated death row inmates, he has created a monument and a museum in Alabama that deal with slavery, lynching, etc. He said, “You don’t see any statues of Hitler in Germany, but there are 150 statues of Confederate heroes here. In Germany you can’t go five steps without a memorial or a museum about the holocaust. No one’s proud of that history.”

Talking with Larry, I said I thought as a nation we needed to acknowledge and talk about our terrible history of racial discrimination, starting with the native populations, slavery, Manzanar, etc.

Larry said, “I don’t know. Grudges run deep. I’m not sure talking about them would do much good. Humbaba’s descendants probably still hold a grudge against Gilgamash.”

Why I include the simple things

Posted on by Meryl in Stuff Larry Sez

This is mostly a literary blog, poetry, selections from novels and non-fiction. I have been reading a lot of literature about Nazism and Totalitarianism lately, including A Century of Horrors, Secondhand Time, and rereading Hope Abandoned. This was a very illuminating process. The stultifying political correctness of today, the offhand denigration of the capitalist democracy that supports us all, masks a kind of group think that Orwell would recognize and chide us for. We don’t see through it–the deadening of individual thought this self censorship promotes in the service of inclusiveness, identity politics, diversity.

Continue reading “Why I include the simple things” →

Your morning economics lesson

Posted on by Meryl in Stuff Larry Sez

This morning, Larry was reading Greg Mankiw’s NY Times editorial on 45’s tax plan. Mankiw is an economics professor at Harvard.  To familiarize me with Mankiw, Larry played a country western economics song, Dual Mandate for me. I guess he was directed to this from reading Mankiw, and I incorrectly reported it as Greg. An alert reader (thanks, Dan) caught the error, but the video is still worth watching.

And Mankiw’s editorial in the Times is worth reading.

I don’t know any good poems on economics or business. As Dana Gioia has pointed out, business is the last taboo subject for poetry. I have one poem about money, and so you don’t miss a Monday poem, here it is.

Meditation on Money

I am thinking about a day forty years ago
when we were down to our last fifty cents,
and our friends drove up
with a month’s rent and groceries,
and after we ate and talked, we sat together
on the edge of the dock, saying nothing,
and watched the barnacles
slowly open their feathery lips,
slowly close them.

Meryl Natchez