Telegram

Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.
Friday, April 30th

Passing F.


The photoblog I created for Rummage has been enthusiastically received by the volunteers who have seen it, to the extet that it now gets more hits than this does. I imagine it is a novelty to them, and that the experience of seeing their world appearing on the web is appealing. Certainly it hasn't occupied much of my time or thoughts, I've just trudged out in search of pictures every day, uploaded them with brief captions, and let it go at that. The design is straight out of Blogger. As far as I know, none of those viewers are drifting over here, which may be for the best. Some of them have high opinions of me, and I wouldn't want to disillusion them.
David on 04.30.04 @ 07:21 AM CST [link]


Thursday, April 29th

Big


The donation period ended at one o'clock yesterday, and, all in all, it was a disaster. It was lmuch like being on the scenen of a natural disaster, with dazed people wandering around picking ineffectually at the refuse, and exhausted volunteers going forward on grit alone. The flow of incoming stuff was overwhelming, and unless we can get it under control, the next sale will be even worse. Too many poeple were dropping off too much stuff all at once, and if they were unattended, they just dropped their donations where they were and left. I think a lot of people have figured out that on certain days, at certain hours, we can't screen the donations at all, and they are deliberately dumping their crap. The bright side is, if we can manage to deal with the donations we've got, we should have an excellent sale.
David on 04.29.04 @ 07:17 AM CST [link]


Wednesday, April 28th

Ties that Bind


It's funny how you run around thinking you're free, and then a little tug comes on the leash, and you remember your true condition. The leash has two ends, though, and the distinction between master and pet is at best a technical one.
David on 04.28.04 @ 07:11 AM CST [link]


Tuesday, April 27th

Break


After the rain, there was a new day, and it broke gently and softly. Full of mystery and promise, the mist that was the echo of yesterday was both revealing and concealing -- revealing the beauty in the moment, concealing the complexity and ambiguity that is also there. More and more is revealed as the sun comes up. Everything looks like it has unlimited potential at times like this; but the dawn is not always the prophet of the day.
David on 04.27.04 @ 07:06 AM CST [link]


Monday, April 26th

Tale of a Tub


It's someone else's bathroom. Strangely enough, although I am familiar with all the basic fixtures, it is exotic enough that I have to learn to use it. The shower is an education in itself; water supplies are as individualistic as clutches in cars, and this one seems to go from too hot to too cold without any transition. The absent user of this room is a teenage girl, so even the basic supplies are a little strange to me. I used the soap, but didn't dare attempt any of the array of hair-care products. I wasn't sure what they were for and wasn't sure I wanted to know. But, I got wet, clean and dry, and got out of there as fast as I could.
David on 04.26.04 @ 07:04 AM CST [link]


Sunday, April 25th

Nice Day


It was a delightful day, I guess; sometimes I think I spend so much time out in the weather that i barely notice the little subtleties of temperature, sunshine and humidity that differentiate a nice day from a great one. It was vey comfortable for rummmaging and I got too much sun. I put up the rest of the signs and started moving chairs. Some of us aren't sleeping too well by now, and arrive at thr fairgrounds even earlier than necessary. She got up on the pile of unsorted clothing and was giddy with mischievous joy. I think people who get the subjects of their photographs in focus are just show-offs. I put a sandwich aside for later and forgot all about it. The analysis from the twenty-month-old: "Wow!"
David on 04.25.04 @ 06:09 AM CST [link]


Saturday, April 24th

Rite of Passage


In consumer culture, products have a lifespan with certain definite milestones along the way. Take a legendary invention like the Kodak: it really has two births, one when it comes into being privately, and again when it meets its public, when it is introduced for sale. It struggles, it succeeds, it changes to meet challenges, it becomes prosperous and complacent, younger rivals come along and do battle with it. These days, I guess, we are watching the dying days of the snapshot camera. Rummage illuminates another milestone in the history of a product. At some point in its life, the product has become so ubiquitous that an owner of one is willing to get rid of a perfectly good example, just because he's lost interest in it or because a more attractive example is available -- there is an instant when the first Kodak, say, appears at a garage sale. When I started doing Rummage, we never saw a donated cell phone, or a pog, or a Britney Spears CD, or found euros in a wallet. I'm not sure about the euros, but the rest sure are coming in.
David on 04.24.04 @ 06:45 AM CST [link]


Friday, April 23rd

Green Card Day


One of the privileges, or duties, of the rummage volunteer is the opportunity to shop early, once 24 hours of service have been logged. I got my green card, to record purchases, about a week ago, and yesterday finally took some time out to browse. Some departments aren't open yet for browsing, but you can usually walk around the Book department without getting underfoot, and they are anxious to clear the shelf-space. My purchases were:
From Mexican Days to the Gold Rush; James W. Marshall and Edward G. Buffum.
Under the Lilacs; Louisa May Alcott.
New England Legends and Folkore; Samuel A. Drake.
Essays; Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Basil; Wilkie Collins.
Two Years Before the Mast; Richard Henry Dana.
Henry IV, Part I; Shakespeare.
Henry IV, Part II; Shakespeare.
The Theory of the Leisure Class; Thorstein Veblen.
The Best of Robert Benchley.
Born For Liberty; Sara M. Evans.

David on 04.23.04 @ 06:27 AM CST [link]


Thursday, April 22nd

Numbers Game


Rummage is the season when I have most of my contact with the media. The Intrepid Photographer comes around two or three times, putting together eyecatching-compositions for the weekly, and stray reporters from the local and regional papers come in and talk to the head. There was one hanging around for the longest time the other day, while the head was trying to sort clothing and keep an eye on her grandson. Reporter left and came back later in the afternoon, with questions of the statistical variety. Was it all right to say we're the largest rummage sale in New Jersey? How much stuff do we get? How much money do we make for the nurses? How much space do we use? I was going by and offered some numbers in an authoritative tone -- I do know how much money we make, but I haven't a clue on the acreage -- and may be quoted. Now I'll have to pace the place off and see if I am even in the ballpark.
David on 04.22.04 @ 06:50 AM CST [link]


Wednesday, April 21st

Tongues


My friends are speaking in strange languages. One of them is coming up on two years old, the other is past ninety. He has been good, not getting into too much trouble or wandering off, content to play in the car, beep the horn occasionally, and try on pairs of sunglasses. He has an engaging manner, and with a sincere and confidential manner, will rattle off a stream of nonsense which is highly persuasive-sounding.

She has been in the rehab institute after a stroke. She is doing well, physically, but she can't find any of her words any more. She has been frustrated to the point of tears, trying to express herself when all but a few words are misplaced, and she panics, going through all the drawers where they should be and coming up with nothing but lint and old cough drops. For her, the assurance that there is a system, with rules she knows, has been shattered; for him, there are no rules, only delight in activity.
David on 04.21.04 @ 06:56 AM CST [link]


Tuesday, April 20th

Trustworthy?


I am circumspect. Perhaps I am obscure. But am I trustworthy? I do take seriously the Shakespeare-lintel over this door, but this journal is a door, not a window, and I am opening it only so far. It's beyond the limits of my patience, and my vanity, to attempt an exhaustive inventory of my day's activities, thoughts and desires. I'll tell you the truth, so far as I can, but I can't guarantee that you'll understand it, mainly because I leave so much out. That probably makes this a pretty irritating page to read, now that I think of it, but like I say, it's all true, and it doesn't take very long to get through.
David on 04.20.04 @ 06:50 AM CST [link]


Monday, April 19th

The Suicide's Grave


It was November when she was laid to rest, less than six months ago. She didn't see the downpours Chrismas Eve, the never felt the bitter chill of January, never walked through the snows of February; she never endured the wet and miserable Lenten march, or the resurgent spring of Palm Sunday. She never saw The Apprentice or The Swan, the scandalous half-time show at the Super Bowl, and she never learned who won last year's Oscars. I went over to her grave this morning: the grass has been growing like crazy, but not on it. But there has been activity. Some fresh flowers. Two crosses, woven from palm fronds. A circle made of small pieces of red shale, inscribed with a cross, and a heart of the same tesserae. Soon we will smooth and seed the ground, and bury her again, but I hope those childish
memorials remain there for a while longer.
David on 04.19.04 @ 07:18 PM CST [link]


Sunday, April 18th

Eros for Emily


She doesn't get any roses, at least not from any suitors; but it seems as though she has her own garden and grows them herself. So she doesn't lack for the beauty of the roses, she only lacks for the fickle and transitory declarations which might be made with them. She will grow old and die; but as for those others, won't they also, and their roses fade and be forgotten too? I know a few Emilies, maybe I'm one myself: but I refuse to find them pitiable. I know their lives are fertile and cultivated, rich in love even if impoverished of romance. No one brings a rose? She has roses, and when they fade, she has roses in December.
David on 04.18.04 @ 07:26 PM CST [link]


Saturday, April 17th

Extremities


We have such versatile tools and we carry them with us everywhere we go; we have far to travel and only the transport which we have beneath us. These hands count, and carry strange loads, and are the paper upon which we write messages, and reassemble broken toys. The feet go through dust and mud and hay and water. The same hands which hammer a clothes rack into shape will cradle a baby. They are cut, bruised and blistered, soaked and pinched and exposed to the sun and the cold. And still, they come back to work again.
David on 04.17.04 @ 07:13 PM CST [link]


Friday, April 16th

Long Afternoons


The last two days, the volunteers slipped away, one by one, and eventually only a remnant remained. And still there was plenty of day left, the sun came in the door, and all the winter chill was gone. So why not stay? The pace slows without the pressure of the incoming donations. Work can be done in silence, in quiet, with murmured, brief communications. It's the pleasantest hour of the day, with the summer promise, the bucolic atmosphere; an afterthought, a coda, a grace note.
David on 04.16.04 @ 07:22 PM CST [link]


Thursday, April 15th

Year of the Vomit


I have declared 2004 The Year of the Vomit. Not that I have participated in any such activity; but I am hearing about it early and often, and with a strange degree of vigor and enthusiasm in the description. Maybe I'm strange, but I really don't like to vomit very much. But practically every day, it seems, I am told, cases of the pukes are passed around families until everyone has shared to the point of exhaustion. Even the puke-talk makes me a little queasy, but the most sensitive soul is hardened by repeated exposure, and it's gotten to be part of the everyday chit-chat. To conclude with a proverbial truth: That which one is incapable of digesting, one must surely vomit.
David on 04.15.04 @ 06:47 PM CST [link]


Wednesday, April 14th

Comfort


Coming in at the end of the day, cold and wet, tired and hungry. Not sure which of these conditions to attend to first. Out of the wet clothes and into a hot bath -- takes the edge off the cold, anyway. Warmer, drier, and curiouser, I turn on the computer and check e-mail while eating. Then rest, the head falls to a placid pillow. I arise, not quite rested, not quite warm, not quite sated, but enough so that I can take care of other things.
David on 04.14.04 @ 05:44 PM CST [link]


Tuesday, April 13th

The Perception of Doors


It doesn't take much to make a door. The guys from the county were around putting up hurricane fencing all around the tents and barns -- the fence itself consists of two elements, wooden slats and wire, the warp and the weft of it running the length of the perimeter. So, to make a door, they get out their snips and cut the wire, there, and there. Two lengths of fence overlap, and are held closed by another little twist of wire. It's not high security, it's not posh and it doesn't keep the weather out, but it's adequate for the purpose.
David on 04.13.04 @ 05:17 PM CST [link]


Monday, April 12th

Hammers & Eggs


The rain held off until mid-afternoon, not forever but long enough. The central tables in the big barn had disappeared on Friday, and after the brunch, the big attached tables and shelves started to be dismantled. I came by for a doughnut and a couple of women were banging away at them with hammers, gradually shaking them loose. I went out to the car and got a prybar and had some fun. Z came by on her lunch hour, shivering under a spring coat, but missed seeing the full baby brigade: some couldn't take the noise and the chaos, and became too unhappy to stay. The same effect is noted in adults. Hoping that as the literal floods come, the figurative ones dry up.
David on 04.12.04 @ 08:00 PM CST [link]


Publicity


I found out in church on Easter Sunday that the sale got a nice mention in New Jersey Monthly. About halfway down.
David on 04.12.04 @ 06:37 AM CST [link]


Saturday, April 10th

Heavy Waters


I had to act like I knew what they were talking about when they recapped the latest on The Apprentice. I was handed a bugle and made silly noises with it all the way back to Sorting. We set up playpens to put the sorted clothing into, and scrounged some tables, and found silly stuff among the rummage. It started off cold enough for green mittens, but the sun was out and everyone got a little too much. Beyond the tables the ples of loose donations went on for fifty feet. We stood amidst it all and made ineffectual tries at separating it. In time much was sorted and all was put away, well inside the tents in anticipation of an Easter rain. I gave a book to a friend in need. Voices were low, understanding quick.
David on 04.10.04 @ 07:33 PM CST [link]


Friday, April 9th

Snow Country


A year ago several inches of heavy, wet snow fell, and the canvas roofs bowed and tore under the weight. Snowfalls become markers in time past, little highlights against undifferentiated days, weeks, and months. The April snowfall we drove through on our way back from West Virginia. The heavy snows of our first winter in the Massachusetts house. My great-grandfather's experience in Kansas, when a horrible blizzard forced him to take shelter on the leeside of a horse. Sunny days are great, but they can't be bookmarks in history.
David on 04.09.04 @ 07:47 PM CST [link]


Thursday, April 8th

Maundy Thursday


It started off a beautiful morning, crisp and full of promise. I drove past the barns and fields and low-rising hills, sunlight streaking low through the gaps. I arrived at Far Hils too early, so I went straight on up to Gladstone and turned around, then parked in a sunny spot and looked over the paper. When I arrived I was sent straight out for coffee and doughnuts. Rummage communion.
David on 04.08.04 @ 05:08 PM CST [link]


Wednesday, April 7th

Five Weeks Before the Mast


The tent poles are ten feet apart, more or less. The first tent is forty feet by one hundred, and the two behind it are at least half again as big. With the two smaller tents across the grounds, that's well over twenty thousand feet under canvas. If we were a clipper ship, we'd be ready to weigh anchor and set sail for the orient. Bon voyage!
David on 04.07.04 @ 05:04 PM CST [link]


Tuesday, April 6th

Night watch


It was only a fragment of the dream that stayed with me when I woke: I was sitting next to her as she lay in bed, and I saw on her face an expression of calm and contentment. I thought, "it must be time for her pain pill, but it looks like she's doing okay, so I won't say anything." And I woke up long enough to realize that I'd gone back in time, that she hadn't needed any pain medication in six years, and that the expression on her face was no falsehood, that, even more, it was a promise and an assurance to me.
David on 04.06.04 @ 05:46 PM CST [link]


Monday, April 5th

Content


A pop-up ad invites me to visit a dating website, and further invites me to "search to your heart's content". But the search, I am afraid, goes to the heart's discontent, and the wider the search, the greater the discontent. The heart's content, I hope, rests in a different search; our hearts are restless until they find their true rest. So I won't click; "the heart's content" isn't on the other side of that ad.
David on 04.05.04 @ 06:47 PM CST [link]


Sunday, April 4th

Protected


She came to church on Wednesday. Somebody else was calling me and I went closer, and as I passed, she asked, "Where are you going?" So I turned around and hugged her, and she seemed o bigger than a baby bird in my embrace. She turned 91 last month, has lived alone for four years, since her sister died, and there are long stretches when I don't see her any more. She's frail and forgetful; I can't even imagine the way she must have been, once, when she went everywhere with Mr. Getty. But there's plenty of that toughness still in her, I guess; she manages to get her own way even when it's in her own worst interest. And she seems to have a guardian angel watching over her. I was there to catch her when she slipped on the ice, and instead of a broken hip she ended up with a scuffed shoe. And on Friday, she'd arranged for someone to drive her to the doctor. She was by herself when she fell, but she got prompt attention, and it looks like she'll climb back in the ring for another round.
David on 04.04.04 @ 05:11 PM CST [link]


Saturday, April 3rd

Writing In Books


When I was a child I would take my pencil, or crayon, and scribble on the flyleaf of a book, and maybe go on to add my editorial marks to the rest of it pages. Soon I was scolded, and I didn't do it any more -- and I continued to leave the pages of my books unmarked for many years. Even books of my own, with which I could do as I pleased, I couldn't bear to deface. Then, in my later student years, the felony of writing in books was decriminalized; in many quaters the authorities encouraged it. I took to it, underlining, highlighting, making marginal comments; my Bible had multicolored coding. Even as I accepted the permission, I felt the regret of the sinner. After graduation, the need to underline was gone, and I stopped -- but as I got involved with charities I noticed that books had lost their mystic preciousness. I can throw them out. I can tear them up. There is an endless supply of more. The books I get, these days, are often marred by a previous owner's hand, and sometimes the previous use has made them useless to me. But often it adds to the mystique of the book; the history of the reader's engagement with the text is bound in it, and bound to it. This volume has lived a life, before it was put up on the shelf, to slumber, to wait the day of its resurrection.
David on 04.03.04 @ 05:21 PM CST [link]


Friday, April 2nd

Summary


Each classroom in the nursery school has a whiteboard outside the door where the teacher writes an enthusiastic review of the day's activities. If there was one outside the boiler room, it might read, "FRIDAY. We had fun today. We made coffee, and talked about the boss, and used the phone. Dave set up rows of chairs in the parlor, and then rearranged them into three circles. The tractor sat in the rain. P disappeared for three hours. Then we tried to learn how to open the elevator without the key, and jammed the door. It's okay now, though! The piano tuner came, and the volunteers assembled 600 bulletins, and Dave had a bagel and orange for lunch."
David on 04.02.04 @ 05:40 PM CST [link]


Thursday, April 1st

Housekeeping


Last night, and again this morning, I put some work in on a new weblog called Passing Fair, which will concern the spring rummage sale, which starts coming to life next week. I went out to the fairgrounds this morning, a damp, moory day, and did some maintainence work on the carts. I brought along a portable CD player for company, and briefly, the clouds parted, as the Cream played Sunshine of Your Love. Not that this is evidence that Clapton is, or was, God.
David on 04.01.04 @ 02:18 PM CST [link]




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