In honor of the past twelve months, I’d like to post Hopper’s
Photo of the Year, 2023, taken by my own hand on my iPhone version
something-or-other:
It’s a Marian shrine on my daughter’s college campus,
taken on January 22, 2023, the 50th anniversary of the monstrous and unconstitutional
court decision of Roe v. Wade. Thank God it was overturned and turned back to
the states 18 months ago. Countless lives were saved because of this.
Anyway, have a safe and happy New Years Eve, all ye
who are stopping by tonight. The ladies and I are laying low, watching some
movies, eating our traditional NYE meals of TGI Friday snacks (I’m a jalapeno popper
and bagel bites guy, the girls enjoy their mozzarella sticks and potato
skins). We’ll watch the ball drop at midnight, CST, then eventually hit the
beds around 1.
Well, I thought of doing several over-the-top literary
stunts to announce the Best-Ofs, my favorite post of each and every year. But
in retrospect, owing to the low-key, close-to-the-vest year I’ve had, I’ve
decided to keep this post low-key and close-to-the-vest. A simple list
detailing my favorite, not-so-favorite, and least favorite entertainment and
experiential experiences of the year. For your benefit and my nostalgia.
On that note, without any further ado … the 2023 Best-Ofs!
[Wild Uncontained Applause]
[I couldn’t resist 😊]
Here goes:
Best Fiction:
Les Misérables, by Victor Hugo, reviewed here.
Runner-Up:
The Bear and the Dragon, by Tom Clancy
Best
Re-Read: Watership Down, by Richard Adams
I thoroughly
enjoyed a re-entry into the Clancyverse (or is it the Ryanverse?). I immersed
myself in this oeuvre from 1994 to 2002, and enjoyed every Clancy novel. A new
experience for me back then, which I devoured.
I also re-read
lots of books, some going back to childhood and some for a third reading. Always a
worthy activity, to re-read a meaningful, fruitful book.
Best Non-Fiction:
The Mystical City of God, by Venerable Mary of Agreda
Runner-Up:
Einstein: His Life and Universe, by Walter Isaacson
Wasn’t
a big non-fiction year for me – only 7 of the 45 books I put away were of the
non-fiction category. I hope to increase this in 2024.
Worst Read:
Nexus, by Ramez Naam
Basically a
Netflix movie in print, with all the bad that that entails. Still, a page
turner which I read to the end, though I wouldn’t recommend it or read other works
by the author. Overly violent, overly vulgar (F-bombs on nearly every page;
sometimes multiple F-bombs in a single sentence; often phrases such as “F-bomb.
F-bomb. F-bomb.”), and containing my least-favorite trope, the Mary Sue girl
boss (though the story explains her superpowers away convincingly).
Disappointing Read:
The Wolfen, by Whitley Strieber
I loved this
book when I first read it, way, way, back in middle school. (Same with Jaws,
which is a runner-up in this category.) Just didn’t hold up a second time
around. Wanted it to be better, to correspond to my fond memories of my first
encounter with the story.
Best Movie:
Godzilla Minus One
Runners-Up:
Sisu, The Northman, The Black Phone, Uncut Gems
Saw
Godzilla Minus One in the theaters, twice, with both daughters on
separate occasions. Would take my wife to see it a third time, still working on
that. More than a monster movie; definitely more than the rubber-suit flicks of
the 60s and 70s. Human drama, convincing characters, a phenomenal story and
script. Puts modern-day Hollywood to complete shame. Well worth a viewing.
Disappointing Movie:
Oppenheimer
Would
be better without the oppressive omnipresent background music and the final
third completely cut out.
Worse Movie:
Holes in the Sky
A truly awful
alien abduction faux documentary I watched over wings one Saturday afternoon.
Not worth the investment in time for one-and-a-half moderately spooky scenes.
Best TV / Worse TV:
Not really a TV year, as always. Best? Finishing Regular Show cartoon
series with Patch. Worse? Jack Ryan Season 3, Boardwalk Empire for
bad, predictable writing and casting, plus distasteful anachronisms in the
latter.
Best YouTube channel:
For dumb, adrenaline-pumping true crime – Predator Poachers with Alex/Gordon.
For spiritual uplift, Aaron Kim’s channel really affected (and helped) me.
Best Podcast:
The Barnhardt Podcast, hands down.
Song of the Year:
Row Jimmy
Never a big fan
of the Grateful Dead, though my first girlfriend many, many years ago was and
exposed me first to their music. But was searching early in the year for
relaxing tunes I could do my work spreadsheets to, stuff I wasn’t familiar
with, and this wound up my favorite song of the year.
Bucket List Accomplishments:
Crime and
Punishment
Pericles, Prince of Tyre
Titus
Andronicus
Phases:
Record
Collecting (my collection now sits at 32 albums! Up from only 9 this time last
year!)
Twitter, joining
and scrolling through
Diving into
classic literature (Dante, Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, Once and Future King,
East of Eden, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Watership Down,
Old Man and the Sea, Bridge at San Luis Rey, Wuthering Heights,
Something Wicked This Way Comes, War of the Worlds, Les Misérables)
Re-reads
(nine of the 45 books I read cover-to-cover this year were re-reads – The Grayspace
Beast, Jaws, The Once and Future King, Ultimate Security,
Watership Down, The Wolfen, Floating Dragon, War of the Worlds,
Something Wicked This Way Comes)
Nostradamus
Watching
movies back in the theaters (Oppenheimer, Five Nights at Freddy’s,
Godzilla Minus One)
The Inadvertent Blog Hiatus, April to October
(not a good phase)
Proudest Family Moments:
Little One passing
her driving test and obtaining her license.
Patch working
her third job, this time as a party balloon technician.
Though it seemed a workaday, unremarkable year, there
was a wedding, a funeral, a wintry trip to Pennsylvania and a summer trip to
Austin. I took on new duties at work over the summer and increased my value
something-fold. Lifted the iron 52 times and walked 89 miles. Visited three
different doctors several times covering various parts of my physiology and
received a clean bill of health. Ate like a king on a cobbler’s salary.
This was a weird Christmas, no? with Christmas Eve falling
on Sunday and Christmas Day on Monday. For Chez Hopper down in North Texas,
shopping and preparations ended on Saturday, with last-minute stocking stuffers,
scotch tape, and sticker labels being purchased. After a quick dinner of salads
the girls watched a Hallmark movie while I swept up dog hair, cleaned the dishes
in the kitchen, then settled in to finish Heinlein’s Starship Troopers.
We attended midnight mass on Sunday sans Patch,
who was fighting (and ultimately overcame) a congestive cold. The Christmas celebration
was warm, friendly, and I enjoyed the singing and the sermon. Our pastor
carried the baby Jesus statuette up above his head during the introductory procession,
something I love. A free book was handed out to parishioners, This Is My
Body, by Bishop Robert Barron. I have minor problems with Barron, but I do
plan on reading the book in January. We got home, exhausted, around 1:30 a.m.
Little One went to bed immediately while the Mrs. and I stayed up filling
stockings and arranging gifts under the tree.
For the second year in a row I was the first one up,
at 9:15. Still strange to wake up to a quiet house on Christmas morning after a
dozen years of frantic screaming children knocking down our door at dawn to
open presents. Eventually everyone rose and we began a long, slow process of
opening presents that ended sometime after noon. We had my mother-in-law’s
Polish coffee cake for lunch and spent the remainder of the day lazing around. More
Hallmark movies, some football and hockey games, some charcuterie board snacking,
some flowing wine. I took the dog out for a drive while the Mrs. prepared a
delicious Christmas dinner of Beef Wellington, mashed potatoes, and asparagus.
She bought us all individualized desserts; mine was a cheesecake but my belly was
too full to enjoy it; that awaits me tonight.
I did pretty well in the gift-giving department. By
nature I am an awful gift-giver. I put too much pressure on myself, am too
inattentive to the signals my loved ones send out, and have no interest in
their interests (mostly fashion and makeup at this stage). Last year I overcame
a lot of this and took notes during the summer and fall and managed to give
something to each of my family members she loved. This year … kinda the same,
but not as much back-patting as I felt in 2022. I didn’t hit a home run, but I did get
on base with a ground-rule double.
So what did I give? Well, by agreement, the Mrs. and I
decided to not go overboard on each other (especially since we celebrated the
25th anniversary of our first date with dinner out three days earlier). I picked
out for her a management decision workbook she hinted at, some Dallas Stars squishy socks,
and two bottles of margherita mix, peach and pomegranate. Patch got a stuffed Pusheen,
a ramen bowl, and the paperback Magic, by William Goldman. This is the
book the 1978 Anthony Hopkins-psychotic ventriloquist dummy movie was based on,
which I watched with Patch on Halloween. She’s fascinated with the macabre tale
from a psychological angle. For Little One, who’s traveling to Italy for the
entirety of the spring semester, I bought a couple of non-traditional travel
books, an Italian phrasebook, and some laminated cards on wines, cheeses of
Italy, and, of course, a travel prayer card.
How’d Hopper do? Pretty darn good, as always. The Mrs.
bought me a few books on the Alamo – a visit there’s on our bucket list in
2024, and will get a few posts of its own down the road. She also gifted me some
upgraded sneakers for my walks. Patch bought me two records – Brahms's Symphony
No. 4 and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6 “Pathetique”, bringing my collection
total up to 32 albums. Little One bought me a book on the Founding Fathers and
another on Andrew Jackson. All this non-fiction will be read in January and
February of the new year. And both girls made funny and tender Christmas cards
for their old dad, which he’ll keep forever.
I took today and Friday off from my job, so only a
two-day workweek for me. A lot of reading and relaxation in store today.
And a lot of leftover Beef Wellington. After that another four-day weekend and
then, 2024.
I like to have two books going at any given time. To
keep me focused and confusion-free, I generally read one fiction and one nonfiction
book simultaneously. I usually go through phases too, especially with my nonfiction
reading. There’ve been lengthy phases of religion, the books of the Bible, physics
and mathematics, Civil War, World War II. Over the past decade I’ve read 37
Civil War books, and over the past four years 40 books on World War II. As far
as religion and the Bible go, I’ve read through the Good Book twice, have read
separate books of the Bible multiple times in multiple translations, and have read
countless books on Catholicism, Christianity, Christian Science, Buddhism, Zen and
Hinduism.
I say this not to brag (well, maybe a little; I could
probably do pretty well on Jeopardy), but to let you know what type of person I
am. I’ve written earlier that I’m planning to spend the first half of 2024
reading through Tolkien’s oeuvre, something which I haven’t done in several
years now but never in the story’s internal chronological order. But what nonfiction
to compliment Tolkien?
There are several ideas that appeal to me.
All kind of relate to the insane frenetic upside-down current
state of the world we live in.
Two ideas are religious-oriented. I am coming more and
more to the belief that Bergoglio is an anti-pope (or rather, I have the
near-certainty future history, long after my lifetime, will regard him as one).
I think he is doing incredible damage to the Catholic Church. Statistics show
this. He’s the best thing to happen to the Eastern Orthodox Church, based on
the numbers of Catholics entering the other lung of the church. Suffice it to
say that not only do I dislike the direction the Catholic Church has been
heading since 1965, I definitely despise what has happened in 2013 and after.
So one idea would be a deep dive into the history of
the Catholic Church, pre-Vatican II. I am having trouble finding an unbiased tome,
but detective work of this sort is part of the fun. Additionally, I’d like to
read some of the early Church Fathers and some pre-1965 papal documents,
particularly those of Pope Leo XIII and those of the early 20th century (i.e.,
the documents opposed to Modernism and Marxism).
The other would be an in-depth exploration of the Eastern
Orthodox Church, particularly the 1054 theological split which separated the
two parts of the Church. Sure, it has its own set of issues dealing with our
evil liquid modernity, but it seems to be doing a better job sparring with it.
It seems a more manly, vigorous, ascetical system of belief and practice, and,
for better or worse, it has no Pope or papal system of governance.
My semi-serious reading of Nostradamus over the summer
has sparked an interest in 15th-16th century Europe. Kings, Queens, Empires, Wars,
Intrigue – the O.G. Game of Thrones. The Hundred Years War, said to be more devastating
to the continent than World War II. The religious divisions and upheavals. The
great Spanish Empire and its proselytizational efforts in the New World.
Interesting in a way to intelligently distract me from the constant,
never-ending bread and circuses of today’s world.
Then there is a 180-degree turn – or return – into physics.
My youngest is now taking a chemistry course in high school and I am helping
her with it, and it’s all coming back: Sub-atomic particles, electron shells
and orbitals, the Periodic Table. Ah, my first love! I told her how, way, way
back in the early 90s when I was at Seton Hall, I’d dream of exploring this microscopic
world. Rutherford’s probing of the gold foil with alpha and beta particles –
which my daughter is familiar with (or at least had to know for a test and
probably has forgotten) – mesmerized young me. So she said, “Dad, why don’t you
get a book on this stuff and start reading about it again.” Good idea! I have a
couple already, in fact, unread on the book shelf behind me.
Then I read on Twitter a few days ago this simple
question: What skill do you have that would be valuable if the whole world fell
apart? I knew exactly what the questioner was getting at, and I was also
immediately dismayed at my lack of response to it. All this reading … to what
purpose? What good would knowledge of 16th-century Europe bring if the apocalypse
that so many in power seem to be superhumanly striving for actually happened?
Yeah, I read 77 books on war, but could I even lead myself in battle?
I discussed this with the Mrs, who was also intrigued
by the question. She suggested that I’d be great at making detailed plans to
implement should catastrophe befall. “That’s the first thing you should do. It’d
be good for your peace of mind, no matter how far-fetched the situation.” Then
she said I should learn some survival skills, some first aide skills, “Boy
Scout handbook”-type stuff. I agreed. “Trauma response,” a subject I always
wanted to explore since it factored so heavily in the two manuscripts I wrote
and I had to fudge most of it. Lastly she said, “How about plants? Gardening?
It would be a relaxing hobby and would be valuable if food became scarce.” Hmm.
My buddy started a garden as a response to the Covid lockdowns, and now it
covers nearly half his backyard.
So, my nonfiction choices for 2024 seem to be:
- Pre-1965 Catholicism
- Eastern
Orthodoxy
- 15th-16th
Century European Game of Thrones
- Sub-atomic
Particles
- Survival Skills
- Or, possibly,
some other subject that hits from out of the blue in the next 10 days …
And if I can’t decide on any of those, I have a second
book on Nostradamus I could begin January 1 as a placeholder of sorts …
Wow, I think the highlight of the year was, for me, that
time when the superheated moon nearly smashed into the earth. I took this pic of it just as
it swooshed by overhead. Didn’t hit my car, thankfully, but I did lose quite a
few shingles off the roof.
Forget the musical. Forget the phrase “Lay Miz.” Forget
the filmed musical version with Hugh Jackman. What follows has nothing to do
with that. The following is simply my “review” – my thoughts and observations –
regarding Victor Hugo’s 1862 magnum opus.
Can I just say it is such a pleasure to leave behind
this completely dysfunctional culture that drenches us in its filth twenty-four
seven from every single electronic device I have at home, at work, in my car, and
in general in public. I feel that somewhere in the early twenty-first century,
maybe around 2008 or 2010 and definitely by 2015, the culture had passed me by.
After a decade of youth as a dyed-in-the-wool hedonist I had my first
conversion in the early 90s; in 2009 I had my month-long stay in the hospital which
cemented it. So I am no fan of contemporary media.
Your body is a result of what you’ve put into it. Mine
certainly is. And so is your mind. Mine certainly was. And now, especially over
the past year, I’ve made an attempt, to varying degrees of success, to watch what
I allow into my mind. I spend a great deal of time reading, probably an hour or
more a day, and that’s a direct injection into my mind, my thinking and reasoning,
my soul. So I like to be careful with what I read (though I’m not often
successful in this endeavor).
Les Misérables has
nothing in common with 2023 America. In no particular order, there is no
diversity, no feminism, no girl bosses, no alphabet people, no multiculturalism,
no antipathy towards religious belief, no nihilism, no moral confusion, no topsy-turvy
white-is-black and black-is-white. True, there is crime. There is injustice.
Indeed, injustice is a major theme of the novel. There is poverty. There is corruption.
There is bad faith. But as assuredly as a novel written today would allow that
crime and corruption and injustice to triumph in a perverse deconstruction of
the human spirit, a work written in 1864 would have good eventually triumph
over evil.
All right; enough of that. The bottom line is I loved
this novel and it is without a doubt the best book I’ve read this year. It’s probably
on a short list of the greatest books I’ve ever read; certainly in the top
twenty. I enjoyed it immensely, and I am a better man for it, and really for
one reason.
It truly is a magnum opus, emphasis on the “magnum.”
My version of the book clocks in at 1,232 pages. I started it on November 1st
figuring that, if I averaged 20 pages a day, I’d finish it by year’s end. Truth
is I finished it by December 4. I nearly doubled my page output because I couldn’t
put it down.
How to sum it up succinctly? Hard to do … Suffice it
to say that it takes place in France during a forty-year period of, say, 1792-1832.
It’s a turbulent time, similar to ours, I suppose, in the degree if not the
substance of the turbulence. We have the tail end of the terror of the French
Revolution, the rise and subsequent fall of Napoleon with the nearly two
decades of continental war that accompanied it, the Restoration of the Monarchy
and the failure of the French economy resulting in yet another upheaval. It’s
tough to make a living; if you manage to survive the guillotine, Egypt, the
Italian Campaigns, Jena, Austerlitz, the fighting in Spain, Moscow, Waterloo,
the Bourbon Restoration, and the July Revolution, you still had to find a way
to feed yourself and your family.
After a wonderful and lengthy introduction to a
saintly man, we are introduced to the protagonist of the story, Jean Valjean,
the source of the cliché “gone to prison for stealing a loaf of bread.” Newly
released and shunned by the populace, he reverts to his thieving ways yet
receives life-changing mercy. This changed man then works through the novel, in
varying disguises to stay one step ahead of his nemesis, Inspector Javert, to
better the lives of the many he encounters in his travels. Central to this is
the orphan Cosette, who Valjean eventually saves, adopts, and raises to
adulthood and sees her married. And all this over the scope of the history
mentioned above.
There is tragedy. What happens to the young woman
Fantine, Cosette’s unwed mother, nearly broke my heart (and mine is a heart of
stone). There is evil. What the Thenardiers do to Fantine, Cosette, Jean
Valjean – and, come to think of it, most of the major characters – will make
you ache for vengeance. There is nobility – the idealistic if misguided youth
Marius, comes immediately to mind. And there is transcendence, the best thing you
can ever find in a written work, in the arc of our main character and several
of the others.
Hugo tends to digress at extreme length into side
subjects not necessarily related to the plot. There are several chapters on the
Battle of Waterloo, the idea of the convent, the Parisian sewer systems, the street
“urchin” common of the era, and the “argot” spoken by the common and less-common
man. Two of these are placed in appendices (which I did not read), but the
other three are found within the novel.
So this is an easy A+ for me. I can see a future
re-read in five years, something more in-depth, perhaps accompanied by a well-written
historical study of the time period or a user-friendly analysis of the novel.
A piece of trivia for those French-challenged, as I
am. Les Miserables does not necessarily mean “The Miserable,” as I
ignorantly assumed. A quick bit of research means it translates better to “The
Wretched”, “The Outcasts”, “The Dispossessed.” I like “The Outcasts” the best,
artistically and thematically.
Oh, and that reason mentioned above is the example
Jean Valjean provides to the common man, a common man such as myself.
Something shocking happened to our family on Tuesday.
Our gentle, five-year-old Jack Russell mix Charlie was a victim of dog on dog
crime.
Patch is Charlie’s designated walker. We give her a $2
allowance every time she takes him on a twenty-minute walk. She mixes the route
up regularly to keep him guessing and keep ever new scents and smells available
to his inquisitive nose. Sometimes he gets two walks a day, sometimes none, but
he probably averages ten walks a week, which is perfect for his size and
temperament.
He has not, however, acclimated too well to new humans
and new – rather, any – dogs. Might be our fault when he was a pup. He’s
all bark and no bite, and when someone new enters the house he’s all bark for a
good hour or so. Out in the world beyond our front door, he dissolves into a
neurotic mess when in range of most fellow canines.
But there are exceptions. There’s a big golden
retriever who lives behind a fence along one of their routes. Whenever Charlie
walks by with Patch in tow, the golden pokes its snout out a hole and they sniff
each excitedly. Our neighbor has a dog and my daughter walks two other dogs in
the house behind us (a Doberman named Blitz and a pitbull named King), so he’s
somewhat used to their smells. There’s also an aged corgie that makes the rounds
as well as a giant puffy longhaired dog and another white and brown mix who
could be Charlie’s uncle in the neighborhood.
Charlie has gotten along well, as well as can be
expected, when the occasional passing-by happens on his walks.
Now, back to last Tuesday.
Patch took him out in the fading daylight, which happens
around 5:45 here. She took him on a new walk on the roads behind our house.
Someone was unloading groceries from their car parked on the street, and as the
door to the house was opening and closing, an overly excited brown critter
burst out and charged headlong towards our Jack Russell mix, pacing along the
sidewalk blissfully unaware.
Patch was caught off guard. Charlie had no idea what was
coming and was completely blindsided. The maniacal dog, larger and darker and
angrier than Charlie, pounced on him and began the tussle.
My phone rang a few moments later and Patch was on the
other end, breathing heavily, in a tone halfway between crying and hysteria. I
pieced out what happened listening to her rapid fire outbursts: The dog jumped
on top of Charlie, bit into him several times on the back. Charlie retreated,
making noises Patch has never heard him make before. The dog flipped Charlie
around, clamping down on Charlie’s hind leg. My daughter struggled to maintain
control of Charlie’s leash and to separate our boy from this crazed animal. It
was all over in seconds as the owners raced from the house to separate the two dogs
and get theirs under control.
They asked if our dog was all right. In the fading light
Patch gave him a once over and he seemed okay, aside from his weird barking. I
told her to come immediately home and she replied that she was only a few
minutes away. After she left the house holding the wild dog another adult left
his truck and made sure she and her dog were okay, which Patch confirmed.
Gentlest boy in the world ...
Once inside the safety of our house we examined
Charlie. He had two blood marks on his spine but no bleeding. His right rear
leg, however, was the bloodiest part of him. We separated out fur as best we
could to get to skin but did not see any serious bleeding – and by serious I
mean no signs of continuous blood flow. If there was such an emergency we’d
have called his vet and their voicemail system would have detailed instructions
on who to call and where to take him. Plus we have catastrophic insurance out on
him, so that would not be an issue.
We decided not to tell my wife until she got home from
work. Did not want her to get into an accident or possibly be ticketed for
speeding or running red lights. Charlie is, after all, her third child.
We babied him more than normal the rest of the night.
He seemed a little dazed and not himself the rest of the evening, but recovered
somewhat the following day. By the weekend he returned to full normalcy: not
afraid to go out for walks, wanting to play “tuggy” and fetch with his rubber
bone, and eating as usual.
My wife, however, immediately ordered a small can of
pepper spray from Prime to affix to the leash and gave instructions for Patch to
use it on any animals – dog or human – looking to mess with Charlie – or her –
out on their walks.
We dodged a bullet, and I would urge any one of my
miniscule audience, whether a pet owner or not, to always practice situational
awareness at all times.
Haven’t been much into World War II this year, since I’ve
been mainly focusing on classic literature, but on this anniversary of the 1941
attack on Pearl Harbor I thought I’d post some trivia from one of the best
books I’ve read on the subject, Pearl Harbor: From Infamy to Greatness,
by Craig Nelson, which I bought and devoured in early January 2021.
- Yamamoto and Tojo were both born in 1884. Tojo was posted
to Berlin, Yamamoto to Washington, D.C.
- Eventually one-sixth of all American males would serve in
the military.
- If America’s secret weapons of World War II were radar and
codebreaking, Japan’s were its spies.
- Japanese aerial technology was at the time of Pearl Harbor
the envy of the world.
- The Mitsubishi A6M Reisen was known as the “Zero.” It had
a top speed of 310 mph, two 20mm cannons in its wings, and three 7.7mm machine
guns in the cowling.
- Minesweeper Condor and destroyer USS Ward sighted
a periscope at 0342 the morning of December 7 and unsuccessfully attempted to
track it for an hour.
- The first wave of the attack consisted of 183 planes (with
six failing to launch).
- The second wave consisted of 171 planes (with four fails).
- “Tora! Tora! Tora!” – To is the first syllable of totsugeki
(“charge” or “attack”) and Ra is the first of raigeki (“torpedo”).
Tora also means “tiger” which had a nice ring to Japanese staff.
- On the morning of the attack, Pearl Harbor held 96 ships.
- “Battleship Row” – the Pennsylvania, Nevada,
Arizona, Tennessee, West Virginia, Maryland, Oklahoma,
and California.
- Arizona sank in 9 minutes. 1,177 men were lost. It
was the highest mortality of men killed in a single explosion … until
Hiroshima.
- In his famous speech on December 8, FDR replaced “world
history” with “infamy.”
- Since war had not yet been declared at the time of their
deaths, none of the dead wore dog tags, and the manner of their deaths, from
fires and explosions, resulted in 670 “unknowns” buried in 252 different
locations at Honolulu’s Punchbowl cemetery. Of that 670, 669 remain unknown to
this day.
- Today’s generally accepted numbers: 2,403 American dead,
1,178 wounded. Japan lost 55 naval airmen, 9 midget-sub crewmen, and the 65-man
crew of a destroyed submarine.
- A recovered Japanese midget sub was outfitted with
mannequins dressed as Japanese sailors and sent on a tour of 41 states to help
sell war bonds.
- The sub’s sole survivor, Ensign Kazuo Sakamaki, became
America’s first POW of World War II. After the war he refused to be interview
by Pearl Harbor historians and eventually became president of Toyota Brazil.
- After FDR’s 6 minute 30 second “Day of Infamy” speech,
it took Congress just 52 minutes to declare war on Japan.
- By December 20th, Maryland, Pennsylvania,
and Tennessee were back in service. Nevada was restored at the
end of 1942; California at the end of 1943. Oglala, Downs,
and Cassin were sailing by February 1944; West Virginia on July
4, 1944.
- The Arizona’s five-inch anti-aircraft guns were salvaged
and put to use to defend Oahu.
Of the 40 books I’ve read on World War II, Pearl Harbor:
From Infamy to Greatness is easily in the top half-dozen. Much recommended.
As alluded to in an earlier post this month, I wake up
every night at 3:15 a.m.
So did George Lutz of The Amityville Horror fame
– or, rather, infamy!
So do many experiencing attacks of the demonic or
spiritual crises, as a quick Google search will tell you.
As for me, well … I kinda agree, hate to say.
Now, I don’t always awaken at 3:15. Maybe every
ten days I will wake up at 3:15 on the dot. I see it on the microwave I pass as
I make my way in the darkness to the bathroom. And let me tell you, I almost
know it’s going to display 3:15 before I get there, and when my suspicion in
confirmed, I can’t tell you how eerie it is. Goose-bump eerie. If it happens to
you, you know. If not, I can’t convey it in words adequately enough.
Most of the time I awake around 3:15. Sometimes
I come very close – 3:12, 3:20, 3:08. This morning I woke at 3:40. And it doesn’t
matter when I fall asleep. Normally I go to bed around 11:30. On the weekends I
go to bed later, midnight or 1 a.m. not being uncommon. Last night I was
exhausted from a tough work week and some insomnia and went to bed at 10:15.
But no matter when I go to sleep, I wake up near or at 3:15, invariably. Only
two or three times a month, at best, do I not wake up at the witching hour.
Because that’s what it’s called. The witching hour. The
dead hour of night when witches covens are most active and dark spells suffuse
through the chilly black air on their evil errands. The hour diametrically
opposed to the death of Jesus on the Cross, traditionally held to have happened
at 3 in the afternoon, the hour when salvation came to mankind. Evil naturally
gravitates, accelerates and accentuates its designs at the hour 180 degrees
from God’s saving work in history.
Perhaps there could be a more mundane explanation. Long
ago I’ve read about the “reticular activating system” in our minds – when we
learn something or are pointed towards something, we begin to start noticing
that something more often. The best example I heard is if you go to a auto
dealership and take a fancy to a car model you’ve never seen before. Suddenly,
out on the roads over the next few days and weeks, you’ll suddenly see that car
model everywhere. It’s not like they haven’t been out on the roads all
this time. It was never called to your attention so you never noticed it.
Perhaps it has something to do with that. You hear
some creepy weird things about 3:15 a.m. You wake up one random night at 3:15
a.m. and remember that spooky thing you heard about it. Then it happens again
next month. Then, sooner. And now you’re a 3:15 a.m. junkie like me, getting your
fix every night.
Something similar happened to me when I was young. I
was fascinated with the time 11:11, and would point it out to anyone within
earshot when I caught it on the digital clock. Pretty soon every time I look I
see 11:11. Later, as an adult, I would see 9:17 on the clock – my birthday –
and tease my little ones, especially Patch, whose birthday is September16. Now
it seems every time I see a clock on my phone or laptop or on the microwave, if
it’s morning or evening, it will show 9:17.
What to do?
Well, I’ve read some accounts by individuals afflicted
with this odd phenomenon. The “spiritual crisis” thing resonates cuz, well, I’ve
been undergoing one of varying magnitudes for most of my adult life. Sure, I’m
about 90 percent in the traditional Roman Catholic camp, after many years
reading, thinking, puzzling out and experiencing, but I still have the urge to
explore. Be it philosophy, Eastern religions, or different shades of
Christianity, I seem to never feel safely secure in my traditional Roman
Catholic camp. Yeah, it might have something to do with that idiot Pope we’re
saddled with. Or maybe it’s my habitual sins I’ve struggled with and can never
shake. Or maybe it’s a lack of personal supernatural confirmation from the “out
there.” I dunno. But I think this 3:15 thing might be a signal to me.
What I try to do is follow some advice I read.
Specifically, when I find myself up at that hour of the early morning, I say
the St. Michael Prayer:
St. Michael the Archangel
Defend us in battle
Be our protection against the wickedness
and snares of the devil.
May God rebuke him we humbly pray
And do thou, O Prince of the Heavenly host
By the power of God
Cast into hell Satan and the evil spirits
Who prowl about the world
Seeking the ruin of souls. Amen.
And if I can’t remember that or am too befuddled with
sleep to get through it, I mutter a Hail Mary under my breath, return to my
warm cozy bed, and fall back into my dreams and the darkness.
In my humble, genuine, gentle, and amateur-in-the-original-sense-of-the-word
way (as in “a lover of the thing for the sake of the thing itself,” in this
case, “literature”), I do believe the French lit I’ve read is better than the
Russian lit I’ve read.
Let me preface to say this is a low-volume sample. In
one corner, we have
Les Misérables,
by Victor Hugo
The Count of Monte Cristo,
by Alexandre Dumas
The Hunchback of Notre Dame,
also by Victor Hugo
representing the French contribution to Hopper’s literary
experience.
In the opposite corner, representing that Great Bear
of Literature, Mother Russia, we have
War and Peace,
by Leo Tolstoy
Crime and Punishment,
by Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Brothers Karamazov,
also by Fyodor Dostoevsky
though in all honesty I only conquered a third of the Karamazov
book (of which I will finish one day).
So my experience with the French was “better” than with
the Russian.
French Literature > Russian Literature
Hopper, define “better”. Okay. For me, I enjoyed more
the reading of the one set of novels opposed to the other. All are deeply
philosophical works, of a kind that probably hasn’t been written in English in
at least a half a century, if not longer. All feature large casts of
characters, and all of those characters spring to life. All kept me guessing,
at one point or another or several. All in all, all were worthy reads, and I am
grateful for reading them all and probably, in some small way, am a better man
for doing so.
But, French > Russian.
Perhaps it has something to do with translation. I
recall reading two books by the Frenchman Jules Verne twenty-plus years ago: From
the Earth to the Moon and Journey to the Center of the Earth. The
first was whimsical, LOL-ish, and very joyous to read. The second was the exact
opposite: it was only through grim gritty and teeth-grinding determination I finished it.
In the case of the six abovementioned classics,
however, I discerned no translator creep – er, translation creep. Not creep as
in “creepy,” but creep as in a translator inserting his own editorializing
instead of staying faithful to the original source material. Probably has something
to do with each work’s translation completed in 1992 or earlier, as I do not
trust much literature after 2000 or anything after 2015.
To ascertain why, I came up with a couple of images.
First, I felt the French works more a “right brain”
piece of writing and the Russian a “left brain” exercise. That is, the French
seemed more artistic, visual, holistic, free-form, to use some hippyisms. The
Russian works I found more analytical, more “by the numbers,” logical. This is
just a feeling, just a sense of mine.
Second, this led me to think that perhaps one can view
the French as books written from start to finish, whereas the Russian seemed
written end to beginning. What do I mean? Well, the French works seemed to
meander along to their conclusions, winding this way and that, seeming to
derail but never doing so, inexorably plunging towards their natural climaxes,
almost as if discovering their endings. I had the sense that the Russian novels
knew exactly what the final page would read, and everything was meticulously
outlined and constructed to form logical patterns to fit in to what the authors
wanted to say of history or society or the human soul. (This latter way is the
way I wrote my two “novels,” or rather, “manuscripts.”)
This is not to disparage Dostoevsky or Tolstoy. All three
novels were incredible journeys, me some third wheel breaking the fourth wall
vicariously and voyeuristically and participating in transcendent and or
historic events. I enjoyed them all.
But I enjoyed the French style better. Which leads to
my third simple point: You bring yourself at your stage of your life to the
book you are reading. I think at my age and station in life what I am craving
is a little adventure, a little bit of participation in the great threads of
history, in that French meandering, winding way. Perhaps I spent too long in
too logical a frame of mind, and the right hemisphere is demanding a say in
steering the bus (to confuse a couple of brain/personality images).
Whatever the true case may be, and to convince you I
am really nitpicking here, were I given godlike powers and had to judge these
French and Russian writers standing before me novels-in-hand, I’d grade Hugo
and Dumas easy 98’s.
So I fell asleep with Symphonie fantastique:
Épisode de la vie d'un artiste … en cinq parties on the turntable, the 1830
excursion into psychedelia by the maestro Hector Berlioz and dreamt – of all
things – that I coached basketball.
Now I know nothing of basketball, and basketball knows
nothing of me. We had a brutal breakup sometime in the late 70s when I was unceremoniously
cut at CYO tryouts. Right off the bat my dreamself felt trapped, triggered,
threatened, and soaked in sweat.
That grating air horn buzzer signaled the start of the
first game of the season. I slowly examined the ensemble of broken downs
sulking on the bench, each studying the floor, walls, and ceiling for
inspiration. And how was I to inspire a crew like this – ?
Ludwig van Beethoven – 5’ 4”
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – 5’ 4”
Franz Schubert – 5’ 2”
Richard Wagner – 5’ 5”
Arnold Schoenberg – 5’ 4”
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky – 5’ 3”
Have you ever seen such a bunch of sickly sad sacks?
Well, just then the record skipped at the fourth
movement – Marche au supplice (“March to the Scaffold”) – and I realized
I was dreaming, dreaming last night. And as the fog and purple haze dissipated
I ordered the boys back into the locker room to change, promise they’d quit
hoops forever, and through themselves two hundred percent back into the
compositional studies.
My arm lurched out for my phone in the early morning darkness,
and the numbers “3:15” mocked me, yet again. But that’s the subject of a future
post …
