A Clear Midnight

 “Tell my friends I’m coming down

 We’ll kick it when I hit the ground.”

   Paramore, “Hard Times,” from “After Laughter”

After reading in New York magazine about Hayley Williams, longtime vocalist for Paramore who just recorded a solo album, “Pearls for Armor,” I checked out Paramore’s 2017 studio album “After Laughter’ and put it on heavy rotation with Weezer, Daft Punk, Lush, and Bob Dylan’s “Blood on the Tracks.”  Paramore is often grouped with emo bands such as Panic! At the Disco (once a favorite of Becca’s) and Jimmy Eat World (one of my favorites) who grew out of the punk scene and feature confessional lyrics.  Here’s an example from Paramore’s “Fake Happy”:

I’m quite alright

Better hope I don’t blink

Delia Owens

At the library, open for curbside service I also picked up “Where the Crawdads Sing” by retired wildlife biologist and environmentalist Delia Owens, which I noticed Alissa was reading last weekend. A 2018 novel that was on the New York Times best seller list for 30 weeks, it takes place in a coastal marshlands of North Carolina.  NYT reviewer Marilyn Stasio called it “a painfully beautiful first novel that is at once a murder mystery, a coming-of-age narrative and a celebration of nature.”  I’m intrigued.

 

New York magazine’s special issue, “Listening to the Very Old,” opened with a section titled “Long Lives: Old People have never been so powerful – or, now, so vulnerable.” A photo showed wheelchair-bound Bill Streiber peering at his son through a window at Solheim Senior Community in Los Angeles.  Amelia Schonbek interviewed 90-year-old former farmworkers organizer Dolores Huerta, who marveled at how quickly people can be mobilized into action on the internet.  She added:

    One negative thing about the online issue, though: You realize that you don’t know your neighbors.  Yesterday, on my daily walk, a women greeted me and said, “Are you Dolores Huerta?,” and it turns out she’s a schoolteacher.  And a man shouted, “Are you Dolores Huerta?,” and it turns out he just bought a house and he recognized me because he was active in a labor union in L.A. I guess we’ve had social distancing in a different kind of way about relating to our neighbors.  And that’s different than when I was young. When I was young, you knew everyone on the block.

 

Poet Susan Howe, 82, told Amelia Schonbek that lying down and going to bed, she thinks of Walt Whitman’s poem “A Clear Midnight,” written near the end of his life.  It goes:

THIS is thy hour O Soul, thy free flight into the wordless,

Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson done,

Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the themes
thou lovest best,

Night, sleep, death and the stars.

Howe’s poem “The Midnight begins:

For here we are here

BEDHANGINGS

daylight does not reach

Vast depth on the wall

Neophyte

 

On “Final Jeopardy” with the category “Pre-Civil War Presidents” the clue was, “After a grand tour of Europe he retired to a life of obscurity in Concord.”  One contestant, thinking of Concord, Massachusetts, guessed John Quincy Adams; I knew that was incorrect because Adams spent his final years as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives.  I knew it had to be New Hampshire native Franklin Pierce, like James Buchanan, whom he preceded, a Democrat who favored appeasing the South in a vain attempt to save the Union from Civil War. Next day, a “Jeopardy” clue asked where Noah kept the bees. It was a riddle Calumet Regional Archivist Steve McShane always asked his Indiana History students the first day of class.  Answer: the ark-hives.  When I told Steve about it, he replied, “They owe me royalties.”

 

Cindy C. Bean posted a photo of her grandmother’s Oak Forest bowling team, Pin Crushers, in 1973.  When I said I wish I had known her, Cindy replied: “She was so awesome! So ahead of her time! She ran their Flower and Garden shop and was also a cosmologist! She was extremely social! Always had her hair and nails perfect! She was great! You would have liked her!”

Guy Rhodes photographed East Chicago Central’s drive-thru graduation and posted

    I enjoyed my time this afternoon checking out East Chicago Central High School's first-ever drive through graduation ceremony, brought on by social distancing measures still in place for the COVID-19 pandemic. To my knowledge, this is the first time something like this has ever been done in the city's 127-year history. Students and families drove to several stations set up around the campus for gifts and hand-outs before students got out and walked a short distance to receive their diploma. A parking lot traffic island replaced the stage, a DJ playing popular music replaced a choir, and the resulting atmosphere was fun and lively. I later got word that more than a few people suggested it be done this way from here on out. 

Vanessa Hernandez Orange, left, (Coach V) added: “My go to guy, he’s the man who steps up and makes it happen. Whatever you need I got your back! You have had EC Students back for the past twenty something years!! I thank you from the bottom of my heart. Now let’s get drive through graduation going. Mr. Dave Lane, senior class sponsor, Honor Society Sponsor, English teacher, tennis coach, the voice of EC Athletics, the of Central High School. All love, Coach V”