As an old fart with eight or ten treasured stories that friends and family are sick of hearing, I can set up a blog and hold forth at will without drawing much attention and without causing any harm at all. I like to think that’s at least partly because I have some sense of what’s appropriate.

The real reason, of course, may be a matter of demographics. White dudes over 60 don’t attract much attention unless filthy rich (see Warren Buffett), particularly grotesque (see Donald Trump – also rich) or otherwise infamous (see Dick Cheney – also rich and grotesque). Well over 90% of Americans, after all, are not white, male and over 60.

Apparently it’s an altogether different situation for young women. A recent story in the Chicago Tribune reports on a blog devoted to the grief of a woman whose baby supposedly died. The problem is that none of it happened. This left those who had supported her feeling like fools. There were thousands of them, and they resented being tricked.

The only parallel I can imagine is if I had spun a tale in the CaringBridge account of Marge’s cancer struggle—if I had told the story I told when she didn’t really have cancer, or if my actual response to her cancer had been to go all John Edwards on her.

You can gossip over the back fence without much in the way of real consequences. You can sit on a barstool and tell lies (isn’t practically everything said on a barstool a lie?) but blogging is somehow different. Blogging can feel anonymous on the writer’s end of things, but it is intimate on the reader’s end. If you tell your blog readers that your heart is broken, it damned well better be broken.

Since 1987, my wife Marge has taught at Portland High School, one of the most diverse schools in the country. For the last 15 years or so, she has read the names at graduation. It’s a formidable task because each graduating class includes students from every corner of the world. A typical class includes Bosnian, Cambodian, Chinese, Congolese, Croatian, Ethiopian, Hispanic, Polish, Russian, Rwandan, Serbian, Somali, Sudanese and Vietnamese names, along with the more familiar French, Irish and Italian. It’s a United Nations of names, and this year’s class was no exception.

As an added complication, some families, after being in the U.S. for a while,  have partly or completely Americanized their names. This is why Marge spends hours and hours in preparation. Last year a Cambodian girl whose first name was Touch (pronounced Tooch in Khmer) corrected Marge. “Nah,” she said, “it’s just Tuch, like ‘don’t touch that’.”

This year, however, a Cambodian girl with the same name wanted it pronounced Tooch. The class also included a student from a Polish family named Dziedzic. Marge consulted with a colleague who speaks Polish and learned how to say the name more or less in Polish, something like DJUH-djeetz. “Nice try with the Polish,” the smiling student said at graduation rehearsal, “but we just say DEEZ-ick.”

During Marge’s fierce battle with ovarian cancer through the winter, one of her goals was to be able to return to school in time to read the names at graduation. Pretty much everyone at the school was rooting for her because of who she is and also because there really isn’t anyone else in the school willing or able to tackle those names.

Just before Marge returned to school this spring, the principal met with a group of teachers to discuss scholarship recipients. In identifying the students, he apparently mangled many of the names. He later reported to Marge that after the meeting about five concerned teachers each approached him privately with the same urgent question: “Is Marge going to be back in time for graduation?”

Years and years ago, I taught technical writing at the University of Tulsa. I wore out my students by telling them again and again that they should aim for voiceless writing. What I meant was writing that didn’t hint at the person behind the writing.  “Imagine yourself as the reader,” I would say. “When you’re trying to follow the instructions to put a gas grill together, you want the manual to be about the gas grill, not the person who wrote the manual.”

It’s sound advice for aspiring tech writers, easy to give but sometimes more difficult to follow. Voiceless, for example, is not the same thing as nonhuman! Consider this gem selected more or less at random from the instructions for IRS Form 1040:

If your economic stimulus payment was directly deposited to a tax-favored account and you withdraw the payment by the due date of your return (including extensions), the amount withdrawn will not be taxed and no additional tax or penalty will apply. For a Coverdell education savings account, the withdrawal can be made by the later of the above date or June 1, 2009. See the instructions for lines 15a and 15b, 21, and 59.

All those passive verbs invite me to imagine faceless drones swarming in a glass and steel hive. For all I know, of course, tax form instructions may really be machine generated. The IRS as The Borg.

At the other extreme, the writer becomes fully visible on the page. I sometimes like it when it’s done deliberately. In a professional journal I edited for several years, the author of a particularly complex article added a footnote about three quarters of the way through that said something like “If you’re still with me here, please let me know and I’ll buy you a cup of coffee!”

The problem I tried to warn my students about, however, was more subtle.  Last Christmas, for example, I was given a new alarm clock that has features the manufacturer is pretty excited about. The writer of the owner’s manual pretty obviously was charged with emphasizing these features, particularly the fact that the clock sets itself. Here’s what the manual says:

We all know how annoying it is to wake up in the morning and see the dreaded flashing “12:00” display on our clocks or clock radios. This means that your power was interrupted some time during the night while you were sleeping and your clock doesn’t know what time it is anymore. Unfortunately, it probably also means that you are late for work, or for school, again.

What do we know about the writer here? I think the story is mostly told in that final again.  The writer is someone who has no chance of waking up on time without an alarm, perhaps as a result of staying up too late. It’s also someone who has tried the “my alarm didn’t go off” excuse a few too many times. When I consider this in combination with the sloppy and abrupt pronoun switch from we to you after the first sentence, I get a pretty clear picture of the writer:  habitually running late, lacking focus, desperately striving to please but unwilling or unable to give the work the final edit it needs.

This is someone I would probably find exhausting to have around, and that’s a thought I shouldn’t be having at all as I read the manual. After all, I’m just trying to figure how to use my new clock! I don’t want to hear about roommate troubles, sleep issues, the saga of a psycho ex, and so on.

And that’s why all those years ago at TU, I used to sound like a broken record: “Get the information on the page, kids. Keep yourself off the page.”

Marge and I were newlyweds at time of the election in 1968. Those Americans who fancied themselves the grownups at that time felt moved again and again to show us kids that they’d had enough of the likes of us. As President, the nation’s voters chose Dick Nixon, a man who pretty much hated everyone. I was a first-time voter in that election.

We were living in the town of Gorham, Maine. I recall that when I went to register to vote, the clerk in the town office simply passed me the form to register as a Republican. When I said I wanted to register as a Democrat, the clerk looked surprised, then stumped. “Just a minute,” she said. “Those forms are around here somewhere.” Eventually, I was able to register the way I wanted to.

Things were tougher for other young Democrats that year. I remember how, in the flickering black and white of our old TV, Marge and I saw Mayor Daley’s thug police club our people in Grant Park during the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago. Last night, as I watched Barack Obama deliver his victory speech from that same park, all I saw were thoughtful and hopeful faces. Security was tight for Obama’s speech, but there were no club-wielding goons.

After eight years of bullying cynicism from the current regime, however, I feel hopeful again with some trepidation. Obama won by a comfortable margin, but any observer who calls his victory a mandate is far more partisan than I. Those who support our Fortress America of surveillance, interrogation and secret prosecutions are still among us and still in positions of authority and responsibility. They won’t all be rendered harmless on the day Dubya leaves office.

Still, it was nice to see those shining faces in Grant Park, even if 40 years was a long time to wait.

Recently I’ve written a lot about faces. I think that’s mostly coincidence, because when I wrote the first “game face” post I hadn’t yet seen the photos of my cousin Rusty sent to me by my aunt Toni.

Rusty passed away recently at the age of 66. He lived in South Carolina, and I hadn’t seen him in more than 50 years. In fact, I only ever met him once, when my parents took care of him for a few days back in about 1954. I was about eight then, so Rusty would have been about 12. He didn’t have much use for me or for my friends and spent most of his time alone. The only other thing I remember about his visit was that he wrote his name and the date on a rafter in our unfinished attic. When my father and I finished the attic, we sheetrocked over what Rusty had written. The likelihood is that his name is still hidden there.

Through the years, I never thought about Rusty much. He grew into manhood, and so did I. He got married, and so did I. But our lives were as separate as those of total strangers. I couldn’t have told you the name of his wife or kids, if he had kids. I don’t know what he did for work. I don’t even know the cause of his death.

What strikes me now are the photos of him taken near the end of his life. I never saw him as an adult, but in the photos of him, I see my own face. I also see my father, my uncle Alfred, my cousin Dennis. There is a family look that, as an only child, I never recognized while I was growing up. I only see it now when I look at my own 60-plus face and compare it with photos of my father and my uncle at about the same age.

Rusty’s face belongs in that same lineup. He was a stranger to me, and I recognized him immediately.

For the last month or so, I’ve moved my blogging to the Caringbridge.org site that details Marge’s progress in her fight against ovarian cancer. That’s the compelling story in my life right now, but it’s not the only one.

Another ongoing story for me, and one that belongs on this blog, has to do with faces. The picture here, for example, shows me with my daughter Elizabeth and was taken last Saturday. We are wearing our game faces here. Among the many traits we share, however, is a tendency to drift into private thought during quiet moments. In such moments our muscles relax and faces slip into an expression that might signify despair in another context. The result is that we are often interrupted by concerned friends who conclude that something is terribly wrong. Sample dialogue:

ME: (saying nothing because I’m a million miles away in thought)…
FRIEND: Pete! Oh my God! What’s wrong?
ME: (startled) What? What are you talking about?
FRIEND: You look absolutely stricken! Are you OK?
ME: (confused) I, I don’t understand…

Because this sort of thing also used to happen to my mother, I guess the “stone face cum sightless stare” counts as a family quirk. Current research documents the close relationship between mood and facial expression. That’s just common knowledge. The surprising new idea, however is that facial expression is mood, not just a reflection of it; that the configuration of facial muscles at any given moment determines the mood which the mind/personality will experience; that mood, in short, is something that is pushed into the mind–not something that flows out of it. The whole “let a smile be your umbrella” school of thought seems to be based on an intuitive belief in this principle, but I have to insist that it isn’t the whole story.

I’m more concerned than usual about this right now because during the course of Marge’s cancer treatment I do have stricken moments. I don’t want to squander my friends’ concern for me by looking stricken when I’m, for example, only idly wondering who decided which way “clockwise” would be or whether a necktie knot could be formed from inelastic material or why German uses “sie” as so many different pronouns if it’s supposed to be so damned precise.

It’s a pretty good idea for me to have my picture taken fairly often so that I can see how I’m doing with this. That photographer on Saturday, for example, had to snap the picture three times before he caught me with a facial expression he considered acceptable. I mean, come on people, it was a baby shower. Reveries happen even there. When he tried to take my picture I was just wondering how it came to be that in the years since Elizabeth was a baby, so much baby equipment came to look as if it was designed by Klingons.

That’s Cajun French for “Let the good times roll.” The Katrina Relief mission volunteers from my church are supposed to fly to New Orleans tomorrow. I had planned to be part of the mission until Marge’s illness intevened. Now, however, I’m wondering if anyone is going anywhere tomorrow as this years K-storm Kyle passes by New England. The wind is screaming, and we may get as much as eight inches of rain in the next 24 hours.

Note to Climate: We don’t need any more rain here. Take this water to the folks who need it.

“C is for cookie, that’s good enough for me,” sings Sesame Street’s Cookie Monster. It’s a cute song and an engaging character, especially as re-imagined by Stephen Colbert. The problem is that C stands for a lot of other things, too.

Cancer, for example.

Last Friday, Marge and I sat listening to Marge’s newest doctor, a gynecologic oncologist, while he let us know as gently as he could that Marge has ovarian cancer. I felt as if I’d been slapped. In fact, I actually tried to get a look at the name on the case file the doctor had open while he was talking to us because I was convinced there was some mistake. Surely the message he was giving us was intended for someone else. But no luck on that one.

The cancer is apparently already advanced, and there may be several tumors. The next step is surgery, perhaps on September 30th, a week from today, but we don’t have a confirmed date for it. We’ll meet with the doctor again on Friday for more information about the surgery and the overall treatment strategy. I do know that the surgery will be both treatment and diagnostic tool. We have little specific information now, but there will be a mountain of it following the surgery.

The last four days have been long and difficult. I don’t know of a harder job than this waiting and waiting and waiting to learn how bad the bad news really is. The outpouring of love and support we have received and continue to receive from family and friends, however, is wonderful. I mentioned this to a friend yesterday, and her tone was matter-of-fact as she said, “Of course. You’re wonderful people. Everybody loves you.” I’m braced for bad news, but kindness can make me cry. I cried when she said that.

Today I’m in the process of setting up a CaringBridge site to record our journey through this. The URL is http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/margesampson although not much is there just yet. I’ll post treatment and recovery information over there so that it doesn’t take over this blog.

And so, friends, if you’re familiar with prayer, please pray for us now. If you don’t know how to pray, it’s time you learned. We need everybody here.

I’ll bet this is the sort of night Edward George Bulwer-Lytton imagined when, in about 1830, he wrote the infamous opening words of the otherwise forgotten novel Paul Clifford. Actually, Bulwer-Lytton’s complete opening sentence goes like this:

It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents—except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.

No wonder Bulwer-Lytton has a contest named for him in which entrants compete to see who can write the worst opening sentence of a novel that, God willing, will remain imaginary.

Through the years, the contest has become more and more elaborate, with categories and subcategories and “dishonorable mentions.” I thought I was going to write about the contest, but I find I’ve used up all the time I have reading this year’s winning entries and laughing maniacally.

Spend some time with the winners, and you’ll have favorites of your own. Perhaps it’s only because my nextdoor neighbor has become the proud owner of a genuine hot rod, but tonight my own personal favorite is this:

“Let’s see what this baby can do, Virgil,” said Wyatt, as he floored the Charger, brushing a Dart out of the way, sideswiping an oncoming Lancer, rear-ending a Diplomat, and demolishing a row of Rams before catapulting head-on into the sheriff’s Viper—realizing that we’d indeed missed the turn-off to Abilene and ended up instead, in Dodge City.
–>I want a space here, dammit!<–
Paul Curtis
Randburg, South Africa

iscovering a great website is a small but very real delight. Yesterday, thanks to StumbleUpon, I found a site called POW!, which in turn led me to Liam’s Pictures from Old Books, where I found the wonderful ornamented D that begins this paragraph. The site offers illustrations of all types, including old maps, sample alphabets, technical illustrations ranging from 19th century “marine lighting” to medieval “siege engines.”

We have some old books ourselves, so I’ll make a few scans and send them to Liam. If you’re interested in old books, you might want to do the same.

The POW! site, by the way, contains links to free and cheap stock photos of all kinds. Enjoy.