Good Company

Over our nearly forty-eight-year history, my wife and I have had some of our worst and our best moments while in an automobile. The worst moments have often been connected to my driving habits. The best moments have frequently occurred on one of the many extended road trips we've taken. 

This morning, while she slept in the passenger's seat on our return from central Pennsylvania, I began reflecting on earlier road trips. Some things have changed since 1978 - the cars, the ways we listen to music, the games we play to pass the time. Much has stayed the same - the ease of conversation and comfort with silence, our planning for the future, lots of laughter.  

I've always enjoyed long-distance driving. For almost a half-century now, almost all of my road trips have had an added benefit - the company of someone I endlessly enjoy. 

  

A Slice of Charles

Sometimes, the richness of my life astounds me. Such was the case this past Tuesday evening.

The day was pleasant if fairly routine. But early that evening, my wife skillfully moderated a spirited discussion of A Christmas Carol for the book club I began in 2017. Few things energize me as much as spending time with readers. If the day had ended with the discussion, I would have been more than satisfied.

But then several of us decided to go out for pizza. How dull would life be without pizza? Looking at the disparate group, the richness mentioned above came into focus. Aside from my wife, there was a musician friend and his wife; she is a frequent travelling companion of ours. Also with us was the moderator of the first book club I ever joined - fifteen years ago - and a couple I met via my music classes who have since become good friends. We've already travelled several times with the moderator - did I mention she is a reading soulmate? - and early next year the couple will be joining us on a Road Scholar trip to Spain.

Rounding out the group were two of the newer members of my club, both of whom we met via a hiking group. Come on! A rewarding book discussion, delicious pizza, stimulating conversation with eight people I enjoy all in the span of a few hours. Does it get better than this? 

Actually, it does. Before the meeting, a new member of the club - met her via a writer's group she runs - spent time with us at our home. Although we briefly touched on the Dickens novella in our pre-meeting conversation, little did I suspect she would soon after help guide her team of four to victory in the trivia contest my wife designed for the book discussion. Definitely helped that she'd finished the book just hours before the meeting. And though she didn't join us for pizza, between slices, one of the hikers - a member of her team - mentioned her crucial role in their victory. Nice, right?        

The Way Things Go

"December 7, 1941, a date that will live in infamy..."

My dad was twenty-three years old on this fateful day eighty-four years ago. And his life - like many young men his age at the time - was immediately altered. I don't recall ever having a conversation with him about getting drafted. What would be on your mind if you were newly drafted at twenty-three as the country was entering a World War? 

I've never faced a situation even remotely as frightening as this. If I try to imagine how I'd react by first recalling myself at twenty-three, it's difficult not to laugh. I was immature and self-absorbed. Serving my country was not a priority; I would have done almost anything to avoid getting drafted. Hero material? Not then, not now.

My dad was too unassuming to ever have thought himself a hero. If he thought about his situation at all after getting drafted, I can imagine him saying something like "It's just the way things go."

Chronicling Overkill

Chronicling overkill: A syndrome characterized by a compulsion to chronicle mundane details from one's life. Said chronicling includes - but is not limited to - books finished, movies viewed, music listened to, places visited. 

The entries in my book journals routinely begin with a sentence describing either how I learned of or why I chose to read the book in question. Straightforward enough, right? If you keep a book journal, do you include something like this to help you recall how you came to read something? Reasonably normal behavior, wouldn't you agree?  

Several weeks back, that straightforward opening to an entry for Elizabeth Strout's Tell Me Everything (2024) catapulted me into chronicling overkill. I quickly filled a full page in my book journal before realizing how carried away I'd gotten. Lest you recommend medication, I'll spare you further details about the cavernous rabbit hole I descended into that morning. One saving grace: I was able to climb out after inventing a syndrome which helped me rationalize my aberrant behavior.

Unfortunately, long before I named it, chronicling overkill had me in its grip. And though I expect no one to join me in the bell curve confession booth - at least not publicly - it's always nice to know at least a few other people share my struggle. Is there perhaps a need for a support group? 

Historians Gone Awry, anyone? 

 

Guest Post: Musings on Language

For just the second time since my blog's inception, I'm pleased to welcome a guest contributor. The post below - written by good friend, fellow musician, and published author Alan Struthers - fits critical bell curve criteria, i.e., it's brief and borders on the nerdy. But it also stands apart from my day-to-day musings with its semi-scholarly whiff. Language geeks: Please comment on this post; helps Alan and me to know we're not alone in our nerdiness. Thanks.

Just for fun, I've been researching the Great Vowel Shift, which occurred from the mid-fifteenth to the late sixteenth century, roughly from Chaucer to Shakespeare. OK, maybe that doesn't sound like fun to you, but it is a huge mystery with few theories to explain it. 

For some reason, all the English vowels changed during that period, "shifting" to new positions in the mouth. For example, the sound of "i" moved from "eee" to "aye", that is, moving from the back of the mouth to the front. (Say these sounds and feel what happens in your mouth.) All the vowels moved in the mouth and took on new pronunciations. In addition to this "shift", vowels generally became diphthongs, where the mouth moves while sounding the vowel. This didn't happen in any other language, nearby or remote - not Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, German, Swedish, etc.  

This all made the earlier English dialect (or dialects) virtually incomprehensible to speakers of the new one in the short period of 150 years or less. Put this into a contemporary time frame and imagine the Gettysburg address - delivered in 1863 - being gibberish to today's listeners.

So why did the shift happen in England, and why then?  In Inventing English (2007), scholar Seth Lerer posits the following: During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the upper classes of England shifted from French to English as their chosen “prestige” language.  The sounds of English may have changed then as part of a larger process of replacing a lost prestige language with a prestige dialect – a dialect not keyed to region but to social class, education, or wealth.  

Will our great grandchildren see a different seismic shift in English grammar or pronunciation? Perhaps today's common grammatical usage or new forms of class or wealth will foment great linguistic changes in the future. Or maybe not.