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Playing Scrabble with Turtles

1/24/2022

2003-2007

In the Crescent Park area of Palo Alto, a realtor who admits to being the top salesperson in the U.S. is offering a home with 7,216 square feet of living space. A sleek brochure advertises the merits of this home with such captions as La Dolce Vita, La Belle Epoque, and La Puerto del Sol. No price is listed, but a quick visit to Google brings up the realtor’s site, which informs his discriminating clientele that this property can be had for $8,800,000.

This price will purchase such amenities as a sense that one has been “transported to Monet’s garden in Giverny,” a pool designed by a specially commissioned waterscape architect whose plan was inspired by the pool that graces Hearst Castle, solid granite counter tops, handcrafted 24-karat gold light and bathroom fixtures, and heated towel racks. Ownership will also place one among neighbors who include “many celebrities, Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, well-known power brokers of the high-tech industry, and leading academics from nearby Stanford University.” Any curious passersby who has plucked the brochure from the plastic case at the edge of this property can only imagine the heady conversations that float through the citrus air when this class of persons gathers for a catered social occasion.

A few blocks from Giverny, one comes across a neighborhood consisting of substandard apartment buildings and an occasional small house on the mend. Here the population tends to the bilingual and drives used cars. Weekend nights are a time for birthday celebrations featuring high-decibel salsa and coolers packed with Corona Beer.

Within this district, hidden behind an aging redwood fence and under tall, untrimmed oaks, sits a 960 square foot cottage that rents for $1200 a month. To those few who know its secret, this tiny dwelling seems as out of place in its neighborhood as it would be among the mansions of Crescent Park. It serves not only as Rosemary Lombard’s home; it also contains what she calls “The Chelonian Connection,” a “private animal behavior laboratory” consisting of a mix of sixteen turtles: seven box turtles (Diode, Farfel, Shelley, Angel, Jo, Spin, Nin), eight tortoises (Willow, Wedge, Heidi, Wafford, Scuter, Dittow, Quake, Toot), and a lone red-eared slider (Salty).

The minds of these survivors of the Late Paleozoic Era are arguably even more fascinating than the minds of the Homo sapiens who inhabit the mansions across San Franciscito Creek, which acts, in effect, as a moat protecting Palo Alto proper from East Palo Alto. The conversations that take place in Lombard’s modest laboratory could be more stimulating as those that occur in Monet’s garden.

The turtles, Lombard claims, are literate. Over a period of 25 years, she says, she’s taught them to read and write—or, in their own lexicon, to “read-talk.”

from Just Another Dead White Male

11/8/2021

She buzzed around the patient, dressed in a tiny pink pant suit, armed with a line of floss.

“Open wide,” she sang.

He opened wide.

She accidentally rubbed up against him.

He flinched.

“Relax, Rabbi Scheinblum,” she said gaily. “I’m not going to hurt you. That’s Dr. Digby’s job.”

He flinched again.

“Just kidding,” she reassured him. “My job is to take your mind off the coming pain.”

A major flinch.

She ignored this response and launched into her assignment. One of the questions she’d been asking people as she flossed them up for Dr. Digby was, what did they like best about Kirkland? If they were to name her the one thing they liked best about living in Kirkland, Kansas, one thing and one thing only, what would that one thing be?

They’d been saying it’s a nice conservative town. Still too much crime in the streets, maybe, and it was getting a little too big, in terms of population, but basically it was still a nice conservative town, knock on wood. They’d been mentioning the friendliness of the people. They’d been saying Kirkland was the kind of a place where family values were allowed to shine through, which accounted for the friendliness. They’d also been saying it was a big happy church-going community where everybody was free to go to the religion of his own choice and there were no Liberals—she guessed that maybe now they were called Socialists (this brought an indisputable flinch)—and very, very few atheists, just a few scraggly professors out at the University, and nobody paid any attention to them anyway, except for maybe a few Sophomores, who’d grow out of it just about the time they started applying for jobs in the appliance department at Best Buy.

from Dancing Over the Rays of Light

11/5/2021

As for the possibility that I had once been a pet, I dismissed it on the grounds that it would require the workings of either reincarnation or metamorphosis, neither of which I believed in, being, as I supposed after having looked long and steadily at the portrait of Jesus, a Christian. But as I further supposed from the fact that I had already entertained the possibility of a committee of Higher Beings, I was doubtless a Christian of the backslidden variety.

Next I turned my attention to the second conjecture, that I was now, or had once been, a child. The first possibility, that I was now a child, was easy to dispose of. My reasoning was that though it is possible for a precocious child to translate French into eloquent English, I had to admit that I was not a member of that class. Well above average, certainly, but not a child prodigy. The latter possibility, that I had once been a child, could not be dismissed so readily: I might be an amnesiac. After some meditation on this possibility, I set the issue in a far corner of my mind, where it might later serve as a working hypothesis.

This left me with the third conjecture, that I was, or had once been, a senior citizen.

If I had once been a senior citizen, I reasoned, then something must have happened to me in the intervening period. That “something” must have involved a change. And that change was either (1) a transmigration, (2) a metamorphosis, or (3) a death.

As for the first two possibilities, I had already concluded that they did not apply, at least in my case; because being a Christian, though admittedly of the backslidden variety, I believed in neither transmigration nor metamorphosis.

As for the possibility that the change had been (3) death, I discarded it on the grounds that I was still alive, evidenced by the fact that I had recently reached over and shut off my alarm device. What is more, in the Christian view of things, I must thus be in either (a) heaven or (b) hell or, in the Catholic repertoire of endings, (c) purgatory.

Considering the fact that my surroundings were generally of an inferior quality, I concluded that I was not in heaven. Considering the fact that my feet were presumably cold, I was not in hell. And considering the fact that my walls were not adorned with an icon of the Virgin Mother, I was not in purgatory.

Having refuted the supposition that I had once been a senior citizen, I turned my attention to the remaining possibility, namely, that I was now a senior citizen.

I ran my fingers over my face and discovered wrinkles. Exploring further, I found those wrinkles to be deep. “Aha,” I informed myself, “I’m old!” I ran my fingers over other parts of my body and found that I had no breasts. A hypothesis formed in my mind. My fingers kept exploring. Soon my hypothesis was confirmed: I was a man. I conflated my two discoveries and concluded that I was an old man. Then, after a long interval of exploration, I found that, though I was an old man, my male parts were in satisfactory if not superior working order.

This latter discovery gave me the courage to sit up and place my legs over the edge of the bed. I noted a cane leaning against the near wall and took this as a sign that my powers of locomotion were on the wane. I speculated that this was a result of an old football injury. I reached out, grasped the cane, inspected it, and found it to be polished and sturdy. It was also of a high quality, as evidenced by its gilt handle, which resembled the head of a duck.
I eased myself off the bed and slowly stood up to determine which of my limbs required this aid. Strangely, I felt no pain. In fact, a quick examination showed that my powers of mobility were approximately adequate. Why, then, the cane?

After giving this matter additional thought, I came to recall the Aristotelian principle that there is a reason for everything. Therefore, there was a reason for the cane. A cane, I continued, is designed to aid a person in the act of walking. This aid is required if and only if there is an impediment. That impediment must be a bad hip. Old football injuries that affect one’s powers of locomotion commonly involve a hip. Therefore, I concluded, the purpose of my cane was to aid me in moving about despite my ailing hip.

from my novel, Dancing Over the Rays of Light

11/4/2021

from Sacred Books & Sky Hooks

11/3/2021

Mother’s plan for Jean-Pierre’s life had not gone well. At a certain stage in her spiritual odyssey, she had decided that her beloved son would do well as a Presbyterian pastor. He’d balked at the idea, insisting that he was on his own quest. This, he said, had started while he was preparing for the rite of confirmation featured in that version of Christianity. He shared with me the secrets that he’d spent short stints as a Taoist, a Buddhist monk, a late-to-the-game Hare Krishna, an unwholesome mix of American cults, a peace-loving Muslim, and an adherent of several of the apocalyptic sects that periodically raise their horrid heads. And these were only the ones he’d told me about. In our last pre-Summum conversation, he’d confided that his current goal was to become a Hindu guru meditating in a mountaintop cave while, I supposed, muttering sacred words and enjoying the view.

another bit from Crazy Were We in the Head

11/2/2021

The first thing you noticed about Abe Hamm, besides the fact that he’d show up in church sporting a bright orange tie under his striped bib overalls and hadn’t gotten around to shaving that morning, was that he was a lover of life. It’s not that he wasn’t religious; it’s just that he could hardly wait to get up in the morning and spread some joy around the place. This would sometimes get him in Dutch with Tante Anna, who could easily be embarrassed, being a Reisender born and bred. He’d say something a bit out of the orthodox, like, “If Jesus was around, I bet you anything he’d be the life of the party.”
She’d tut-tut and sigh and shake her head and say, “Abe, Abe.”
He’d grin like a little kid out from under that ring of electric reddish-grey hair and repeat, “Yessir, the life of the party.”

a bit from my novel, Crazy Were We in the Head

10/31/2021

When we were little kids back in the mid-forties, the first thing Karen and I would do when Dad’s brakeless ’36 Plymouth came rolling to a stop just before running into the irrigation ditch at the July 24 reunion would be to tumble out of the doors and windows and go thundering off to the orchard to join our cousins and Stan. Stan, who was unofficially known as Snake, had been adopted by Onkel Abe and Tante Anna and would still have been a student at Inverness High if he’d paid more attention to the rules. They’d picked him up either from an orphanage, which was Tante Anna’s story, or from a reform school, which was the more widely accepted theory. There were also different opinions about how he’d picked up the nickname. It was either because he enjoyed swimming in Beaver Reservoir on the Snake River, which was Tante Anna’s explanation, or because the name fit the reform school theory, which was Aunt Lena’s view of the matter. I myself leaned toward Aunt Lena’s opinion, figuring that she was probably the one who’d started the practice of calling him Snake.

The Church of the Comic Spirit: first paragraph

10/30/2021

That a dropout from a rabbinical school in upstate New York, an ordinary young man with the ordinary young ambition of moving to Hollywood and becoming a ﬁlm star, should be chosen to discover and translate the now-famous Bear Lake Scrolls and then to establish what quickly has become the fastest-growing religion in America, seems incredible. I must confess that when Father Lustlieb ﬁrst told me his story, I too was skeptical. In fact, I thought it was a joke. But after spending eleven years in his illustrious presence and giving his testimony careful and prayerful study, I am convinced that Alazon Lustlieb was exactly who he claimed to be: a true prophet, and an authentic saint.

Just Another Dead White Male: beginning paragraphs

10/29/2021

He stood before the door of the principal's office, hesitant. He tilted his head back slightly, adjusted his trifocals, squinted through the narrow slab, and read the new nameplate announcing the new occupant as Ms. Penni Mode, Ed.D.

He took a large white handkerchief from a rear pocket. He unfolded it and wiped off the dewdrops that were beginning to form on his balding dome. He carefully refolded it and put it back in his pocket. Then he reached into his watch pouch, extracted the gold-plated timepiece he had inherited from his grandfather, thumbnailed open its worn cover, and checked the hour. Two forty-one: exactly on time.

Dancing Over the Rays of Light: first paragraph

10/29/2021

One morning not long ago, I awoke with a start from the dead of a dreamless sleep to find that I had no memory. I did not know where I was, or who, or what place I held in the commodious order of things. Nor did I know the answer to the prime questions: How did I come to be here? and Why? I was even innocent of the order of being to which I belonged.
But as I will recount, I have been able to decipher these enigmas and come to complete and total self-understanding, relying entirely on my powers of observation, reasoning, and more than a little reflection.