©2013  980 words

There has never been a time when I didn’t worry about money.

I write that sentence understanding full well that I know nothing of abject poverty.  Indeed, pecuniary anxieties, when they’ve come my way, have been the ordinary middle-class variety.  Non-life threatening.

In my youth those worries were about supplementing the minimal allowance that my parents were occasionally able to afford—about raising money to pay for a Saturday afternoon movie, a new pair of track and field shoes, things my more affluent schoolmates didn’t give a second thought.  Later, as a young man unskilled in money management, my troubles sprang from foolish choices—how to make rent and pay college loans after having spent too much on good times.  Later still, after I’d become a husband and father, monetary challenges were more domestic in nature: how to afford sky-high childcare, what to do about a furnace in need of repair.

Now that I’ve entered my so-called golden years (though I think the reference to ‘gold’ in that tired old cliché greatly exaggerated), my partner and I keep ends met without much difficulty, even on fixed incomes.  That said, there are still those nights when my sleepless mind gets carried away by worst-case scenarios—all the ‘what ifs’: What if a serious illness strikes?  What if an aging parent needs help?  What if Social Security turns out to be a ruse?

I reiterate that the cares I’ve enumerated don’t add up to a hill of beans against the unscalable Mount Everest of worldwide poverty.  Not when, as I read a few weeks back, 50% of the planet’s 7 billion+ human beings live on less than $2.50 a day.

In a world where such statistics rule my petty economic concerns don’t count for much.  I know that I’m privileged.

Even three years ago when my partner and I lost our California home in the great U.S. bursting real estate bubble, we never lived hand-to-mouth; we never worried we’d be on the street.  That’s how fortunate we were; how fortunate I’ve always been.  Losses happen—a job, a home, savings—my life stumbles on.

Of course, it could be argued that all losses—even those that First World’ers like myself encounter—are relative in the great scheme of things.  In fact, lately I’ve been struck by how even a small loss can assume unexpected proportions—relatively speaking.

For example, a few weeks back, I lost some cash.  Somewhere between the downtown ATM and my home, the money went missing.  I remember looking for it in the usual places—for all of a few minutes.  It never occurred to me then that my loss could have—for a full day—made the difference between hunger and satiation for 8 of the planet’s impoverished inhabitants.  I didn’t consider that, until last Friday—until I’d experienced a brush with indigence.

Here’s how it went down.

On Fridays I go to the gym at 5:00 a.m.  Afterward, my reward (for all that pain and suffering) is a trip to Starbucks.  Only last Friday, my routine was interrupted.  There on the sidewalk outside my gym I encountered a family, the mother and daughter seated curbside while Dad fed coins into a nearby pay phone.  Both bedraggled parents looked to be in their early thirties; their little girl, perhaps six or seven.  It was 6:30 a.m.  Early for a young family to be on the street.

As I approached, the Dad, pointing at his wristwatch, hailed me.  I thought him inquiring after the time.  Instead, he asked if I could direct him to the nearest pawn shop.  But before I could respond that none of them would be open at this hour, he’d begun relating his family’s situation.  He’d just begun a new job, he explained in a breathless, embarrassed rush; however, payday was 3 days away.  Meanwhile, he said, his voice breaking, the family hadn’t enough cash to cover their temporary accommodations at a nearby motel.  Unless his wristwatch could fetch $20.00 at pawn, they’d be on the street.  It took less than half-a-minute for the man to tell the tale.

I remember that at some point during his embarrassed, tearful monologue, I began digging in my pocket for my car keys, thinking—I’ll admit it!—that I had a legitimate ‘out,’ a way to sidestep the awkward encounter.  You see, I don’t carry my wallet on gym mornings—only my driver’s license and a Starbucks card.  But as I went fishing for my keys that morning, I found something else.  I found a twenty-dollar bill in my pocket—right where I’d ‘lost’ it.

There was nothing grand or magnanimous in what happened next.  Rather, the act of retrieving the money and handing it over to that bereft father was a reflex, automatic—like discovering something in the Lost and Found and handing it over to its rightful owner.  The same as anyone would do.

I don’t rightly recall the father’s response, though I know he called his gratitude after me as I hurried on to my car—something about hope.

I do remember that, sitting in my car in the aftermath, I didn’t feel noble.  I didn’t feel proud or generous or righteous.  Rather, I felt confused, even ashamed—ashamed that I’d considered sidestepping the situation.  But mainly, I felt shaken from my comfort zone.

In retrospect, I know that it’s possible I was scammed, that the man’s tears were part of a carefully rehearsed act.  But I don’t know that it matters—not relative to those few shaky moments following the encounter.  Not in comparison to the realization that twenty dollars could assume such momentous proportions, that a loss I’d dismissed could determine—if only for a day—whether there was shelter or no, whether humiliation would rule or a shred of human dignity be preserved.  Whether hope would be lost or found.

Given the world we live in, I can’t help thinking there is nothing relative or fake about any of that.

Forgotten Future (Photo credit: much0)

Honorable Max Baucus (D-Montana)
Honorable Mark Begich (D-Alaska)
Honorable Heidi Heitkamp (D-North Dakota)
Honorable Mark Pryor (D-Arkansas)
Honorable Marco Rubio (R-Florida)
United States Senate,
Washington, DC

Senators,

I am writing to express my disappointment, indeed, my sorrow, that you could not find the courage to support expanded background checks for gun buyers in yesterday’s Senate vote—even though polls show that 90+% of Americans favor them.  I fear that you and the forty other senators who voted against this sensible measure to reduce gun violence have paved the way for more mass shootings—more Newtowns, more Auroras, more Tucsons, and more Virginia Techs.  Furthermore, I believe that your collective votes have exacerbated the notion that members of Congress are excessively beholden to (and cowed by) the gun industry and its various dependent special interest groups, like the National Rifle Association.  How sad that you have allowed the profit-driven and extremist priorities of these entities to trump the cause of public safety.

Please know that although I am a lifelong Democrat, I will henceforth engage with legitimate political action groups—such as Gabrielle Giffords’ Americans for Responsible Solutions, Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s Mayors Against Illegal Guns, and The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence—toward defeating members of Congress (be they Democrat, Republican, or Independent) who, as today’s New York Times editorial so aptly put it, seem to think that:

“…the carnage at Sandy Hook Elementary School is a forgotten tragedy.  The toll of 270 Americans who are shot every day is not a problem requiring action.  The easy access to guns on the Internet, and the inevitability of the next massacre, is not worth preventing.”

In closing, I can only echo the sentiments of Patricia Maisch, who survived the 2011 mass shooting in Tucson, and shouted her dismay from the gallery after yesterday’s Senate vote; indeed, the outcome of that vote was truly shameful.

Sincerely,

Jack A. Urquhart
Mount Dora, Florida

*****
Dear Blog Readers: You can find contact information for your Congressperson here (U.S. Senate) and here (U.S. House of Representatives).  If you have not already done so, I urge you to contact your Congresspersons and to share with them your beliefs (whatever they are) on gun violence as a vital issue of public safety.

©2013  1100 words

1.  Apopka, Florida 1950-something:  I never know how to begin, so I just blurt it out—say that I want to plant flowers.  My aunt smirks at this, says little boys plant corn and sugarcane.  Maybe cucumbers n’tomatoes.  Manly things.

 She says, Flowers is sissy.  So I’m surprised when Daddy says he will help.

It’s your birthday.  Five years old, he says.

In the backyard, he uses a stick to draw shallow lines in the silver-black Florida soil.  The lines spell out my name in great-big letters. We drop zinnia seeds in, brush the dirt back over.

Daddy says when my flowers bloom, people flying in airplanes will look down and know that A-N-D-Y lives here.

But the flowers don’t thrive.  Weeds and sandspurs choke them out.  Only a few zinnias ever bloom.

Doesn’t matter.  I remember what my Daddy said—about those people in airplanes.

2.  Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania:  I am fourteen years old and so shy that I rarely speak at school; so tall and skinny that it invariably hurts to be noticed.  Which is why I don’t like sitting at the front of the class, exactly where the art teacher has placed me.  This is especially difficult today because a popular tenth-grader is modeling for us.  He is movie star handsome, all quarterback shoulders and track-star legs; a flop of ginger-brown hair curtains his brow, and there isn’t a pimple in sight.

When the teacher leaves the room, the model steps down from his pedestal, approaches me, bends close to examine my charcoal sketch.  His eyes are teardrop shaped, golden, sharded with green splinters.  It is easy to believe him when he says that I have artistic hands, such long eyelashes—when he says, maybe you should be the model.

But all that is nothing—because he wants my sketch.

I keep hearing how talented you are, he says, smiling, placing a coin on my easel.  Here.  This should cover it.

For a moment I imagine how it will be—having a celebrity best friend.  I picture the two of us strolling the school halls together, and how that will feel—like living in a Technicolor movie—the being known, the being close.

But then he steps away, declares loudly for the benefit of the class: twenty-five cents is a lot to pay for a blowjob, but I hear he’s pretty good!  And the movie goes dark, everything back to black and white.

Never mind that I’m not sure what a blowjob is.  I just want the movie to end.

3.  Plymouth, Florida:  I am maybe 9 years old.  My Daddy has just finished polishing our Bel Air station wagon.

He sits on the front stoop smoking a cigarette while my brother and I play tag with Walter McCafferty on the front lawn.

Storm’s blowin’ up any minute, Daddy calls to us kids; and right on cue, a crackle of lightning, a roll of thunder speak truth to power.

You boys come on in now.  It’s dangerous out’n weather like this, he hollers.  And lo and behold, my brother—usually a blond bundle of squalling disobedience—complies.  Lickety-split, he makes for the front stoop where our Daddy is lighting up another smoke.

But not me; not Mister good little born-again Baptist boy.

Today I’m feeling the devil.  Today I’ll show my ass—make a big deal of keeping up the chase, running after Walter McCafferty through the hedgerows and azalea beds.  Until a deafening crash, a stench—like the nose-pinching fumes that come when a TV tube blows—strikes me stock-still.

In a twinkling, blue-white stars are dancing ‘round me in a close orbit, a glittering tutu of constellations; fiery comets too—their bright tales dazzling, fritzing out sparkles.

In a flash it’s over and I make a beeline for my Daddy, who surprises me with a hard slap across the face.

You damn fool! he blurts.  And right away I think about the Bible—how it says in Matthew “whosoever says, ‘Thou fool,’ is in danger of hell fire,” and I wonder if Daddy will get burnt to a crisp by another bolt of lightning.

But here is another shock—my Daddy grabbing me even harder, crushing me against his chest this time.  I don’t know what will happen next, so I concentrate on the smells in his shirt, the one he wears to work.  I make out Argo Starch, sweat, tobacco, and something else.  Something metallic and flinty—like the flux-coated welding rods Daddy uses at work to spark his machines to life.

It is the way I think fear must smell.

Later, splashing around in the bathtub, my brother gives me an Indian burn, says I wasn’t ever struck by lightning.  Claims there weren’t any stars making pirouettes around me, no sparkling comets either.  You always ‘zaggerate, he tells me. Daddy thinks you’re a damn fool.

But I know better.

4.  Apopka, Florida:  I am maybe twelve, worried what it will be like when the family moves to a different state come summertime.  So I do what I always do when I’m afraid.  I read.

This time it’s Hawaii, by James A. Michener.

My mother isn’t happy that I’m reading this book.  That is because she knows there are a lot of people doing racy things on way too many pages—so I wait till everyone is asleep at night, pull the chenille bedspread over my head, read with a flashlight.

My mother is right about how sexy Hawaii is.  There are lots of characters doing things I don’t understand, like prissy Reverend Abner Hale, whom I hate.  But there are also the sailors on Captain Rafer Hoxworth’s ship—sailors who take giggling, Hawaiian native girls to their beds, two and three of them at a time.  I try to imagine what they do tussling under the sheets.  Because Mister Michener isn’t saying—or at least not in ways that make sense to my mind.

What’s scandalous is that my body seems to understand.

But there’s other stuff—stuff that’s more unsettling.  There’s the few pages describing sailormen who do something different; the one or two of them who would rather frolic with the half-naked Hawaiian boys and men who row out to greet the tall ships that come sailing into the Sun-Swept Lagoon.  There’s the sailormen who frolic all night long with their native boyfriends.  And though I’m not sure what they do together, I know that it’s supposed to be—Queer.  Which is why I read into the wee hours hoping to understand.

The next morning, groggy and frightened, I look at myself in the bathroom mirror and think about James A. Michener’s Hawaii.  And those sailormen.  And their native boyfriends.  And I think to myself:  You are like them.  Queer.  That’s what you are.

Decades will pass before that fear abates.  Before I can handle those words.  Before I can speak them.  Out loud.

He runs in circles, a miles-long loop through town, up into the foothills, back to where he started.  As always, he takes the last two hundred meters at an arse-kicking pace—panting, arms pumping, a flat-out sprint.  Running for his life.

Because he is.

Linda has seen to that.

“We can’t go on like this,” is how his wife had gotten him started.  “I’ll give you a week to decide.”

He’d been taken off guard by her appearance in the kitchen at the early hour, by how cold and unruffled she’d seemed.

“I’ve given you fifteen years,” she said.  “I think that’s enough.”

Too late he understood that she’d been waiting for him, waiting to be noticed.

“Enough time to get your priorities—straight,” she’d said.

Impossible to ignore her insertion of the humiliating pause, her stoical smile—as if it were all so sadly funny; that and the emphasis she’d placed on the word.

Straight, indeed.

How like Linda to condense even disaster to a single word.  It had taken all his will power to resist bolting past her down the hall.  Out to the street.

“Seven days,” she reiterated, turning to retrieve a mug from the cupboard.

Like out of a movie, the way she’d played it: the scene where the long-suffering spouse calmly declares, “the jig is up,” and then goes on with an everyday task—pouring coffee, stirring in creamer.

“Where is home?  You’ve got to decide,”  she said pausing to sip.  “Do you sleep here, or with him?”

Again the shadow smile—cool, impassive.  Premeditated.

No mischance either, the way Linda doesn’t name names anymore—the way she reduces the third party in their little triangle to a generic pronoun: Him.

Even her exit line seemed carefully rehearsed.

“If  ‘home’ isn’t here, then there’s nothing for it but to hit the road.”

And so he has—six days running.

Setting off before sunrise, he pushes himself faster, farther each time.  At forty-two, the effort requires fantastical incentives:

If I break under an 8:50 mile, I’ll stay with Linda, he tells himself.  If my last split makes 8:40, it’ll be—Him.

Disaster can be postponed, he had almost convinced himself.

Until this morning.

“What’s going on with Uncle Paul?” his daughter, staging a sneak attack, accosted him.

Inexcusable that he’d not anticipated the encounter, that he’d never thought to find Annie slumped at the kitchen table in the pre-dawn darkness.  Like her mother, she’d been waiting for him—her emphasis on the honorific, Uncle, unmistakable.

“How come he’s stopped coming ‘round?  How come Mom never mentions him anymore?” she asked, studying him closely when he stooped to double knot his running shoes.

The sound of Annie’s voice, splintered ‘round the edges, had shattered the vision of the run unfolding in his head.

“Sometimes I think dead would be better,” she’d blurted while he’d been dashing ‘round for a convincing dodge.  “Better than waiting to see how things’ll turn out.”

Chilblains, like a burst of dread, had gone stippling up his legs, the precursor to cramps crippling his calves, his left foot.  Bolting upright, he’d tried shaking out the knots.  But how to escape anything so fundamental as Annie’s pinched face?

“No, you’re wrong,” he’d answered, clinging to the notion that she was yet a child, barely twelve, still chewing at the frayed ends of her hair, still too self-absorbed to notice anything beyond what registered on her smart phone.  Yet there it was along with the freckles and peek-a-boo bangs—a full-grown despair.  Too much knowing for a little girl.

“It will turn out okay.  I promise,” he’d said.

Such hypocrisy.  Such a fraud of a father, a shambles of a man heading nowhere at a steadily improving pace.  For a moment he’d thought to say so, thought to confess to his daughter how lying alone in his study night after night, he’d been thinking the same as she, wondering if oblivion might be preferable to the shame of being ashamed, to the terrible longing to be somewhere else.  To be with—Him.

He’d almost spoken to unburden himself before thinking how unfair that would be.

Instead, he’d gone running.  And now, in a full sprint, he wonders—to what end?

If I break under the mid nines, Annie will be okay, he tells himself, setting more reasonable odds; 9:40 or better, and she’ll be fine.

It is the last thing he thinks before it is upon him—a calamity three strides removed.

The cyclist, the local paperboy, swerves in front of him from behind a parked car so suddenly that veering toward the curb is unavoidable.  Likewise his stumbling somersaults across the median, his arse-slamming, leg-splaying sidewalk landing.

It is over in a heartbeat.

For a moment, he sits on cold concrete, strangely clear-headed—thinking it would be just as appropriate to laugh as to cry.

But now someone else is making a fuss.

“Jesus-God!  Are you okay?”

The McFarland boy is yelling at him, scrambling up from his bike, tripping over the handlebars, spilling newspapers.

“Oh shit!  Is that you, Mister Courtman?”

Yes, it’s me, he thinks, standing slowly, laughing, brushing the dirt from his knees and elbows, wondering where all the new aches and pains will bloom.

“Christ, Annie’ll kill me if you’re hurt!  Should I go for help?”

“I’m fine,” he answers, testing his footing to be sure.  “Still alive,” he says.

“Then, can I help you make it home, Sir?”

A good kid, the McFarland boy.  All gangling, legs and arms.

“No.  I’ll get there on my own,” he decides, thinking for the first time that he can, that he knows where that is.

“But first, let’s deal with this—mess,” he says, indicating the boy’s papers.  “Get you back in business,” he thinks to add, wondering if that’s really all there is to it?

***

Note: A previous version of this story appeared in Bibliographic Blather, Flash Fiction Fridays, January 20, 2012; web site sponsor, Karen Wojcik Berner.
This story posted in response to WordPress Daily Prompt: Do-Over!  April 9, 2013

This is a decades-old photo of my paternal grandmother.  She was in her early nineties and still living in her Central Florida home.  That’s my daughter Devon she’s holding; I think Dev was about 18 months old at the time.  Grandma’s name was Ada Narcissus Urquhart (nee Lovell).

When I was a child, I used to tease her about that middle name—used to try to impress her with my knowledge of mythology gleaned from the World Book Encyclopedia.

“Careful, Grandma,” I’d caution, sassing up to her while she was filling the washing machine or my plastic play pool.  “There’s your reflection in the water.  You don’t want to fall in and get drownded in a lake of love.”

Thing is, personal vanity was about the last thing my Grandma ever contemplated.

“No danger I’ll go to mooning over this big nose and squinty eyes,” she’d laugh.

I thought her eyes pretty.  They were marble bright, as pale blue as my cleary shooters.

All the same, no lady ever primped less than Grandma.  She never stopped to gaze in mirrors and plate-glass windows.  Had not a bit of use for cosmetics other than the talcum she sprinkled in her terry cloth house slippers.  Didn’t worry about fashion either.  Grandma favored sensible water-resistant shoes with rubber soles and little eyelets in the canvas.  She wore plain housedresses whipped up from a Simplicity pattern on her Singer sewing machine—frocks that hung on her five-foot frame like a sack.

The lady was strictly no frills.

No surprise, then, that Grandma lived in an unpretentious house—the house up on Lake Street that she and Grandpa built from cheap yellow pine.  I’m told it was run down and shabby looking long before I was born.  The two-story structure boasted a tin roof over hand-plastered walls and sagging linoleum floors; every window and wind-slamming door sheathed in rusting screen.  It was a house that smelled of sooty fireplaces where tin-foil clad sweet potatoes were left to roast in the ashes, where the aromas of fried chicken, bacon, biscuits and coffee mingled with the musty scents of mildewed rag rugs and wet dogs.  It was a beautiful, falling-down house.  Ugly as sin.

That didn’t matter a bit to Grandma, who never cared a thing about appearances.

What she cared about was her gardens—the great zinnia beds she cultivated in the spring, her Formosa azaleas and French hydrangeas in whose vicinity my cousins and I were forbidden to play.  She cared about her tomato plants and turnip greens, the pole beans she tended like royalty, guarding them the live long summer against caterpillars and raccoons, against murders of marauding crows.

She cared about her animals—the fat little Shetland collie she kept, replaced several times over the decades and always named ‘Lady’.  She had a warm spot for the ragged-ear tomcats that found shelter and food on her kitchen stoop.

And Grandma cared about preserving the family history.

She was, by the time I came on the scene, the keeper of a trove of familial lore—the one who maintained scrapbooks and journals, photographs and mementos in a beat-up steamer trunk.

On rainy afternoons the past was reborn from that trunk.

Grandma told us stories about her Daddy, my Great Grandpa and namesake, who was the town barber—a man known to everyone as ‘Uncle Jack’ and whose idea of a haircut involved a bowl, a pair of scissors, and a bottle of Bay Rum.  She told how he’d spent the last years of his life boarding with her and Grandpa and my aunts and uncles on Lake Street.  The juiciest stories were about Great Grandpa and his liquor and how in his old age he’d taken to hiding pint bottles of Wild Turkey in the lavatory tank—“the one place where he knew it’d keep nice n’cool against the Florida heat”.

Sometimes the stories were about Grandma’s brother, Cleveland, who died at thirteen from a rupture sustained while chopping wood.  Other times, we heard about a sister, Mattie, born two months early and five minutes after her mama, my Great Grandma, had expired in childbirth.

“Poor motherless Mattie,” Grandma would sigh in recounting the tale. “Had a head so small when she’s born, would fit in a teacup.  Still does,” she’d crack.

Souvenirs came out of the trunk too.

Like the valentine carved from a piece of heartwood by my nine-year-old future father, the words, “I love you Mama” scrawled in faded red paint.  This from the boy become-a-soldier, become-a-father, who by the time I could toddle was a living, breathing sphinx.

“All his soft sentiments went into hiding after his war-time in the Pacific,” Grandma tried to explain—which is perhaps why to this day I remain skeptical of the supposed glories of the battlefield.

Thing is, the stories Grandma pulled from her trunk—they threw open a window to that other softer person who would become my Dad, to all those aunts and uncles and great grandparents that I would never know any other way.  Such wonderful stories.

Listening to them was pure pleasure.

But more to the point of these ramblings, those tales, that way of life, they were Grandma’s familiars, her age-old companions through the rearing of six children, and all the grandkids that came after.  They were how she coped through decades of thick and thin—Grandpa’s long, fatal bout with the big ‘C,’ the scattering of her children to the four winds—right up to her ninety-eighth year.  Which was when she broke her hip, when Ada Narcissus slipped and fell—not while gazing dreamily into a pool, but mopping the kitchen floor.

I was living in Colorado the year Grandma’s surviving children—my aunts and uncles, my father—thought it best she enter a nursing home.  The ‘home’ where an attendant stole the wedding band off her finger while she slept.  The ‘home’ where gradually the world slipped away from Grandma, the names of her children and grandchildren slowly dissolving into generic “Sugars” and “Sweethearts”—perfectly understandable in that environment where nothing must have seemed familiar.

My Grandma died seven months after turning one hundred.  It was 1992 and early spring—just about the time she would have begun preparing her gardens for planting back on Lake Street.  She left me a hand-written journal and a crocheted afghan.  And her stories.

I’ve thought about Ada Narcissus a lot in these three years since returning to Florida—especially now that my mother, who still lives independently nearby, will soon embark upon her ninth decade.  I’ve thought about how important it was for Grandma to keep her routines, about how much she enjoyed puttering around her gardens and that dilapidated house on Lake Street.  Time and again, I’ve reflected on how much Ada Narcissus loved recounting the familial past.

Perhaps that is because sometimes it seems that my mother has begun retelling my Grandma’s story, albeit with notable variations.  And the degree of separation this time is much less.  A generation less.

Nowadays, it’s my mother who’s tending gardens, who’s collecting albums and mementos—boxes of them in every room of a too-large house.  Nowadays it’s Mom who’s telling stories—stories I’ve never heard.

Stories of the maternal Grandma I met only a few times.  Tales of a girl named Vivienne who stole away from the schoolyard at fourteen to marry; a girl who traded her sheltered life for first-time motherhood at sixteen, never guessing that there would be nine more babes to feed in the hard years to follow.

And more.  Again and again, come the stories about my Dad, the minor league baseball player, dead these seventeen years.  Stories about the gifted first baseman who paid for my birth by winning a home run derby.

These are stories that my Mom needs to recount.  I can tell.  As if before she forgets.  As if before it’s too late.  Only now the experience feels different to me.  Now the listening isn’t always such a pleasure.  Because I’m not a kid anymore.  So I know what’s coming.

Because now I worry how I’ll handle it, if it comes to that—making the decisions that affect the customary, comfortable details of another person’s life?

Because now I wonder if I’ve the sense, the good grace to discharge the duty honorably—being the keeper of the familial?  The keeper of that flame.

It’s three years this month (March) since my partner Raymond and I moved to Florida from our former home in the San Francisco Bay Area.  It wasn’t a move either of us sought, but, rather, one that was imposed on us by (mostly economic) necessity.  Nevertheless, we resolved to give my birth state our best shot, and by-and-large, we have.

We settled first in my Central Florida hometown, Apopka—a word that comes from the Timucuan Native American language, and that, roughly translated, means “big potato” or “potato eating place.”  Several months later, we made the move to Mount Dora, a lovely mostly unspoiled town 12 miles north in Lake County.  Since then, there have been lots of good times, as well as some bumpy stretches—some of them pretty scary; but here we are—(still) mostly happy, mostly healthy, and certainly better off than a great deal of the rest of the world.

That said, not a day goes by that Ray and I don’t miss the U.S. West Coast.

So I thought it would be a useful exercise in perspective to document on this blog something of the pros and cons of life here in Florida as I see it—and to accompany those observations with some of the photographs that Ray and I have taken these last three years.  My hope is that this project will help me to achieve a more balanced take on what’s good and beautiful and right under my nose, instead of being forever focused on the things I dislike or wish I could change—instead of habitually yearning for some place else, which, it seems to me, is a great waste of time.

So here goes—my feeble photographic attempt at coming to terms with Florida.

Orange blossoms seem an appropriate place to begin—as their scent frequently wafts into our front yard at this time of year (from a grove a quarter mile away!).  If there’s a heaven, could it possibly harbor a fragrance more divine?

Then there’s the happy, vibrant surprise of springs that sometimes arrive as early as February,

And stretch right through March,

and April.

Of course, not to be ignored are the horrible snakes (sorry, herpetologists), in my garden…

and in Florida’s many lakes.

And we mustn’t forget Florida’s weather, which can be like floating in paradise…

or downright brutal…

rather like living in a steam bath.

But we also have Towers that sing,

and boat shows,

and Street fairs,

and lots of Oldies

but goodies.

Then again, it’s difficult to ignore the nasty political billboards (that sometimes stick around post-election).

And Florida’s increasing ‘renown’ as the “Gunshine State”.

Lord, Lord, everywhere guns.

Yet now and then there’s the magic of waking to the Wonderful Wizard of OZ soaring above our front yard;

or to one of Ray’s roses on the dining room table,

or to the dazzling surprise of a mystery flower blooming amidst the weeds.

There is the gift of a neighbor’s beautiful front yard (flowering in what is for most of the country ‘the dead of winter’),

and the wonder of a mossy green giant that has weathered it all for a century or more.

There is the thrill of visiting the place where a favorite book (The Yearling) was written.

And discovering a derelict mansion in the middle of nowhere (Miss Havisham, are you in there?).

There’s bicycling on a Gulf of Mexico beach (where the sea is almost as warm as bathwater),

and over-the-top small-town Christmases,

and ubiquitous religious proselytizing,

tempered by Spanish architecture

and the delight of discovering a Chapel in a grove of old oaks.

There’s the thrill of introducing our gorgeous grandson to a favorite childhood swimming hole,

and spring sunsets,

and (lucky me), any one of a million things that include this wonderful sleepy-headed guy…

like a good cup of coffee at home (on any blinking day of the year)…

wherever the two of us happen to be.

Even if that’s Florida.

Which isn’t a half-bad home (not that I want to live here forever).

“We left home, married, had children of our own, found the seeds of meanness blooming also within us.”

The foregoing line from “Sticks,” one of the dark (and darkly funny) morality tales in George Saunders’ new story collection, Tenth of December, exemplifies part of what captured and entranced this reader from page one.  I refer to the author’s uncanny ability to articulate the inchoate thoughts and feelings of the human mind, those innumerable little epiphanies that spark and flare and disappear—usually too quickly for most of us to grasp.  Such artistry is a wonder in itself.  But Saunders’ talents are even more wide-ranging—expansive enough, in fact, to envelope his little beacons in stories of spellbinding authority.

Of course, the ability to effect such storytelling wizardry has everything to do with Saunders’ mastery of language.  And such inventive language it is!  Each of the 10 stories in this latest collection unfolds rhythmically on the page, sometimes hip hopping to a broken, irregular beat, other times tripping to a jazzy meter.  Once Saunders enters the mind of his protagonist, the reader encounters whole pages alive with street savvy phrases, with hilarious and darkly imaginative neologisms.  This reader confesses that it was thrilling to witness how the author uses his formidable linguistic skills to conjure insights instantly recognizable, often in sentences powerful enough to bring the reader to a full stop on the page.

The line that opens this review from the collection’s shortest story is an excellent example.

“Sticks”—a little miracle in 387 words—spins a tale from a grown son’s memories of a father so repressed that his sole means of emotional expression was to construct stick figure tableaux on the front lawn.  In just two short paragraphs, Saunders captures a dreadful truth that those of us honest enough to fess up will surely recognize: the fear that our parents’ most onerous sins are deeply seeded within us, waiting to germinate, mature, and bear familiar fruit.

Cast of Characters

It is worth noting that throughout the collection, such insights as this spring from under-achieving minds, for Saunders doesn’t pull geniuses and superstars out of his magic hat.  Rather, he summons a cast of rank amateurs—sometimes outright losers—who put the full, unpolished range of human faults and foolishness on display.  Maybe it is because the author renders most of them with enough compassion to offset their blunderings that the reader wants to follow their stories.  Or maybe we tag along because these are characters who—as in all morality tales—want to be saved, even if they don’t know it; characters who struggle to discern the forces of good from those that are not.

In Saunders’ oeuvre, those forces include the dehumanizing provocations of the modern world.  His protagonists are men and women, boys and girls who rail awkwardly against social injustice and oppression, who struggle with domestic longings, and a pervasive sense of class angst—who do battle with the temptations and false idols of a capitalist culture.

It is no accident, then, that many of Saunders’ characters harbor formidable caches of anger—rage that is sometimes suppressed, other times released in bursts of cruel intolerance and violence.  And yet, it is heartening that now and then their rage is—at the last possible moment—diverted into unexpected acts of mercy and compassion.

“Victory Lap”

In the story, “Victory Lap,” Saunders alternates narrative perspectives between his winners and losers.  First, there is Alison, a popular 14-year-old girl whose aspirations (and self-esteem) soar high above her small-town surroundings.

“The local boys possessed a certain je ne sais quoi, which, tell the truth, she was not très crazy about, such as: actually named their own nuts…Did she consider herself special?  Oh, gosh, she didn’t know.  In the history of the world, many had been more special than her.  Helen Keller had been awesome…”

Next comes Kyle, a scrawny teen whose physical appearance is captured in two short sentences: “Poor thing.  He looked like a skeleton with a mullet.”  Yet behind the dorky exterior lurks a potent fury—one regularly stoked by his sadistically controlling parents and which the teen barely contains via a near constant internal litany of profanities.

“What was wrong with him?  Why couldn’t he be grateful for all that Mom and Dad did for him, instead of— Cornhole the ear-cunt.  Flake-fuck the pale vestige with a proddering dick-knee.”

Even so, there remains a tender spot in Kyle’s simmering heart for his attractive and popular neighbor.

“Kyle’s heart was singing.  He’d always thought that was just a phrase.  Alison was like a national treasure.  In the dictionary under “beauty” there should be a picture of her in that jean skirt.  Although lately she didn’t seem to like him all that much.”

Finally, Saunders delivers an unnamed would-be murderer/rapist, who has, in his twisted imagination, carefully rehearsed the assault he will launch on his intended victim, Alison—right down to the opening lines of the attack.

“He had the speech down cold.  Had practiced it both in his head and on the recorder: Calm your heart, darling, I know you’re scared because you don’t know me yet and didn’t expect this today but give me a chance and you will see we will fly high.  See I am putting the knife right over here and I don’t expect I’ll have to use it, right?”

That the story’s climax is achieved by thwarting one act of violence with another says reams about how individual successes and failures can ameliorate or aggravate a personal sense of shame, feed or destroy our self worth—drive human beings for refuge into daydreams and fantasies that can, and often do, bloom in savagery.

“The Semplica Girl Diaries”
(Note: This review does not reveal the meaning of ‘Semplica Girls’ in order to preserve the story’s sci-fi surprise.)

In the unforgettable “The Semplica Girl Diaries,” Saunders produces a struggling middle-class father (trapped in a bureaucratic wasteland) who makes truncated entries in his journal.  Not surprisingly, his journal chronicles a world of shame, the kind of mortification that springs from not being able to give his children the consumeristic perks their peers enjoy:

“Stood awhile watching, thinking, praying: Lord, give us more.  Give us enough.  Help us not fall behind peers.  Help us not, that is, fall further behind peers.  For kids’ sake.  Do not want them scarred by how far behind we are.”

In another entry the narrator writes that he does “…not really like rich people, as they make us poor people feel dopey and inadequate.  Not that we are poor.  I would say we are middle.  We are very very lucky.  I know that.  But still, it is not right that rich people make us middle people feel dopey and inadequate.”

There is something perversely satisfying and simultaneously uncomfortable about stumbling upon a passage like the preceding.  I say satisfying because Saunders evokes precisely the kind of private reverie we humans, regardless of class status, have all entertained at one time or another; and it is strangely gratifying to discover that we are not alone in our insecurities.  As for discomfort, perhaps that springs from the recognition that our most secret yearnings are sometimes as ridiculous as they are pathetic.

Indeed, often the most arresting moments in Saunders’ stories are accompanied by discomfort.

“Tenth of December”

In the wonderful title story, for instance, which comes last in the collection, the reader encounters two characters whose internal thoughts bespeak such an abiding loneliness as to be embarrassingly familiar.  Familiar, that is, to anyone who in a moment of self-loathing has ever felt herself/himself a hopelessly lost soul.

Saunders identifies the story’s protagonists with a few, deftly worded sentences.  There is the boy, Robin, a chubby outsider “with unfortunate Prince Valiant bangs and cublike mannerisms” whose only friends are imaginary; and the terminally ill Eber, with his “bare white arms sticking out of his p.j. shirt…like an Auschwitz dude or sad confused grandpa.” 

Just as Robin’s description marks him the archetypal outsider, a target for adolescent bullying and ostracism, Eber’s physical depiction fits the mission he has embarked upon—namely, suicide (via hypothermia, of all things), a quest he undertakes to spare his wife Molly the strain of his prolonged illness.

Neither of these defeated characters makes a comfortable story companion.  And yet, once the two cross paths in the wilderness on a freezing winter day, the reader’s empathy begins to swing their way.  Gradually, we begin to care what happens to these oddballs, begin to hope that they will find a way to save each other.  It is a storyline that in less accomplished hands might easily have veered into cliché.  But Saunders steers well clear of trodden territory.  Rather, when he pulls his protagonists back from the brink, it is to make them face life’s harsh realities, its excruciating squalor and heart-rending splendor.

Indeed, the ‘life’ that Saunders envisions for all his protagonists seems always to retain just enough potential for good to make the plodding, painful journey worthwhile—even when ongoing social rejection seems likely, or when death is an imminent certainty.  That is because sometimes—in the midst of chaos, injustice, and the cruelties of birth and chance—the smallest act of generosity, of kindness, of acceptance, can forestall disaster and make a miracle.

Witness this passage from the conclusion of the title story:

“The kid…took Eber’s bloody hand gently.  Said he was sorry.  Sorry for being such a dope in the woods.  Sorry for running off.  He’d just been out of it.  Kind of scared and all.

Listen, Eber said hoarsely.  You did amazing.  You did perfect.  I’m here.  Who did that?

There.  That was something you could do.  The kid maybe felt better now?  He’d given the kid that?  That was a reason.  To stay around.  Wasn’t it?  Can’t console anyone if not around?  Can’t do squat if gone?…

Then: sirens.  Somehow: Molly.

He heard her in the entryway.  Mol, Molly, oh boy.  When they were first married they used to fight.  Say the most insane things.  Afterward, sometimes there would be tears.  Tears in bed?  And then they would— Molly pressing her hot wet face against his hot wet face.  They were sorry, they were saying with their bodies, they were accepting each other back, and that feeling, that feeling of being accepted back again and again, of someone’s affection for you expanding to encompass whatever new flawed thing had just manifested in you, that was the deepest, dearest thing he’d ever—”

Coda

One wonders after reading the 10 interludes in The Tenth of December if the human struggle to achieve salvation is as simple and as complex as Saunders seems to suggest—as facile as a single good and true revelation?  As arduous as discovering amidst the cacophonous, mind-numbing distractions of modern life the deepest, dearest thing?  A thing powerful enough to stop us midthought or midsentence?

Feats of magic that happen with marvelous regularity in these brilliant, heartbreakingly insightful stories.

Lately I have followed with interest, and no small regard, the various “When I was…” posts (also known as “My [insert number]” posts) that have been showing up on social media sites.  For those unfamiliar with these posts, they typically offer a biographical snap-shot of the author at a specific point in time, say at age 21, or 39, or 85, etc.  In most cases, the number explored (i.e., the specific age) is suggested by one author to another.

In every instance, I’ve admired the author’s courage in these mini bios, the sometimes brutal honesty evident in their retrospective self-assessments.  Each of the posts I’ve read has seemed a liberating endeavor, and, unless I’ve mistaken the prevailing tone in them, a cathartic one as well—so much so that I decided to give the exercise a try.

My number—or rather, the ‘age’ I’ve decided to explore—is self-selected, I should point out.  That is because, from jump street, I knew it would have to be 48—a milestone (in every sense of the word) I achieved in 1996.  Nothing else, I knew, would do for this project save my forty-eighth year.  So, to begin:

By 1996 I had been living in Colorado for nearly 18 years and was eking out a living as an adjunct instructor of rhetoric at the University of Colorado, Boulder (C.U.).  Barely two years divorced and out of the proverbial closet, I had endured over the previous many months the loss of a much-loved best friend, who as it happened was also my former wife, the forfeiture of our Boulder home, and, worst of all, the removal of my teenage children and ex-wife to another state.  Come ‘96, I was—at the scandalously tardy age of 48—a self-acknowledged homosexual (finally) and, for the first time in decades, desperately alone.

It didn’t help, of course, that I compared myself unfavorably to every male on the planet, or at least to those closest at hand—none more than Drew (not his real name), the man who had been my next-door neighbor during the last years of my heterosexual married life.

Drew was one of those gifted men who seemed predestined for success.  Certainly he was blessed with good looks, and though younger than I, more successful professionally than my lack of ambition would ever permit.  And he was positively, gloriously straight, not to mention happily married.  In fact, Drew seemed more effortlessly heterosexual than I had ever managed to mime in forty-odd years of concentrated effort.  For three of those years, I had observed Drew’s manly perfection across the dilapidated fence that separated my weedy backyard from his manicured, private Eden—all while experiencing the gradual failure of my marriage.

In short, I began my 48^th year a bit of a mess, a man lacking in the assets that seemed to matter most in my new out-of-the-closet environment. That is because, to borrow from Ms. Austen, “it is a truth universally acknowledged,” or so it appeared to me at the time, that quite a few gay men were in search of the B-Y-B; be it the quest for a casual hookup or a life partner, Beauty, Youth, and (financial) Bounty seemed the prevailing currencies—which meant that I was pretty much broke.  Barring a winning lottery ticket and/or the beneficence of a whiz-bang plastic surgeon, I couldn’t hope that my paltry “charms and allurements” would count for much in the market place.

Yet as gloomy as that sounds, I can truthfully say that even in the darkest days of that Rocky Mountain season, I remember knowing—a word I don’t use lightly here—that I would not remain solo, that despite a late start at more truthful living, I was bound to be partnered, meant to share my life, and that I would—absolutely would—find a good man.

To that end, I applied myself with perhaps more ambition and determination than at any time previous or since.  It was difficult work.  But I exerted myself.  I moved into temporary housing in another part of town and entered therapy.  An empathetic psychologist provided a short-term prescription for Prozac that helped to flatten my highs and lows (of which there were many).  With his encouragement, I made some changes: I cut off my passé Robert Plant-esque locks and upped the ante at the gym toward adding some little substance to my scrawny frame.  On the professional front, a C.U. colleague and I broke tentative new ground by collaborating on the design and instruction of a writing course entitled “Representations of Gays in the Media” that quickly filled to waitlist status.  Volunteer work at the Boulder County AIDS Project provided a more thorough awareness of the issues facing the gay community and offered the unexpected benefit of new friends.

And, risking the market place, I went looking for love.

With that goal in mind, I joined a local gay men’s social group—Mature Gay Men (MGM)—that held monthly potlucks in various locations around Boulder County.  It was a decision that, on a spring afternoon, led to one of happiest events of my 48^th year.  All these years later, I still recall the magic of the day.

It was mild enough that May for outdoor gatherings even in the foothills of Boulder County where a late spring snow is not all that uncommon.  On the afternoon in question, the potluck was held at a private home that boasted a lovely Japanese garden.  Rick, the man who would shortly become my first long-term lover, accompanied me.  A total sweetheart, he was the kind of guy who made it his business to facilitate a newbie’s entrance into the strange new world of out-and-proud gay men.  To wit, as we eased our way through the crowd toward the reception table that afternoon, he devoted himself to making introductions—so many introductions that by the time we approached the table, my head was spinning with a bewildering array of new names and faces.  Perhaps you can imagine, then, the degree of shock, and, yes, confusion that flooded my senses when the handsome man at the table turning to greet me presented a familiar face.

As you’ve probably guessed, it was Drew.  And, no, I’m not making this up.  It really happened.  There he was in the flesh, my idol and my nemesis, only recently divorced himself it turned out, yet already in possession of a beautiful, young boyfriend  (B-Y-B scoffers, I rest my case!).  But the biggest eye-opener of the encounter was that Drew seemed every bit as surprised as I.

I don’t remember the substance of our conversation that afternoon, the things we said to each other, what expressions of astonishment we might have exchanged.  But I do remember our matching ear-to-ear grins, Drew’s and mine—as if we’d both received an unexpected, totally awesome gift.  And I remember feeling that something tremendously heartening had happened; something that seemed to bridge the gap between the rest of the world and me.  A sense of community, I think it was.  And happiness at the wonder of being alive and connected in ways previously unimagined.

Such intensity of feeling never lasts, of course.  But that doesn’t diminish the magic or the value of those oh-so rare moments.

In the months that followed, I clung to the memory of the rapport I’d felt that May afternoon—held on to it for dear life as I made a fledgling start at coupledom with Rick.  I was still 48 when we took an apartment together, bought furniture, gave and attended parties, played hosts to my children when they visited.  And though our union didn’t last, it was nevertheless lovely and sad, encouraging and disappointing in the way that most relationships are bound to be.  And oh-so worth it.  Because it strengthened my confidence, my resolve.

Our time together, Rick’s and mine, proved that I could—even at all of 48—start anew; that I could forge a meaningful relationship, give and receive love, and do so in a manner that was appropriately fulfilling.  And, as much as that is ever possible with us human beings, truthful.

1. The total number of nonmilitary firearms in the United States as of 2009 was:

a. 100 million
b. 150 million
c. 310 million
d. 500 million

2. True/False: The U.S. ranks number 1 in the world in per capita gun ownership at 90 guns per 100 people.

3. True/False: Per capita gun ownership in Mexico is 15 guns per 100 people.

4. The U.S., with 4.5 percent of the world population, owns about what percent of the planet’s civilian firearms?

a. 10%
b. 15%
c. 25%
d. 40%

5. According to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, what U.S. State has the most guns per capita?

a. Utah
b. Montana
c. Kentucky
d. West Virginia

6. According to The U.S. Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, what U.S. State boasts the highest number of concealed weapons permits?

a. Pennsylvania
b. Georgia
c. Florida
d. Texas

7. Which of the following retailers boasts the most establishments in the U.S. (as of 2011)?

a. Grocery Stores
b. Walmart Stores
c. McDonald’s Restaurants
d. Gun Dealers

8. The Small Arms Survey, an independent research project based in Geneva, noted that of 28 countries surveyed for its 2011 report on civilian firearm possession, only two consider civilian ownership of a firearm a basic right. They are:

a. U.S. and Australia
b. U.S. and Yemen.
c. U.S. and Israel
d. U.S. and Colombia

9. Since 2010, Ruger and Smith & Wesson – the two biggest U.S. publicly traded gun makers – have enjoyed a stock market value increase of:

a. 150%
b. 100%
c. 90%
d. 50%

10. What chain retailer is the biggest seller of firearms and ammunition in the U.S.?

a. Kmart
b. Sears
c. Walmart
d. Target

11. The National Rifle Association was first chartered in 1871 in what U.S. State?

a. Texas
b. Pennsylvania
c. New York
d. Tennessee

12. The Original Mission of the National Rifle Association (N.R.A.) was:

a. To promote gun ownership
b. Promote marksmanship and hunting safety
c. Protect gun manufacturers
d. Provide gun training to post American Civil War Union Army Soldiers

13. The N.R.A.-backed Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, passed by Congress in 2005, was designed to:

a. Reduce Federal taxes on gun manufacturers
b. Shield gun manufacturers from lawsuits filed by victims of gun violence
c. Allow gun manufacturers to contribute funds to Political Action Committees
d. Allow gun manufacturers to establish limited monopolies in certain states

14. Which organization spent the most dollars lobbying Congress in 2012?

a. Mayors Against Illegal Guns (pro-gun control)
b. The Brady Campaign (pro-gun control)
c. National Rifle Association (anti-gun control)
d. Gun Owners of America (anti-gun control)

15. Match the office holder to his Annual Salary.

• Barack Obama, President of the U.S.                                             a.  $970,000
• Wayne LaPierre, CEO/V.P. N.R.A.                                                 b.  $223,500
• Hon. John Roberts, Chief Justice of the U.S.                                c.  $666,000+
• Chris W. Cox, Executive Director, N.R.A. Lobbying Efforts       d. $400,000

16. True/False: In an average year, guns are used to murder more than 9,500 people in the United States.

17. True/False: About 5,900 American troops have died in Afghanistan and Iraq during the past 10 years.

18. Japan, Germany, England, Wales and Canada have a combined population of 305 million people. In an average year, the combined total number of gun deaths in these countries is:

a. 2600 people
b. 1200 people
c. 450 people
d. 250 people

19. The number of gun-related homicides in Chicago, Illinois, in 2012 was:

a. 97
b. 129
c. 374
d. 435

20. On January 8, 2011, Jared Lee Loughner shot U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords and eighteen others (six fatally). Loughner used a Glock 19 handgun with a high-capacity ammunition magazine. The high-capacity magazine made it possible to fire how many bullets in 15 seconds?

a. 30+ bullets
b. 20 bullets
c. 15  bullets
d. 10 bullets

21. How many states ban large capacity magazines capable of firing more than 10 rounds?

a. 42
b. 18
c. 10
d. 5

22. According to Labor Bureau figures, the annual cost of putting an armed guard in each of the United States’ roughly 98,000 public schools would be:

a. $500 million
b. $1.75 billion
c. $2.5 billion
d. $3.3 billion

23. Hollow point bullets, which feature a dimple on the point of the bullet:

a. Are illegal in the U.S.
b. Can’t be purchased online in the U.S.
c. Expand on impact like an umbrella to produce extra wound channels
d. Are purchased in huge quantities by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security

24. True/False: The Geneva Convention prohibits the use of hollow point bullets on the battlefield in time of war.

25. The number of children and teens killed by guns in the U.S. in 2008 and 2009 was:

a. 5740
b. 5013
c. 3250
d. 2517

26. Bonus: In Japan, the number of guns per 100 people is:

a. 47
b. 20
c. 10
d. less than 1 gun per 100 people.

Answer Key:
1. c. 310 million (source: Point, Click, Fire: An Investigation of Illegal Online Gun Sales)
2. True; comparison: Switzerland is #2 in the world at 47 guns per 100 people (source: International Small Arms Survey )
3. True (source: same as #2 above)
4. d. 40% (source: Huffington Post, Dr. Garen Wintemute, of the University of California, Davis, Medical Center  )
5. c. Kentucky; comparison: Utah is #2; Montana is #3 (source: FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System )
6. c. Florida (1 million permits by close of 2012) (source: U.S. Government Accountability Office )
7. d. Gun dealers, 129,817; comparison: number of gas stations in the U.S. in 2011, 143,839 (source: ABC News  )
8. b. The U.S. and Yemen (source: The Small Arms Survey )
9. a. 150% (source: Forbes )
10. c. Walmart (source: 2008 Fortune Global 500 )
11. c. New York (source: Wikipedia )
12. d. Provide Gun training to Union Army Soldiers (source: same as #11)
13. b. Shield gun manufacturers from lawsuits (source: Huffington Post )
14. c. N.R.A. $2,905,000; comparison: Mayors Against Illegal Guns spent $200,000 (source: Republic Report )
15. Barack Obama ->            d. $400,000 (2013)
Wayne LaPierre ->                a. $970,000 (2012)
Hon. John Roberts ->           b. $223,500 (2013)
Chris W. Cox ->                       c. $666,000+ (2012)
(source: Forbes  AND About.com )
16. True (source: Huffington Post )
17. True (source: same as #16)
18. c.  450 (source: same as #16 )
19. d. 435  (source: Washington Monthly)
20. a. 30+ (source: same as #16)
21. d. 5  California, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Massachusetts, New York (source: Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence )
22. d. $3.3 billion (source: New York Daily News )
23. c & d (source: Examiner.com )
24. True (source: same as #23)
25. a. 5740 (source: Children’s Defense Fund )
26. Bonus: d. less than 1 gun per 100 people (source: International Small Arms Survey)

Bonus Question.  Can you identify this youthful photograph of a 19^th century literary giant?  

Is it…

A.  Victor Hugo
B.  Gustave Flaubert
C.  Leo Tolstoy
D.  Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Answer Key:

1. D (Naguib Mahfouz; won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1988)
2. B (Nathaniel Hawthorne)
3. A (John Steinbeck; “Lifeboat” 1944 for Hitchcock and “Viva Zapata!” 1952 for Kazan)
4. F (Gustave Flaubert) Note: Oscar Wilde changed his name to “Sebastian Melmoth” in 1897; Joseph Conrad was born Teodor Josef Konrad Korzeniowski in 1857; Lewis Carroll was born Charles Lutwidge Dodgson in 1832; George Eliot was born Mary Ann Evans in 1819; Voltaire was born Francois Marie Arouet in 1694
5. A (Lewis Carroll; An early entry in Carroll’s diary anticipated the game as early as 1880.  The entry notes that, ‘A game might be made of letters, to be moved about on a chess-board till they form words.’  On New Year’s Day in 1895 Carroll wrote to Winnifred Hawke and told her of a game of his own invention which is very similar to SCRABBLE®)
6. C (Lewis Carroll.  In his 1996 book, Jack the Ripper, Light-Hearted Friend, Richard Wallace proposed a theory that British author Lewis Carroll and his colleague Thomas Vere Bayne were responsible for the Jack the Ripper murders.)
7. D (Glossophobia–also known as Peiraphobia–fear of public speaking)
8. A (Agatha Christie)
9. D (Robert Frost; deployed to the Soviet Union by President John F. Kennedy in 1962)
10. A (Allen Ginsberg; In June 1949, Ginsberg was arrested as an accessory to crimes carried out by friends, who had stored stolen goods in his apartment.  Ginsberg entered a plea of psychological disability and was admitted to the Columbia Presbyterian Psychiatric Institute.)
11. B (Hilda [H.D.] Doolittle; H.D. was Freud’s patient during the 1930s)
12. A (Maya Angelou)
13. C (Joyce Carol Oates)
14. B (Hilary Mantel for Wolf Hall, 2009 and Bring Up the Bodies, 2012 )
15. A (Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette; her novel Gigi became the musical of the same name; And D (George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion became “My Fair Lady”)
16. A (George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron, later George Gordon Noel, 6th Baron Byron)
17. A (Jonathan Franzen; The Question cites Rule no. 4 on Franzen’s list)
18. D (James Joyce; question references Joyce’s first book, Dubliners)
19. C (Oliver Goldsmith; The anonymously authored, The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes, a children’s story, was published by the John Newbery Company in London in 1765.  The story was later attributed to the Irish author Oliver Goldsmith, though this has been disputed.)
20. A (Irène Némirovsky for Suite française) And B (Anne Frank  for Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl)

Bonus:  C (Leo Tolstoy, 1848, age 20)

Scoring Table:
15 to 21 correct: Picayune Pundit
8 to 14 correct: Picayune Proficient
5 to   7 correct: Picayune Pedestrian (Read more Wikipedia)
4 to  0 correct: Picayune Pitiful (Consult USA Today, FOX News)