Southern Bookman

Cecelia Watson's ode to the semicolon

Cecelia Watson's "Semicolon: The Past, Present and Future of a Misunderstood Mark" moves from a brief history of the pesky punctuation mark to a call for liberty from restrictive grammar rules.

White and Strunk's "The Elements of Style" probably has crippled more writers than encouraged them. Subverting the tyranny of usage guardians, Watson calls for writing creativity, especially in the application of semicolons.

A professor at Bard College, Watson doesn't support complete anarchy. She believes in an understanding of grammar, without allowing a slavish adherence to stifle writing.

Watson gives examples of excellent writers who have imaginatively used the semicolon beyond its common role of separating two interdependent complete statements. Passages from Shakespeare, Irvine Welsh, Rebecca Solnit and Raymond Chandler illustrate how semicolon flexibility enhances writing.

The punctuation mark, invented by the Italian scholar and printer Aldus Manutius the Elder in 1494, is shown as an essential writing tool.

She doesn't mention Saul Bellow, but I thought of his liberation from language strictures in "The Adventures of Augie March." A look at the novel's celebrated first paragraph reveals how Bellow's semicolons boost his writing.

Watson's small book, with lovely woodcut illustrations, raises enthralling questions about the philosophy of writing. Grammar purists will warn that she's opening the gates to increased language promiscuity, but her own work shows the effectiveness of elegant English.

Her treatise ends by skewering David Foster Wallace's admonition to students to conform to the standard English dialect.

I'm not sure how far she would go in allowing freedom from spelling and grammar rules. I suspect she would oppose complete abandonment of grammatical norms. However, she speaks for the value of speech outside of narrow syntactical channels. Her thorough historical analysis of how those rules developed points to their arbitrariness.

In Watson's viewpoint, semicolon mastery is a hallmark of vivid writing. Those who might think of her book as a dull pedantic exercise will discover a witty, expansive work touching upon history, philosophy, literary criticism and personal reflections. Her footnotes are like jewels in a stream.

All hail the semicolon; Watson seeks to free the funny-looking mark, and writers' thoughts. Already, I'm throwing semicolons around like doubloons from a Mardi Gras float. I don't fear the language police.

 

Farewell, Don Larsen

The New York Times on Friday ran a panoramic black and white photograph showing the Yankee Stadium scoreboard at the end of Don Larsen's perfect game in the 1956 World Series.

There's an ad for Ballantine beer, and a notice that the New York football Giants would play the Steelers in a few days at the old stadium. The Brooklyn Dodgers lineup flashes in electric lights: Gilliam, Reese, Snider, Robinson, Hodges, Campanella, Erskine. All have zeros in the hits column.

Larsen, who died Monday at age 90 of cancer, achieved perfection on Oct. 8, 1956. A mediocre pitcher through the rest of his career, Larsen on that sun-splashed autumn afternoon pitched the only perfect game in World Series history. Larsen threw without a windup. After the game, he said he found himself with perfect control, as if touched by magic.

The Times in its appreciation of Larsen also reprinted ace sportswriter John Drebinger's account of the game, "27 Up and 27 Down," and the famous picture of Yogi Berra in his catching gear leaping into Larsen's arms when it was over. Berra called Larsen's pitches, and wasn't shaken off.

As with other great days of old-time baseball, Larsen's masterpiece comes to us like an epic. Brooklyn pitcher Sal "The Barber" Maglie gave up only two runs, one of them a home run to Mickey Mantle. Legendary names also filled the Yankees lineup: Billy Martin, Enos "Country" Slaughter, Gil McDougald. Walter Alston, who would also pilot the Dodgers when they moved to Los Angeles three years later, managed Brooklyn's team, and Casey Stengel was the Yankees skipper.

A nearly complete TV tape of the game, announced by the Yankees' Mel Allen and the Dodgers' young Vin Scully, shows the precision and fast pace of baseball back in the day, as detailed in an earlier Southern Bookman article.

Larsen pitched for the old St. Louis Browns, lost 24 games in a season when that woeful franchise moved to Baltimore, and finished with a career record of 81-91. None of that matters. For two hours and six minutes, he was touched with perfection, every inch a Yankee.

 

Battle of the Bulge anniversary recalls book I read in childhood

The 75th anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge this week brought back memories of one of my favorite childhood books, a history of the World War II battle in which 19,000 Americans lost their lives.

On Dec. 16, 1944, Hitler launched a surprise attack against Allied forces through the Ardennes Forest. His desperate final attempt to win the war almost succeeded, except for the bravery of American soldiers.

The German advance, planned to capture the port of Antwerp and split the Allied army, formed a bulge that gave the battle its name. After the initial German success, the Allies counterattacked, pushing back the Nazi forces and winning the battle on Jan. 25, 1945.

As a boy, I read over and over again the massive Battle of the Bulge book, thrilled by the maps, photographs and accounts of American heroism such as the 101st Airborne's defiant defense of Bastogne.

The American soldier's individual heroism won the battle. As Paul Fussell said in his World War II memoir, "The Boys Crusade: The American Infantry in Northwestern Europe, 1944-1945," the American men cut off from their comrades displayed courage and personal initiative fostered by American democracy. On the other side, the Germans showed the drawbacks of their regimented society.

The book, one of the the first written about the battle, was one of my parents' Book of the Month Club selections. "The Bulge" sat unread on the shelves in our den for months, until one day I pulled it down and found myself fascinated. It was the first "adult" book I read. I still loved the Hardy Boys, Chip Hilton and a series of biographies for young readers, but the Battle of the Bulge history began my lifetime of "serious" reading.

I wish I still had the book, but it's been lost through the years. Nor could I remember who wrote it. Internet research revealed that the book was likely John Toland's "Battle: The Story of the Bulge," published in 1959, when I was 8 years old.

At least I have my father's hardcover edition of John Dos Passos' "USA Trilogy," and many of my Hardy Boys books. Perhaps one day I'll find a copy of Toland's book to join them.

 

Season's greetings: More bad news on climate change

As the Christmas lights grow more opulent and ubiquitous commercials hawk gas-guzzling autos as gifts, alarming climate change reports mount.

Despite an impassioned plea by Greta Thunberg, Time magazine's Person of the Year and  Donald Trump irritant, the UN's COP 25 conference in Madrid collapsed, torpedoed by the United States, Brazil and Australia. The conference's purpose was to reaffirm carbon-reduction goals set by each country in the 2016 Paris agreement.

New York magazine writer and "Uninhabitable Earth" author David Wallace-Wells in a report on the failed UN conference outlines the folly of Australia denying climate change as wildfires burn, droughts grow worse and coral reefs die.

Trump has pulled the United States from the treaty, making the U.S. the only country refusing to make a commitment to cut carbon emissions. But no country has taken significant action to meet its carbon reduction goals.

Carbon output rose to an all-time high in 2019, breaking the record set in 2018, according to reports.

In a ray of good news, the global increase in fossil fuel emissions fell to 0.2 percent, after a 2 percent rise in 2018, Scientific American said. The reduction came from a 10 percent reduction in U.S. coal use, despite the Trump administration's campaign to revive the coal industry. Much of Europe also had a similar reduction in coal burning, the magazine reported.

But India and China boosted its coal dependency. A rise in natural gas usage also played a part in the emissions increase, although the fuel emits less carbon than coal.

Another message in this season of bad tidings: The ocean off the coast of California is turning acidic much faster than other ocean areas. That's a death knell for the spiny lobster, the market squid, the Dungeness crab, The New York Times reported. Hear the sea lions honking?

As the oceans absorb more carbon dioxide, they are turning more acidic, with the process going faster off the coast of California. And one more ominous report found that the oceans' oxygen levels are declining, raising the threat to sealife, not to mention our own.

Tidings of comfort and joy? Arctic melting accelerates. Greenland's ice disappears, raising sea levels. Soon the carol will be "'I'm dreaming of a white Greenland, just like the one I used to know."

We keep ignoring those urgent wake-up calls.

Still, we must hope, as the Christmas carols say.

 

Boris Johnson victory puts Britain on ominous path

The London Review of Books in midsummer published a crepuscular cover bearing the headline, "The sun sets on Britain."

I thought of LRB editor Mary Kay Wilmers' verdict  on Boris Johnson's ascendancy and the Brexit morass when I read about Johnson's astounding victory Friday in the British election.

From reading commentary in the LRB and other publications, I thought Johnson would win a small legislative majority, not enough to remove Britain from the European Union. Despite his vast unpopularity, Labor leader Jeremy Corbyn figured to show enough strength to keep Johnson hemmed in.

But Corbyn, who failed to answer charges of anti-Semitism against his party, even lost Labor strongholds thought impregnable. Voters rejected Corbyn's massive plan to raise taxes and spending for a banquet of social services.

In Britain, the right wing is blue and the left wing red on electoral maps. Johnson has turned Britain purple.

A Labor win would have brought another Brexit referendum. Despite recent demonstrations in favor of a new Brexit vote, the public overwhelmingly stated it wants no more elections.

Along with the LRB cover, the surprising results brought back the old Beatles songs "Penny Lane" and "When I'm 64."  The small middle class British characters depicted by Paul McCartney's songs are the type who support Brexit, and voted for Johnson. I can almost hear them singing, "we can rent a cottage in the Isle of Wight, if it's not too dear."

Now, Scotland might gain its independence. British will go it alone, if not purchased by Trump, or made an American state.

Brexit opponents like the LRB see economic apocalypse for Britain. If the ominous scenario comes true, the small nation likely will sink into further decline.

As James Wood wrote in the same LRB issue with the funereal cover, Johnson is one of the Eton old boys who mourn the lost empire and believe Britain can rise again to an international power. He and his Tory colleagues sold the electorate on those illusions.

"The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime," British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey said as Britain headed into World War I. A little over 100 years later, the lights flicker across England.

 

 

 

 

Harper's writer Wes Enzinna offers personal view of housing crisis in San Francisco and Oakland

Wes Enzinna's "Gimme Shelter: The Cost of Living in the Bay Area" gives harrowing personal testimony about the housing crisis in San Francisco and Oakland.

Enzinna's article in the current Harper's tells how he found himself living in a tiny back-yard shack without electricity or running water although he had what was once considered a middle-class job as a magazine editor.

Connecting the housing crisis to the Ghost Ship warehouse fire in which 36 people were killed in December 2016, Enzinna through his personal experience illuminates the broader issues of gentrification, homelessness and wealth disparity.

After subsisting in the shack for a couple of years, Enzinna decides to try to live in a small apartment in even more expensive San Francisco. He falls in love with San Francisco's charm and beauty, but his exorbitant rent forces him to leave.

The disturbing article reads like a futuristic dystopian novel, but the crisis is real and happening now. A new society of barbarity and inequality is already entrenched in the Bay Area and other major metropolitan areas, while the country's interior is decimated economically.

A Brookings Institution report recently found that San Francisco and Silicon Valley lead the nation in the creation of "innovation jobs." The study failed to note that the influx of high-tech positions is killing the California cities.

Remembering John Lennon

The 39th anniversary of John Lennon's murder passed without much fanfare.

On the night of Dec. 8, 1980, Lennon was returning with his wife, Yoko Ono, to their home at the Dakota Apartments in New York City when Lennon was shot four times in the back by Mark David Chapman. The seriously wounded musician was rushed to Roosevelt Hospital, where he was pronounced dead on arrival. The news was first broadcast to a shocked nation by Howard Cosell during a Monday night football game between the Patriots and the Dolphins.

Mark Strong, my friend and colleague at the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer, and I put out a newspaper special section honoring the former co-leader of the Beatles who stirred controversy with his and Yoko's political activism supporting world peace. Ledger-Enquirer advertising and circulation execs objected to us giving such attention to Lennon in a conservative small Southern city, but our executive editor, the legendary Glenn Vaughn, never uttered a word. If I recall correctly, the special section was a big seller.

Looking back, I'm amazed at how much Lennon meant to me and others of our generation. My late friend Loftin and I loved Lennon intensely. We liked Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr, but we saw Lennon, along with Bob Dylan, as the true voices of our generation.

We waited breathlessly for each new Beatles album to arrive from England, always at this time of year. After the band's earth-shaking early pop hits, mainly co-written by Lennon and McCartney, the two began diverging into writing separate songs on ever more ambitious albums like "Rubber Soul," "Revolver" and "Sgt. Pepper." Their partnership still shone with brilliance on collaborations like "A Day in the Life," which memorably ended "Sgt. Pepper." Lennon's work turned edgier and more mystical, while McCartney remained more pop-oriented.

While many Beatles fans opposed Lennon's marriage to Yoko, we enjoyed her collaborations with him. We remained enthralled by Lennon's solo career after he broke with the Beatles. Lennon's political activism was a big influence on our worldview. He joined Joe Namath and Muhammad Ali as my main anti-establishment heroes.

A lot of Lennon's antics look silly now. But I will always keep a flame burning for him in my heart. When I hear songs like "Norwegian Wood," "I'm So Tired," "Come Together,"  and "Imagine," I'm transported to my youth.

Baton Rouge's Confederate soldier statue housed at Old State Capitol

With all of the controversy over the removal of Confederate monuments across the South, I wondered what had happened to the statue of the Rebel soldier that stood for years in downtown Baton Rouge.

A Thanksgiving-weekend visit to Louisiana's Old State Capitol solved the mystery. The generic "silent sentinel," installed in 1886 to honor soldiers from East and West Baton Rouge parishes killed during the Civil War, resides in the Old State Capitol's history museum. 

The museum display includes information cards giving historical context about how such Confederate monuments were placed across the South at the end of Reconstruction to mark the restoration of white rule and to honor the South's "lost cause."

Baton Rouge's Confederate soldier was removed with little or no opposition, according to a 2016 article by Walter Pierce in the Lafayette Independent. The Acadiana city for several years has debated taking down a statue of Confederate Gen. Alfred Mouton. But The Baton Rouge Advocate didn't even publish a story on the moving of the Baton Rouge statue.

That was before the taking down of the Robert E. Lee statue in New Orleans, the Charlottesville violence in which a young woman was killed, and the toppling of "Silent Sam" at the University of North Carolina.

Kudos to my hometown for unobtrusively placing the Confederate statue in its proper place in a museum. The change came in the wake of the Town Square development on North Boulevard. The square within sight of the Old State Capitol is a popular spot for festivals and concerts.

Other Confederate memorials have been removed in Baton Rouge without opposition. A few years ago, LSU changed Raphael Semmes Road, named for the Confederate admiral and blockade runner, to Veterans Drive. Kirby Smith Hall, a monstrous dorm named for the last Confederate general to surrender, will be torn down.

Robert E. Lee High, my alma mater, is now just Lee High, and its teams are known as the Patriots, not the Rebels.

But LSU's Beauregard Hall, named for P.G.T Beauregard, remains. Roadways in Baton Rouge's Southdowns section called Stuart, Hood, Pickett and Lee likely will stay the same.

And LSU will never consider changing the name of its athletic teams from Tigers, honoring the Louisiana soldiers who fought with Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee and came close to overwhelming the Union army on Cemetery Hill on Gettysburg's second day. LSU's teams will be the Tigers for evermore.

 

 

 

 

Louisiana's Old State Capitol registers state's tragic history

The spiral staircase and stained glass dome at Louisiana's Old State Capitol in Baton Rouge are astonishing monuments to a vanished society's sense of elegance and beauty.

They are also vestiges of an era of racial violence and repression. The white ruling class that regained control of Louisiana after Reconstruction built the imposing structures as symbols of its dominance.

The Old State Capitol traces the state's tormented political history like sedimentary rock. Abandoned for years, the Neo-Gothic structure has kept watch over the Mississippi River for nearly 175 years. Baton Rouge's history is registered through carved wood, polished floors, golden chandeliers and resplendent windows.

Exhibits and furnishings trace the state's agonized path from the Antebellum period through the Civil War and Reconstruction, the restoration of white rule and the tragic usurpation of blacks' civil rights, and the reign of Huey Long.

Along with impressive exhibits, the building considered a monstrosity by Mark Twain preserves the old legislative chambers and offices where political deals were consummated. A beautiful stained glass window graces the House's side, which looks ready for business. The Senate chamber, decorated with a glorious Christmas tree after Thanksgiving, is a favorite spot for weddings. A bride's room has been established where lobbyists once cajoled legislators.

Originally designed by New York architect James H. Dakin, the building resembling a medieval castle opened in 1845. During the Civil War, Union troops occupying Baton Rouge set fires that destroyed the interior. When Union forces gained control of Baton Rouge, the state capital moved to Opelousas and Shreveport, where the Confederacy made its last stand.

After a brief spell of Republican rule during Reconstruction, which saw the election of black officials including Gov. P.B.S. Pinchback, the Bourbon planters and merchants regained white control with the Louisiana Constitution of 1879. Baton Rouge was restored as the state capital, and the Legislature allocated $153,000 to realize architect William Freret's vision of adding the staircase, dome and towers. The renovated building opened in 1884.

In the next decade, the Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court case that originated in New Orleans would cement white rule with the ignominious "separate but equal" standard. Belying the dome's serene beauty, Louisiana imposed white power enforced by lynchings and barriers to blacks' voting.

Depression-devastated Louisiana turned to Huey Long, who gave the state new roads, schools and hospitals. Long, who broke the Bourbons' power, built the soaring new state Capitol on the other side of downtown Baton Rouge from 1929-32.

Before the state government moved to the art-deco edifice where "the Kingfish" was later assassinated, the State Senate tried and failed to impeach Long in the last political drama played out at the Old State Capitol. Long gleefully referred in political speeches to his clinching victory over the Bourbons. The Old State Capitol's intensive exhibit on Long's career includes recordings of his orations as the melody of Long's anthem "Every Man a King" plays in the background.

The memorable Civil War diarist Sarah Morgan Dawson is also remembered at the Old State Capitol in an entertaining multimedia theatrical production "The Ghost of the Castle." Like the more heralded Mary Boykin Chestnut's diary, Dawson's work gives an absorbing eyewitness account of daily life in the Confederacy. Written from March 1862 until April 1865, Dawson's diary records the deprivations suffered by Southern women under Union occupation.

Like its staircase and dome, the Old State Capitol glorifies Louisiana's history. But the state's tragic and violence-stained past comes through. The Old State Capitol, like the river it overlooks, endures through the years.

 

 

 

Happy Thanksgiving

It's time to give thanks for our blessings.

This year has dealt me highs and lows. Here are a few snapshots from my 2019 album.

Eight days in the hospital. I'm thankful for the doctors and nurses who helped me feel better again.

A trip to New York City to see Jeff Daniels' masterful performance as Atticus Finch in Aaron Sorkin's theater adaptation of Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird."

The Miro show at the MOMA, before the museum closed to receive a new look. Miro's stance against Fascism in the 1930s gives us courage to resist Trump and the GOP's assaults on truth and human dignity. I was overwhelmed by Picasso's "Guernica" when I first visited MOMA nearly 50 years ago. I'm looking forward to visiting yet another new MOMA.

Trips to Portugal and Amelia Island, Fla., two places where rivers join the Atlantic Ocean. Both are threatened by rising sea levels and the crush of tourism. Like distant cousins, they are battling to preserve their proud cultures.

The Braves' rush to the pennant. Joe Burrow and the Tigers. Anne-Marie and I getting together with our children Sara, Luke and Ruthie in Nashville, Tenn. Learning to play Joni Mitchell's "Both Sides Now" on the piano.

We'll soon turn the calendar to another year, which looms as one of history's crossroads. The personal decisions of millions will determine whether the nation follows the course of freedom or an American totalitarianism.

No matter what happens, truth and beauty eventually will prevail.