https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uP5oylZW2uI
Depression is a cruel and painful disease. It has robbed us of many great talents besides Phil Ochs.
As for whether "her" is literal or metaphorical, it doesn't really matter. People (not always heterosexual men) often personify some passion as a woman, a "demanding mistress". But also, plenty of people suffering from depression have destroyed relationships when they proved not to "cure" them, and blamed the lover.
I am so fortunate that I have someone in my life who loved me enough to reach out after I had mistreated her so viciously, and ask me to try again.
She hasn't made me whole, but no-one can -- if that's possible, I will have to do it myself. But she did show me that someone was capable of loving me that much.
I was a glutton for love. It was not enough for me to have the love of a good woman -- I demanded the love of another, and then another, never satisfied. At my worst, I tried to have the love of three, any of whom would have been a good match for me, but trying to have everything more than just both ways made all of them miserable, hurt them terribly. I demanded that they prove themselves to me over and over, and was never satisfied.
I am immensely fortunate that the true love of my life forgave me all of that, and invited me to walk away from self-indulgence onto a demanding path which led to the happiness I now enjoy. Depression is still an issue, but it's better now that I have found better footing.
Ours is one of the great loves of history, even though no-one will know about it. Future generations will not speak of "John Burt and his Brightly Shining" as a metaphor for love, but that doesn't matter. The greatest soldiers didn't get medals, the scientists who contributed most never received a Nobel Prize. No-one knows who wrote "Away in a Manger" or "Darlin' Corey".
No-one will know, but it happened, and it is happening now.
I have her. She isn't "nothing".
//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "She's really something."\\
Showing posts with label Relationships. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Relationships. Show all posts
Friday, September 23, 2016
Friday, March 07, 2014
Death -- What a Concept
I ran into an interesting post at Susie Bright's blog, about Ariel Gore and the memoir she allowed herself to write after her mother died:
http://susiebright.blogs.com/susie_brights_journal_/2014/03/lung-cancer-noir-ariel-gores-masterpiece.html#tpe-action-posted-6a00d8341c5e4053ef01a3fcce7c30970b
It inspired me to make this comment:
I had appalling dreams after my father died, and dream logic followed me into waking life. I discovered that not only could I not confront the reality that my father was dead, I could not even deal with the reality of death, period, for anyone. I would find myself imagining corpses living still, drawn-out lives in drawers and back bedrooms, and saying things like, "Oh, yes, she's dead -- but how dead is dead, really?" It was over a year before I stopped skidding over the concept of death and could say, "Dead is dead. My father is dead."
Now that my father is definitively dead, though, I can feel his presence more than I could when death didn't exist in my world. The other day, I saw a joke that involved Marxist jargon and a horrid pun, and I immediately sent it out to the family:
"Q: Why is it that when you flush the toilet at Karl Marx's place, you can hear the sound of stringed instruments?
"A: Because of the violins inherent in the cistern.
"This has been a George S. Burt Memorial E-Mail."
//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "Yes, he would have liked that one."\\
http://susiebright.blogs.com/susie_brights_journal_/2014/03/lung-cancer-noir-ariel-gores-masterpiece.html#tpe-action-posted-6a00d8341c5e4053ef01a3fcce7c30970b
It inspired me to make this comment:
I had appalling dreams after my father died, and dream logic followed me into waking life. I discovered that not only could I not confront the reality that my father was dead, I could not even deal with the reality of death, period, for anyone. I would find myself imagining corpses living still, drawn-out lives in drawers and back bedrooms, and saying things like, "Oh, yes, she's dead -- but how dead is dead, really?" It was over a year before I stopped skidding over the concept of death and could say, "Dead is dead. My father is dead."
Now that my father is definitively dead, though, I can feel his presence more than I could when death didn't exist in my world. The other day, I saw a joke that involved Marxist jargon and a horrid pun, and I immediately sent it out to the family:
"Q: Why is it that when you flush the toilet at Karl Marx's place, you can hear the sound of stringed instruments?
"A: Because of the violins inherent in the cistern.
"This has been a George S. Burt Memorial E-Mail."
//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "Yes, he would have liked that one."\\
Saturday, March 16, 2013
Good Cookies
http://www.williams-sonoma.com/recipe/oatmeal-chocolate-chip-cookies.html
I make them for Kathe and me to eat on the paper route.
Still wish I could find Becca's recipe card for the recipe I used to use.
Or ask Becca about it....
//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "She loved her mother. And she loved you."\\
I make them for Kathe and me to eat on the paper route.
Still wish I could find Becca's recipe card for the recipe I used to use.
Or ask Becca about it....
//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "She loved her mother. And she loved you."\\
Saturday, November 03, 2012
I Forgive You For Hating Teen Moms
I have only just discovered the FB page "I Hate Teen Moms" and the unfortunately large group of pages which imitate it. Looking them over has helped me to finally understand why Jesus said "Judge not, lest ye be judged". Clearly, Jesus understood that most people who are extremely judgmental are trying to push away the possibility that they would not measure up to the standards they set themselves, and think that attacking other people they will somehow shield themselves from judgment. Lighten up, people. It won't work. In fact, the best way to feel better about your own failings is the opposite: to be forgiving and understanding of other people.
//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "I think Jesus said that, too."\\
//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "I think Jesus said that, too."\\
Saturday, March 03, 2012
Christopher Robin and Pooh Come to an Enchanted Place
Tonight I read the last chapter of The House at Pooh Corner to a little boy, and we talked about it a little.
I remember my mother reading to me from that book (especially the Woozle sighting), but I definitely don't remember her reading me the ending.
Possibly she thought it would be too confusing for me. Or possibly she was simply interrupted by her fast-changing life, back when she was a college student and the mother of three preschoolers (good grief!). Or perhaps, knowing what a fickle child I was, I one day said, "Winnie the Pooh! Yuck! I'm not a baby!"
I read Winnie the Pooh to my own kids, but we never got around to The House at Pooh Corner. Not sure why that happened, either.
But I by-Christopher-Robin did read that last chapter to one little boy, anyway.
For whatever that's worth.
//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "Leave them there."\\
I remember my mother reading to me from that book (especially the Woozle sighting), but I definitely don't remember her reading me the ending.
Possibly she thought it would be too confusing for me. Or possibly she was simply interrupted by her fast-changing life, back when she was a college student and the mother of three preschoolers (good grief!). Or perhaps, knowing what a fickle child I was, I one day said, "Winnie the Pooh! Yuck! I'm not a baby!"
I read Winnie the Pooh to my own kids, but we never got around to The House at Pooh Corner. Not sure why that happened, either.
But I by-Christopher-Robin did read that last chapter to one little boy, anyway.
For whatever that's worth.
//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "Leave them there."\\
Sunday, January 01, 2012
The Year Ends
Was it a good year for you?
Yeah, me neither.
No job, acute emotional depression, dubious prospects for the new year.
My father died, my grandmother died, and other things were difficult also.
The first post in this blog was titled, "It's Easy to Get Discouraged". It still is.
I am taking antidepressants, and they help some, but not enough, really. I wish I could go back into therapy, but we really can't afford it, and my former therapist has moved away. I am looking for a support group for the long-term unemployed, but there doesn't seem to be one. Maybe I should start one.
On the other hand, we did get the water out of the oil tank so the heater runs again. And we got the mud out of the kitchen sink drain so water runs through it again. I finished my first novel, and possibly it will bring in some money. That'd be good.
And the new year...will be a new year. Anything could happen.
//The Magic Eight-Ball says: "Put one foot in front of the other. Repeat."\\
Yeah, me neither.
No job, acute emotional depression, dubious prospects for the new year.
My father died, my grandmother died, and other things were difficult also.
The first post in this blog was titled, "It's Easy to Get Discouraged". It still is.
I am taking antidepressants, and they help some, but not enough, really. I wish I could go back into therapy, but we really can't afford it, and my former therapist has moved away. I am looking for a support group for the long-term unemployed, but there doesn't seem to be one. Maybe I should start one.
On the other hand, we did get the water out of the oil tank so the heater runs again. And we got the mud out of the kitchen sink drain so water runs through it again. I finished my first novel, and possibly it will bring in some money. That'd be good.
And the new year...will be a new year. Anything could happen.
//The Magic Eight-Ball says: "Put one foot in front of the other. Repeat."\\
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Questions From Sierra
My niece Sierra sent me an e-mail:
Could you please answer some questions for my family history project? here are 5 questions.
1.What was your life like when you were young?
My parents were college students, living in rented accommodations until I was six years old. I didn’t really understand what all of that meant, other than that Daddy went to “the school” every day to collect “day-da” for his “diss-ree-tation”, and that this was very important work.
Spending my childhood in an academic setting, I learned a great deal, and developed a large vocabulary from an early age. I absorbed concepts like cultural parallax and the need to test an hypothesis. I also absorbed an intellectual snobbery that I didn’t notice for the longest time, making it all that harder to discard.
2.What were people afraid of when you were young?
People talked a lot about pollution and about social changes that seemed to threaten civilization, but above all about the threat of nuclear war. Although my parents tried to divert me from thinking about it, I lived under the threat of destruction until I was twenty-nine years old. I went to school suspecting I would not live to grow up. I joined the Navy because I thought it might be safer than being drafted into the Army when Ronald Reagan inevitably went too far. I got married and had a child still under that shadow, because life did have to go on. It was not until Kathe and I saw the Berlin Wall being demolished that we really believed it was over.
3. What is a story from your childhood?
One day, Dad had been working on an old radio, the kind that was the size of a cabinet and stood on the floor, with a huge green light like an eye at the center of the dial. He talked about how much fun he and his siblings had, listening to old radio shows. He turned it on, joking that since it was an old radio, perhaps it would bring in an old radio show…and it did.
We listened, rapt, to an episode of Chandu the Magician. When it ended, the announcer came on and told us we were listening to the Old Time Radio Hour on KEX 1190 AM. We wound up listening to KEX every night, and recorded episodes on cassette tapes. But I will never forget the eerie experience of hearing those voices and sound effects coming through the radio just as Dad had predicted.
4. What is the bravest thing you’ve ever done?
Bicycling home from work after a night shift, I came upon a group of men standing over a fallen jogger. None of them seemed to know what to do. She had a pulse but wasn’t breathing, so I dove in and started giving her mouth to mouth. I gave her breaths until I couldn’t find a pulse, and then started CPR. To spare the others from the risk of infection, I gave her all of the breaths while they took turns giving chest compressions.
One of the men peeled back her eyelid and said, “There’s no pupillary response. I don’t think we need to bother.” I heard the voice of Sergeant Preston of the Yukon shouting, “We will continue until we are relieved!” – and it was me. That’s literally how it felt at the time.
An ambulance came and took over. I went home and went to bed. I heard later that the woman had died, but I knew we had done our part.
They always tell you at CPR classes that the person in charge at an emergency was whoever spoke up first, but I never thought that would be me.
5.What is one thing you’re proud of?
I am very proud of whatever role I have played in how my children have turned out. Some of them were half-grown when I got them, and none of them were related to me genetically, but I did what I could for them. They had many difficulties to overcome, and some of their problems could not be solved, but all four of them have faced and are facing life on their own terms with tremendous courage and persistence.
//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "Teach the children well."\\
Could you please answer some questions for my family history project? here are 5 questions.
1.What was your life like when you were young?
My parents were college students, living in rented accommodations until I was six years old. I didn’t really understand what all of that meant, other than that Daddy went to “the school” every day to collect “day-da” for his “diss-ree-tation”, and that this was very important work.
Spending my childhood in an academic setting, I learned a great deal, and developed a large vocabulary from an early age. I absorbed concepts like cultural parallax and the need to test an hypothesis. I also absorbed an intellectual snobbery that I didn’t notice for the longest time, making it all that harder to discard.
2.What were people afraid of when you were young?
People talked a lot about pollution and about social changes that seemed to threaten civilization, but above all about the threat of nuclear war. Although my parents tried to divert me from thinking about it, I lived under the threat of destruction until I was twenty-nine years old. I went to school suspecting I would not live to grow up. I joined the Navy because I thought it might be safer than being drafted into the Army when Ronald Reagan inevitably went too far. I got married and had a child still under that shadow, because life did have to go on. It was not until Kathe and I saw the Berlin Wall being demolished that we really believed it was over.
3. What is a story from your childhood?
One day, Dad had been working on an old radio, the kind that was the size of a cabinet and stood on the floor, with a huge green light like an eye at the center of the dial. He talked about how much fun he and his siblings had, listening to old radio shows. He turned it on, joking that since it was an old radio, perhaps it would bring in an old radio show…and it did.
We listened, rapt, to an episode of Chandu the Magician. When it ended, the announcer came on and told us we were listening to the Old Time Radio Hour on KEX 1190 AM. We wound up listening to KEX every night, and recorded episodes on cassette tapes. But I will never forget the eerie experience of hearing those voices and sound effects coming through the radio just as Dad had predicted.
4. What is the bravest thing you’ve ever done?
Bicycling home from work after a night shift, I came upon a group of men standing over a fallen jogger. None of them seemed to know what to do. She had a pulse but wasn’t breathing, so I dove in and started giving her mouth to mouth. I gave her breaths until I couldn’t find a pulse, and then started CPR. To spare the others from the risk of infection, I gave her all of the breaths while they took turns giving chest compressions.
One of the men peeled back her eyelid and said, “There’s no pupillary response. I don’t think we need to bother.” I heard the voice of Sergeant Preston of the Yukon shouting, “We will continue until we are relieved!” – and it was me. That’s literally how it felt at the time.
An ambulance came and took over. I went home and went to bed. I heard later that the woman had died, but I knew we had done our part.
They always tell you at CPR classes that the person in charge at an emergency was whoever spoke up first, but I never thought that would be me.
5.What is one thing you’re proud of?
I am very proud of whatever role I have played in how my children have turned out. Some of them were half-grown when I got them, and none of them were related to me genetically, but I did what I could for them. They had many difficulties to overcome, and some of their problems could not be solved, but all four of them have faced and are facing life on their own terms with tremendous courage and persistence.
//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "Teach the children well."\\
Friday, July 01, 2011
Grandma's In The Hospital*
*Probably Riverbend, but I'll let people know when I know for certain.
She fell and broke her hip last night.
Mom (Dorothy) is rushing to her side.
I'll let you know more when I know more.
//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "Keep calm and carry on."\\
She fell and broke her hip last night.
Mom (Dorothy) is rushing to her side.
I'll let you know more when I know more.
//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "Keep calm and carry on."\\
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Out With The Old, In With The Stored
Big events taking place around here -- big by our standards, anyway.
* We got rid of the two worst mattresses in our bed and replaced them with a mattress and box spring from the majestic bed, formerly belonging to my parents and given to me about 30 years ago, in which I slept for oh, a couple of years in the 1980s. The bed, stored in our shed for a number of years and eventually borrowed back by my parents, has now been rescued from my mother's Corvallis mobile home and stored in our storage locker. So, still not actually sleeping in the bed, but it is my hope to have it assembled in some room of the house eventually.
And meanwhile, the bed we're actually sleeping in is more comfortable. And taller.
* We finally pulled some of the old stuff out of the garage and placed it where it will do some good. The hardwood chunks left behind by Corky the woodcarver who used to have his workshop in our shed have gone to a woodcarver in Albany, and the organic gardening magazines have been claimed by someone else. Thank you, Freecycle groups!
* We are finally cleaning out "the boys' room" (where several young boys and teenagers have lived for most of the time Kathe has owned the house) and are turning it back into a habitable bedroom.
Not a lot of progress, but some.
//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "A little and a little and a little...."\\
* We got rid of the two worst mattresses in our bed and replaced them with a mattress and box spring from the majestic bed, formerly belonging to my parents and given to me about 30 years ago, in which I slept for oh, a couple of years in the 1980s. The bed, stored in our shed for a number of years and eventually borrowed back by my parents, has now been rescued from my mother's Corvallis mobile home and stored in our storage locker. So, still not actually sleeping in the bed, but it is my hope to have it assembled in some room of the house eventually.
And meanwhile, the bed we're actually sleeping in is more comfortable. And taller.
* We finally pulled some of the old stuff out of the garage and placed it where it will do some good. The hardwood chunks left behind by Corky the woodcarver who used to have his workshop in our shed have gone to a woodcarver in Albany, and the organic gardening magazines have been claimed by someone else. Thank you, Freecycle groups!
* We are finally cleaning out "the boys' room" (where several young boys and teenagers have lived for most of the time Kathe has owned the house) and are turning it back into a habitable bedroom.
Not a lot of progress, but some.
//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "A little and a little and a little...."\\
Sunday, May 29, 2011
Wednesday, May 04, 2011
'Bye, Bellfountain
Kathe and I went to Bellfountain one last time today, to retrieve a few more items and for one last walk-through.
That's it. We have given up the keys and will have no more reason to go out there.
//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "To everything there is a season."\\
That's it. We have given up the keys and will have no more reason to go out there.
//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "To everything there is a season."\\
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
A Flag
Out driving around with Kathe today, I saw a flag I'd never seen before (the one with trees). I was interested enough that we went around and stopped at the house. The woman there said her husband had bought it, and she thought it was the flag of the province of Prince Edward Island, or maybe the personal banner of King Richard the Lionhearted.
I have no idea what either of those things might mean to her husband, but it was an interesting experience.
Oh, and for the record, it is PEI. Richard's banner is the one with three lions.
//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "A flag can mean many things."\\
Saturday, April 02, 2011
My Father's Funeral Is Today
He died not long after my last post. Services will be held at the First United Methodist Church in Monroe, which he and my mother attended for some years. Afterward, my brothers and I will scatter his ashes at the land at Bellfountain where he and Mom lived for the last 20 years (but which Mom has just sold).
//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "Keep it together."\\
//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "Keep it together."\\
Thursday, March 03, 2011
The Mysterious Island
Kathe and I have been watching a lot of videos from the library lately. We saw a Ray Harryhausen film awhile back, and she mentioned that she hadn't seen most of them, so I reserved all of them that the library had.
The most recent one was The Mysterious Island, and that reminded me of just how many film versions of it there have been, and how many extraneous elements each of them have had: giant crabs, a feral child, cultures of aquatic humanoids, Caribbean pirates of the 1600s in the western Pacific of the 1860s, a rival in his own submarine, an oddball tie-in with a totally different Verne novel and so on.
I suppose it's the result of the book's being a sequel to 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, one of the most famous books of all time (even in English, where it has suffered from some very poor translations), but isn't anywhere like as colorful or bombastic.
Still, invaders from Mercury...?
//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "The book remains unharmed, on the shelf over there."\\
The most recent one was The Mysterious Island, and that reminded me of just how many film versions of it there have been, and how many extraneous elements each of them have had: giant crabs, a feral child, cultures of aquatic humanoids, Caribbean pirates of the 1600s in the western Pacific of the 1860s, a rival in his own submarine, an oddball tie-in with a totally different Verne novel and so on.
I suppose it's the result of the book's being a sequel to 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, one of the most famous books of all time (even in English, where it has suffered from some very poor translations), but isn't anywhere like as colorful or bombastic.
Still, invaders from Mercury...?
//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "The book remains unharmed, on the shelf over there."\\
Thursday, November 18, 2010
New Perceptions
Kathe:
Since I started therapy, I have been overcoming sensory inhibitions right and left: food tastes better -- and I pay more attention to its nutritional value as opposed to any emotional comfort it might give. I told you about the ground under my feet feeling more substantial. I don't know if that has led to any improvement in my posture, but I feel more balanced anyway.
But tonight while soaking I was overwhelmed by a rarer and more precious kind of improved perception: I suddenly had a powerful feeling of how much you really do value me, how much I mean to you.
I would have been unable to recognize such a feeling before, or if I started to get an outline of it, I would have recoiled from it with fear or horror or shame, feeling both unworthy and unfairly burdened.
The thing I craved like an addict was also something I couldn't bring myself to look at directly.
Oh, well, doesn't have to make sense.
But thank you for your love, admiration and desire.
-- Love, John
//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "Value all that you see, and see all that you value."\\
Since I started therapy, I have been overcoming sensory inhibitions right and left: food tastes better -- and I pay more attention to its nutritional value as opposed to any emotional comfort it might give. I told you about the ground under my feet feeling more substantial. I don't know if that has led to any improvement in my posture, but I feel more balanced anyway.
But tonight while soaking I was overwhelmed by a rarer and more precious kind of improved perception: I suddenly had a powerful feeling of how much you really do value me, how much I mean to you.
I would have been unable to recognize such a feeling before, or if I started to get an outline of it, I would have recoiled from it with fear or horror or shame, feeling both unworthy and unfairly burdened.
The thing I craved like an addict was also something I couldn't bring myself to look at directly.
Oh, well, doesn't have to make sense.
But thank you for your love, admiration and desire.
-- Love, John
//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "Value all that you see, and see all that you value."\\
Sunday, August 22, 2010
The Fien Experiment
I had this idea yesterday afternoon, just about the time Anne and Wes would have been having their automobile accident, I guess. I do hope that Anne will be in a position to take part.
I am going to try to recount off the top of my head what I know about my paternal grandfather, also named John Merritt Burt, and ask people who knew him (or who heard stories about him as they grew up) to expand and correct my recollections. I will also later on check available records, but as i said, part of this exercise is to see what I can come up with out of my own unassisted memory.
Have you ever tired to draw a map from memory? That is the sort of experiment I am trying here.
Merritt Burt and his brother Walden Burt were born in the 1880s, named after the two Methodist bishops in their parents' diocese. As a young man, Merritt decided he didn't like having a last name for a first name, and took to calling himself John Merritt Burt.
He joined the Navy in 1906 and left in 1912 with the rank of Boatswain's Mate 3rd Class. While in the Navy he learned to tie knots very well, and in later years was known to show off by tying knots with his toes. He also learned how to whistle the national anthems of all the world's naval powers, since when his ship was in port in Hong Kong he had to stand on deck at dusk while every ship in port lowered its flag in turn, its band playing, a process which could take as long as two hours depending on how many ships were in port.
He acquired a collection of handsome old-fashioned sailor's tattoos, of which there is alas no photographic record.
He was once put on bread and water for two days as punishment for punching out his immediate superior.
In 1917, he joined the Army and went to France as an infantry Lieutenant. He came back with various souvenirs, including his issued Enfield rifle and a plundered German Mauser rifle which remained in the family until they were stolen by a burglar in the 1970s.
After the war, he became a Treasury agent, and was kept busy during Prohibition busting up stills in the legendary fashion. He took a significant amount of copper home with him, and made it into various useful household objects such as the decorative work on a set of fireplace bellows which my parents used for many years. He never did make anything of the long-nosed copper alembic which became a favorite toy of my childhood. He also acquired, possibly also confiscated from a criminal, a long blackjack which he kept aeound the house, though the only use I know he ever made of it was in using its handle to give especially severe spankings .
Other highlights of his career as a "revenoor" included standing guard over the Golden Gate Bridge just after Pearl Harbor and finding a human brain washed up on a San Francisco beach (it proved to have been carelessly discarded after the shipboard autopsy of a sailor who had died of meningitis). He might have lost his job on account of a prank he and three male friends played, driving slowly around the San Francisco Mint as though casing the joint. They circled the building three times before a police car pulled them over and they were told to knock it off.
He worked in copper and in iron, and in wood. Once, while cutting a piece of wood with a table saw, he cut off half of his index finger. The stump of that finger was a memorable feature of his appearance when I was a small child, as was his clouded eye and his emphysemic wheeze.
He smoked for many years, rolling his own cigarettes with tobacco from a small cloth bag. He suffered from emphysema for some years, but it was lung cancer, presumably also from smoking, which finally killed him.
He married relatively late in life, and often regretted not being younger and more vigorous while his children were growing up. He fathered four children, two girls and two boys, one of whom was my father, George S. Burt. He often had a bad temper with his children, and frightened them with harsh criticism and physical punishments such as making them run home within the beams of his car headlights when they stayed out after dark. His favorite pejorative for his son George was "impertinent whelp", but you knew you were really in for it if he said, "I hope you're proud of yourself". His habit of flying into a towering rage with his children was, alas, passed on to his son and to his grandson -- I had to work very hard at unlearning it.
The children had a lively family culture, which manifested itself in various ways, including the invention of an imaginary language and culture. The kids gave themselves "Grorian" names, and may have given them to their parents also, but I do not know John Burt's Grorian name, if he had one. They also at some point gave themselves (or one another) "monster" names like "Thing" and "Creature". They named their father "Fiend With a Fearsome Face", usually shortened to "Fien", and they were still calling him that well after they were grown, and even after he had died.
Towards the end of a long day, he was fond of imitating a favorite expression of a neighbor, "Ahm tarred. Ahm tarred and ahm hongrey." His son did the same, and I have been known to say it myself. I have often wondered what other figures of speech and other habits I have acquired from him without knowing it.
He worked for the Treasury Department until he had accumulated just enough seniority, between his Treasury job and his military service, to qualify for a pension, and then retired. His wife was younger than himself, but she died of cancer more than a decade before he did.
After leaving San Francisco, he moved to rural Watsonville, and that is where he lived when I knew him, on a small acreage near what was proclaimed on its side to be "the world's biggest haybarn". I don't know if the land was an actual working farm, although that is how I thought of it as a child. The only thing I know for certain that he raised was bees.
He was a frail old man with a breathless laugh that was both comical and frightening to me as a child. I associated him with Boris Karloff, I think mainly on account of his squarish face, and perhaps also an air of mingled kindliness and menace.
He died when I was nine years old, but I hadn't seen him for some time by then. He was very sick, and I think my parents didn't want to expose me to his frailty, or perhaps to strain his health with my obstreperousness.
His last words were in response to a ringing telephone: "Uh-oh, that's Waldy." he was right: it was a call to let him know his brother had died.
Okay, that is as much as I can come up with right now. I will try to write more later, and I would appreciate any additions and corrections you folks might provide.
//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "Don't delay."\\
I am going to try to recount off the top of my head what I know about my paternal grandfather, also named John Merritt Burt, and ask people who knew him (or who heard stories about him as they grew up) to expand and correct my recollections. I will also later on check available records, but as i said, part of this exercise is to see what I can come up with out of my own unassisted memory.
Have you ever tired to draw a map from memory? That is the sort of experiment I am trying here.
Merritt Burt and his brother Walden Burt were born in the 1880s, named after the two Methodist bishops in their parents' diocese. As a young man, Merritt decided he didn't like having a last name for a first name, and took to calling himself John Merritt Burt.
He joined the Navy in 1906 and left in 1912 with the rank of Boatswain's Mate 3rd Class. While in the Navy he learned to tie knots very well, and in later years was known to show off by tying knots with his toes. He also learned how to whistle the national anthems of all the world's naval powers, since when his ship was in port in Hong Kong he had to stand on deck at dusk while every ship in port lowered its flag in turn, its band playing, a process which could take as long as two hours depending on how many ships were in port.
He acquired a collection of handsome old-fashioned sailor's tattoos, of which there is alas no photographic record.
He was once put on bread and water for two days as punishment for punching out his immediate superior.
In 1917, he joined the Army and went to France as an infantry Lieutenant. He came back with various souvenirs, including his issued Enfield rifle and a plundered German Mauser rifle which remained in the family until they were stolen by a burglar in the 1970s.
After the war, he became a Treasury agent, and was kept busy during Prohibition busting up stills in the legendary fashion. He took a significant amount of copper home with him, and made it into various useful household objects such as the decorative work on a set of fireplace bellows which my parents used for many years. He never did make anything of the long-nosed copper alembic which became a favorite toy of my childhood. He also acquired, possibly also confiscated from a criminal, a long blackjack which he kept aeound the house, though the only use I know he ever made of it was in using its handle to give especially severe spankings .
Other highlights of his career as a "revenoor" included standing guard over the Golden Gate Bridge just after Pearl Harbor and finding a human brain washed up on a San Francisco beach (it proved to have been carelessly discarded after the shipboard autopsy of a sailor who had died of meningitis). He might have lost his job on account of a prank he and three male friends played, driving slowly around the San Francisco Mint as though casing the joint. They circled the building three times before a police car pulled them over and they were told to knock it off.
He worked in copper and in iron, and in wood. Once, while cutting a piece of wood with a table saw, he cut off half of his index finger. The stump of that finger was a memorable feature of his appearance when I was a small child, as was his clouded eye and his emphysemic wheeze.
He smoked for many years, rolling his own cigarettes with tobacco from a small cloth bag. He suffered from emphysema for some years, but it was lung cancer, presumably also from smoking, which finally killed him.
He married relatively late in life, and often regretted not being younger and more vigorous while his children were growing up. He fathered four children, two girls and two boys, one of whom was my father, George S. Burt. He often had a bad temper with his children, and frightened them with harsh criticism and physical punishments such as making them run home within the beams of his car headlights when they stayed out after dark. His favorite pejorative for his son George was "impertinent whelp", but you knew you were really in for it if he said, "I hope you're proud of yourself". His habit of flying into a towering rage with his children was, alas, passed on to his son and to his grandson -- I had to work very hard at unlearning it.
The children had a lively family culture, which manifested itself in various ways, including the invention of an imaginary language and culture. The kids gave themselves "Grorian" names, and may have given them to their parents also, but I do not know John Burt's Grorian name, if he had one. They also at some point gave themselves (or one another) "monster" names like "Thing" and "Creature". They named their father "Fiend With a Fearsome Face", usually shortened to "Fien", and they were still calling him that well after they were grown, and even after he had died.
Towards the end of a long day, he was fond of imitating a favorite expression of a neighbor, "Ahm tarred. Ahm tarred and ahm hongrey." His son did the same, and I have been known to say it myself. I have often wondered what other figures of speech and other habits I have acquired from him without knowing it.
He worked for the Treasury Department until he had accumulated just enough seniority, between his Treasury job and his military service, to qualify for a pension, and then retired. His wife was younger than himself, but she died of cancer more than a decade before he did.
After leaving San Francisco, he moved to rural Watsonville, and that is where he lived when I knew him, on a small acreage near what was proclaimed on its side to be "the world's biggest haybarn". I don't know if the land was an actual working farm, although that is how I thought of it as a child. The only thing I know for certain that he raised was bees.
He was a frail old man with a breathless laugh that was both comical and frightening to me as a child. I associated him with Boris Karloff, I think mainly on account of his squarish face, and perhaps also an air of mingled kindliness and menace.
He died when I was nine years old, but I hadn't seen him for some time by then. He was very sick, and I think my parents didn't want to expose me to his frailty, or perhaps to strain his health with my obstreperousness.
His last words were in response to a ringing telephone: "Uh-oh, that's Waldy." he was right: it was a call to let him know his brother had died.
Okay, that is as much as I can come up with right now. I will try to write more later, and I would appreciate any additions and corrections you folks might provide.
//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "Don't delay."\\
Thursday, May 20, 2010
So Many Ways
There are so many ways for a human brain to go wrong. It's actually kind of remarkable that most of us are more or less fully functional.
My father has suffered a stroke which impairs his memory. Not sure if it's authentic anterograde amnesia, but something close. Also, he tends to lose track of where in his lifetime he is, constantly worrying about high school or graduate school issues, or about finishing his doctoral dissertation.
Constantly worrying -- he seems to have a positive need to worry about something.
One of my children is schizophrenic. He hears voices. He doesn't obey them, but some of the things he does to silence them get him into trouble.
I'm suffering from symptoms of stress, myself. So is my wife. Funniest thing. But I am trying to assess it as just one more psychological issue to address, rather than wallow in it.
Just got to hang in there, keep on trucking, never give up.
I don't see any other option available, anyway.
//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "Life Goes On."\\
My father has suffered a stroke which impairs his memory. Not sure if it's authentic anterograde amnesia, but something close. Also, he tends to lose track of where in his lifetime he is, constantly worrying about high school or graduate school issues, or about finishing his doctoral dissertation.
Constantly worrying -- he seems to have a positive need to worry about something.
One of my children is schizophrenic. He hears voices. He doesn't obey them, but some of the things he does to silence them get him into trouble.
I'm suffering from symptoms of stress, myself. So is my wife. Funniest thing. But I am trying to assess it as just one more psychological issue to address, rather than wallow in it.
Just got to hang in there, keep on trucking, never give up.
I don't see any other option available, anyway.
//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "Life Goes On."\\
Friday, January 01, 2010
Contact Light 2009
[If all goes well, a slightly different version of this newsletter will accompany our year-end cards]
Contact Light 2009
A Blackberry House Production by John M. Burt, 960 SW Jefferson Avenue, Corvallis, Oregon 97333 USA
john_m_burt@hotmail.com // katheburt@hotmail.com // burtfamily@live.com // john_m_burt.blogspot.com // thesweater.blogspot.com // johnandkathe.blogspot.com //
It's been a pretty good year, over-all. We're living together and having fun, in a variety of ways. Kathe continues to work as a process server. John continues to work as a caregiver and massage therapist, and hopes soon to be working as a phlebotomist (that's the person who draws your blood when the doctor sends you to the lab for a test). He took the course and passed with outstanding grades, but hasn't yet landed a job. We are continuing to work on one of our long-term project, the Coffee Shack Book, a task which is made easier by Kathe's job, which allows scouting the entire mid-valley area for new coffee shacks, and also allows John to ride along when he's not otherwise occupied,
Our son Walden and our grandson Richard Loy Gentry are both living in Corvallis. We don't see a lot of Walden and even less of Dick, but they both seem to be doing well.
Our daughter Asnakech is living in Portland. Our daughter Mestowet is living in Georgia near Atlanta. There is more we could say about family matters but...they are family matters. Here and now, let it be enough to say that there are other people we hold in our hearts, also.
We have no pets unless you count the elderly cat we feed in the shed. We inherited her from a former neighbor, and I don't think of her so much a pet as a feral animal we feel sorry for. It's hard not to, looking at her. She's more or less friendly and appreciative, but she will never be a house cat. Last winter she disappeared for several days and returned minus her tail. We think maybe the local raccoon ate it.
John's father remains in poor health, but his mother looks after him diligently and with energy. John helps out a lot, and is grateful for the opportunity.
As always, we continue to work on the house. And, as always, it is not finished. The roof, foundation and exterior walls are sound, though and those are the most important parts.
The community art theme for da Vinci Days this year was fish. We disdained the precut fish patterns the organizers offered, opting instead for our usual contribution, a collage, assembled on our usual schedule, atthelastminute. We've done worse. http://www.davinci-days.org/
After years of hearing compliments on our "signature" sweaters, and telling people as much of the backstory as they would hold still for, we decided we needed to have cards printed up telling the tale. We still don't have the cards, but at least we can give them the Web address of the sweaters' blog: http://thesweater.blogspot.com
We are so sorry we missed the chance to pick up the "Rude Hippy" story from Craigslist; it would have been an excellent addition to the sweater blog.
Oh, you haven't heard it?
Apparently, we offended someone by not talking to them long enough when they commented on the sweater (there was just one, until last year), and they posted on the Craigslist rant page. A wonderful rant, about how we were probably liberals, and self-centered, like all liberals, and didn't have time to be polite to someone who stopped us on the street to comment on the sweater (described as "technicolor barf"), and besides, I was too thin and John was too fat, and so on and on. Probably they said "That's an ugly sweater" and we replied, "Sorry you don't like it," and walked on, entirely unaware that they wanted us to stay around for further derision. Rude us. Actually, the community appreciation seems to be picking up.
We didn't really observe Christmas this year, but we did mark New Year's with, among other things, a new digital camera, with which we took the attached photo.
Well, here's hoping next year will be even better. Especially that health-care thing.
//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "Take a cup of kindness."\\
Sunday, December 06, 2009
Sunday Go To Meetin'
I went to the Quaker Meeting this morning, which I used to do regularly, and have been trying recently to start doing again, with limited success.
I am really glad that I was there today, though, because one of the members said something that I really needed to hear:
He said something to the effect that Quakers talk a lot about the Light Within, but that he was much more concerned with the Light that forms between people, if they allow it to. He said this was one of the most precious, even miraculous aspects of being human, and tragically all too vulnerable. By comparison with the vulnerability of human relations, the Light Within is relatively easy to nurture and to heal.
As I said, that was something I needed to hear.
//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "Thank you, John".\\
I am really glad that I was there today, though, because one of the members said something that I really needed to hear:
He said something to the effect that Quakers talk a lot about the Light Within, but that he was much more concerned with the Light that forms between people, if they allow it to. He said this was one of the most precious, even miraculous aspects of being human, and tragically all too vulnerable. By comparison with the vulnerability of human relations, the Light Within is relatively easy to nurture and to heal.
As I said, that was something I needed to hear.
//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "Thank you, John".\\
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