Sanitize, memorize

Coronavirus is among us and we are in lockdown. Well, there is nowhere we may go but to the park, which I did today, taking the picture up above, of my quick sketch of the Parkside Lodge.

Not only that but it is necessitating us to wash our hands for an interminable length of time. And my sister Katie came up with the idea that we should memorize poetry and use that time to practice it.

I love memorizing poetry. And it is easier than when I was a kid, far easier. A couple of years ago I memorized Yeats' "The Fiddler of Dooney" and it is still with me. I learned it because I was writing a story about the St. Patrick's Day Parade and there is a float in it that reads "And Dance Like the Waves of the Sea."

I also memorized Edna St. Vincent Millay's poem that goes, "We were very tired, we were very merry, we had gone back and forth all night on the ferry." I forget the name. Isn't that silly, I know the poem, every word of it, I can recite it beautifully at the drop of a dime, but I did not bother to memorize the name. But anyway I know it.

The memorizing of that poem dates to when I had to write a story about staying out in a bar till 4 a.m. That and the St. Patrick's Day parade story were both part of that series I wrote for The Buffalo News called "100 Things Every Western New Yorker Should Do At Least Once." It sounds dumb now but I took that series very seriously. I took the series seriously, get it? I would walk around thinking about the one I was working on. My editor gave me this long list of 100 Things and miraculously I was able to fit them all in, on a weekly basis, in something like 102 weeks. It was tricky because so many were seasonal and I had to bring a photographer. But we made it work!

These 100 Things would percolate in my mind and sometimes I would memorize a poem. That is funny, the Edna St. Vincent Millay poem, whenever I say it to myself, it brings back that time when I did indeed go out -- with my friend Ryan and my friend Lizzie -- and stay out till after 4 a.m. We were very tired, we were very merry! That is the truth.

Ahem.

With which, my sister suggested we memorize poems so we may utilize that time we are spending washing our hands. I have just memorized Edward Lear's "The Owl and the Pussycat."

I already knew half of it so it was not that hard. One thing that makes it easier is that every time I see someone with a ring in his or her nose -- which is often -- I think of the Piggy with the ring at the end of his nose.

Next I will move on to "The Courtship of the Onghi Bonghi Bo."

This lockdown may be long!

Toe story

One thing I forgot to mention yesterday, but I did mention it to Howard and he cracked up:

While we were reading "The Pobble Who Has No Toes," pictured above, before we got to the part about the mermaid there was the opening line:

The Pobble who has no toes
Had once as many as we...

And I stopped there, and I asked the kids: "How many toes do you have?"

And Barbara said, sure of her smarts: "Five on each foot, so, five and five is ten!"

She is going to be like Leonard Pennario and be good in school.

But my mom points at little Georgie, on the other side of me. He has taken his socks off and is counting his toes.

These kids are so funny!!

'It's a myth!'

So tonight I was at my mom's and my little niece and nephew were there and by popular demand we returned to "The Pobble Who Had No Toes."

It is passing into common knowledge. For instance when 3-year-old  nephew George Andrew cut his finger he said he would be like the Pobble Who Had No Toes, only with him it would be fingers. Ha, ha! I said, Georgie, I hope not!

Anyway Barbara and Georgie are there next to me and we revisit "The Pobble Who Had No Toes." I am getting to love the poem too. I love how Victorian it is. How they put the Pobble in a friendly Bark ... I always have to stop and explain a bark is a boat ... and then they row and row and row till they come to his Aunt Jobiska's Park. In 1848 when this book was published you would have a park.

There is also the speculation about how the Pobble loses his toes. Edward Lear raises the possibility of a mermaid.

"What's a mermaid?" asked Barbara.

And I began to explain: A mermaid is half fish, she has the tail of a fish, but the other half is, she is a beautiful girl, and --

Suddenly my brother George, Barbara's daddy, interrupted. "Myth, Barbara!" he said. "It's a myth!"

And I felt chastised. I mean, I probably would have gotten around to telling her mermaids were make-believe,  I like to think I would, but for a second, could we not enter the world of Edward Lear, and the mermaid, and Aunt Jobiska's Park?

When I was little I think I knew what a mermaid was before I knew what a myth was.

I will have to try to sneak Edward Lear words into my book about Leonard Pennario. Words like "runcible," "flannel" and, well, perhaps I will allude to my Park.

Then again, the story is unbelievable enough on its own.

How pleasant to know Mr. Lear!

I have started my little niece Barbara in on Edward Lear.

There was a time at my mom's when I thought she needed entertainment and so I asked her if she wanted me to read her the poetry of Edward Lear. She said yes! A most excellent thing in a child.

I went and got the book. I remembered where it was from when I was a kid. And we sat down on the couch. We read "The Pobble Who Has No Toes."

It was all about the Bristol Channel and porpoises and red flannel and I could not believe Barbara could even follow it. She just turned 6. I never know how old kids should be for stuff like this. I always find it hard to believe any kid these days could understand it. But Barbara did!

You have to love the quaint correct Victorian grammar:

"The Pobble who has no toes
Had once as many as we..."

We read a huge number of limericks, Barbara loving the pictures. Like this one:

There was an Old Man of Cape Horn,
Who wished he had never been born;
So he sat on a Chair till he died of despair,
That dolorous Man of Cape Horn.

Then we reread, by popular demand, "The Pobble Who Has No Toes."

Here is the poem read to you so you may enjoy it as Barbara did.



At the end of it I went, "It's a fact the whole world knows, that Pobbles are happier without their..."

"Toes!" Barbara got to cry out.

As Howard would say the software still works. That is amazing, I thought. Considering that these poems were written when, 1910?

I looked up Edward Lear and zut alors, they were published in 1848!

How about that??

Still charming the 6-year-olds after all these years.

Edward Lear sounds like a strange character. To begin with he was his parents' 21st child. Also Wikipedia said that Edward Lear made two marriage proposals in his life, both to the same woman, who was 46 years his junior. Both of them were rejected.

You cannot blame a guy for trying!

Here is "The Pobble Who Has No Toes" complete with, would you believe it, analysis. It is sweet actually. One gentleman comments, "I read this poem when I was 6 and am rediscovering it after 67 years." Someone else writes, "EL is the most underrated of children's writers." Being the authorized biographer of Leonard Pennario, who has sometimes been called the most underrated of pianists, I can appreciate that.

After that the comments sort of descend into spam. Edward Lear would probably have appreciated the humor of that.

I cannot wait to move on "How Pleasant To Know Mr. Lear."