Bullying April

Dateline: April 30, 2021
Location: Southern Michigan

You’re in the right place

for a mix of stories you just won’t find anywhere else…

“Here’s to the allure of the obscure!”

 “When bullying April bruised mine eyes / With sleet-bound appetites and crude / Experiments of green, I still was wise / And kissed the blossoming rod.” – Cecil Day-Lewis

In this issue:

1. What’s With April? (one weird month)
2. Writer’s Side (thinking like an author)
3. Moving Back Into Small Spaces (from 2,500 to 300 square feet, again)
4. Review: A Powerful Bestseller (not my usual read)
5. Did You Know? (useless but interesting factoids)
6. Featured Guest (International Lecturer)

Warning: This month’s issue became more lengthy than usual: an action-packed month!

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1. What’s With April?

Did you know April is National Poetry Month? Hence, the Cecil Day-Lewis quote above, and I’ll have more to say about that in a moment. Everyone knows April Fools Day, Good Friday and Easter fall in April. How about a few less notable but no less interesting observations about this month? You celebrated all of these, right? Click on any link to drill down, or skip them altogether:

• National Sourdough Bread Day (Diana, no more of your wonderful bread, but thank you!)
• Jeep 4×4 Day (now relevant to Kay and me as neophyte Jeepsters)
• National Nebraska Day (relevant later in this issue)
• National Caramel Day (its genesis with 1880 candy makers)
• National Empanada Day (unnusual story)
• National Bookmobile Day (you would expect authors and readers to celebrate this day, right?)
• National Eight Track Tape Day (are you old enough to remember these?)
• Vaisakhi / Baisakhi / Vishu (if you are Hindu from India, perhaps this is how you celebrate the beginning of your harvest year)
• National Dolphin Day (some very cool facts about dolphins)
• Tax Day (originated to fund the American Civil War)
• National Lineman Appreciation Day (we’ve met a few in our travels – click the link for some electrifying facts)
• National Garlic Day (read how you can observe this day, even if you aren’t a vampire hunter)
• Lima Bean Respect Day (otherwise known as Kay and Gene’s wedding anniversary day and our ninth sobriety anniversary – appropriate for a couple of buttery vegans, don’t you think?)
• National Earth Day (you know, to celebrate the existence of the tiny cinder in space upon which we roost)
• National Talk Like Shakespeare Day (It is not in the stars to hold our destiny, but in ourselves)
• National Tell a Story Day (once upon a time…)

This is but a smattering of days celebrated each year during the transformative month of April. Every day celebrates something, which is appropriate since we should celebrate something every day of our lives! But what I find fascinating is the story behind each of these celebratory moments in time, and their history.

2. Writer’s Side

Now let’s talk about that poem I quoted at the beginning of this article, and why it matters to me, and maybe even to you despite what you might think of poetry… it can be a beautiful thing… a fragile flower unwilling to shrivel, even in the cold and the dark…

Poems deliver powerful mind-pictures in brief.

When bullying April bruised mine eyes
With sleet-bound appetites and crude
Experiments of green, I still was wise
And kissed the blossoming rod.
– Cecil Day-Lewis

Have you heard the term, COVID fog? This was a feeling I experienced all through 2020, but never put a label on it until yesterday’s discussion with my brother, Rod (who I hope is also blossoming)! The term resonated.

Sometimes, to combat this isolationist phenomenon and other emotional anomalies, doctors even prescribe poetry as a therapeutic aid. For example, Dr. Rafael Campo, a poet and physician at Harvard Medical School, believes poetry can also help doctors become better providers. As he put it in a TEDxCambridge talk in June 2019, “When we hear rhythmic language and recite poetry, our bodies translate crude sensory data into nuanced knowing — feeling becomes meaning.”

Aside from simply celebrating National Poetry Month, the largest literary celebration in the world, April has been a month of rebirth for my bride and me. With our vaccinations are behind us, I began to win my battle with agoraphobia (fear of open spaces) and anthropophobia (fear of being in close proximity to other people due to the perhaps irrational fear that infected me throughout 2020 and early 2021), we ventured out of our comfort zone to hit the road once more earlier this month after sheltering in place for fifteen months.

I, more than Kay, still felt that “bullying April bruised mine eyes,” with my ongoing personal battles, with cold weather we hadn’t really experienced in over a decade, and with having made a brutal financial decision to invest significant funds in our home on wheels once again. We cast aside concerns for our at-risk selves to some extent, at least as much as our bullied psyches allowed. We had once again slaked our “sleet-bound appetites” that nevertheless felt “crude” after languishing in the tropics, perhaps for too long.

But I successfully reasoned through our decision to once again hit the road after our 2020 hiatus. “I still was wise…” and after a bout of freezing “up north” temps, sleet and a (now) foreign smattering of snow (more dramatic when you live in a bus in the middle of nowhere), we are adapting beautifully as we “kissed the blossoming rod.” Grass never gets as green as it does in a Midwest Spring, or in minds recently unshackled from paralyzing fear! At least partially. Yeah, the season is finally busting out all over, and we are blossoming too.

Another Project…

As an aside, I have thought of myself as a poet for more than forty years, not as some literary titan, but as a humble word player. To me, poems present fascinating and often mysterious word puzzles, a direct tunnel into the mind of a poet – they are wired differently than most earthlings. I find that interesting.

A poem can be simple in its surprising elegance, or sinister in its myriad word pictures that tease and tantalize. But it takes a little effort to read poetry, which turns off many lazy readers, and that is tragic. Poetry represents a dimension to the human experience most will be denied, not by others, but by oneself.

As a preview of my “Did You Know” feature below, did you know that haiku is the most popular form of poetry? If you like puzzles, check this out… from the “poetic detective” chapter in my soon-to-be-published anthology of seventy-four irreverent poems, plus a bonus: a reader’s guide to (all) poetry. In this anthology, you’ll find poems that range from three to three hundred lines.

Brevity is an art form unto itself, one that often escapes this humble scribe.

Mark Twain famously said, “If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter.”

Poetry is like a reverse puzzle of words. The poet has solved a puzzle for you and challenges you to discover how, while harvesting meaning behind the pictures painted in your mind. Truly an art form. Take the following haiku (actually a senyru… keep reading) I composed decades ago for which I am just now clutching at the courage to publish:

Stunned Stupid

Her hypnotic smile,
 A turn of pink cheek and chin,
 Man’s mind melts molten.

- GK Jurrens

So what? Just three simple lines of text, right? Did you smile as you read it? Did you think of someone you know? Perhaps yourself if you’re a dude? Well, my dear poetic detectives, listen up. Haiku and Senyru are similar forms of syllabic poetry (based on their syllable count) that originated in ancient Japan. They are elegant puzzles, and if you know the rules of how and why the pieces fit together, you may better appreciate this seemingly simple but sophisticated art form. Haiku and Senyru are:

• Non-rhyming,
• Composed of three lines – five, seven and five syllables respectively (go ahead, count ’em!),
• Seventeen syllables total (although sometimes the syllable count may vary due to translation differences).

Really? What is the point? It’s a puzzle! Now the next time you see a three-line poem, you’ll better appreciate the effort to create it for you, whether or not it is Haiku or Senyru. Cool, huh? The aromatic allure of the obscure, as promised.

In my upcoming anthology called A Narrow Painted Road, I introduce each poem with a piece of Author’s Advice, that is, how best to enjoy the verse that follows. Here’s what I offer as a preamble to Stunned Stupid:

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Author’s Advice: 

Do you know a man who suffers the effects of a frontal lobotomy when intoxicated by a woman’s beauty? I do. If you are a woman, you get it. Summed up in fourteen words, seventeen syllables, and in just three lines…

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I then follow each piece with a short essay of what was on the poet’s addled brain (that would be me and mine) when the piece was composed along with a few insights into the poem’s form. These I call Poet’s Notes. Clever, right? You never need wonder what the hell I was thinking when reading my work. This is unlike many other poets, rightly or wrongly, as I try to remove some of the mystery. You might choose to skip these essays or find them humorous, illuminating, insightful or illustrative, but probably not boring. For example, this is what I wrote about this Senyru (many years ago):

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Poet’s Notes:

I created the image introducing this poem featuring one of my favorite female vocalists, Norah Jones, daughter of the famous sitarist, Ravi Shankar. 

Composed in the traditional syllabic structure of a Japanese Senryu, this compact poem features the same traditional structure as Haiku, likely a more recognizable name for this type of succinct syllabic verse. 

Such short but sophisticated verses comprise just three lines of five, seven, and five syllables respectively. Like Haiku, Senryu do not rhyme. Senyru are humorous or cynical concerning the ironies of life; whereas, Haiku are often serious, concern nature, play with imagery, metaphors, and emotions of the seasons.

This piece offers three one-line acts of setting, subject, and action, which are designed to elicit provocative imagery, and leave much to the reader’s imagination.

This Senryu is just for fun, but true. Yes, I am a man. I’d like to think I am not a misogynistic pig. Although I am subject to the vagaries of my species. Fortunately, I am less afflicted as I age.

One Summer, an attractive young waitress at an outdoor restaurant in Victoria, British Columbia inspired me. She brought to mind all the times stunning feminine beauty has turned me into a mindless hot rock. Sometimes I have placed myself and those around me at risk of foolish behavior. I now have mostly escaped that velvet cell. Unlike some of my ilk, I seem capable of suppressing my lizard-brain impulses, for the most part, constraining them to harmless private fantasies… or to oblivion. 

How many other men are like this? Who are we kidding, guys? We are all like this, my brothers. Or we were at one time, to a greater or lesser extent.

One last comment on this art form. Such remarkable brevity requires a unique skill, but more than anything, patience and desire. I’ve never spent so much time writing a verse than when composing Senryu and Haiku!

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3. Moving Back Into Small Spaces

We’re back in the bus and adjusting beautifully! The three of us are all refurbished. Where many suffer from their quarantine fifteen (the fifteen pounds many folks gained while hunkered down in their COVID bunker), Kay and I collectively lost over one hundred and forty pounds. So yes, we are refurbished. Not with new fiberglass and paint and lights, oh my, but with new and improved immune systems. But bluntly, moving from 2,500 square feet back into less than 300 square feet requires reacquiring habits from fifteen months ago. Now, however, we begin our travels again without our 200 square foot trailer in tow, that is, our mobile garage, and all that implies. What to do? We adapt, of course!

We are VERY pleased with our bus’s new fiberglass, the re-lighted and re-painted exterior, along with more than a few interior upgrades. Yes, we’re glad we took her to a specialist.

Before Rennovation (note this is NOT due to neglect, just age, not unlike my own cornucopia of wrinkles)…

During…

After…

That’s the pretty stuff. Now we’ve moved one hundred-twenty miles north to Charlotte, Michigan, home of Spartan Motors, manufacturer of chassis for fire engines and for our motorhome. Another specialist. We’re currently undergoing a comprehensive slate of maintenance and diagnostic tasks for our chassis including mundane but necessary items such as:

• A full 44-point chassis inspection (they always find a bunch of stuff that needs attention),
• Chassis lube (annual),
• Drain and refill oil-bath hubs on front and tag (aft-most) axles (every few years),
• Rear differential fluid change (done every few years),
• Air dryer filter change (for the airbrake and air suspension system),
• Engine oil and filter change (done annually),
• Fuel filters change (including diesel fuel/water separator),
• Transmission and (internal) filter and fluid change (every five years or so),
• Internal hydraulic filter and fluid change (we’ve not had this done since we bought the coach over five years ago),
• Inspect house jack springs (our hydraulic leveling system uses BIG springs to retract leveling jacks),
• Corner weights (they weigh the coach at each “axle end” (six weights) so we can appropriately adjust our tire inflation pressure.

News: Yesterday, after the full chassis inspection I mentioned above, several items need be addressed, none urgent, but necessary (remember, many of you asked for this gory detail… skip if you’re not interested):

• Various bolts and clamps that need to be re-torqued (tightened),
• Our dash air conditioner needs various components (we recently had replaced our two rooftop A/C units and they’re fine),
• A pair of shocks on the tag (rear) axle (we’ve already replaced the steer and drive axle shocks – these were due),
• New serpentine belt on our 8.9-liter Cummins diesel engine and replace a tired belt tensioner,
• Replace a leaky coolant sensor and a couple of seals on the wheel hubs,
• Some brake work.

Boring, right? Many of you had asked. Like so much on a complex machine like this, we invest as much or more in stuff we can’t see as in stuff we can. Normally.

Geeky fun: As we are comfortably staying in the coach (a COVID precaution) inside the shop while they work in “the pit” underneath the coach, we are reading, binge-watching a few of our favorite shows, reading, napping, more reading… it is glorious! While the crew was out to lunch yesterday, I took the rare opportunity to see some work in progress and to descend into the pit for a unique perspective. Wanna take a peek underneath with me? Ready to get dirty?

So it sounds like we’re going to be hanging around here in Michigan over the weekend for the rest of the work to be completed after our warranty company inspects scheduled repairs for possible coverage. We might also need to await the arrival of a few parts. Better here than on the side of the road somewhere. I would say we’re camping here for free, but we won’t be thinking that when we pay the bill !

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4. Review: A Powerful Bestseller

Well, I must admit that The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah is not within the genres I normally read, but is precisely relevant “research” to my latest writing project. Recommended to me by a bookseller after hearing of my plans to write a 1930s drama, this book is a:

• Number One New York Times Best Seller
• Number One USA Today Best Seller
• Number One Wall Street Journal Best Seller, and,
• Number One Indie Best Seller

I must admit I am a bit intimidated by this masterful storyteller who shares her perspective on this pivotal period of American history. With a cast of characters so engaging, I can’t help but feel their pain, their joy and both their strength and fragility. I would hope to capture this essence of America in some small measure as I contemplate “Jake’s Flame” (and yes, I need a different title).

From the book’s Amazon sales page:

“The Four Winds seems eerily prescient in 2021…. Its message is galvanizing and hopeful: We are a nation of scrappy survivors. We’ve been in dire straits before; we will be again. Hold your people close.” (The New York Times)

“A spectacular tour de force that shines a spotlight on the indispensable but often overlooked role of Greatest Generation women.” (People)

“Through one woman’s survival during the harsh and haunting Dust Bowl, master storyteller, Kristin Hannah, reminds us that the human heart and our Earth are as tough, yet as fragile, as a change in the wind.” (Delia Owens, author of Where the Crawdads Sing)

From the number-one best-selling author of The Nightingale and The Great Alone comes a powerful American epic about love and heroism and hope, set during the Great Depression, a time when the country was in crisis and at war with itself, when millions were out of work and even the land seemed to have turned against them.

Texas, 1921. A time of abundance. The Great War is over, the bounty of the land is plentiful, and America is on the brink of a new and optimistic era. But for Elsa Wolcott, deemed too old to marry in a time when marriage is a woman’s only option, the future seems bleak. Until the night she meets Rafe Martinelli and decides to change the direction of her life. With her reputation in ruin, there is only one respectable choice: marriage to a man she barely knows.

By 1934, the world has changed; millions are out of work and drought has devastated the Great Plains. Farmers are fighting to keep their land and their livelihoods as crops fail and water dries up and the earth cracks open. Dust storms roll relentlessly across the plains. Everything on the Martinelli farm is dying, including Elsa’s tenuous marriage; each day is a desperate battle against nature and a fight to keep her children alive.

In this uncertain and perilous time, Elsa- like so many of her neighbors – must make an agonizing choice: fight for the land she loves or leave it behind and go west, to California, in search of a better life for her family.

The Four Winds is a rich, sweeping novel that stunningly brings to life the Great Depression and the people who lived through it – the harsh realities that divided us as a nation and the enduring battle between the haves and the have-nots. A testament to hope, resilience, and the strength of the human spirit to survive adversity, The Four Winds is an indelible portrait of America and the American dream, as seen through the eyes of one indomitable woman whose courage and sacrifice will come to define a generation. 

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5. Did You Know?

What happens when you have an Army General for a president? Well, here’s an obscure but interesting example: DID YOU KNOW that one of every five miles in the Eisenhower interstate highway system must be straight? Why? To serve as aircraft runways during times of war and other emergencies. I also saw this in the island-nation of Singapore.

Since Kay and I are once again road warriors, I thought you might find this interesting too. For a historical view of our world-famous interstate system, click on The Epic Road Trip That Inspired the Interstate Highway System.

DID YOU KNOW that:

• More than half of the coastline of the entire United States is in Alaska?
• The Amazon rain forest produces >20% of the world’s oxygen supply.
• Antarctica is the only land on our planet that is not owned by any country. Ninety percent of the world’s ice covers Antarctica. This ice also represents seventy percent of all the fresh water in the world. As strange as it sounds, however, Antarctica is essentially a desert; the average yearly total precipitation is about two inches. Although covered with ice (all but 0.4% of it is ice), Antarctica is the driest place on the planet, with an absolute humidity lower than the Gobi desert.
• Canada has more lakes than the rest of the world combined.
• Woodward Avenue in Detroit, Michigan carries the designation M-1, so named because it was the first paved road anywhere.
• Istanbul, Turkey is the only city in the world located on two continents.
• The deepest hole ever drilled by man is the Kola Superdeep Borehole in Russia: 7.62 Miles. Now that’s super deep!

Thanks to our friend, Jody, for these obscure factoids.

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6. Featured Guest

My guest this month is Doctor Graham Mitenko, a friend, mentor and Florida neighbor.

Have you ever met someone who was very different from most of your friends, and that makes them so very interesting? That’s my friend, Graham. A retired professor, of Finance, no less (SO not my forte), Graham is either extremely well-read and articulate on a wide range of eclectic topics, or he has me completely snookered! No small feat. Our morning walks together this winter passed quickly with near non-stop repartee. His easy-going style obviously serves him well as an international guest lecturer and teacher. And we do enjoy verbal swordplay as we take to the streets. 

Tell us about yourself, Graham. I’m especially interested in a few of your cultural anecdotes while lecturing abroad.

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Absolutely. First, the boring stuff. I was born seventy-plus years ago in Winnipeg, Manitoba. I am of Ukraine descent. Growing up, hockey and curling (Google it!) kept us busy in the winter. We filled wonderful summers with fishing and time spent outdoors . I am a fishing fool. 

School was never a problem, for me; however, it was for my teachers and for my parents. They obsessed over my education. I was a great, good, average, marginal student. To me, a “C” was as good as an “A,” and that seemed to be a problem for them. After high school, I attended the University of Manitoba, a wonderful institution that piqued my interest in stuff I deemed interesting. 

After kicking around a few assorted majors, I settled on economics. I graduated and worked my way through a bunch of uninteresting jobs because I thought I could get a job in economics with an economics degree. Oddly, nobody would pay me to draw supply and demand curves. They wanted real results from real work, and someone with a Masters degree.

One career choice became increasingly obvious: accounting. It seemed auditing financial institutions was real world results for which I could get paid. Unlike artistic types like you, Gene, this work fascinated me. I saw the good and the bad. My interest in finance blossomed which gave me a reason to go back to school.

While earning my MBA in Finance from Minnesota State University, one of my professors suffered a heart attack. The school needed someone to cover his classes during his absence. The dean told me in no uncertain terms I was the new instructor for the Introduction to Finance classes. Doubt gripped me. He told me to just “keep one chapter ahead of the students.”

I taught as an instructor for the next couple of years. I loved the students, plus I got the summers off to fish! Higher education drew me in, and I left corporate America behind. But if I was serious about this new direction, a PhD would be essential. So I moved south once more and attended the University of Memphis. Two important life events underscored my time in Memphis. I achieved my doctorate and I met my wife, a forensic accountant, no less. While there, I took a summer job teaching at the University of Southern Mississippi. And that’s when new opportunities presented themselves—the frosting on my career’s cake. 

A number of schools in Tennessee, Arkansas, Minnesota and Wisconsin recruited me for summer positions. I taught at Southern Mississippi for two years before settling into teaching Finance at the University of Nebraska. While there, a few international institutions seemed to think I could offer them something unique. After thirty-one years in Omaha, and traveling to teach abroad during many of those years, I retired and moved to Florida.

Though retired, I continue to accept teaching or guest lecturing gigs in Ukraine and Finland. I have just been asked to return to Aalto University’s Helsinki School of Economics this fall for the sixteenth consecutive year.

So what have I distilled from a lifetime of teaching? I learn as much from students and others as they do from me, sometimes much more. Counter to some old people talking, students are just as good or better now than when I was in school decades ago. Higher education is not for everyone, nor is it a guarantee of success, or of happiness. Life is short, so find what you like to do and see if you can make a living at it. Brains are no substitute for hard work, and desire trumps both of those. If you want something badly enough, you’ll get it. Think for yourself! There are a lot of people out there who will help you, but ultimately, you must make your own decisions. Remember, there are a lot of misguided people in the world. Don’t be one of them!

Your readers might appreciate a few of my experiences teaching in Finland. Anyone who has traveled, particularly if you’ve lived abroad for a while, will understand.

The Finnish people, as with most Europeans I have met, march to a different drummer than most Americans or Canadians. I am not saying this is good or bad, just different. The Finns, for instance, tend to be very stoic. They are prim, proper and usually carry a serious face. In the US, for example, it is common to greet relative strangers and ask, “How are you doing?” when in fact, we really don’t care. It is just a phrase that has worked its way into our general English speech pattern. When I greet individuals in Finland similarly, they tell me, sometimes more than I want to know.

The Finns are also very reserved. They do not smile very much, at least not in public. I discovered, however, that they are generally friendly, warm and happy individuals… just without a smile, or without most any other type of expression. 

When I taught in Finland, their somber demeanor disarmed me, at least at first. In the US, I received a wealth of feedback from students by reading expressions on their faces. Most of my Finnish students, however, wore granite masks throughout my lectures. This initially threw me for a loop. I was incorrectly reading the situation. They devoured the information, but it turned out I was the problem. I found this akin to teaching during COVID when all the students wore masks, but even then, the eyes reveal thoughts and understanding. It’s just a harder read.

Also, Finnish students very seldom volunteer answers. In the US, when I throw out a hypothetical and ask for an opinion, students invariably volunteer answers. In Finland, if I ask for their opinion, I am greeted with deafening silence. Sometimes I just wait them out, or call on individual students by name. One student explained. Most Finnish instructors never engage their students in such an open manner, and students generally never answer for fear of embarrassment or answering incorrectly. When I run across such reticence, I ask one student–by name–then turn to another student and ask for their opinion, then another and another, etc. This gets the whole class involved, and eventually, they overcome the stigma of responding in class. Sometimes they even carry their brave new voices into other classes. Other professors jokingly accuse me of creating a monster!

I hope to continue our walks together next winter, Gene.

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Thanks, Graham! Me too, my friend.

With pen in hand,

Gene