Readers familiar with my feckless scribbling will not be surprised to find yet another terminally muddled speculation on books, popular culture, the world as it exists from time to time, and the joy of writing solely for one’s own amusement. 

From whence, you ask, do these furry ruminations arrive? Do they just clatter down the chimney like Santa at midnight? Today, in fact, they do. I begin this scattergram with my meeting with Joe, the chimney guy from Naugatuck. How do Joe and I end up on the same hearth? Like Frederic, apprentice to the pirates who are eventually tamed in Penzance, I am a slave to duty; repair of our chimney had been on the list of bullets to be bitten for more than a year. I saw Joe’s work online, took out the checkbook, and gave him a call. I will not admit the countless unfounded and unfortunate estimations of character I had made in seeing Joe and his body art for the first time, but I confess they were many, which is the more unfortunate in that I number Ink Master, the televised tattoo competition, among my guilty pleasures. Within seconds, however, Joe had won his place in my pantheon of heroes by admitting that he had “Googled” me and was delighted to meet an author in person. 

I’ve frequently described the stack of self-published and almost entirely unpurchased books sitting on a shelf in the living room, books of little or no interest to the general reading public. I’ve found peace in admitting that for me, writing a novel is essentially the equivalent of completing a tough crossword puzzle; it exercises the mind, offers satisfaction in the completion of the task, and keeps me off the streets and out of handcuffs. 

And yet …

I still recall a July afternoon in Santa Barbara. The glitterati were doing whatever it is glitterati do in Santa Barbara; I was in the parking lot of my favorite thrift shop. In moments I would be rifling through previously-loved clothing in search of the elusive “Score” – the once-in-a-lifetime-find, the Picasso in the bin full of cracked frames, a Gutenberg Bible at the bottom of a pile of books. My juices were already bubbling as I stepped out of the car. 

Then, a woman with a shopping cart waved at me. “Are you a writer?” she asked.

“Why, yes. Yes, I am” I froze in place. “Why do you ask?”

“You look like a writer.”

That may not be as good as it gets, but it’s as good as I got. 

Joe’s got his retainer, I assume the chimney will be repaired, I sit on a Sunday morning determined to wade through the articles I’ve set aside during the past week. I’ve done what I could to absorb the news throughout the week; today I wallow in Op Ed and critical reviews. I subscribe to four major news outlets – lots of opinions to get through, but I trip down a rabbit hole within minutes of opening my files. Suzanne Garfinkle-Crowell, founding director of the Academy for Medicine and the Humanities at Mount Sinai writes, “Taylor Swift Has Rocked My Psychiatric Practice” in the New York Times. The article describes a phenomenon; In her experience, Swift’s music, Swift’s persona, provides, “ …a kind of big sister through the daily agonies of being a teenage girl: unsteady friendships, the 24-hour firing squad of the internet and, of course, the endless longing to feel seen and valued.” Garfinkle-Crowell goes on to describe these young women – “Who is the Swiftie? In my practice, these patients share certain characteristics. Raised on a healthy diet of kindness and fairness, she is sensitive, ambitious and a bit of a perfectionist.” Providing a kind of hero who meets these young women where they are, Swift provides an external analog, the young woman who can feel deeply but not be destroyed by feeling. The psychiatrist notes that in difficult circumstances, many of her patients have begun to ask, “What would Taylor do?”

There’s a lot to consider here; too much for one essay. I’ll have to circle back, and look forward to circling back, but as limited as my generational experience is, I have to wonder if there have been many cultural figures of similar impact. Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Anne Frank, Hellen Keller, for some of us the Obamas, sure, but at a distance. As a retired teen did I feel that Elvis, or Holden Caulfield, or the Beatles had answers I could not summon? Even when I found myself “itchin’ like a man on a fuzzy tree” – psychologically All Shook Up, I never found myself wondering, “What Would Elvis Do?”

Returning to Joe and his unsolicited affirmation of myself as a man of letters, I picked up the next article, “Everyone Likes Reading, So Why Are We So Afraid Of It?” by A. O. Scott, formerly a film critic with the Times. I like Scott as a reviewer; he described the film, 65 in this fashion, “Millions of years ago, a guy from another planet landed on this one. Like most survivors, he had a moody little girl with him.” This article has to do with the battles over books in this age of partisan culture sniping; the subtitle is, “What it means to read has become a minefield.”

Scott presents Franz Kafka’s aphorism that “a book must be the ax for the frozen sea within us”, and goes on to write, “By itself, the violence of the metaphor is tempered by its therapeutic implication. Less frequently quoted is Kafka’s previous sentence: “What we need are books that hit us like the most painful misfortune, like the death of someone we loved more than we love ourselves, that make us feel as though we had been banished to the woods, far from any human presence, like a suicide.”

Uh, I understand that Scott is moving toward a defense of literature that confronts our humanity, even as that confrontation is ugly, and dangerous, and frightening. No argument from me, but on this morning in June, even as I count the blessings that abound, ugly, dangerous, and frightening are realities as well, and I could use a big brother or sister to meet me where I am, as I am. One of the authors I most respect as a writer, Cormac McCarthy, died this week. I’ve read his work with delight and disgust; he was a magician. I belong to a book club that may never forgive me for picking Blood Meridian as our shared read. When it came time for me to select the book those friends would take on this month, however, I picked Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano because I wanted to spend time with characters I wish I’d known. I’m a sucker for kindness, and there were times I was gifted with tears. Kafka may have needed an ax to get at the frozen sea; I’ll choose kindness.

All of which is to return to books and Taylor Swift and to introduce a goofy reality show, Jury Duty, in which a very ordinary guy meets a series of complicated events with unfailing generosity and kindness. No spoilers here. Watch Jury Duty, meet Ronald Gladden, and then, ask yourself, “What would Ronald Do?”

Let’s begin with the admission that I have more than enough trouble negotiating people and events in the actual world. I’m also nonplussed by repairs of any kind, do-it-yourself kits, maps, calendars, large animal medicine, preparing steel cut oatmeal, fractions, and breakdancing in the Olympics. The list goes on, but these are all present in the space time continuum known as here and now. In the virtual world, I might as well wear a virtual chinchilla costume and beg the trillion virtual commercial markets to skin me quickly.

Today’s flaying of character has to do with a puzzling and unwelcome message from our bank, Wells Fargo, a national bank, admired far and wide for its integrity, except when caught foisting invisible accounts on unwary customers. We joined the Wells Fargo family when we moved to Oregon and took on a mortgage. One of our best friends rode with the Wells Fargo Stagecoach in parades and round-ups across the western states. My daughter has a plush Wells Fargo horse in her collection of plush horses. 

So, our bank.

In days of yore, I could walk into a building and speak to a human; I was separated from the teller by thick glass, but I could see a person in there, clearly alive and present. During the early days of the pandemic, that branch closed its doors, still operating but not accessible to civilians. No problem; my on-line portal was responsive to my clever passwords and instantly coughed up the information I needed. There were the inevitable glitches from time to time, but they were almost entirely glitches born of my own ineptitude. 

Yesterday, however, came the most unkindest cut of all. The virtual bank recognized my password, brought up a familiar opening page, and then informed me that I was not the primary account holder and could not, therefore, get anywhere close to where I needed to go. A dozen phone calls and e-messages later, I came to fully understand that humans no longer inhabited this fiscal planet. I was, literally, screaming into the void. For the first time in my life, I tossed an ugly injunction to a recorded voice. 

Faint satisfaction there.

Not easily defeated, I’ll carry my dilemma to a branch not far from here. I’ve seen people there. Humans. The issue will likely be resolved, but the damage is done.The business of banking goes on, but my sense of self is once again wounded. 

Not the primary account holder? Not Me? Then Who?

Sure, the potential loss of our capital future is disturbing, but the demotion from prime account holder to mere observer reminds me of the puzzle that has been my identity from the start. I was born in Colombia and christened (I think) as Pedro Arango y Leighton. An ill-fated marriage ended relatively quickly, and I entered the United States a citizen attached to my mother’s maiden name, Elizabeth Leighton. She remarried and took on the name Elizabeth Wolff. I spoke little English at the time and not much Spanish, and for a multitude of reasons did not often hear my name. When my brother was born, I entered primary school as Peter Wolff. Fine with me. I liked having the same name as my brother, and my classmates seemed to find my name unexceptional.

For my sins, however, I was sent off to boarding school at the age of ten, registered as Pedro Arango-Wolff. This was notably less fine with me for any number of reasons. From that point on, I would have to explain that my brother was my brother, even though we had different last names. Bad enough. The more immediate impact was that the snakepit that was this junior boarding school was packed with boys who took great pleasure in taunting the easily identifiable other, a Hispanic kid with a Spanish name. Ok, a partly Spanish name. Some pruning took place as I left eighth grade and headed to the second boarding school, where I was registered as Pedro Arango. In my college years, I was Pedro Arango, P.L. Arango, P. Leighton Arango, and, to a small group of friends, “Boom” Arango. “Time to straighten things out,” I said to myself as my college bid me an uncelebrated and early farewell and I prepared to enlist in the US Navy. “I shall serve as Peter Leighton Arango-Wolff” I announced and took an enlistment oath under that name. Great fun in boot camp as our drill instructor loved to call me “Angry Wolf”, assuming I was Native American.

Returning to finish up at my poorly used college, I must have had a name, but I’ve lost my diploma. I assume I was still Peter Arango-Wolff as I was living on the GI Bill at that point. I changed back to Pedro Leighton Arango as I started my teaching career, but when I turned 50, I had to admit that I still did not pronounce my own first name well. I could manage “Pay-Dro”, which was better than one of my teachers who persisted in calling me “Pee-Dro”, but still. Back we went to Peter, and here we are.

Oh, lest I forget. In virtually any situation demanding the presentation of my last name, I have learned to spell it out, slowly and with emphasis on the letters as they follow one upon the last. One might not think Arango too much of a mouthful to manage, but, believe me, I’ve heard every mangled near and not-so-near miss. I’m actually quite fond of “Avenge-o”, great name for a superhero- Captain Avenge-O! Today I pick up the phone and spell it out – ARA – N- GO, always tempted to say, “pretty much what it sounds like,” but restrain myself. I’m often asked to repeat the spelling. 

So, there I was, happily opening a virtual conversation with my old friend and former mortgage holder, Wells Fargo, expecting the immediate connection to all that is mine, when the news hit home. “Sorry, pal. Not today.” Or more precisely, “Sorry Pal, You are not you today.” Whoever I was, I dialed every number I could find, spelling my name carefully when asked, “ARA – N -GO”. No dice. 

Still not me, apparently.

Once, as a sophomore, I was asked what name I would like to have, if I could have any name in the world. For reasons that escape me, I came up with “Stu Wepler”. I have not found it necessary to use that name in the intervening 62 years, but today, who knows?

This essay ended up as a reflection on the sustaining value of quality. I thought I might begin with friendship, or a book, or a film, but then, the tangled strands of memory got caught in the loom once again, particularly the transition from a partisan emotional attachment to a particular baseball team to a greater appreciation of genius, beauty, and character. Sure, I could have chosen literature or the arts as the medium, but why not baseball?

I was in my first year at my second boarding school in the autumn of 1960, the year in which the U2 Spy plane piloted by Gary Gary Powers was brought to earth by a Soviet missile, the US sent its first soldiers into Vietnam, The Civil Rights Act was signed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, and JFK became the first president born in the 20th Century. I’m pretty sure all those events happened, but the most significant event from my point of view, was Bill Mazerowski’s ninth inning home run, a long line drive that gave the Pirates the deciding game of the World Series. My dormitory included one kid from Pittsburgh and a lot of guys from Connecticut, some of whom rooted for the Red Sox if they lived east of Hartford and some for the Yankees from the western half of the state.

I lived in northwestern Connecticut and had been devoted to the Yankees from the first wobbling images of Yankee games broadcast on WPIX, Channel 11, narrated by Mel Allen and Red Barber. The northwest corner wasn’t far from New York City, but television reception was iffish on crystal clear afternoons and virtually obscured as storms moved through the region. I counted on Allen and Barber to bring the games to life even as the screen was filled with horizontal bands of black. Allen was The Voice of the Yankees, mellow and blessed with a honeysuckle voice thick with witticisms that had traveled with him from Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Barber had been a notable announcer for the Dodgers whose broadcasts on Channel 9, WOR might as well have been filmed underwater, under muddy water as the signal hardly made it to my corner of the state. Barber was noted for the vivid expressions he had picked up in Mississippi – “Sittin’ in the catbird seat”, “slicker than boiled okra”, “tied up in a croker sack”, but holds my admiration to this day for his determination to keep profanity from entering his vocabulary at any time. His fear was that in a moment of excitement he might blurt out a vulgarism that would offend his listeners. I share his intentions and fail daily.

Mel was on the mike on October 13 when Ralph Terry tossed Mazerowski the fat ball that crushed my soul. 

“There’s a drive into deep left field, look out now…! That ball is going … going … gone! The World Series is over! Mazeroski … hits it over the left field fence for a home run, and the Pirates win it 10-9 and win the World Series!… And the fans go wild.”

This fan did NOT go wild; this fan watched Nick Litchfield, the kid from Pittsburgh, strut around campus for the next eight months. 

Life went on, of course, and my intensive “How to Become A Human Being” program took much of my time, but when Mazerowski was elected to the Hall of Fame, the dark and unattractive underbelly of this aspiring human took a nasty turn. In addition to recognizing a more complete understanding of the corroding power of resentment reanimated, I have to take a long look at what was bubbling up, and what animated the taking of myself back to Forbes Field in 1960 when in the present I sat in reasonable contentment, happily near almost all of the people I love best and without a virtual cloud on the horizon, with the exception of existential angst, of course.

I had forgiven Ralph Terry. Leave us not forget that the Yankees had allowed NINE runs before Mazerowski added to the tally. I was ok with Yogi Berra as well; Berra was too short to catch the ball as it cleared the fence. I have ½ inch on Berra, but I can’t see myself making the catch either. Aaron Judge, 6’7”, would have fielded it like a pop fly.

But alternate histories have no place here.

The plain truth is that from the age of five or six I really did not do well with humans. I can’t remember precisely when I shut the door to my room and lost myself in books, but books are virtually all that I do remember until I became a sports fan. I listened to games in my room and watched on television when my teams were in town. For several years children’s classics gave way to stories about baseball – about real baseball players, and fictional players, only slightly older than I, who defied expectation, overcame adversity, and played their way to victory. When asked what Christmas present was the best I ever received, the thrill of opening the wrapper and finding The Fireside Book of Baseball arrives as vividly today as it did in 1956.

Remarkable writers have written about sports, some of the most estimable about baseball. I won’t trot out the entire list of writers whose perception of the game has fired my imagination, but two, Roger Angell and George Will, are essentially men of letters who fell in love with the game and who write unapologetically about baseball in the same fashion that Joseph Campbell wrote about the power of myth. 

“This was a new recognition that perfection is admirable but a trifle inhuman, and that a stumbling kind of semi-success can be much more warming. Most of all, perhaps, these exultant yells for the Mets were also yells for ourselves, and came from a wry, half-understood recognition that there is more Met than Yankee in every one of us. I knew for whom that foghorn blew; it blew for me.”

Roger Angell

“All I remember about my wedding day in 1967 is that the Cubs lost a double-header.” George Will

Angell suggested that the only path beyond blind partisan allegiance is expertise, an observation which I took to mean an appreciation of greatness in players and teams other than one’s own. 

Do I cite Angell in order to mouth a mamby pamby paean to Mazeroski, a long-overdue tribute to a clutch ballplayer? 

Nah. One homerun does not a Hall of Famer make, and if defensive skill is the criterion, the list of exquisitely talented fielders not in the Hall is as long as an A’s losing streak. Do a search for Jim Edmonds. The first word you’ll encounter is “Catch”. Not this catch or that catch but the seemingly endless string of improbable catches, any one of which rivals the iconic catches in baseball lore. When Edmonds became eligible for consideration, he garnered 2.5% of Hall of Fame votes and was relegated to the heap of overlooked defensive wizards.

Like a runner inching his way down the third base line as a pitcher winds up, I am slowly edging toward the purpose of this confession. Having buried the lead several pages ago, my intention is still to describe the transition from juvenile devotion to a team, the Yankees, to an appreciation of grace, skill, and heart wherever it appears. As a child, I gave my heart to the Yankees for the same reason kids wear superhero costumes on Halloween and are fascinated by dinosaurs and sharks. I lacked agency, authority, power, and they were powerful. 

But childhood ends. In my case on October 12, 1960. All was not lost, however. That Pirates team, for example, included Roberto Clemente, among the most complete and certainly most graceful players of all time. In addition to Clemente, the National League was stuffed with greatness – Willie Mays, Ernie Banks, Orlando Cepeda, Stan Musiel, Eddie Matthews, and Hank Aaron. American League rivals included Ted Williams, Minnie Minoso, Nellie Fox, Brooks Robinson, Al Kaline, Luis Aparicio, Vic Power, and Harvey Kuenn. Against all odds, throughout the next 60 years, magical ball players continued to break into a lineup and blaze with glory. 

As I write, I am reminded of a spring training game in Peoria, Arizona, an early evening game in which the best seats had been sold out. My son and I sat on the lawn behind right field, above the bullpens on the side of the outfield. We were there to see Ichiro Suzuki, the Mariner’s newly acquired bushido batsman. His career in Japan had been extraordinary, and we would have made the trip if only to see him hit and run the bases. He won my admiration before spring training had begun. He’d worn the number 51 in Japan and had asked pitcher Randy Johnson if he could have the number in Seattle, assuring the pitcher that he would bring the number no shame. No shame? That year he was Rookie of the Year, AL MVP, won a Gold Glove and Silver Slugger Award, and was the first rookie to lead voting for the All Star game. On that evening in March, however, that was yet to come. We’d seen him hit a single and steal second in the first inning, more than excitement enough for us, but in the third, the Padres’ bats warmed up and runners were on first and second. Ichiro was playing relatively deep, read the batter’s stance, took off at the crack of the bat, and nailed the runner at third. Early in the regular season he would cut down Terrance Long of the A’s with a rope to third that was simply immortalized in Japan as “The Throw”. 

I can’t truly pay tribute to Ichiro as a hitter, but like Curry’s delicate shot from mid-court, like the mid-air acrobatics of Randy Moss, Ichiro Suzuki’s courtly extension of his bat signified a kind of kinesthetic genius.

I stopped in at the National Baseball Hall of Fame last week on the way home from a college reunion. Ichiro won’t be eligible for election to the Hall until 2025, but the museum had mounted an extensive display of records held by various players, many of which belong to Suzuki. Ichiro has visited the museum frequently, holding the bats of celebrated players, weighing them in his hands to feel the density, the “sweet spot” in each bat. He wanted to hold the bat used by George Sisler, former St. Louis Browns first baseman, whose record for hits in a single season had held until 2004 when Suzuki’s set the new mark of 257 hits. He visited Sisler’s grave in St. Louis, explaining,

“I wanted to do that for a grand upperclassman of the baseball world. I think it’s only natural to want to do that, to express my feelings in that way.”

Those of us who were devoted to his career remember his response when readying to face dominant pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka – 

“I hope he arouses the fire that’s dormant in the innermost recesses of my soul. I plan to face him with the zeal of a challenger.”

So, the Yankees were pretty terrific in 1960,  but then the Giants were pretty terrific, and the Dodgers, and the Cards, and the Braves, and the Reds, and the Mariners, and now, the Astros and the Rays.

I stood in front of Ichiro’s locker in Cooperstown and reminded myself that more grace and more beauty is likely to appear when I least expect it, I wouldn’t mind being on the lawn above a bullpen to see it arrive

Against all odds I’ve lived beyond the confines of a 50th college reunion, now joining superannuated loyal alumni returning to campus as a“Perennial”, a tag that is far more generous and far less descriptive than “Shambling Husk of a Person Seeking Connection With a Life Only Dimly Recalled”. So it was as a Perennial that I drove up the hill again to find the campus essentially where I left it, but subtly altered as open views have been filled with new construction and familiar haunts have evolved into freshly coined businesses. A long central path runs down the backbone of this college town and campus, slightly more congested as classes return and Amish carts bring handmade goods to stalls along the path. Banners and signs waved a jaunty greeting as I parked between a dusty Dodge Caravan and a sleek Rolls Royce convertible. I can’t begin to guess at the slog the chipper development staff goes through – organizing this spectacle and housing pop up a week or so after the Commencement litter has been swept up. They were universally chipper on day one but somewhat brittle by Sunday mid-morning as they had heard one too many complaints about the fluffiness of towels in dormitory accommodations. 

The President made his rounds, dutifully extolling the generosity of the loyalists whose classes had contributed millions to the small college’s coffers. Some of the Perennials were in that cohort; most of my pals were still trying to figure out how we thought we could retire and still pay the cable bill.

But, happy to be back, and resigned to seeing flags and pennants reminding us of the many generations of graduates who followed our tattered retreat from the groves of academe in the riot of the late 1960’s. Most of the signs welcomed us back by class, but since some of us had outlived our reunions, one sign in particular struck me as oddly impersonal and unsettlingly familiar.

“Welcome Back, You.”

An unadorned “Welcome Back” fits all sizes and raises no curious flights of fancy. “Welcome Back … You”? 

The first impression is that the college thinks it should know me, but just can’t quite come up with a name. Rather than stumble and guess, “Welcome Back … Terry?”, the sign signifies a warmish welcome and the admission of the droll ravages of time. Almost immediately, however, I hear a different intonation as I consider the greeting spoken. Not just the word, “You”, but an elbow in the ribs, perhaps, or a light punch on the arm. “You devil, you.” “You scamp, you”, You joker, you”. This is a welcome accompanied by the curious mixture of affection and correction offered by those who know us well enough to see beyond our public personae. Nudge nudge, wink wink.

I suspect those whose collegiate years were filled with triumph and celebrity hear a different greeting, but those of us who tried the patience of the place understand that this reckoning is the gift that keeps on giving. I’m ok now, too long in the tooth to be dangerous and too diminished in charisma to be an attractive distraction. Welcome Back, Me, the college says, pretty sure the worst that will happen is that I complain about soap.

The theme song of my early years was, “I Did It My Way”, and while Sinatra may not have given much room to his few regrets, mine are heaped like kegs at a frat party, a simile I choose with some caution. I spent the summer before my freshman year in a house in the woods on the Upper Cape, above the elbow, near Thoreau’s cabin and a short walk from the Bay. I read everything I could get my hands on, especially histories of European literary and artistic movements. At the end of the summer, I packed a backpack, grabbed a guitar, and headed off to find the intellectual playground of my dreams.

I’m not sure I read anything assigned in the debacle that was my first three and a half years on that campus. I have no memory of riveting conversations with professors, no fault of theirs as I was only fleetingly and rarely in the classroom. Paradise Lost? More like Paradise Ignored.

I mention the social and academic wasteland that was my collegiate career to introduce one of the unexpected pleasures this Perennial found over the course of a weekend. I listened to my classmates and appreciated the lives they had lived. I sat with a friend who had taught in schools such as those I knew comparing notes on “the Duke of dark corners” in Measure for Measure and arguing whether Shakespeare intended us to see The Merchant of Venice as belonging to Shylock or to Antonio, the actual merchant, and if so, whether Antonio’s opening lines, “In sooth I know not why I am sad…” is an unarticulated, unintended declaration of his love for Bassanio, the moronic frat boy, and in that reading, if the character of Portia has to be reassessed. 

Regrets? I could have had a thousand conversations such as that in my college years and did not. But, welcomed back, I could bring the person I had become to a place that had wished me well. 

That sign now means something more to me. “Welcome Back, all that you regret and all that you love, and all that you are.” “Welcome Back, You”.