nancynall.com » Data-mining the past.
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Data-mining the past.

I found a note­book yes­ter­day. Noth­ing like a full soft­ware rein­stall to send what should stay buried tum­bling from the shelves. Keep­ing note­books is one of those things all writ­ers are sup­posed to do, and I sort of do, but not enough. There’s the how-to-carry thing, for one. There’s the atro­phied writ­ing mus­cles thing, for another. And note­books are dan­ger­ous items, not unlike your seventh-grade jour­nals. Scrib­bling one’s inner­most thoughts, or even amus­ing words, phrases, jux­ta­po­si­tions and church signs con­tem­po­ra­ne­ously inevitably leads to a 99-to-1 chaff/wheat ratio.

(Lance Man­nion is an excep­tion. See his Min­ing the Note­books tag.)

Any­way, the note­book I found yes­ter­day was from my Ann Arbor year. Dan­ger, Will Robin­son. That was the last year I felt bound­less opti­mism and infi­nite pos­si­bil­i­ties, before it ended and all the crabs reached up and dragged me back into the bucket. (Yes, I am jok­ing about the crabs. Poor me.) It wasn’t as excru­ci­at­ing to read as I’d feared:

2/10/04: Nor­walk virus in a dorm — lines out­side the stalls in com­mu­nal bath­rooms, signs on doors read­ing “sick.”

I have no idea where I got that, as I stayed out of dorms. Prob­a­bly over­heard some­one talk­ing about it in class, and just liked the image. I don’t recall my own dorm years as happy, fun ones, although they were instruc­tive. You dis­cover how peo­ple really live, and hope you don’t draw a room­mate with a vastly dif­fer­ent thresh­old of Gross than yours. Once I walked into a shower and found an empty bot­tle of dis­pos­able douche lying on the floor. Straw­berry. Hav­ing to line up to barf is all part of the same hell of other people.

Here’s another:

1/28/04: Snow day casu­al­ties — Cindy, pale and tired, color bleached from even her lips. Smok­ers, ban­ished to the out­doors, hud­dled together like dull spar­rows in the cold.

Whoa, poetry. An unat­trib­uted quote:

1/20/04: “The golfer plays to save the land from builders.”

Some­one should answer for that.

2/18/04: The psy­chol­ogy of oppres­sion: Make mem­bers of the oppressed group over­seers of the group as a whole. Thus, women ini­ti­ate oth­ers into pros­ti­tu­tion, Jews guard oth­ers in con­cen­tra­tion camps, Hebrews over­see work on the pyramids.

Again, no cite. Notes on watch­ing an onstage inter­view with Arthur Miller, 4/1/04:

AM on UM: “A testing-ground for all my prej­u­dices.” …30’s the­ater in NYC: “rad­i­cal out­cry” against the Depres­sion (Welles, Odets) …Never trust an inter­viewer who uses the word “per­spi­ca­cious” …“[We] weaned the [Michi­gan] Daily away from the fraternities.”

But what I remem­ber most with­out the aid of my note­book, I didn’t even write down: When Miller said that within five years, cli­mate change would change the route of the Gulf Stream and plunge the British Isles into a Siber­ian ice age. I thought, Hmm, he’s senile. He died not quite a year later.

I sup­pose my note­book has done what note­books are sup­posed to do — prod­ded mem­ory and data-mined a unique year in my life. Every year is unique, and we for­get so much of it. That’s why I started this blog — so I could remem­ber more of it. Ruby just hopped up and nib­bled a cres­cent out of the Arthur Miller page. Another memory.

The last page has a sin­gle line: “food and wine.” I have no idea.

OK, then. Another early exit, more scant bloggage:

Hank Stuever has a book com­ing out this fall. You’d think writ­ing a book would be the hard­est part, but it isn’t. He explains.

Finally, I was going to wait for Moe to bring this up her­self, but I see the com­ments in the pre­vi­ous thread have uncov­ered her recent news, so here goes: Moe, our fre­quent com­menter here, recently got some very bad news about what started as a raspy throat. It’s the kind that includes lan­guage like “biopsy” and “stage 3 or 4.” Moe, courage to you on what must be a ter­ri­fy­ing jour­ney. Details on her blog.

And now off to my meeting.

Posted on Friday, September 25th, 2009 at 8:54 am
in Uncategorized.

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43 responses to
“Data-mining the past.”

  1. Jolene said on September 25th, 2009 at 9:53 am

    Hadn’t seen the end of the last thread, Moe, so just learned your news. Am very sorry to hear this. Stay with us, and we’ll stay with you.

  2. del said on September 25th, 2009 at 10:16 am

    I tried to post a com­ment to your blog but failed Moe. That was a beau­ti­ful post about the roller coaster. How to put it? I don’t know. Your words put reeled me in, I feel like I am dream­ing with you now.

  3. brian stouder said on September 25th, 2009 at 10:31 am

    Regard­ing the first part of today’s post, do you know what made me laugh out loud? This passage:

    Any­way, the note­book I found yes­ter­day was from my Ann Arbor year. Dan­ger, Will Robinson.

    We are rapidly approach­ing the end of the fis­cal year, and sev­eral of our admin­stra­tive types are fraz­zled, and one is very (very!) particularly…frazzled. A col­league qui­etly passed the warn­ing along to me, pref­aced with that exact say­ing — “Dan­ger, Will Robin­son”. I have not googled it; I’m assum­ing it’s from an old tv show or pos­si­bly a comic book.

    Aside from that — I whole­heart­edly sec­ond Jolene’s motion.

  4. John said on September 25th, 2009 at 10:47 am

    I was talk­ing to a 30 year old engi­neer this morn­ing who didn’t know what a 9-track mag­netic tape was and now Brian tells us that he doesn’t know the Dan­ger, Will Robin­son ref­er­ence. God I feel old.

    Moe, tamp ‘em up solid.

  5. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on September 25th, 2009 at 10:48 am

    “Lost In Space,” which aired in the mid-60s along­side “Star Trek” but on another net­work. The robot said “Dan­ger, Will Robin­son” with a dis­tinc­tive wave of his inef­fi­cient hosepipe arms.

  6. LAMary said on September 25th, 2009 at 11:04 am

    It was Rob­bie the Robot, same guy as the For­bid­den Planet robot.

  7. MarkH said on September 25th, 2009 at 11:08 am

    Moe, I am very sorry to hear this news. Any pre­vi­ous polit­i­cal dis­agree­ments with you are hereby neu­tral­ized. You are in my prayers, seri­ously. All the best to you and your fam­ily. Hang in there!

  8. LAMary said on September 25th, 2009 at 11:10 am

    JTMMO
    The recruiter who does chap­lains and other spir­i­tual care posi­tions also cov­ers a boat­load of other non clin­i­cal jobs here. We’re a Catholic hos­pi­tal, but we have chap­lains of all sorts so the recruiter stays pretty busy.
    One of the Catholic chap­lains is also ordained East­ern Rite. The last time Arnie the Gov­er­na­tor vis­ited us, his staff requested employ­ees in scrubs, lab­coats, or other uni­forms be in the cam­era frame with the guv. Father Mark went to his office and got his most impres­sive East­ern Rite head­gear so he could be in the picture.

  9. MarkH said on September 25th, 2009 at 11:10 am

    LAMary, it was NOT Rob­bie the Robot, famous from “The For­bid­den Planet”. It was a com­pletely new and dif­fer­ent robot made espe­cially for “Lost in Space”, voiced by Dick Tufel, who I believe died recently. Oddly though, Rob­bie did make a guest appear­ance or two on the show.

    EDIT — Here is a (lousy) photo of the two:

    EDIT (2) —  And the most famous robots of all, together at last:

    http://​www​.tms​.org/​p​u​b​s​/​j​o​u​r​n​a​l​s​/​J​O​M​/​0​3​1​1​/​f​i​g6.gif

    http://​www​.high​tech​science​.org/​R​o​b​b​y​_​_​B​9​_​1b.JPG

  10. LAMary said on September 25th, 2009 at 11:31 am

    Now, ya see? They look alike, and unless I had seen them together, I would have thought they were the same guy. I never watched much Lost in Space, but I’ve seen For­bid­den Planet a lot of times. Leslie Neilsen and Wal­ter Pidgeon.

  11. Sue said on September 25th, 2009 at 11:34 am

    Moe — hope you have a chance to read the com­ments from yes­ter­day and today. Keep us informed and keep fighting.

  12. MarkH said on September 25th, 2009 at 11:38 am

    Yes, B-9 was clearly inspired by Rob­bie, whom they just had to bring him back to duke it out with Will’s buddy for the TV show.

    For­bid­den Planet: Yes, and Anne Francis(!).

  13. Peter said on September 25th, 2009 at 11:49 am

    Moe — Am very sorry to hear the news. I wish the best for you and your family.

  14. Dorothy said on September 25th, 2009 at 11:59 am

    Moe I left a com­ment at your blog and I echo all the com­ments here. We’re here as your sup­port sys­tem — one of many I’m sure you have. Send­ing lots of pos­i­tive thoughts your way.

    Billy Mumy played the inim­itable Will Robin­son. He had a small part in “Papil­lion” as well, and at least one mem­o­rable role in the orig­i­nal Twi­light Zone show. Cloris Leach­man played his mom in this episode. http://​www​.imdb​.com/​t​i​t​l​e​/​t​t​0​7​34580/

  15. brian stouder said on September 25th, 2009 at 12:11 pm

    Cloris Leach­man played his mom in this episode

    You know, in that one Sein­feld episode where he couldn’t remem­ber his date’s first name, but he knew it rhymed with a female anatom­i­cal part, her name could have been Cloris

  16. Danny said on September 25th, 2009 at 12:12 pm

    Oh, Moe, I am so shocked by this news my sis­ter. I know we barely “know” one another, but I feel very con­nected to you here in our lit­tle com­mu­nity. Keep walk­ing, keep fight­ing, keep praying.

    Need­less to say, I will be in fer­vent prayer for you and if you ever want to chat Nancy can send my con­tact infor­ma­tion to you.

  17. 4dbirds said on September 25th, 2009 at 12:22 pm

    Moe, my thoughts are with you.

    My dad hated LIS so when Star Trek came around he refused to let us watch it. I had to visit friends to see Star Trek.

  18. Dexter said on September 25th, 2009 at 12:24 pm

    moe, wow… shocked here, also. I sim­ply wish you the best.
    All I have to offer is a blog site; a fel­low polit­i­cal blog con­trib­u­tor, Sean Holton, who is a buddy of Craig Craw­ford , blogs on his own site about his bat­tle with brain can­cer. Craig was on Don Imus’s WABC radio show on Mon­day and men­tioned Sean’s phi­los­o­phy: “How Sean Holton Learned To Stop Wor­ry­ing And Just Have Brain Can­cer Instead.“
    http://​sean​holton​.word​press​.com/​about/

  19. Colleen said on September 25th, 2009 at 1:13 pm

    Aw geeze Moe. I just read your blog. I’m so sorry. Thoughts and prayers are with you.

  20. MarkH said on September 25th, 2009 at 1:29 pm

    Brian, the name Sein­feld came up with when he had his epiphany at episode’s end was Dolores.

    Also, Brain, you have been strangely silent on this episode, given your affec­tion for F1:

    http://​www​.autosport​.com/​n​e​w​s​/​r​e​p​o​r​t​.​p​h​p​/​i​d​/78771

    Incred­i­ble event, no? Flavio Bri­a­tore has prop­erly left the venue, finally show­ing him­self to be the supreme whore in a who­r­ish busi­ness. Poor Nel­son Piquet, Jr. was des­per­ate to save his career and went along with the crash orders. Renault’s spon­sorhsip is now dec­i­mated, but some­how, they will con­tinue. As Stir­ling Moss said on BBC the other day, the sport in F1 is almost entirely wiped out; it’s all busi­ness and money. I’ll still watch, though.

  21. MarkH said on September 25th, 2009 at 1:35 pm

    Dorothy, one of the many TZ episodes that creeped me out as a kid in the ‘burgh! What a per­for­mance that direc­tor got out of Mumy.

    http://​www​.youtube​.com/​w​a​t​c​h​?​v​=​_​C​3​4​g​5mz1ZQ

    “You’re a bad girl! You’re a VERY bad girl, Dorothy!”

    Mumy also had a cameo in the big screen remake of Lost in Space star­ring William Hurt.

  22. brian stouder said on September 25th, 2009 at 1:51 pm

    Mark, short ver­sion of my reac­tion to Renault/Flavio/Piquet: Wow. As a Schu­macher fan, it makes me think back on those years when the FIA was con­stantly on him, sanc­tion­ing and penal­iz­ing and dq’ing him.… and all those folks I’ve argued with over the years, about the mer­its of Schuey. Looks like they were more right than I was.

    Aside from that, I can’t decide if I’m more dis­gusted by Piquet’s actions THEN (crash­ing on pur­pose) or NOW (vin­dic­tively destroy­ing his team by rat­ting them all out)

    After­all, inten­tional crashes for larger pur­poses are not unprece­dented in F1; Senna and Prost leap to mind (not to men­tion Schuey and Hill, not so many years ago).

    And, Fer­nando Alonso can­not help but be dam­aged by this

  23. Jean S said on September 25th, 2009 at 3:15 pm

    aw crap, Moe. So sorry to hear this. Will be send­ing good energy your way. (As I live near Port­land, I’m allowed to say things like that.)

  24. Jenflex said on September 25th, 2009 at 3:29 pm

    Moe, you’re in my prayers, too.

  25. MichaelG said on September 25th, 2009 at 3:32 pm

    F-1 is rot­ten from the top down. Start with Bernie E. and Max M. What a pair. I’m not sur­prised by Flavio’s fol­lies or by the McLaren foo foo a while ago. I’m just sur­prised that there isn’t more scan­dal. Schu­macher is unde­ni­ably a great dri­ver but an ass­hat. I was once a great fan but I haven’t given a rat’s ass about F-1 for years. The dri­vers are mostly rich kids whose dad­dies bought them their rides. I look at it now and again but can’t decide whether to laugh or gag at dri­ver inter­views. Yes, I know. “It was a very tech­ni­cal cor­ner.” What a bunch.

  26. paddyo' said on September 25th, 2009 at 4:20 pm

    LA Mary and Mark H –

    “Gort: Klaatu, barada, nikto!”

    My fave robot of all time …

  27. Jolene said on September 25th, 2009 at 4:31 pm

    Just spent a bit of time read­ing Sean Holton’s blog, linked by Dex­ter above. Good writ­ing and many good thoughts about what it means to have a seri­ous illness.

    Like Nancy, I was recently reminded of past lives by sort­ing through things I’d writ­ten – let­ters, in this case – and things that had been writ­ten to me. My sibs and I are in the process of clear­ing out my par­ents’ house and get­ting it ready to sell. Among many other sortings-out, I had to go through the con­tents of a trunk of my own stuff that’s been at their house all this time.

    The trunk con­tained some trin­kets I’d saved from child­hood, but it was let­ters that I’d received from var­i­ous friends and rel­a­tives in my late teens and early twen­ties that were most inter­est­ing. So much crazi­ness in my life and in the cul­ture back then (late ‘60s and early ‘70s). The let­ters from other young friends who, like me, were try­ing to fig­ure them­selves out polit­i­cally, pro­fes­sion­ally, and finan­cially – all the while mov­ing from one city to another or even to other coun­tries – gave me a vivid sense of the enor­mous cul­tural churn occur­ring then.

    Those let­ters, along with the recent deaths of Kennedy, Cronkite, Tra­vers and oth­ers who pop­u­lated my con­scious­ness, have made my youth feel very far away indeed.

  28. mark said on September 25th, 2009 at 4:57 pm

    Very sorry to hear your news, moe. Prayers can’t hurt, so I will also send some your way.

  29. Sue said on September 25th, 2009 at 5:04 pm

    Well, now, who is this mouthy sen­a­tor from MI?
    http://​www​.wash​ing​ton​monthly​.com/​a​r​c​h​i​v​e​s​/​i​n​d​i​v​i​d​u​a​l​/​2​0​0​9​_​0​9​/​0​2​0​1​17.php

  30. ROgirl said on September 25th, 2009 at 5:12 pm

    So sorry, moe. Good thoughts to you and your family.

  31. whitebeard said on September 25th, 2009 at 5:42 pm

    Moe, my thoughts and prayers are with you and yours; fight on!

  32. brian stouder said on September 25th, 2009 at 5:59 pm

    The trunk con­tained some trin­kets I’d saved from child­hood, but it was let­ters that I’d received from var­i­ous friends and rel­a­tives in my late teens and early twen­ties that were most interesting.

    Pam and I recently went to my high school class’s 30th reunion, and while I was some­what con­cerned going in, the expe­ri­ence ended up being some­where between mildly inter­est­ing and a bust.

    At about 20 after 9, I asked Pam if she was ready to roll, and she agreed, and we were out of there.

    By way of say­ing, I think let­ters and notes — things that are an authen­tic part of one’s past — have a mag­ni­fied power all their own.

  33. joodyb said on September 25th, 2009 at 6:12 pm

    I come from a dif­fer­ent place than Kathryn Kuhlman, Moe, but I too believe in the power of mir­a­cles. Keep telling your story. We are wait­ing to hear from you.

  34. crazycatlady said on September 26th, 2009 at 1:01 am

    Note to self: Burn all of my Jour­nals to pre­vent the read­ing of my pathetic mewlings.…

  35. crazycatlady said on September 26th, 2009 at 1:16 am

    Moe, I’m not a reli­gious per­son. But I do believe that there is a uni­ver­sal vibra­tion of every­thing that is. I wish for you peace, strength and the knowl­edge that what you have given will given back to you. It is what it is. But you can fight it. And we will stand by you.

  36. Dave K. said on September 26th, 2009 at 2:10 am

    Moe, you are one of my favorites! My prayers are already with you. Wish­ing you all the best.

  37. moe99 said on September 26th, 2009 at 3:40 pm

    Thank you each and every one. The biopsy pro­ce­dure went well yes­ter­day. My lung did not col­lapse after the nee­dle punc­ture, and it appears that the doc did get a sam­ple of the growth. It’s hard to do with an organ like the lung because it is not a sta­tion­ary object – it slides against the chest wall – so I had to stop breath­ing at exactly the right point – took about 20 prac­tice stops but sam­ple was there in the preser­v­a­tive, an innocu­ous white rib­bon of goo. Should know by Tues­day at the ear­li­est or Thurs­day at the latest.

    Thank you again. Your care is very much appreciated.

  38. MarkH said on September 26th, 2009 at 6:14 pm

    pad­dyo’ —  I’m with ya. I thought that Keanu Reeves remake was an insult to the orig­i­nal. BTW, I’m in your ter­ri­tory this week­end vis­it­ing all my rel­a­tives in Boul­der. Hot weather!

    moe, here’s hop­ing and pray­ing for the best pos­si­ble results!

  39. Rana said on September 26th, 2009 at 11:22 pm

    moe, I’m glad the biopsy went well. Here’s hop­ing the results are help­ful too.

  40. beb said on September 27th, 2009 at 11:54 am

    At times like this I wish I had more than two fin­gers to cross, Moe.

  41. Joe Kobiela said on September 27th, 2009 at 7:56 pm

    Hang tough Moe,
    Con­grat­u­la­tion to the Lions,
    It will make every­one in Detroit walk just a bit taller.
    Pilot Joe

  42. Laurie said on September 27th, 2009 at 8:37 pm

    Moe, I am so shocked and sorry to hear your news. Please keep us updated. You and your fam­ily are in my thoughts.

  43. Dexter said on September 28th, 2009 at 12:34 am

    “My” Lions won, but they sucked so bad the local Toledo chan­nel didn’t even carry it…usually Detroit non-sell-out TV black­outs do not affect Toledo cov­er­age, but WTF who cares?
    The two most excit­ing teams this year are amazing…The Cincin­nati Ben­gals and NY Jets are two teams I have not watched in decades, and now I search for their game because they both are so much fun to watch.
    Imag­ine Cincin­nati beat­ing Pitts­burgh! And the Jets are sim­ply awesome.

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