My Current Crush

The immortal Samuel Johnson has enjoyed perhaps the most robust afterlife of any other human being in history, thanks to the labors of his great friend and biographer James Boswell. I daresay most educated people know some of Johnson's oft-quoted witticisms, perhaps without knowing whom to credit. 

"Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel." 

"I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read."

Or one of my favorites:

"The true measure of a man is how he treats someone 

who can do him absolutely no good."

We are indebted to Mr. Boswell not only for carefully recording so much of Johnson's wit and wisdom, but also for preserving the character and substance of the great man himself, his essence. And one need only peruse a few pages of Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language to grasp the vastness of his prodigious reading history.

My present absorption with Sam Johnson is that after nearly more than five decades of somewhat cobwebby awareness of Boswell's masterwork, I am actually reading the thing that has been called the great-granddaddy of all biographies, certainly the standard-setter for the genre for the past 225 years.  I do not know why it has taken me so long. I actually bought my copy some years ago, and I expect the small print and the gravity of its pedigree, in both subject and author, were intimidating.

It needn't have put me off. The book is a complete delight, interlacing the events of Johnson's storied career as an essayist, literary critic, lexicographer, and raconteur with verbatim accounts of conversations with the great man. The narrative is so delicious and compelling that I feel almost like an intimate of Johnson, along with Boswell and other members of the literary club that generated so much of the book's wit. It is a rare delight, to be carried along in the company of great minds, as I was also when reading Goethe's Italian Journey.

The descriptions and observations of Johnson by Boswell recreate a lively personage; I note that in film and BBC productions, Johnson has been played by Robbie Coltrane (Hagrid in Harry Potter films) and Peter Ustinov. I would cast Timothy Spall, another of the great, unpretty British character actors who fill the screen with the force of personality. And I have been further delighted to learn that Sam Johnson and I have much in common! We both have only one usable eye, are prone to melancholy (depression, in today's parlance), dress appallingly, cannot suffer fools, and read widely, guided only by the moment's appetite. Indeed, Johnson said that if one reads by design or plan, for the purpose of gaining specific knowledge, as we do in college, for example, we read with only 50% of our minds, as the other 50% is busy keeping us to the task at hand.  Clearly, Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson is a book to engage 100% of one's attention. Why did I wait so long?

Sacuanjoche Update

My query regarding the mysterious appendages my little sacuanjoche treeling was sporting last month has been satisfied at last. No, the twigs were not evidence of a branching out of the original single stem, although that, in fact, has happened, as several new junctures have occurred just below the twigs in question. The pictorial below attests:

A brand new sacuanjoche, the national flower of Nicaragua!

More Bits and Bobs

A Case of The Blahs
Soon, classes at Keiser University Latin American Campus will resume, and my twice-weekly tutoring schedule with them. The past two months since my vacation have seemed hermitic (Is there such a word? Hermitically sealed?). I have spent most of my time alone, in the company of my little Greek chorus, the three doggies who follow me inside and out, constantly craving attention and treats. Of course, Maria José and her brother Roger have come to do their work in the house and garden, and I make my usual rounds to pay bills and buy groceries, but I have felt zero inclination to see anyone or do anything in particular. Likewise, my energy level has been quite low. On humid mornings, I feel incapable of walking even a quarter-mile. Napping is my favorite activity, and I wonder if I shall ever feel like doing anything ever again.

I'm chalking it up to rainy season malaise. When the humidity drops, I'll perk up.

Walking in Nicaragua
When I was a little girl, my eyes were not straight. I have always used only one eye, as the other sees a different angle, and using both would result in a double image. Surgeries and eye patches helped straighten out my appearance to some degree, but because my classmates at Our Mother of Sorrows school in Johnstown were so cruel (especially the son of my eye doctor!), I always walked home looking down at my feet, so as not to invite comment.

I got over it; further surgery in adulthood helped. Lately, though, I have reverted to that earlier form. Here in Nicaragua, I dare not step unmindfully, or I risk ending up prone and bruised. Most sidewalks, when there are sidewalks, are narrower than we have in the States, and have lozenge-shaped access holes for water pipes below. Some of the holes still have cement lids, but many do not, and some have crumbled to twice their original size. It's a perilous path indeed.

Not only that, but everywhere, there are lingering stubs of metal sign posts that have been mostly removed, save for two or three inches of steel sticking up in the middle of the road or sidewalk. Twice, after descending from a bus in Jinotepe, I tripped and tore open my knee in the exact same place because of a metal obstacle embedded in the concrete. When I finally saw what had tripped me up, I simply could not believe it had been left in place. But I have since seen many such examples.

Owners of stores and houses often pave the sidewalk in front of their buildings with distinctive tiles and mosaics, some very slippery when wet. Woe to anyone who goes striding down the walkway unaware that the hausfrau has just emptied a bucket onto her front stoop!

The colors and flowers and displays of fruits and vegetables do tempt the eye, but far better to stop and look around, and then continue on, eyes downward.

Salvation in Reading
Anent my above observation that I have become a hermit, I must add that the two to four books I read every two weeks afford me a rich and varied life of the mind. For the past year, I have been working my way through the English and American Literature shelves of Keiser University's library. My tastes run to 18th and 19th-c. English lit, but I also enjoy Homer, Dante, Euripedes, and Virgil. Also more contemporary efforts, from Elena Ferrante to Abraham Verghese (just finished "Cutting for Stone" - wonderful!).

When my mother was in her last years, I discovered the novels of Anthony Trollope, who chronicled Victorian England in his many tales of middle-class and better-off people of trades, professions and the aristocracy. His comic yarns of pompous clerics and scalawag barristers, and romances with long-suffering devoted daughters and feckless lotharios are charming, absorbing, amusing, and often heartbreaking. My mother relished Trollope's novels, devouring them as fast as I could order them. She was in the grip of dementia, with impaired short-term memory, but as long as she was reading, she was free of the limits of age and ill health. She may not have recalled the characters and plots for long, but while she was in the moment, reading and enjoying Trollope's lively tales, she was 100% herself, wholly engaged.