Second Monday & First Blog of January, 2026

The deceased poet Donald Hall is looking at me from the cover of Essays After Eighty.

The NY Times calls the collection “alternately lyrical and laugh-out loud funny.” And trust me that this book is written in a poet’s prose. One reviewer called it, “wise without being didactic,” in which “every word counts” in prose both “wry and tangy.” Before Hall’s death in 2018, he wrote 16 poetry and 17 essay collections.

Who sent me Hall’s final book?  The laconic & comic orthopedic who sliced open my left leg in December 2019, then dismembered the right knee in June 2020. I am… at 82 and ½, a fine example of his skill as an orthopedic surgeon. More importantly, Dr. N. and I share a love of literature; and he kindly left marks in Hall’s final essay collection. In the chapter, “Death,” I have taken note of what his dark blue pen marked and underlined.

“I become gloomy thinking of insensate things I will leave behind.” (page 91)

“When my friend drove me on its dirt road—an afternoon of bright autumn sunlight, the pond intensely blue with its waters choppy—I glimpsed the birches of our old beach and wept a tear of self-pity.”  (Dr. N. underlined the first its…clever of his questioning literary eye.) (page 92)

“I wrote a poem, “In Praise of Death” that tried to get rid of death by flattery.” (page 93) And below on that page Dr. N drew a line beside this claim: “I’ve been ambitious, and ambition no longer has plans for the future—except these essays.” (I continue to offer my free editorial assistance to this fine physician for a collection of his essays!)

In the chapter on “Death” Donald Hall plays with the language given to our inevitability.  I will offer the first paragraph to you and thank Mariner books for the “right” I assume to do this and hope a few of my limited readers will buy the collection.  Here goes:

“It is sensible of me to be aware that I will die one of these days. I will not pass away—in obituaries, death notices, cards of consolation, e-mails to the corpse’s friends—but people don’t die. Sometimes they rest in peace, quit this world, go the way of all flesh, depart, give up the ghost, breathe a last breath, join their dear ones in heaven, meet their Maker, ascend to a better place, succumb surrounded by family, return to the Lord, go home, cross over, or leave this world.  Whatever the fatuous phrase, death usually happens peacefully (asleep) or after courageous struggle (cancer).  Sometimes women lose their husbands. (Where the hell did I put him?) Some expressions are less common in print: push up the daisies, kick the bucket, croak, buy the farm, cash out. All euphemisms conceal how we gasp and choke turning blue.”

The next paragraph begins: Cremation hides the cadaver!  Hall ends this paragraph on Hindu burial with the following wry observation: “My favorite anecdote of ash disposal is recent. Once after I finished a poetry reading, a generous admirer presented me a jar of her late husband’s remains.” Donald then says, “Myself, I’ll be a molderer, like my wife Jane.” (a famous poet herself)  

Ah, if only another Donald, not a poet but a king, knew the inevitability of death.

Until next week when my right hand will be free of sutures…and tennis again in one month! 

A Christmas Memory, circa 1968… in San Antonio, Texas

Picture me, age 25, a high school English teacher of largely Hispanic students, four classes of sophomore English, and the text book the same one I had in high school in 1958. I was a young teacher, knew I would be at Harlandale High just that semester. So I ignored the rules and bought 30 copies each of four novels:  To Kill a Mockingbird, The Pearl (Steinbeck), Lord of the Flies, and West Side Story (to use with Romeo and Juliet in the textbook). Most students spoke Spanish, many with limited English. I rotated the books and no student lost a copy that semester.  On the last day I was there before the Christmas break, I hauled my record player to school, along with treats, and put on a recording of Dylan Thomas reading, “A Child’s Christmas in Wales.” 

I laugh at myself now. Those kids “bore” with me.

This week in a file I found an old Literary Christmas quiz, which has a passage from Dylan Thomas. I have edited it for space. Imagine my Hispanic students hearing Dylan’s actual voice speaking these words:  “There were the Useful Presents: engulfing mufflers of the old coach days, and mittens made for giant sloths; zebra scarfs of a substance like silky gum that could be tug-o-warred down to the galoshes…and balaclavas for victims of head-shrinking tribes… and from aunts who wore wool next to the skin, there were rasping vests that made you wonder why the aunts had any skin left at all.”

Oh, to hear the Welshman read his words in a voice that had to be heard to be believed. I remember suggesting “not to worry,” just hear and love the sound of the English language read in this lyrical and intoxicating way. 

That same week I read Truman Capote’s “A Christmas Memory,” to my classes, brought in fruit cake so they would know what Capote’s crazy aunt was making to send all over the South to strangers she had met that year, plus one to the President in the White House.

“One must have a little madness/ Or one never dares to cut the rope and be free.” Who said similar words I do not recall. I will only say that Harlandale High is not on my resumé!  My teaching “record” went from Dodson Junior High in Los Angeles to the decade in the Napa Valley, then beyond in other countries, until American University in the late 90s.

My students at Dodson had been Latino and black kids bused to a white school on a Southern California hill. The other day I returned to an essay I wrote years ago about Rafael, a student I taught for three semesters at Dodson before moving to Texas for those six months.  I added the following to this “old” essay about my calling to be a teacher.  Again, edited for space…

“Here I am, age 82, and still teaching for a community college program, usually two short courses of literature and writing each year. Why do I keep doing this? Because teaching is in my blood, a marker of my character, the way I have given to others throughout life; and I hope to continue teaching until my death./ A science writer I have used often in classes was Lewis Thomas who said we ought to reach the end of our lives and like a milkweed go poof and just blow away.  He wrote, “We pass the word around; we ponder how the case is put by different people; we read the poetry; we meditate over literature; we play the music; we change our minds; we reach an understanding.” Yes, Lewis Thomas, as you did in life, I have given my heart and soul to being an educator and would not have lived my life in any other way.”

The finest of holidays to all.  I’ll be back early in 2026, a most welcome New Year!

My lame Right Hand and Sad News of a Friend’s Death

I’m holding a pen with a thick glove, which is filled with a salve to fight inflammation. My location is in bed with our feral cat beside me. He is now in his 17^th year and content to stay indoors. My mood can be described as maudlin because I’ve reached the end of the road (or rope) when it comes to my right hand. Strangely, I just realized this December 5^th that I had my left knee replaced six years ago today, and the right six months later. The surgery for Carpal T. is supposed to be easy. That is if I pass the required “nerve” test. The one restriction after the surgery is no tennis for six weeks. I didn’t get back on the tennis court until the 8^th week with both knees. But this is what I will admit, that each day at 82 plus, I awaken with a rolling ship in my head. What do I hear? Herman Melville’s declaration that, “Old age is a shipwreck.”

Yet this is small stuff.

Last evening I learned of a friend’s death in the U.K. What’s strange is that yesterday I spent time with two address books. The older one (the new one too) disturbed me because over and over I read “deceased” by someone’s name. Later on my computer, I noticed there were 30 messages in Spam. I scanned them and was about to hit delete all, when I recognized a name. I’ve only known one Perrett. I opened the e-mail. It was from an old friend’s son who had written to let me know his mother had died peacefully at home and he, the son, was with husband Ray. This couple had lost one of their two sons not that long ago.

In the early to the mid-1990s, Mike and I were friends with this couple in Venezuela.  Ray was the British Defense Attache and Mike in this position for the USA. After Caracas we kept in contact and visited them in the U.K.  And each Christmas I awaited Sheila’s hand-written and wonderfully lucid letter. I sound matter-of-fact. But what I feel is the loss of another person whose life touched mine in a meaningful way. I remember being in Jane Austin’s village and visiting her house because Ray and Sheila took me there, no doubt repeating an experience that was all too familiar to them. And their house, centuries old, enchanted me.  Mike, too, spent time with this couple when he was in the U.K. on business.

Later today I will struggle, as I always do, with a letter to the man (or the woman) who survives a mate’s death.

I think now… this early morning, of all the friends who are no longer alive. I have remembered a simple poem I love from The Dream Keeper, a small and brilliant book of poetry by Langston Hughes.

I loved my friend / He (she) went away from me

            The story ends / Soft as it began

            I loved my friend.

I no longer have the book and lack energy to check the wording. But think how many you know for whom this is true.  Until next week….and the book club’s fifth meeting for 2025.