John Updike

We have a biography on the late John Updike. I wonder what took so long. He had me at "Roger's Version", but I am not a great fan, and I have much else on my plate. I am glad, however, to get this little snippet into the personal life from the book review.

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His high school friends called him Uppie, as if he were a drug. He’d claim the back booth in Stephen’s Luncheonette, in Shillington, Pa., his hometown, and amuse everyone by blowing smoke rings and French inhaling. He was gawky and shy but almost sexy.

John Updike (1932-2009) grew up to like high spirits, gags, party games. At The Harvard Lampoon, where he became editor, he organized elaborate pranks that required great mounds of elephant dung and the destruction of cars. At The New Yorker, he’d pretend to faint in elevators. He played Twister and Botticelli at his dinner parties. If things got dull, he’d fall off a couch.

He satirized his need to entertain in an early poem called “Thoughts While Driving Home”:

Was I clever enough? Was I charming?
Did I make at least one good pun?
Was I disconcerting? Disarming?
Was I wise? Was I wan? Was I fun?

-- Dwight Garner at The New York Time

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The Natural World

A cheetah (duma) walking in the sunset, Buffalo Springs, Kenya by Kulmiye Chan

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Patio Chairs

Pop came home with some new patio furniture, those plastic chairs. He has long complained about how dirty our chairs our, as they are left outside. At first, it struck me as one of his random projects, but then I remembered that Victor is supposed to be visiting in a few weeks. Maybe that prompted Pop to finally do something about the chairs.

I grabbed a new chair for the one in my room. Remember, my chair had a little crack on top of the back, and it would often snag my jacket or shirt that I lay upon it. So, I got to take care of that little problem. Though, the new chair seems weaker to me. I am over 200 pounds. That is probably a lot of poundage for a plastic chair. I hope it does not collapse under me.

The Lump

I checked the lump on my left wrist, and I was happily shocked to see that practically nothing was there. Indeed, I checked my right wrist to see if I had somehow misremembered where it was. That lump was seriously growing, becoming golf-ball sized, and now to see it practically disappear!

Could it be tied to stress? Diet? Could it be pure randomness?

In truth, in all these years, in my nearly thirty years back home, I have been lucky in my health. Knock on wood! Now, if only this deformity on my right foot would follow suit and disappear, I could see about resuming my morning walks.