Deadlines

My editor emailed me this week and asked how things were going since I had committed to a February 1 deadline to complete the manuscript.  I allowed as how I might be a little later than that and suggested that February 15 might be more reasonable.  Actually, June 15 would be even more reasonable.  But never mind.  I am now working at a feverish pace to try to finish this book sometime reasonably close to that February 15 date.

But when I am not sitting at the computer, I have been thinking about deadlines.  All kinds of deadlines.  We all know about April 15.  At the end of each quarter at UCLA, I have faced a deadline to turn in grades.  There have been deadlines to turn in grant proposals and to get the early bird rate for conference registration.  So many deadlines.  They are mostly hateful things, generating a lot of stress.

I have also been reading Marguerite Yourcenar's magnificent "Memoirs of Hadrian."  The elderly Roman Emperor is reflecting on his life and writing a kind of testimonial for the young Marcus Aurelius who will succeed him.  Hadrian doesn't know the exact date of that ultimate deadline -- death -- but he knows that it is inevitable and that it may be close at hand.  As he assesses his life, he seems content with what he has accomplished.  He regrets most the untimely death by suicide of the young man who was the great love of his life. 

While Hadrian is sometimes harsh in his judgment of other old men, especially those whose minds seem to have hardened along with their arteries, he seems sanguine about his own aging.  He acknowledges the increasing physical weaknesses with some dismay, but of course, he has a host of servants to massage his aching limbs, lend an arm, make him comfortable, or even carry him if necessary.  

I haven't finished the book yet so I don't know if there are any last tasks Hadrian wants to complete before his final deadline with Death.  At 65,  I certainly don't feel that I am at Death's door.  I am aware, however, that I am closer to the end of my life than to its beginning.  I have retired from not one but two careers that were immensely rewarding to me, but I still work.  I write.  I teach.  I consult.  I think.  

I can't remember exactly when I stopped reading job announcements and fantasizing about other jobs I might tackle.  I do have a "lifetime to do" list that I compiled about ten years ago.  I've checked off some items:  attending another performance of Wagner's Ring, being promoted to full professor, and growing  a wisteria vine.  I'm looking forward to achieving one more this summer -- visiting Italy.  And just this week I thought of a professional project I would like to initiate:  a movement for children's library rights.  I'll be writing about that in the book that I just might finish by February 15.  I haven't set a deadline for the children's library rights movement though.

A change in the weather

I know I'm a weather wimp. Living here in the paradise that is Venice, California, I have become accustomed to temperatures that don't deviate much from the 70s, and I like it that way. So I have been suffering lately with night time temperatures down in the forties and daytime temperatures in the high 50s.

My Minnesota grandkids were just here, and they thought it was positively tropical. They ran around with bare feet and no jackets and pooled their walking-around money to reach a total of $130 which they they offered to their mother as a bribe to move the family here. Their dad said he'd consider it if they added a few zeros to that sum.

Anyway, I've been cold. My house is not designed for cold weather. There is a wall heater in the hall. It gets the hall nice and toasty and leaves the rest of the house pretty chilly. A little heat seeps into the living room but none reaches my drafty office. And now we finally get to the point of this post. It has been too cold to work comfortably at the computer. My keyboard keys are cold. My fingers are cold. My brain is cold.

And this brings me to the image at the beginning of the post. That is Henry Hagglyhoagly, the romantic hero of one of Carl Sandburg's Rootabaga Stories. I loved these stories as a little girl living in Minnesota, and I love them still.

Henry Hagglyhoagly was in love with Susan Slackentwist, and he was walking down a country road to court her. "Why is it so bitter cold weather?" Henry Hagglyhoagly asked himself, "if I say many bitter bitters it is not so bitter as the cold wind and the cold weather." Fortunately he had his good wool mittens on. At last he gets to Susan's home and prepares to serenade her with his Spanish Spinnish Splishy guitar.

"And now," he asked his mittens, "shall I take you off or keep you on? If I take you off the cold wind of the bitter cold weather will freeze my hands so stiff and bitter cold my fingers will be too stiff to play the guitar. I will play with mittens on."

Which he did. Susan Slackentwist listened and opened her window and threw him a snow-bird feather. And for years afterward many a sweetheart in the Rootabaga Country told her lover, "If you wish to marry me let me hear you under my window on a winter night playing the guitar with wool yarn mittens on."

I actually TRIED typing with my gloves on. Not a successful effort.

Fortunately, the weather man predicts a change in the weather, with a Santa Ana condition bringing temperatures up in the 80s to LA by the weekend.