From chicks back to the Basement Books (#77)

Chances are you want to hear how we are faring with the all-important task of sexing the chickens. It seems we have missed the opportunity to insert our fingers into the cloaca to feel the tell-tale penis-like bump – this can only be done safely in the first 24 hours of a chicken’s life, and I am happy to report that they are MUCH older now. So we are back to secondary sexual characteristics. And since chickens do not replace toilet paper rolls on dispensers, or fail to, nor do they talk about their feelings, or refuse to, these sure-fire indicators are not available to us. This morning I was looking for subtle signs of a desire to crow, or lay an egg. Last night they all gathered together under the heat lamp and slept in a sweet roosting-like cluster. Or so I want to believe. In Raising Chickens for Dummies, we read that the combs and wattles of the roosters will grow faster and larger than the hens; also, the roosters will have pointed – not rounded – hackle feathers. And we feel confident that the chicks will agreeably stay very still while he examine their body parts.

Since there is nothing to report, chicken-sex-wise, I thought I would discuss one of the more exciting Books from the Parental Basement. That would be Isometrics, by Henry Wittenberg, Olympic Gold Medal Champion. Our first introduction to isometrics was in Bill Bryson’s The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, in which the young Bill is observing his father practicing isometric exercises, which look a lot like someone standing still or sitting still. In Bryson’s capable hands, this is weepingly funny, or it is when read aloud by CSB in the tropics. So when I found a guide to isometrics in the basement, by an isometric champion no less, I could not wait to share it with CSB.
One cool thing about isometrics is that you can do them in 10-second increments. Here’s an example: press your right hand against the right side of your head and push while your head pushes back. Voila – you have created tension without motion, and you can call it exercise. Although it says clearly on the cover of this 5th GIANT PRINTING that Wittenberg is an Olympic champion, it turns out he is not the Olympic Isometric champion (I still don’t know who that is), and that was disappointing. He was a wrestler.

If you were a promoter of an “Amazing System of No-Motion Exercises” and writer of a best-selling guide to the Magic of Isometrics, you would think this might get mentioned in your obituary. I would. So I found it very strange when last month I read of the death of Henry Wittenberg at age 91, and isometrics were nowhere mentioned. (Do isometrics get any credit for his remarkable longevity? No, they do not.) His early fondness for chess and swimming was alluded to. His career as a champion wrestler was highlighted. His participation in the Maccabiah Game was featured. We read how, unable to secure a job as a teacher, he became a police officer. He is quoted on the subject of weight lifting as a training regiment.
Nothing about Isometrics.

The News from the Isthmus

Bringing in the beans
Perhaps you want to know how the coffee picking is going in the Turrialba region, (very well)or whether the volcano is smoking, bubbling or rumbling; perhaps you’d care for a political gossip (the current president is now dating one of his myriad cousins – she’s much younger and very rich; her mother was so upset that her daughter was involved with the consanguineous womanizer that she has retired to sulk in her Paris apartment), but I suspect you want to know how CSB is enjoying his vacation reading, and the answer is, Very much thank you.
We did procure another Bill Bryson volume, I’m a Stranger Here Myself, and according to plan, CSB is amused.

The very first morning at the farm found CSB and Dad in their usual spot on the early morning patio. There is an excellent view of the volcano (see above) if the clouds are not in the way, which they are and have been, constantly and lamentably. They are drinking their coffee and solving the world’s problems as they read Le Nacion and Bill Bryson. Dad exclaims intermittently that this is such a lovely place and he is happy to be here; CSB remarks how pleasant it is to be back in their spot exactly as they were last year. Dad does not remember last year but he is sure it was equally lovely and that he had an equally lovely time.

Reading Suggestions Solicited

About a year ago we spent a lovely week with my parents at a coffee farm in Costa Rica (Dad, you have forgotten but you were there and you had a good time).
I take vacation reading very seriously. First of all, I simply need to be sure I have enough to read because the idea of being in a beautiful spot with great food, excellent walks and good company – but not enough reading material – strikes me as a sure path to misery; and second, I like to have appropriate reading material. In New Mexico I want to read Mabel Dodge Luhan’s memoirs, in Prague I will read Kafka and Hrabal, in Ethiopia I will read Kapuscinski’s The Emperor and Waugh’s Black Mischief (very amusing), and in Costa Rica I will read the latest Bolaño, some Rubén Darío (Nicaragua is next to Costa Rica, closer than Russia is to Alaska) and the memoirs of Wilson Poponoe, the agronomist who scoured the jungles of Central America looking for the perfect avocado (a valiant effort if there ever was one).

I could go on.
CSB (who with whom it has been suggested I have Nothing in Common) has a rather different attitude about vacation reading. He thinks time in foreign parts is a perfectly good time to read all the back issues of Bee Culture and American Bee Journal and The Ins and Outs of Comb Honey.
We don’t travel light.
(Aldous Huxley, so I was once told, had traveling trunk specially made to carry all 24 volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica, and he took it with him everywhere he went. There were very strong porters in those days and the airlines were less strict about carry-on, so I hear.)
Last year in Costa Rica, thanks to a brilliant Christmas gift by Peter and Fritz (well known re-gifters of books) CSB took along a book that had nothing whatever to do with honeybees. It was Bill Bryson’s The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid. He read it on the patio overlooking Volcan Turrialba and laughed aloud. He read it on Playa Junquillal and chortled enticingly.
“What is so funny?” I would demand.
CSB insisted that I would not find the story of an American boyhood in Omaha as funny as he did because I am [choose one: effete, not a normal American, insufficiently steeped in 1960's TV arcana, a Proustian manqué, a bleeding heart-white-wine drinking liberal, all of the above].
“Just read me something and see if I laugh,” I begged.
Grudgingly, he complied.
Of course I thought it was funny. When Bill Bryson is funny he is hilarious and when Stanley Katz enters the tale, all caution flies.
I am not THAT effete.

Which brings me to the request. (Has anyone read this far?) We are returning soon to the coffee farm, with my parents, and I seek another amusing book for CSB. Please send suggestions.