Memoirs of a Crone:  Persephone, Billie Holiday, and You

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Everybody wants to be a crone. There is the blue hair (possibly purple in this day and age), the Bridge club prizes, the jigsaw puzzles with missing places, the daily trips to the library, and the long chats on the phone with the psychic who won’t tell your fortune because she can’t bullshit an old friend.

All right, the entrance into cronedom isn’t easy.  Remember the scene in The Odyssey (movie or poem) in which Odysseus visits the land of the dead to chat with dead friends and get travel tips.  Cronedom initiation is a bit like that.

“Lo and behold!” you say to a crone-ish nymph with medals all over her dashing Hades-black military cloak. She is guarding the River Styx from intruders, and she confides,”Hades is in a bit of a fascist phase since Hercules stole Cerberus, the dogeth with three headeths.”

You curtsey and ask,  “Nymph with the lovely braids, what doth one do to become a crone around here?”

She says, “I am the nymph with the Hades-black cloak, not the golden braids one.”

 And then the nymph with the military cloak directs you to the ferry to cross the Styx, and dives into the Lethe to forget  the conversation.

You make it to the other side of the river – no thanks to the drunken ferryman  = and a ghost named Perpetua walks out of the mist. She is a Chistian martyr who ended up here by mistake.

 “Right now I am l a ghost, in the John Le Carre sense of the word.  If you want to get to Cronedom, tell me a couple of state secrets, or my cover will be blown.”

You huff and puff as you follow Perpetua uphill and downhill, and then you share a few rumors about Aeneas and Dido in Carthage, because Rumor volat (Rumor flies).

And then you hear it.  “is that a Billie Holiday song?”

“It is,” says Persephone, Hades’ queen.  “Billie’s drinking over in the corner there.”

Billie waves, looking a bit stoned.  .

And then you recognize the queen. “Persephone, is that you?”

She sayeth, “Kat, is that you?”

Simultaneously: “What are you doing here?”

The whole crone thing is a scam, Persephone says.. Somebody made it up = probably that joker Dionysus – and now Persephone is in charge of the department of information.  Then you and Persephone and Billie decide to sneak out of the underworld and go to a club Billie knows in Athens.   

You have so much fun that you’re NEVER going back. And you forget all about becoming a crone.

It will come in good time, but not today.

Generational Nostalgia:  Chuck Miller’s “start up the music again”

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Garrison Keillor once read a poem by Chuck Miller on The Writer’s Almanac. That’s how I rediscovered Miller’s poems. He writes about nature, his dog (rescued from a dental lab), living in a shack, and continually reminds himself why he’s an anarchist.

Miller built a rough shack in the 1980s, using egg cartons as insulation. It is nothing like Thoreau’s shack. It looks barely livable.

And I am saddened by Miller’s rough life-style. How? Why? He earned a BS in Science and Math at the University of Illinois, an MA in philosophy at the Southern Illinois University, and an MFA from The Writer’s Workshop at the University of Iowa. How could he not find a good job?

But I’m here to share my enthusiasm for his book, Northern Lights: New & Selected Poems (1994). The poem “start up the music again” especially resonates with me.

Chuck Miller and his shack.

An excerpt from “start up the music again,” by Chuck Miller

but there is a hunger for those other times
when if we were more desperate for everything
we were also more alive
in some other way,
you seek out this sense
without knowing how
exactly you are going about it
but what is it
…the memory of our lost youth…
or something generational
that now seems almost past for us
or that once we struck out against them
and made a life, at least for a while
so completely different
from their own




Chuck Miller, the least silent of poets, was a member of the Silent Generation. When he wasn’t writing poetry, socializing, or rabble-rousing, he was telling truths no one wanted to hear. I saw him at a poetry reading when I was a teenager, and he was very handsome, with a slightly mischievous twinkle. Some of his poems are about sex with various girlfriends, and he sounded, yes, good in bed.

On the back of the book, Miller is quoted by an editor on what he does not want to see printed on the back of the book.

“The thing I don’t want on the back of my book is a bunch of crap about my degrees, or who I studied with, or my MFA from the University of Iowa, blah-blah, particularly since I ended up absolute enemies with the Writers’ Workshop; it would be ironic, galling, and disgusting to be identified as some product  or protege of theirs.”

.Sometimes Miller was dirt-poor:  He writes a poem about almost taking a telemarketer job.  He was desperate, but when he he saw the crowded room of miserable people, being rated, berated, or praised by a supervisor, he left. He decided he was not that desperate.

He also rages against the food stamps program. He’s been getting food stamps for years, and suddenly they change their procedure, in order, he believes, to make it more difficult for the poor and the immigrants. He is told that everyone must watch a two-hour film on what food stamps are before he gets his stamps. Miller explains that he knows what food stamps are. He has to get back to his job: he doesn’t have time for the bureaucracy.

In one poem, he writes about people with dead eyes on the bus, getting out at the supermarket which sells food that he says will kill them: dyed food with lots of additives, and cheap fruit and vegetables imported from Mexico. There is no reason why we shouldn’t be eating American fruit.

But it is the gentler poem, “the memory of our lost youth/ or something generational.” that haunts me. A snapshot fell out of a book the other day, a faded picture that won’t last much longer, ,of my husband and me in our early twenties on a picnic by the river. What makes me laugh: we wore nearly identical jeans and t-shirts (though mine is pink). We could wear the same clothe then. How sweet we were!

Cheers to Chuck Miller and his book Northern Fields, which I really love. He lived a long life, in spite of his life-style. Some people can live like that, others cannot. And he seemed to appreciate his shack and his country walks, so there was clearly joy in his life.

Reading Mary McCarthy on My Birthday

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I celebrated a Big Birthday this month.  We put many, many candles on the cupcakes, but it was too windy to light them.

There was singing. “Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday to you…”

“Happy Birthday to me…”

After a long walk my husband laid down his head on a picnic table and gently snored.  I skootched next to him and read Mary McCarthy’s A Charmed Life, a brilliant satiric novel about life in an artists’ colony in New England. Martha, an aspiring playwright, reluctantly renews her relationship with her domineering ex-husband, Miles. Both are remarried, but he is determined to seduce her. The place abounds with writers, artists, and spouses who drink too much at parties and criticize each other’s lack of talent.  They’re fascinated by the relationship between Martha and MIles.

Such a fun book to read! But McCarthy’s satire was so pungent that she didn’t dare  return to Wellfleet.

I can’t quite imagine the artists’ colony, but I’ll read anything by Mary McCarthy.

The Witch, the Loom, & the Critics

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The Odyssey is the best, the boldest, and the most-hyped movie of the summer. If you haven’t seen it, you’ve read about it; if you haven’t read about it, you’ve seen the trailer; and if you’ve seen the trailer, you probably saw the movie. 

The critics have taken the movie seriously.  Multiple articles and reviews have been published in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Slate, The TLS, and The London Review of Books. The poet A. E. Stallings (TLS) and the translator Emily Wilson (LRB) went one-on-one in the literary boxing ring. Stallings is an enthusiastic and groupie-ish fan ( in a good way; I’m a groupie, too), while Wilson objects to changes from Homer’s Odyssey and drily mocks the film (in a funny way!).

Since the movie opened in July, Emily Wilson’s popular translation of the Odyssey (2017) has sold a million copies. She has popularized Homer, and let us hope the classics classes are full of Homer fans this fall. My own favorite is Robert Fagle’s literal but elegant translation (1996). My professor’s favorite was Richmond Lattimore’s, which, he thought, was closest to the Greek.

There are many translations, all slightly different, and the movie is extremely bold in its differences from the poem.  In Homer’s epic Circe the witch is known as “the nymph with the lovely braids” or “Circe skilled in spells.” She lives in a palace, with many handmaidens. Circe in the movie (Samantha Morton) is haggard, middle-aged, tricky, and lives in a hut. Morton’s interpretation of Circe is brilliant, a woman ordinary on the surface but full of power.  No one could call her “the nymph with the lovely braids.”  It’s a new, different interpretation of Circe. And it’s perfect for the movie.

Homer’s Circe turns the men into pigs by stirring “her wicked drugs/ to wipe any memory of home.”  In the movie Circe feeds them a grotesque-looking stew, which makes them oink, and she twists and turns their skin to make them pigs.

Some critics have complained that Christopher Nolan, the director/writer, omits the sex scenes. There are not what I’d call sex scenes in Homer’s epic. Occasionally someone “mounts a gorgeous bed.” That’s about it.

But I did find a few lines in Fagles’ translation.  

Circe says to Odysseus, “Come, sheathe your sword, let’s go to bed together, / mount my bed and mix in the magic work of love -. We’ll breed deep trust between us.”    

The actors’ interpretations are splendid:  the most memorable characters are Samantha Morton’s Circe and Matt Damon’s Odysseus. Damon’s Odysseus is quiet and still, even contemplative, though in battle, or in the Cyclop’s cave, he is a “man of twists and turns,” a strategist, and a general.

But it’s the Trojan Horse scene that haunts me.  This black structure of a horse looks less equine than like something I. M. Pei might create in a black mood. Inside the horse, Odysseus and his men are jostled, unable to get a hold on the walls, and one man dies. Finally, in the deep darkness, while the Trojans are sleeping, the Greeks climb out of the horse and unlock the gate so their army can enter the city and attack. And then there’s a moment: Odysseus walks alone toward the city, seeming contemplative, almost regretful, and then rushes forward. Perhaps there is a moment when he realizes what he has wrought..

And I want to add one observation.  In Book X of Homer’s Odyssey, when Odysseus’ men approach Circe’s palace, there is a reference to Penelope and her loom. Circe is singing as she “glided back and forth/ at her great immortal loom, her enchanting web/ a shimmering glory only goddesses can weave.”  Is Circe, like Penelope, weaving while she waits for an Odysseus? She is a better weaver than Penelope.

A Lost Comic Novel:  Gladys Taber’s “Mrs. Daffodil”

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“‘What type girdle?  What size, Moddom?’ asked the fiercest of the clerks.” – Mrs. Daffodil

Gladys Taber’s, Mrs. Daffodil,  a comic novel set on a farm in Connecticut, is a charming light read suitable for fans of Betty MacDonald and Cornelia Otis Skinner.  Mrs. Daffodil, the author of a popular column called “Butternut Wisdom,” has hundreds of fans who consider her their best friend. Unfortunately, they often drop in.

Mrs. Daffodil is so kind that she never turns them away. She cooks meals for them. In fact, she likes food so much that she also sneaks recipes into her column and romantic short stories.

Taber writes, “One editor complained that after the staff read Mrs. Daffodil’s story (light love) they had rushed out trying to find home-baked beans like those she described.”

When a reporter interviews her, Mrs. Daffodil genuinely can’t remember how long she’s lived on the farm. She babbles charmingly, but the reporter despairs of taking notes.  We do learn, however, that  Mrs. Daffodil and her friend Kay pooled their resources to buy the farm after Kay, devastated by her husband’s death, had a breakdown.

There is plenty about dogs, cats, chickens, and their maid’s horse,  but Taber focuses on the humorous problems of middle-aged woman.

When Mrs. Daffodil goes shopping, “Buying a girdle is a horror…. The lingerie department was filled with languid female figures, and you had to look twice to tell which were live models in the filmy robes and which were plaster. Mrs. Daffodil asked one the way to the girdle department and there was no answer so she raised her voice.” Kay points out Mrs. Daffodil is talking to a mannequin.

 Many readers would enjoy Mrs. Daffodil, but, alas! it is out-of-print.  Too bad: we need humor and wit in 2026.

In Praise of Small Houses

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In the early 21st century, when I was hospitalized for an unidentified illness, which manifested such symptoms as necrosis, Clonus, and hallucinations, the team of doctors, who were experts in their fields, comforted me with humor and optimism. 

“Trial and error,” one said cheerfully.  “I feel we’re getting close.”

“Closer and closer,” said another. 

That was a Paul McCartney song.

“This might be your lucky day.” My favorite doctor handed me a Chinese fortune cookie that said “It’s your lucky day.”.

I still have that fortune. It is in my lucky blue jar, a blue ceramic jar with a bird flying off the lid.

The next day he told me,  “f you were a horse, I’d bet on you.”

“I’m a tired horse right now.”

“Bet you $5 you won’t go downstairs to the cafeteria in your pajamas.”

“Bet’s on, Cookie, dear!” I called him Cookie because of the fortune cookie. I did feel ridiculous in the cafeteria, but I went down in my jams, pink robe and slippers.

And then one day I woke up and was completely well.  No one knew how or why.  The doctors said some cases were like that: they experimented with drug cocktails until they found  the right one. Cookie gave me a pack of peanut M&Ms:  “I know they’re your favorite.”

While I was lying in bed I finally stayed up long enough to read Thoreau. Thoreau was the ultimate downsizer, and I was thinking about downsizing. I imagined us leaving our big, rambling house in a dicey neighborhood plagued by “white flight” to live in a smaller house in a safer neighborhood.

I don’t mean I wanted to live in a shack like Thoreau, but I thought in a smaller house we would live closer together and take up less space.  We would live more simply; we would ultimately be happier. Perhaps I was thinking like Bronson Alcott, the impractical Transcendentalist dreamer who started a vegetarian commune and forgot to plant vegetables. I sincerely hope I am more like his daughter, Louisa May, who wrote a satire of the commune, Transcendental Wild Oats.

Eventually we found a house. It’s not a tiny house, mind, it’s just small, and there are trees in the backyard, and one started out as a weed tree and grew into a tall walnut tree. Our house might be a Sears Roebuck house, or so a carpenter told us. From 1908 to 1942, Sears sold house kits that came with blueprints and the materials to build the house. 

Sometimes we feel cooped-up here in winter. It’s small, it’s too cold to sit on the porch, there’s too much ice on the sidewalk, he wants to watch sports, I would prefer a rom-com – you know how it goes.  But overall, I think it’s better for the soul, it’s a better way to know the truth, it’s a charm against the competitive trampling that goes on in our society, and a way to live without chasing down the dream of a suburban mansion with a turret, a tower (I want that), two porches (I want those), a gazebo, a billiards room, a library (I want that), several boudoirs, and the mysterious three garages. 

Mary McCarthy’s “Birds of America”

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“How can we not write satire? ” Juvenal asked in the second century CE.

That’s why I appreciate Mary McCarthy.  I recently reread her brilliant novel Birds of America (1971), set in the 1960s in Rocky Port, Massachusetts, Paris, and Rome. 

McCarthy aims her savage wit at American politics (the 1964 presidential election and the Vietnam War), the rise of “canned” culture, literally canned and frozen food, the creation of faux history in American small towns, and the growing mistrust of the American government in the U.S. and Europe.

The protagonist, Peter Levi, a birdwatcher and amateur philosopher, moves to Rocky Port with his mother after she separates from her second husband, a Berkeley professor.  They had enjoyed a stay in Rocky Port a few years ago, but the small town is no longer idyllic: it has been infected by urban culture, the disappearance of fresh vegetables in stores,  and the death of the Great Horned Owl at the nature preserve, which only Peter mourns.

But the changing American traditions, old and new, are most sharply illustrated by McCarthy’s descriptions of two Thanksgivings, one in Rocky Port, the other in Paris.

Thanksgiving in Rocky Port is the most fun, because Peter’s mother, who plays the harp and is a professional musician, organizes it. She resolves to make a tradtional Thanksgiving dinner using only ingredients available to the Pilgrims and indigenous Americans of the time.

And still she can’t find a bean pot!  Peter wonders,”Can’t you use a casserole?” Fortunately, a neighbor provides one. And of course the unique traditional meal is scrumptious, and both family (Peter’s cynical aunt and joyful cousins), and friends (lonely Mrs. Curtis, who takes most of her meals at the Portuguese diner), enjoy the food and have fun. 

And then there’s another Thanksgiving dinner in Paris, where Peter spends his junior year abroad. He is acquainted with a general attached to NATO, and his wife invites Peter to “partake of turkey ‘n’ trimmings” on Thanksgivlng.  Naturally, the victuals at Thanksgiving in Paris are of the all-American kind, of the modern frozen tureky era, because the general’s Southern wife wants to be as American as possible.

But Peter is appalled when the general’s wife holds forth on Thanksgiving. 

He observes,

“Then, at table, she actually explained the principle of Thanksgiving to the French. ‘It isn’t a social event, you see.  It isn’t exactly a family event, either…  It’s the day when we Americans – help me, Chuck – as we thank God for our blessings trying to gather under our roof some of our fellow countrymen who might be lonely….'”

Peter, a little tired of being a waif, can’t resist saying, “It’s just a harvest festival, isn’t it?”

And that’s the thing about Peter: he is philosophically prepared, from reading Kant and living with his radical mother, who gets arrested in Rocky Port for refusing to post a faux historical plaque on her house, to jeer at undercooked thought and oppose American imperialism.

McCarthy also mocks Peter’s American obsession with European toilets:  In his rooming house in Paris, he is so disgusted by the filthy toilet that he rises early every morning to scrape the shit off the seat and walls. In Rome, he has to repeat the process.  He had hoped for better. So it’s not only America: France and Italy are also full of shit. (No, I’m only pretending to parse the text. That’s not at all what Mccarthy means!)

McCarthy’s slings and outrageous arrows strike everything in sight, not just American smugness but French chauvinism and tourism in Italy. In the process she makes you laugh aloud, but she also reveals both affection and criticism of flawed American culture.

This is one of my favorite books.

In Which We Go to a Club:  Who Were Those Men with the Boat?   

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Not a club exactly but it captures the spirit.

It started at the grand opening of a club. 

I was given two tickets, and what else was I doing on a Friday night?  I begged Captain Nemo to come with me, but the only club he liked was a dingy warehouse where we had once heard 10,000 Maniacs and Talk Talk for free.

Anyway, what he really liked, and what I liked, too, was lolling on the couches in our living room (we had two) and reading Proust. It was a sweet scene:  there is no doubt about it.  We had bought a set of of Proust (Modern Library) for $5.  I’m still on Volume VI…

But my charming friend Rosie, who had never been to a club, was willing to go. We dressed up, put on costume jewelry, and tried to tame our hair, which was difficult when the humidlty was 70%.

Anyway, the club was very crowded. There must have been at least 200 people. Once we got inside, we milled and thronged, hovered over the buffet, and ate standing up because there weren’t enough chairs.

And then two strange men approached us. Rosie and I had not expected this! 

Dorothy Parker wrote: 

Men seldom make passes
At girls who wear glasses.

 I guess these guys never heard that one.

Anyway, the men chatted, and we smiled, but we hardly talked at all.  AND THEN THEY ASKED US TO GO OUT ON THEIR BOAT.

“Um, er.  Shall we go to the restroom first?” I said, smiling

And so we retired, giggling, to the restroom. According to Rosie, I looked  “vampish.” I looked at myself in the mirror with a sinking sensation. If I hadn’t let the clerk at a department store pick out my party dress, this would not have happened. But my friend Emma was truly beautiful, and I was a sweet bookish woman in disguise, so I can only say they had good taste.

And then we sort of lost them in the crowd.  I know, I know:  we should have turned them down and told them we were married.  But I sort of froze.  Maybe you know what I mean.

“So this is what it’s like to be single,” Rosie said.  “Joe and I met at a fraternity dance.”

“The captain and I met in a Latin class.”

“Kat, you’re such a nerd!”

“Yes,” I said, satisfied.

Although I wish I had been courteous, and tactfully turned down the men’s invitations, I comfort myself with the knowledge that there were hundreds of women there who would want to go out on their boat!

Who’s on Prozac, Who’s Not?

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I used to think I could walk down the street and identify people on Prozac (by which I mean antidepressants in general).  It turned out I was wrong. The handsome, impeccably dressed middle-aged man who held the bus door open for us appeared on the street corner one morning wearing  “beggar clothes” (tattered jeans, a soup-stained sweater, and a small ski jacket that may have belonged to his wife, if he had one).

“Can you spare money for a cup of coffee?” he asked.  Of course I could and did. I handed him $7, in case he craved two cups of coffee or a latte.  Under other circumstances, I would have dircted him to the best place to get a latte, but it would be a miracle if he made it to any coffeehouse.

I asked the neighborhood security guard if the man, now apparently a beggar, would be okay.

“Yup, when the pills kick in. His house is a block away.  And if he beds down in the alley in that sleeping bag, we take him home in the car.”

“Where does he get those beggar clothes?”  I asked. The security guard said he’d wondered, too.

And a few days later, sure enough, the man wore his suit again and  helped us onto  the bus.  I almost asked him about that imaginary latte but stopped just in time.

According to the National Institutes of Health, approximately 16 percent of Americans take antidepressants.  That does not seem like an inordinately high number to me. In fact, it seems like a lowball number.

Because who isn’t depressed these days, even if not clinically?  Americans seem more isolated than ever since the pandemic. They sheltered in place, and worked at home, but the work-at-home trend, though convenient, has also weakened the sense of community among  workers. They used to meet daily and chat in their cubes and offices about Netflix, the weather, and on rare occasions, politics. I’m not saying people shouldn’t work at home, but perhaps they should put in an appearance once or twice  a week, to reestablish a sense of community.

Meanwhile, it’s okay to take Prozac if you need it.

Women and Sexuality in 20th-Century Literature:  Cynthia Heimel,  D. H. Lawrence, Mary McCarthy & Erica Jong

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Why, one wonders, this sudden interest in sex?  As a woman of a certain age, I already feel I could write an instruction manual. But as I laughed over Cynthia Heimel’s Sex Tips for Girls (1983), I was astonished by her detailed instructions on how to give a blow job.

There’s no casual hopping into bed in a camisole and gym shorts, then shedding layers. Heimel is a diva obsessed with oral sex. It’s as if she suddenly decided to rewrite The Joy of Sex in the middle of her book.  But of course she’s very witty, albeit perhaps too detailed in her instructions.

And so I began thinking about the portrayal of women and sexuality in 20th-century literature, about what worked and what didn’t.

D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover is his best-known novel, and that’s a shame: it was far from his best.  But of course it’s very popular, because it was banned in England for the sex scenes till 1960.

It is a novel of sexual unhappiness. Sex is always important to Lawrence, and this is one of the few books where he doesn’t philosophize about it. But the characters are very sad: Lady Constance Chatterley married her husband in 1917; he came back from the war a paraplegic.  There is no sex: Constance is unhappy; he is unhappy, everyone is unhappy.  But then Constance begins an affair with Mellors, the virile gardener, and she and he are ecstatic.  Lawrence is always brilliant, but I must admit the sex scenes are slightly comical, because Mellors refers to their genitals as Lady Jane and John Thomas.  If you’re a Lawrence fan, you should read it; and if you’re not a Lawrence fan, start with something else.

His better banned book, Women in Love, is much more complicated, and one of the main characters, Rupert, philosophizes about sex, but there is also much humor. His girlfriend Ursula tolerates his orations and grounds him. They are the perfect couple.

Mary McCarthy’s The Group, a novel about eight women who graduate from Vassar in 1933,  was a best-seller, and no wonder: it is the perfect beach book. Everyone apologizes for liking this book.  I’m not sure why.  Some of McCarthy’s intellectual friends (she was political, outspoken, and made a lot of enemies) deemed it too commercial.

But is it too commercial?  That’s not how I remember it.  Although I prefer Birds of America, her satiric novel about a young American abroad in the 1960s, The Group is a fascinating portrayal of an earlier generation with fewer choices. In one memorable scene, two women put on fake wedding rings before going to a doctor to be fitted for diaphragms. And, if I remember correctly, the diaphragms zoom around like frisbees as they practice inserting them. Perhaps they were easier to insert by the time I got mine! But the characters in The Group can’t take birth control for granted: if they’re not married, the doctor might refuse to prescribe it.

Erica Jong’s Fear of Flying was a sensation when it was published in 1973. The heroine, Isadora Wing, is afraid of flying , but accompanies her psychiatrist husband to a conference in Germany anyway. She is tired of her marriage, and on the lookout for the “zipless fuck,” as she calls it. (She finds it. )And she finds it again in a couple of sequels, which I actually preferred to Fear of Flying. 

All four of these writers were groundbreaking in their approach to women’s sexuality.