Enleavened

Sun-Ae

Photo by Jae-Uk

Just a belated birthday poem for my wife, whose birth date was October 8th, nineteen hundred-and-some-thump-paddy-other:

Enleavened

Sunshine of my life,
under the heavens,
need I thee alone,
alone thy leaven's
enlivening, wife?

How might I, my life,
withhold from heaven's
angels thee, alone,
nor leave thy leaven's
grace, enlivened wife?

You will have noticed that the first letter of each line, settled in a sequence, spells out my wife's name "Sunae Hwang."

A Milestone in Life: Age 60

Birthday Boy

I'm 60, and that's all I want to say today . . .


Update: Thanks to all well-wishers, and the best birthday gift would be for you to read my poems and my BBB story.

Sun-Ae's Birthday!

Sun-Ae Hwang

* * *

October 8, 2013

* * *

Your Birthday

* * *

To My Sun-Ae

* * *

Wife - Partner - Guide

* * *

The Woman Who Has Given Me

Twenty-One Years Of Happiness

* * *

I Offer These

*BRIGHT*

Birthday Greetings

* * *

Your Husband

* * *

Jeff

Mr. Scott Turns 80 . . .

Mr. Jim Scott
Eternal Teacher

My genius high school math teacher, Jim Scott, who taught not only mathematics but also music and art, along with physics as well, celebrates his 80th birthday Saturday, September 21, 2013, Arkansas time, so I and two other students -- Deva and Pete -- have each written him a letter of appreciation. Here's mine:

Dear Mr. Scott,

Unlike Deva and Pete, I've moved away from the fields of math and science, but your influence on me might be even more direct because I worked for you as a chainman on your land-surveying team that summer of 1976, just after my freshman year at Baylor, back when I was only nineteen years old and thought I knew everything. I especially recall one conversation that you, Denny Wilkins, and I had. We were eating lunch in May's Café and discussing values and life's meaning, and you asked me what I wanted from life.

I reflected for a moment, then answered, "Peace of mind."

You retorted, "You can have that with a cup of coffee!"

At the time, I thought you were making a joke at my expense -- and I don't doubt that you were, because Denny laughed -- but with the passage of time, I came to see that you were also utterly serious . . . and that you were right. With a cup of coffee, you really can have peace of mind.

And with a great cup of coffee, you can even have peace on earth! (If only I could get Deva to test this theory in Syria . . .)

Another conversation I recall was from high school, though you and I were out on some unlikely pretext in your old pickup truck that bore the poetic warning, "Smoking is dangerous to your health and wealth." We briefly discussed that reminder of mortality and penury -- which you’d written when you'd given up smoking, but which remained there to plague you when you again took up the habit -- then we moved to other topics. You talked about mathematics and remarked that you probably should have instead pursued a higher degree in molecular biology or somesuch because the ground in mathematics had been fairly well tamped down already, so there wasn't much left to accomplish. I took your words to mean that if you couldn't do something fundamental in a field, then you just weren't interested.

Well, perhaps you didn't find anything fundamental to do in math, but you've accomplished a lot through the influence you've had on your many grateful students. We learned rigor and discipline under your tutelage, but also the importance of humor, creativity, and critical thinking.

And those are all fundamental to a proper education.

I began this letter to you by suggesting that "your influence on me might be even more direct" than your influence on Pete and Deva, but supposing that this is not the case, your influence on me has at least been more far-reaching, because I've gone halfway around the world in my career, and we know from geometry -- literally, "earth-measure" -- that one can't, without a great increase in acceleration (you do the math), get any further from Salem than that!

So if you ever feel you ought to have made a bigger mark in the world, just remember that your mark is still being made in many places, including not only Colorado and The Netherlands, but also even Korea.

Your Eternal Student,

Jeff

I can't attend his celebration, unfortunately, since I'm halfway around the world, but somebody will read this letter aloud for the gathering . . .

North Korea's Crab-O-Nated Cocoa!

Korean Peninsula Through the Lens

Volume V, Issue 93

Monday, 13 May 2013

(UNCLASSIFIED)
From:

The Daily Mail

(Photos by Eric Lafforgue)

I've heard this North Korean soft drink is crap . . . but the label doesn't say that.

I actually wanted to try some of this North Korean crabonated 'cocoa' for my birthday yesterday to see for myself that the word wasn't a misspelling of craponated, but I didn't receive any as a birthday gift, so I'm taking today off from blogging as a protest!

Don't even bother to check my blog today.

Nothing to see here.

Move along . . .

The Big Fifty-Five!

Looking to the Future

I turned 55 yesterday, still mobile but feeling old, and by a happy coincidence was invited -- along with my lovely wife, Sun-Ae Hwang -- to share lunch paid for by a friend from my days at Korea University, Professor Suh Ji-moon, expert in English literature who also translates literary works of Korean into English.

We ate at a 'green' restaurant called Seven Springs -- by which is meant wellsprings of water, I presume, rather than the green season repeated seven times -- a restaurant located on the underground level of the Hungkuk Life Insurance Building, easily located by its trademark statue out front, Jonathan Borofsky's gigantic steel Hammering Man, who is constantly pounding away noiselessly like clockwork on a job never quite done, as if only to pass the time.

In the photo above, you see me and a friend -- a rather colorful character, I must admit -- in the lobby of the Hungkuk Life Insurance Building. My friend is seated on the Cologne Pagoda constructed by Kang Ik-Joong (강익중) and is using specially made binoculars to peer into my future, but said it was like seeing through a glass darkly, so I don't know what to expect in the next few years, though I anticipate changes.

At any rate, a belated Happy Birthday to me! Enjoy your time here . . .

Heading for Insadong, getting sidetracked . . .

On October 8 of this year, my wife Sun-Ae had a significant birthday that I dare not identify too precisely. Let's just say she's no longer 29. Wherever the exact truth lies -- yes, it sometimes does lie, especially temporal truths -- we celebrated by heading off that Saturday afternoon for Seoul's traditional neighborhood of Insadong . . . and vicinity.

We decided to take the subway and walked from our apartment to Mangu Station on the Jungang Line, rode to Oksu Station and switched to Line 3, then rode for eight stops to Gyeongbokgung Station, where we got off and encountered a gate with Chinese writing opaque to my mind if visible to my eyes, but I decided to pass through anyway:

After I'd crossed that threshold, Sun-Ae noticed an explanation given in Korean -- and more importantly, for me, also in English:

That reads as follows:

This gate was made of monolith in imitation of PULLOMUN in CH'ANGDOKKUNG. It has a legend that once one passes through the gate, he would not be old forever.

I don't think "monolith" is a type of stone -- perhaps an indefinite article is missing? -- but the message is certainly reassuring. I won't stay old forever. Apparently, I will die . . . someday. Maybe never even knowing what "PULLOMUN" and "CH'ANGDOKKUNG" mean, for the informative sign failed to inform. But they must mean something odd, for weird things happened on the other side of that gate after we'd left the underground for the city streets above:

A man emerged from a mural as his girlfriend looked about to be run down by a mysteriously floating automobile . . . and by its equally buoyant couple. Sun-Ae and I soon even more mysteriously found ourselves beyond the mural in the midst of those traditional Korean houses known as hanok . . .

. . . hanok . . .

. . . and more hanok . . .

. . . after which we wound our way down that hillside -- unexpectedly encountering fellow translator Brother Anthony in our descent -- and ended up at our reserved table in the easily misheard Min's Club, a restaurant named after a descendant of Queen Min and located in a house designed by Korean architect Gilryong Park (1898∼1943) and built in 1930 in a combination of Korean and Japanese style:

You see from my glowing red eyes that I really was in a different state of being after passing through that gate that threatened to kill me.

But all of you are wondering, "Where's the lovely Sun-Ae?" Where indeed? She had the camera and refused to part with it, perhaps unwilling to document this birthday of hers too closely . . .

But happy belated birthday, anyway, my dear . . .

En-Uk's Birthday was Yesterday . . .

En-Uk's Birthday Cake

(Image from En-Uk's Art Blog)

My eleven-year-old son, En-Uk, turned twelve yesterday, which means he's still a tween, not yet a teen. He'd invited a few friends over to celebrate, so the big table where I usually grade essays was occupied by presents and plates and platitudes. Also plenty of food.

Unable to mark the nearly 50 essays for my history class while En-Uk and his friends were running around all afternoon, I instead sat at my computer and edited three articles for the Ewha Voice, a proofreading responsibility that I've recently assumed.

The relatively good English of the articles was a relief, for I had a very different experience nearly ten years ago at Hanshin University when I provided editorial assistance to the student newspaper there. The reporters at Hanshin had first written their articles in Korean and then given me their word-for-word translations. Most of the articles were incomprehensible . . . to me. But when I asked my wife to take a look, she instantly understood and 'translated' the gibberish into standard English. That bout of editing took a lot of my time, so I informed the students there that if I were to be asked again to edit their newspaper, then they'd first need to have their reports proofread by someone who knew both Korean and English. I don't think that I was asked again . . .

I'm therefore quite pleased to find the Ewha Voice reporters so competent at English. I still have to rewrite a good deal to attain a more natural English style, but I can do this relatively quickly because I understand what has been written.

That editing is mostly out of the way for this weekend . . . but those 50-odd essays yet await.

And that's how I spent En-Uk's birthday . . .

Another year passes . . .

My birthday came around again yesterday, leaving another year discarded onto the heaped-up rubble of my life, and I gaze back upon the growing pile like Walter Benjamin's Angel of History, dismayed by the storm blowing from Paradise . . .

But I can smile anyway, for my wife found my favorite sort of ice-cream cake to remind me that birthdays aren't just about looking back upon the past but about enjoying the present, and my son and daughter wrote notes to turn my gaze forward to the future as I contemplate my two best contributions to the world. From eleven-year-old En-Uk:

Happy birthday. I'm En-Uk. Today is May 14th! Have a good day. Wow! Happy face.

And he drew a cake with four candles and a smiling face to cheer me up, I suppose. My fourteen-year-old daughter, Sa-Rah, wrote a somewhat longer note:

Good morning, and happy birthday daddy! This is your lovely daughter (who needs more basketball practice). I just want to tell you how much I love you (and mama, of course), and wish you a happy birthday. Feel free to do whatever you want today! You can get brain-freezed from eating ice-cream cake, go ride your bicycle alone, write a 500 page poem about how much you love Milton, and even feel depressed by the fact that you are now 54 YEARS OLD. Go have a Guiness or somethin'. Anyway, that's not the point! The reason I'm writing this letter at 1:00 a.m. in the morning is NOT to make fun of your hobbies. Daddy, you are a wonderful father and I am happy and blessed that you are my "daddy." Thank you for taking care of me, teaching me English since I was a tiny infant, and thank you soooo much fer watchin' me weight . . . yeah . . . thanks . . . (Just kidding). Keep up the good work! HAPPY BIRTHDAY! Love, Sa-Rah.

That's the nicest letter that she's ever written me. She seems to be growing up . . . but judge for yourself from the photos below, taken by my wife, Sun-Ae, on our day trip to Chuncheon. First, a photo to prove that we did indeed head for Chuncheon:


I hope that I'm looking bemused by another year, not that those are just more age lines on my face. Be that as it may, we next see the younger, and better-looking generation in the form of my lovely daughter, Sa-Rah, posing with statues commemorating soldiers in the Korean War:


I'm not sure that she's taking history so seriously, but she at least appears to be contemplating things. En-Uk, in the next photo, looks to be celebrating a victory by South Korean soldiers as I look on:


I suppose that he's being serious enough. Finally, we see Sun-Ae, my beautiful wife . . . or a small reflection of her, anyway, along with equally tiny images of the rest of us as we enjoy treats in the cafe of an art museum called "R. Mutt 1917" -- in honor of Duchamp's famous 'fountain':


As you see, the shadows were lengthening, reminding us that time is short and moving us to head back toward Seoul . . .

Incidentally, today is Teacher's Day here in Korea, and a couple of forward-thinking students gave me some small gifts last week. Both are taking my history class, and one of them attached this note to her gift:

Dear Prof. Hodges: HAPPY TEACHER'S DAY! Thank you for your experimental classes that involve students in various discussions. It's a rare opportunity to talk to our peers about race, religion, and integration, but your classes made it possible. Also, this class deepened my interest in immigrants in Korea and in Korean identity. I hope Korea makes a smooth transition from a conservative society to a liberal, multi-ethnic one. Again, thank you for your effort you put in class. Sincerely, Tae-Yeon Kim

A very nice, thoughtful note from a good student. I hope that all of the students feel the same way, but that's probably too much to expect.

Enough for now from me . . .

"Revolutionary Birthday Party for Goodness to all Mankind"

'Birthday Babies'

Terrance Lindall (66) and Yuko Nii (68)

Photo by Tasneem Shazad

(Image Supplied by Terrance Lindall)

Extravatantly good news from the revolutionary world of art: Terrance Lindall has recently had a birthday, as has also Yuko Nii. Both are pictured above in a photograph that Mr. Lindall personally sent to me. Admittedly, he probably sent the same photo in an email circular to several hundred other individuals, but that doesn't negate the fact that he also sent it to me . . .

In addition to the above photograph, the email circular also offered a few words of wit:

Our "Revolutionary Birthday Party for Goodness to all Mankind" was held Saturday!! Will be covered in the Philippines Press. Very International with guests from Pakistan, Nepal, Philippines, Japan, Denmark and probably more . . . .

A signed copy of the requiem that Terrance commissioned from the foremost Lutheran hymn writer Amanda Husberg was presented to him. It is being performed for the first time by a major chorale in Kentucky later in the year.

PS: Terrance is not dead yet, but many people are hoping to hear this masterpiece soon.

Hmmm . . . well, let's interpret that postscript generously, as meaning that people want to hear Mr. Lindall's requiem before he dies. I hope that he and Ms. Nii both enjoy many more artistically productive years of health blessed by wealth.

I privately wished both of them a happy birthday, and received this reply:

Thanks Jeffery. There are a lot more photos coming. To that list of internationals you can add Korea (she sang for Yuko & me), and Thailand. Terrance

I suppose that 'Korea' here is synecdoche for a Korean woman who offered a birthday song to them, perhaps the Korean happy birthday tune. I wish that I'd made the party, for that cake looks delicious, and I could do with a glass of wine from either of those two bottles about now.

For those readers interested in the art of Mr. Lindall and Ms. Nii, click here for the former and here for the latter. And be sure to visit the Williamsburg Art and Historical Center (full disclosure: I'm on the Advisory Committee).

Happy Birthday, Dear Sun-Ae

Lauenburg Zündholzfabrik

(Image from youpodia)

Happy Birthday

*

to
*

You, Dear Wife

*

and
*

Remember the Zündholzfabrik

*

of

*

Lauenberg, Deutschland

*

Where

*

Our Love Struck a Match

*

at the

*

Einfuhrungsseminar

*

Beziehungsweise

*

Verfuhrungsseminar
*

Happy Birthday, Sun-Ae!

Happy Birthday

***
to

* * *

My Beautiful Wife

* * *

on

* * *

This Your Birthday

* * *

offering

* * *

A Borrowed Cake

* * *

and

* * *

A Song Borrowed in Humor
* * *
but

* * *

This Card Especially for You

"Quem deus vult perdere, dementat prius"

Orion Cough Drops

(목의보감)

Also in bags.

(Bionuri Cooperative Network)

And I am mad, too! I take one day off, and guess what happens. Orion nearly kills me with his slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.

May the Scorpion take him!

My son, En-Uk, had chosen a bag of medicinal candy from among Orion Confectionery's fine selection to give me for my throat as a birthday present. He must have noticed my regular, mildly asthmatic cough, which seems worse here in Seoul than in other places that I've lived, probably due to the bad air and seasonal dust storms.

Whatever the etiology to my cough, the Orion drops seemed to be helping, so I had several as I sat checking the friendly messages left yesterday on my birthday blog. As I was reading Uncle Cranford's comment, I began madly laughing.

"What's so funny?" inquired my wife, who was laboring in earnest at her translation work.

Attempting to catch my breath and explain, I sucked into my windpipe a tiny drop of candy-flavored saliva, just sufficient for the upper trachea to clamp shut in reaction. Alarmed, I stood up, trying unsuccessfully to inhale. I coughed, emptying my lungs of air.

My wife stared at me. "What's wrong?"

I couldn't answer, couldn't breathe, couldn't cough.

My wife stood up. "What's wrong?

I could nearly have smiled at the irony. Here I was, about to die on my birthday, choking to death from a lozenge intended to stop my coughing. Well . . . it had stopped my coughing.

My wife, realizing that I couldn't breathe, grew alarmed. "Jeff!"

I finally croaked.

Not "croaked" as in "died," of course, or I wouldn't be writing about this, but "croaked" as in the creaky, cracky, deep-throaty sound of a great, big ol' bullfrog . . . or maybe a wheezy, middle-sized frog.

Then coughed a small cough. Wheezed. Inhaled a tiny gasp. Coughed again. Wheezed. Breathed a large breath. Coughed hard. Breathed better. Coughed more. Breathed. Looked at my wife. Smiled. Pointed at the bag. Said:

"I thought that these were supposed to help my breathing."

My wife grabbed the bag and threw it into a drawer of her desk, saying, "Don't have any more!"

To my mind, she somewhat overreacted to my near death experience . . . but don't trust me. I'm mad. Punished by the gods for my hubristic remark about leaving the defense of Western civilization to others for 24 hours -- as if I were its primary defender.

"Whom the gods would destroy..."

Gypsy Scholar's Birthday Off

Map of Western Civilization?

Can Wikipedia be wrong?

(Image from Wikipedia)

Actually, the birthday is not Gypsy Scholar's but that of my secret identity, Jeffery Hodges.

Oops . . . guess that's not so secret anymore.

Anyway, I'm taking the day off, hence leaving the defense of Western civilization to others for the next 24 hours...

The Big 5-0

Life Expectancy

"One always expects more life..."

(Image from Wikipedia)

Not the Hawaii 5-0, though the Big 5-0 can hit you in the face like a nice Hawaiian Punch.

And those cultural references date me already. Yes, I turn 50 today, for I was born on May 14th, way back in 1957 -- a mere 4 years after the end of the Korean War and only 12 years after WWII. These days, I teach about such things as part of history, and my students look at me in wonder when they find out that I was born so soon after those enormously momentous events.

When I was a little kid, however, both of those wars felt to me more deeply buried in the past than did WWI, for I lived with my maternal grandparents, who kept on their bedroom wall a large photo of Grandpa Perryman and his brother, Uncle Joe, dressed in their doughboy uniforms, ready to fight the Germans way back when that was a fight against the arrogant German Kaiser rather than the far more frightening German Führer.

Just down the highway from our place was a log building that served as a meeting hall for the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW), of whom my grandpa was one, obviously. He used to keep his WWI helmet and rifle in our house and occasionally take them with him to the VFW meetings. I imagined that he was heading off to war...

He was already 65 or more years old, having been born in 1895.

But he was young compared to his mother-in-law, Grandma Shell, who was born about 1877 and took a liking to me. She spoke to me of the Civil War as though she had lived it -- despite having been born as long after that as I had been after WWII.

Now that I have taught so much history, none of these great events seem so far in the past, but one thing that you learn from life, I suppose, is that the past can't be undone. The world might have become a better place if Europe hadn't taken a wrong path in 1914, for we might have avoided both Soviet Communism and German Fascism and the millions of deaths that these ideologies brought in their wake. Colonialism might have had a softer, more democratic landing.

Korea wouldn't have been divided, nor would it have experienced its own civil war. And yet ... I might not have met Sun-Ae. Sa-Rah and En-Uk might not have existed. I might not have existed. That's always been one of the objections to time travel, that in undoing the past, one undoes oneself, whereby one cannot undo the past, for one does not exist. It boggles the mind.

Perhaps turning 50 should also boggle my mind. Amba of AmbivaBlog has written of turning 50, and some boggling seems to have taken place for her:

Nine years ago, when I was 52 and just emerging from the shock of "the death of youth" -- what Sara Davidson calls "the narrows" and my dreams insisted was a "dark wood" -- I started writing a book of short essays about this life passage, which nothing had prepared me for.

Amba didn't finish the book, but she has recently resuscitated some of those essays on her blog, which you can read through in two posts.

So far, the big 5-0 hasn't done much boggling with my mind. Maybe it will, but I've all along noticed my body aging as I've said good-bye to various things. I used to play a lot of basketball, and I noticed quite early on, about my mid-twenties or so, that physical decline had set in. An inability to consistently dunk two-handed. Then one-handed. Then failing to block shots. Then having one's own shots consistently blocked. Then giving up on basketball...

Recently, people around my age but from an earlier me have been getting in touch, perhaps because we're all hitting the big 5-0 and want to see who's survived.

Well, everybody, at 50 years, "I'm Still Here."

Happy Birthday, Sun-Ae

Happy Birthday

to my

Sun-Ae

For my beautiful, brilliant wife who has given me 11 very happy years of married life,

on this special day, October 8, 2006, when you turn...

...uh, 29?

I can never remember because you look so young.

Thank you for everything...

for the 14 years since the day we met on that slow train through Germany,

for the two gorgeous children whom we've accumulated along the way,

for accompanying me on this long trip through life,

for the many years of joy yet to come...

Love

Your Husband

Jeffery