A few readers wondered what happened to Poor David’s Almanack. Many others have celebrated its demise, and with good reason. The written word in breezy short form – the weblog – is obsolete and archaic, like the Editor-in-Chief of PDA.
Video and antisocial media is where the action is. Our attentiveness has atrophied to “reels” featuring happy shiny people delivering anodyne content and self-promotional pablum. Arcane 800-word outbursts are vestiges of a bygone past.
If you ask me what happened to PDA, my answer is, like many answers to questions demanding my introspection, “I’m not sure.”
Not being sure is a constant in my life. But uncertainty is a general condition of all lives, so it’s a convenient dodge. Mumbling ‘I don’t know’ is not really an adult answer, to those two or three readers whose paths produce a thirst that only a regular review of The Almanack can slake. More crucial, it isn’t a satisfying answer for the writer, who is perhaps the fundamental target audience for these missives.
The 6-month sabbatical may be explained by one or more exigent environmental factors. Check all that you think might apply:
o Became a proud grandfather
o Lost my mom
o Moved to ancestral hometown
o Accepted a new role at firm
o Children escaped the nest
In the mathematics and kultursmog trades, these are known as inflection points, where the curve takes a different direction. But I think of them as reflection points, and reflection takes some time. The events of late 2023 leading to the leave of absence were joyful, expectant, grievous and melancholy in variable proportions.
The other possibility - a most unattractive and self-indulgent one - is that I was enjoying life as a late-stage boulevardier and became lazy. Conjuring up excuses to avoid work is the mark of the sybarite, a reflection one would rather not admit.
However, it is now July, and the time is upon us to get on with it. July, You’re a Woman, after all, and with apologies to the Wiener Shule, nobody can stir an awakening like her. I offer three different versions of this nice musical theme to begin the month.
The original song July You’re a Woman is more than 50 years old and remains a popular tune. It was written and first performed by the 1960s California folkie John Stewart, after he left The Kingston Trio. I believe this is Stewart’s second incarnation circa 1969:
The Minnesotan John Gorka, a longtime Almanack favorite, also appreciates the song and gives it a nice solo acoustic version here:
And finally, a Dave Alvin/Jimmie Dale Gilmore collaboration, from the excellent record of 2018 called Downey to Lubbock, reflecting their respective homelands:
July You’re a Woman can take on multiple meanings, depending on where your reflection points lie. The July wind here blows hot, because there’s not a lot to stop it coming from Oklahoma or Colorado. In reflective moments, it carries notes that can be both soothing and sad.
Mark Helprin, one of the most lyrical living writers, wrote a beautiful book called Memoir from Antproof Case, which included a testament to the power of memory and devotion:
I was graduated from the finest school, which is that of the love between parent and child. Though the world is constructed to serve glory, success, and strength, one loves one’s parents and one’s children despite their failings and weaknesses – sometimes even more on account of them. In this school you learn the measure not of power, but of love; not of victory, but of grace; not of triumph, but forgiveness. You learn as well, and sometimes, as I did, you learn early, that love can overcome death, and that what is required of you in this is memory and devotion. Memory and devotion. To keep your love alive you must be willing to be obstinate, and irrational, and true, to fashion your entire life as a construct, a metaphor, a fiction, a device for the exercise of faith. Without this, you will live like a beast and have nothing but an aching heart. With it, your heart, though broken, will be full, and you will stay in the fight unto the very last.
July, you’re a woman. Ad extremum verbum.
So pleased to see the return of the Almanack. I enjoyed the 3 versions of July You’re a Woman, especially Stewart’s. I saved the Mark Helprin piece as it touched me so strongly. Memory and devotion. Thank you for going against the norm of reels and doing the real work of writing.
Always enjoy reading your stuff, David. ...always learn something: this time I learned the meaning of the word anodyne and the phrase Ad extremum verbum. Thanks!