Where's Armand?

Appearing In Print

This year's second quarter issue of the Philatelic Communicator features an article by Armand Singer titled "How To Soothe and Impress Your Editor". I was hoping to offer you a link for your reading pleasure but it seems they're still working on their archives at www.wu30.org.

I'd like to share Armand's opening comments and his twenty-one points hopefully, with the blessings of the Journal:

If you've reached the point where you don't need advice, I doff my editorial hat. I used to give all of you contributors the benefit of the doubt. But either, like students, you're getting younger each year, or I'm getting more punctilious (read nitpicking), or the times are becoming increasingly disjointed. Whatever is wrong, the editorial board is finding problems in your submissions. The following pages offer simple suggestions on how to improve the packaging of your product. Said hints are in no way intended as exhaustive, but they represent the commonest objections appearing on the referees' opinion sheets. Since I read all the manuscripts, I have thrown in my own pet peeves along with the others.

1. Research First
2. Avoid Being a Paperback Citer
3. Submit Electronically
4. Be Conventional
5. Simplify Notes
6. Leave Those Quotes Alone
7. Omit Commas
8. Beware the Hyphen
9. Ban Capital Punishment
10. Notes on Footnotes
11. Put Them in their Place
12. Exile the Ellipsis
13. Say It Simply
14. Spare the Parentheses and Dashes
15. Downplay Emphasis
16. Quote Out
17. Be Neither Definite nor Indefinite
18. Watch the Manure
19. Literacy for the Literate
20. Age and Polish
21. Let the Guilty Tremble

I've chosen one of the shorter guidelines to give you an idea of the article's tone and direction:

18. Watch the Manure. Speaking of Russian and French reminds me: please forbear heavy use of foreign words (and that goes for jargon as well) to show off. Judiciously spread around, fine and dandy, but too much manure can kill all sorts of flowers verbal or other.

Who IS Armand, Again?

  
  There are two reasons why I'm reprinting a May 2007 post from Where's Armand?:

1. To "formally" introduce our new readers to Armand Singer.
2. I need to find a magnifying lens, big enough to read the next Armand diary (1951-54).

Armand wrote it in what seems to be a size negative 2 font! He must have been trying to keep his spending to a minimum and so squeezed four years into one small book. I'll have to scan a sample page for all to see. But first, a magnifying glass.
----------

May 7, 2007.
Armand's time and efforts were duly rewarded at the WESTPEX stamp exhibition last weekend. His collection and exhibit won a gold medal! Hurray, Armand!!!

Are you wearing shades now to deflect the glitter of the gold or to confuse the Morgantown paparazzi? Don't be hiding, my friend, you certainly deserve more than an occasional 15 minutes of fame.

Armand got home from San Francisco at 2am this past Tuesday. He was asleep by 2:30 and got up at 6:30am in order to teach a class. I think the Energizer Bunny was patterned after this man (even down to the sunglasses!):

"The Bunny has become the ultimate symbol of longevity, perseverance and determination," says Mark Larsen, communications category manager for Energizer. During the past decade, everyone from politicians to sport stars used the Energizer Bunny to describe their staying power.

Answers for our new subscribers:

Just who is Armand Singer? Your yoga guru?
Answer.

Why are you writing about him?
Answer.

In 1963...

I saw a video this weekend that immediately had me thinking of Armand. Ninety year old Rachel Veitch is still driving her 1964 Mercury Comet and has driven every one of the 540,000 plus miles on her car's original engine. She's a gun-toting, flag-waving, all-American woman and you can see how she cares for her Chariot, here on Growing Bolder.com. She was 89 when the video was made.

It drove me to find a diary entry of Armand's as close to 1964 as possible. I was curious to see where he was in his travels and found him ready to expound:

"December 6, 1963. Gyrovagically, we all took an ambitious trip last summer. We motored in June by way of Colorado and Utah to Los Angeles. Crossed the Colorado River above Hatch, Utah by ferry using last such conveyance still functioning. Drove over some of the area of the proposed Canyonlands National Park, saw Arches N.P., Glen Canyon Dam, Bryce and Zion Parks (climbed Angel's Landing), and so to California.

On June 14, sailed on the Matsonia for Honolulu. "Five fun-filled days at sea" (as the brochure puts it). Really very luxurious, with fine food in Brobdingnagian quantities and dishes such as shark fin soup and passion fruit ice. Hawaii got a pretty full treatment.

All the visitable islands: Oahu, Kauai, Molokai, Lanai, Maui and Hawaii, with extensive drives by rented car from a ten thousand foot volcano top on Maui to the beaches of Waikiki. Flew back.

Drove up California's coastal highway north of San Francisco: Big Sur, Carmel, and all---then on to Seattle and into Canada. Cut northeast up into British Columbia to Mt. Robson Provincial Park, which lies against the west edge of Jasper Park. There we took horses up to Berg Lake, a cold mile high, lying against a great glacier that tumbles down Mt. Robson (12,972') itself, the Monarch of the Canadian Rockies.

The wretched weather (we got soaked on our horses both going and coming--so wet we often had to walk them up and down for fear they'd slip in the mud) didn't cooperate at all but we caught a few glimpses of Robson, the most magnificent peak in the whole range and got in a few good climbs. Then home to teach the second term of summer school.

Whew! I wonder if Rachel Veitch would have ridden shotgun for Armand during his last few road trips. Think they would have gotten along?

Photo: Simplon

Trying To Make a Point

Near the end of May 1950, Armand chaperoned a WVU fraternity picnic at Chestnut Ridge camp, near Cooper's Rock. He played a little baseball that day and caught one on the tip of his little finger, right hand, and wrote:

Monongalia General Hospital. Yes, damn it....had it x-rayed, 2 pieces broken off, one of both of 2 end joints. Also pulled a tendon loose. Result, here I am with this writing hand all bandaged and sterilized and all I can do to hold pen through the mitten like, hot bandage.

Operation for tomorrow at 8 A.M. To be under gas an hour, metal pin has to be set in finger, etc. $50 + hospital , anesthesia, etc. Jesus. Supposed to be in cast or splints for 3 to 6 weeks. Then, summer school over, hope to drive to Canada to see Geefer.

Armand continued writing in discomfort for three more pages before describing his operation, at least what he recalled of it:

Then shot of morphine and atropine in upper left shoulder. Morphine makes you drowsy and relaxed, atropine dries up mouth saliva to prevent your gagging (and it works too). ...They didn't use nitrous oxide or a rubber mouth piece. Just an injection in left arm of sodium pentathol (this is stuff used during war in small doses by army psychiatrists to relax "war-nerved" soldiers and talk to them "under").

Quick? In 15 seconds or less, I was absolutely out cold and remember nothing - no dreams, hurts, bumps, no nothing till around 3 P.M., back in my room, I heard a nurse say, "Awake now?" I was sick, or sickish, all rest of day.

Armand spent the night in the hospital and was expected to stay another but left after lunch, to everyone's surprise.

Took bus downtown, no bus today- Memorial Day- up hill, so walked up with black valise, suit coat, brief case and umbrella! Also a stroll this eve! Damned fool? but feel fine except that the finger , which is stitched up and has a wire around loosened tendon keeping it stretched. Two ends of said wire supposed to come out top of finger and be twisted. It hurts at times if I don't keep finger in air.

At the end of that sentence, Armand painstakingly (the perfect word, don't you agree?) drew his finger and pointed to his broken bones.

Illustration: Armand Singer, 1950.

In Savannah

An excerpt from Armand's 1996 Christmas letter gives us a view from one end of his book shelf to the other. He was 82 years old when he wrote:

Besides a bunch of articles and a book of poetry in February (Robert Frost et al, needn't feel uneasy about their reputations: it's just a selection from little ditties composed over the past forty-plus years. I call it 1001 Horny Limericks. Yes, it's available if you're determined. Inquire at the return address on this envelope, but don't say I didn't warn you) the serious literary activity of my year (and the longest sentence since Henry James) was "The Uses of History in Fiction and Film", W.V.U.'s 21st Colloquium on Modern Literature and Film, held October 17-19.

After a lapse of ten years, I took it on for the eighth time, there being a crisis of availability of a likelier candidate to direct it. Luckily, things went well. Some 250 participants (all but a few showed up), big speakers, exhibits, and 62 special sessions for paper readers. I have already taken the plunge and agreed to run the show one more time.

Much more restful, three weeks later, was a drive to that charming old Southern city of Savannah to attend the South Atlantic Modern Language Association convention to chair a session on science fiction (again, I'm not making this up). Had a walking tour of the old part of town where so many events of a literary or scandalous nature took place (cf. John Berendt's Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, seems it's all pretty true).

Returned to W. Va. in bad weather but no casualties. Oh, should have added: visited spots connected with Conrad Aiken, Flannery O'Connor, Julian Green, and others. Savannah is well worth a visit.

...Well, as I noted above, I've agreed to do one more Colloquium (and I do mean, just one). Working title, "Critical Theory Examines the Literature and Film of the Last Hundred Years" (a retrospective look at what we've wrought, using Freudian, Marxist,semiotic, deconstructionist, and a dozen and more other better and worse, upcoming and outmoded theories for making sense out of literature and film art). This one's my own baby and I'm really anxious to see how well it plays.

Note: In the days before he passed away in July of 2007, Armand was organizing the 31st Colloquium at W.V.U. from his hospital bed!

Photo by Jack Leigh via Alitris

At Dream Lake

Armand's daughter Ann and her husband,Tomas, are driving across the country in true Armand fashion. Although, perhaps in more comfort than Armand would have allowed himself.

Last Tuesday, Ann wrote:We have just scattered Daddy's ashes at Dream Lake! We had a quite icy and snowy hike up there and it was quite slippery in places! Walked along a couple of icy precipices that would have undone those with acrophobia! We are now back in town for an honorary ice cream at the Estes Park DQ!!!!

In honor of Armand's Dream Lake connection, I've gone through the Where's Armand? blog and picked out old posts with mention of this favorite spot:

• Leaving 15 Minutes of Fame
• Free Armand!
• Sited: August 6, 2006
• Prudhoe Bay, Alaska - July 2001
• Raising It Higher

I'm sure there will be more references to Dream Lake as I go through the Armand Diaries but until then, it's comforting to know that in a way, Armand never has to leave it again.

Nashville, CSI

Notes about a summer road trip by an overheated Armand:

Monday, August 11, 1947. Nashville, Tenn. (352 miles). Started the day very early. At about 4:45, we were awakened by a woman's voice at our screen door: 'Would I move my car; it was blocking theirs?'

Half asleep I hastened to pull on my trousers and comply. Seems their car was in a garage and mine outside (our cabin had no garage attached) was unintentionally blocking it. I pulled out of the way, getting not even a word of thanks, and went back to bed.

Started for here at 8:15. Few moments later we smelled something, found engine smoking and spitting, so hot it ran after ignition turned off and ran until I put it in gear, let out clutch without pushing on accelerator and thus stalled it. Turned out radiator was bone dry.

I got a bucket at a house along road, filled it. Radiator didn't then, nor has it since leaked. All I can see is that the woman's husband, a Texan, sore because I blocked his way, let water out of radiator then restored faucet to closed position (it was closed when I checked it).

We didn't go to bed till midnight, and it was OK till then. A kid could have done it: I doubt it. Damn the Texas s. of a b. Otherwise, a long, uneventful day.

Tuesday, August 12. Rogersville, Tennessee (261 miles). FLASH! TEXAN EXONERATED! No Texan but an intermittent leak currently stopped with Dupont liquid solder (as Time says) caused draining of H2O.

Photo: Chrispwalsh

A Consoling Thought

In February of 1951, Armand Singer pondered what was still over fifty years away, death and the process of dying.

Concerning death, that seems to me so impossible to consider from one's own point of view (the cessation of existence for you, the person doing the thinking), will that point of view such as I have (for me or for people in general) gradually change as one grows older until you become resigned to it, conditioned to it, or even helped by some bio-chemical changes in your own brain system, to the point where it seems normal and natural.

I remember an old notion of mine to reconcile the unthinkable idea of ceasing to exist: as you die you sink into a coma, where (just as in a dream, events taking place over a day can be dreamed in a moment or two) you go on gradually sinking into death, but it seemingly takes forever in your mind. Hence, the death to you, at least never occurs. A consoling thought.

Painting by Hans Eder from Plural Magazine

"...but still!!"

May 12, 1947. Yesterday, Mother's Day, we drove up in A.M. to Pittsburgh for last concert of season. Returned by 7 P.M., driving the Hemmings of Speech Dep't back. They're very nice, he has Teton color movies which we must see! We had dinner at Manuel's here in town, very good, and 4$. Ate with Sallie Board of English Dep't.

Concert was New York Philharmonic, Dimitri Mitropoulos directing. Fine orchestra; fine, sensitive directing - no flaws I could detect except that the Viennese waltz in Rosenkavalier suite dragged a bit, as always.

...We've, for years, longed to hear Rubenstein, so as to compare him with Horowitz, especially after Geefer raved over R. so. Well, Mary was looking over some old souvenir programs she'd kept from Duke. Lo and behold, there was one for Rubenstein.

I laughed: she'd heard him before I knew her, forgotten it. Oh no - program was spring, 1940. We realized it was a program we hadn't heard - just an announcement it really was.

But, just to be sure, we checked in my diary. Well, there it was in black and white: the date and numbers he played - only one of which I remembered having heard after reading the description I'd written. Now tell me you can trust your memory.

It's all a little frightening, a bit saddening to think someone so great left so little impression at the time. To be sure, I wrote that we didn't care for his program that night, and we were on verge of getting married - but still!!

Photo: LIFE

Road Trip-1949

From the Armand Diaries of 1949:

Sunday, September 18, Fairmont, W.VA.
Wednesday we drove 340 miles to Marysville, Kansas; Thursday 409 miles (our record for this summer) to Springfield, Illinois; Friday 302 miles to Troy, Ohio; yesterday 275 miles to here. Trip mileage over 10,000. The day we drove to Marysville, Kansas, car went over the 150,000 mark and over, now, 73,000 miles that we've driven it.

A few days ago, by the time we left Colorado, gradually became clearer and clearer we were back East: more and more towns, more and more shade trees, softer, less invigorating days, quieter scenery, more prosaic people. It's nice to be back and sad too.

A few facts and figures: Longest 2 day drives= the 409 miles above, and 402 miles to Geefer's. A few more in the 300's. Our gravel days in Alaska and Canada more often around 250 miles (and long, tiresome days at that!).

I've now been in all the states of the U.S. except Maine and Rhode Island. All provinces of Canada except Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Newfoundland, and a territory or two. In Mexico, Cuba, Haiti, Jamaica, France, Germany, Austria, Italy, Switzerland, off shore in Ireland; in dock in England. In the territorial waters of Russia. In the territory of Alaska.

This being written in 1946, Armand still had miles to go before the map we saw in 2006 was completed.

UPDATE. Here's a message from Armand's daughter, Ann:

He was quite ashamed, actually...that, by age 35 he had missed 2 states (out of 48) AND all those Canadian Provinces. His goal when I was born...was to have me in all Canada Provinces (there are now 13 provinces and territories with Nunavut only becoming one a few years ago,  I believe...also Labrador may have been its own province back then so maybe there were 13 then as well) and ALL 49 states by the time I was 12 years old. We finished that list by age 11 (1961) and he was so delighted!!!!

Photo of a store in Springfield, Illinois in 1949: View Liner, Ltd.