Life Imitates Art: Yogurt Edition

Before tap class tonight at the Hartt School 's Mort & Irma Handel Performing Arts Center, I bought a Greek yogurt at the cafe.

I picked up a plastic spoon and started eating.

Quickly I realized the spoon, in shape and size, was completely wrong for the food I was eating, and so, immediately and naturally, Joel Barlow's words from Canto Three of "The Hasty Pudding" (1793) came to mind:

There is a choice in spoons. Though small appear
The nice distinction, yet to me 'tis clear.
The deep-bowled Gallic spoon, contrived to scoop
In ample draughts the thin diluted soup,
Performs not well in those substantial things,
Whose mass adhesive to the metal clings;
Where the strong labial muscles must embrace,
The gentle curve, and sweep the hollow space.
With ease to enter and discharge the freight,
A bowl less concave and more dilate,
Becomes the pudding best...

The mock epic, perhaps the best neo-classical poem written in British America and definitely the best poem composed about cornmeal mush, now rings truer than ever for me...

...and I also now know to bring my own spoon to tap class (maybe one of those "Frosty" spoons from Wendy's)!

The General David Humphreys House and Connecticut Open House Day

On Saturday, June 13th, it was Connecticut Open House Day which had dozens of arts and cultural institutions all around the state opening their doors (with either free or reduced admission) to encourage residents and non-residents alike to take advantage of all the opportunities that Connecticut offers.

My daughters performed at an open house held by the organization formerly known as The Newington's Children's Theatre, but, while there, I looked at the state-wide schedule and, at the top of the town participant list, was Ansonia and its General David Humphreys House. I headed off shortly thereafter!

Now, any reader of the "Connecticut Wit" blog should at least recognize the name of David Humphreys, who -- along with Joel Barlow, Timothy Dwight, John Trumbull, Lemuel Hopkins, and Elihu Hubbard Smith, et alia -- comprise that band of early American writers known as the "Hartford, Wicked, or Connecticut Wits." The Wits were the first to attempt to write a distinctly American writers. They came to prominence when they authored "The Anarchiad," a series of satires in in the late 1780s that argued for the need for a new constitutional convention. They met at Yale, and Humphreys would go on to become George Washington's aide-de-camp and one of the first industrialists in Connecticut when he would import Merino sheep from Spain and build Humphreysville (now Shelton, CT)...

I was excited to go to the house (and glad I went) but, I must admit, disappointed in the complete absence of any exhibit acknowledging his literary contributions to American history. Even the pamphlet about his life by Leo T. Malloy that the Derby Historical Society (DHS) sells pretty much ignores his authorial dimension. While it quotes briefly from one of his poems and mentions his "outstanding friends" Trumbull, Dwight, and Barlow, it never refers to them as "The Wits" or any of their several their collaborations.

While I commend the DHS for both maintaining the house and their undeniable dedication to keeping Humphreys' name alive, I just wish they'd give him his full due.

I recognize that it's easier (and, to judge by the many young and old who were there, more popular) to display things military (or things more generally colonial/early national), but even a little love for Dave the poet would be nice.

Salve!

Welcome to the ironically named Connecticut Wit, which will probably be far less witty than imagined, but I'll try.

The title is taken from the group of late 18th-century poets in the US (including, inter alia, Joel Barlow, Timothy Dwight, David Humphreys, and John Trumbull) who first tried to write a distinctly American literature. They FAILED.

Their failure, of course, is less important than their recognition of the need of something different to reflect the newness of the American experiment. As students of American literature know, failure has been a major theme from its Anglo-American beginnings (enter snide "Brit lit's better" comment here) as seen in such works asOn Plimmoth Plantation and Letters from an American Farmer...

And failure's almost always more interesting than success.

Now, while Frank Sinatra's late '60sWatertown album can't be enjoyed as regularly as Songs for Swingin' Lovers, it's intriguing in a way that only a failure can be.

Here's hopin' the same can be said, in the end, of this blog!