Picking up the gauntlet

Cecil Acuff, Editorialist

June 30, 2008 09:39 am

— This Perkins person, who never met Alvena Bieri, read her book review column whether in the Stillwater NewsPress, Perkins Journal or Oklahoma Observer. Then, as people do, make presumptive assumptions.
Alvena’s writing was fhrontifugic (FHRON-ti-FU-gic); she helped readers escape their thoughts of cares, sorrows and misfortunes. Everyone is familiar with egocentrics — inner-directed, self-absorbed, their center of reference is of self. Bieri just had to be an alterocentric (AL-tuh-roh-SEN-trik), one who is wholly focused on others, and whose life revolves around them.
Alvena probably was a joviomelancholian (Joh-vec-MEL-un-kahl-i-an) — one who wears a jovial face to mask the gloom within. She surely could have suffered from prosopolethy (pruh-SOH-puh-LEE-thee) — an inclination to accept people based on their personal appearance, as falling in love at first sight.
The three types of book nuts, in ascending intensity: the bibliophile, who loves books; the bibliomaniac, who is crazy about them; and the biblioholic, who is consumed by them to the point of self-destruction. Tom Raabe’s book, “Biblioholism: The Literary Addition,” defines the disease as “the habitual longing to purchase, read, store, admire and consume books in excess.” Rabbe chose an epigraph by author John Ferriar, “What wild desires, what restless torments seize, The hapless person, who feels the book-disease.”
Alvena was probably a bibliomaniac, and she had to have practiced Winston Churchill’s suggestion in the little book, “Book Lover’s Quotations,” edited by Helen Exley. “If you cannot read all your books, at any rate handle, or as it were, fondle them — peer into them, let them fall open where they will, read from the first sentence that arrests your eye, set them back on the shelves with your own hand, arrange them on your own plan so that at least you know where they are. Let them be your friends; let them be your acquaintances.”
Gentle newspaper readers may be convinced, at this point, that this Perkins person is one pegalgian (py-GAL-jee-an) — a pain in the butt. Well, all God’s chilluns and most dogs and cats are, at times (some constantly?), a pain-er, or a pain-ee! As Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia said when asked about the 2000 presidential election, “Get over it.”
Bieri would have loved the little 272-page book by Charles Harrigton Elster, “There’s A Word For It.” And Alvena’s the celebrity here.
If one cannot please by writing book reviews or giving millions, to make people feel good, then give of self.
Robin Myers, pastor of the Mayflower Congregational in Oklahoma City, said, God so loved the world that he sent not politicians and statesmen, but you, the individual, to serve others. Stop thinking about yourselves.”
The premise, use any encounter with neighbor, clerk, waiter, owner, whomever, to comment, if time permits, on a trait, physical characteristic, family, work, whatever, to “make that person’s day.” As everyone has experienced, “a little lovin’ (or a word) goes a long way.”
Alvena Bieri would be proud that the gauntlet has been picked up!
Cecil Acuff is a Perkins resident.