The Phenomenal Field

Many Thoughts, Little Time

2011-04-23T17:11:00.006-04:00

Alas. I had hoped to be a more regular presence in my own space. In fact, I have a longish entry to this blog that has been sitting in draft for over a month now. I've been out of town. I've been working. I've been sick. Simultaneously. So, on my first weekend to actually rest up without the aid of heavy medication, I--- attempted a cento. A cento is a poem made up entirely of lines taken from other poems. A poet, Danielle Pafunda, got some very experienced poets to act as judges, and in celebration of National Poetry Month and the Academy of American Poets, launched a Cento Contest. She tweeted one line from seventy-five different poems/poets on April 21, and anyone who wished could make a cento of any length of them, with the contest ending today at noon. The rules were very generous, with any use of the line allowed: split, whole, differently punctuated, spliced to pieces, partially used or discarded. I don't know what got into me; I gave it a try. I can immediately see from the more experienced entries (or what I assume are more experienced writers), more control: they used fewer lines to more coherence and sharper effect. The last one in the gate (as of now, but I think they are finished posting), called "Dementia Canto" is one such. Another is called "The Mistress." Mine is next-to-last-in-the-gate, but I have put it in below, with a few changes I wish I'd made (the deletion of a line and an extra "the" that never should have been there). I own up to working on it with more than a little effort. I am mostly pleased, but, naturally, welcome anyone's thoughts. The original entry is here, and the lines writers were given to work with are all at the end of all of the entries, or directly here. Also, check out 30 Poems in 30 Days, also from the Academy of American Poets.

The beautiful and intriguing lines from the original poems have opened up many new voices to me. More reading awaits in the longer, warmer, and sunnier days to come, glass of wine in hand and feet up on the porch.

Humbly yours on this Easter weekend,

Cordelia

Were they pearls

Sleep-fallen, just jars of buttons spilled
recurring naked in your dark hair,
implicit with stars;
plunge me deep in love,
the whole cathedral,
put out paper sacks stuffed full of orange
weighing the harvest
when my eye nearly failed.

You have lived and lived on every kind of shortage,
little corners of a kind of ham;
count out sherry, and ripe plates crash at your back---
and the trick is the pungent oranges and
bright green wings to make it personal.
It was not really necessary to eat the food:
one could breath it, the mystery of
---now I hear the clock snap just ten---
that. I became
hard to lift: my own bags were full of salt

which made them shifty in our hearts.
Hoist their nets,
sleepily indifferent,
we’ll kiss a hundred times
kiss the kiss to open your tiny beak-mouth
each kiss other, consider:
what you’ve said that looks as if it would never open
the magnolias
and not April
the wild, protected, liminal woods
the naked man;

in the glaring white gap,
in a carousel-sweet dress
I’m drunk,
each one a treaty, each one a place
where, glisten’d with wet,
I stand on the porch,
the reflected gleams
myself conjectured.

Alternate last stanza, which does not play so precious with Emily Dickinson's line "Myself conjectured were they Pearls---:" and replaces the segment of the Dickinson line with part of one from Gerald Manley Hopkins. I wanted some kind of ring composition effect, I think, to begin and end with Dickinson, and to do it by reversing the line's halves, but don't know how much sense I made of it, whereas this seems more straightforward.

in the glaring white gap
in a carousel-sweet dress
I'm drunk,
each one a treaty, each one a place
where, glisten’d with wet,
I stand on the porch,
the reflected gleams,
were they pearls,
to rescue one.

i-madness

2011-03-05T08:43:00.011-05:00

Remember this ? Where you put your ipod on shuffle and see what song titles come up to answer the questions ? I decided that this Saturday morning was time for a revisit. I've added, it seems, quite a bit of music since 2009. I admit as well to being an ipad 2 holdout: though ever fiber of my tech-loving being desired the ipad the minute rumors of it began to emerge, I have held fast to waiting for at least the second incarnation (this wait and my lack of patience helped by generous visits to the Apple store to play with the thing). Yes, if I had real patience, I would wait for 2.5 or 3.0, whatever one will emerge with the usb, the retina display, the sd card slot, or even the new Thunderbolt (usb, I gather, may not last much longer). So, yes, I confess, I have reached some personal limit, and I will foolishly purchase the transitional device: my techno-wonder, my gadget lust, can wait no longer. All this, I sigh, because my eyes are too old to enjoy the ipod touch, hence this little revived meme is brought to you via an ipod classic, you know, the kind with a hard drive and a click wheel. I admit, I admit, I have no issue with the ipad being, as some keep wailing "just a glorified ipod touch." I'm happy that the ipad is as big as a picture frame and that I can bluetooth a keyboard to it. My eyes are happy. My senses are stimulated. Okay, enough. Ironically, having planned now for a year (or since the original one came out) to stand in line for the ipad 2, I will be out of the country on the day it comes out. And I want a black one. So I will have to wait some more. I also had no patience, literally, to revisit all twenty-odd questions for a remix of this meme, so I picked the ones that were the most interesting last time or to which I got the least satisfactory answers on the first go. I still have the same fear that Christmas songs may overwhelm the mix. But we will see. If one pops up, I'll note it but go on to the next... Post-experiment notes: there were still too many Christmas songs; I noted them in some places, but the pile up was too long elsewhere, so I just moved on. The opener, "How do you feel today ?" is also fairly apt: I have a lot to do. So it's been nice to pause here and be a little silly. Contemplating this as an actual playlist, or even how it would have sounded it I'd let this all play, doesn't conjure up a soothing set of tunes or any kind of coherent experience. Still, I may cue it up and let it play while I'm doing some housework this morning. I'll let you know.

1. How do you feel today ? Situations (Jack Johnson)
2. How do your friends see you ? Ain't No Cure for Love (Leonard Cohen): this is really funny, considering that I am in love...
3. What do you like in a girl/guy ? I Can See Clearly Now (Johnny Nash)
4. Where will you get married ? And She Was (Talking Heads) Parse That Please. I would like to know
*When Will You Get Married ? (I added this): Life Effect (Stars) Disappointing answer !
5. If someone says, "Is this ok ?", you say: Georgia (Ray Charles)
6. What would best describe your personality ? Cycles (Rickie Lee Jones): Ooh. That could be true !
7. What is your life's purpose ? [Winter Wonderland, Eddie Higgins + 3 more Xmas Songs. Skip] You Belong To Me (Kate Rusby)
8. What is your motto ? 15 Step (Radiohead)
9. What do you think about often ? Rock, Salt, and Nails (Kate Wolf). Metaphorically, I think I can see this...
10. What is your life story ? Calendar Girl (Neil Sedaka). Deadlines, deadlines...
11. What do you think when you see a person you like ? Little Island (Randy Newman). Interesting
12. What will they play at your funeral ? Someone Else's Life (Josh Radin). Funny. Not as funny as last time (Belly: Feed the Tree)
13. What do you think of your friends ? Mercy of the Fallen (Dar Williams).
14. What is the one thing you regret ? Suit and Tie (Suzzy Roche) Oh him. Just kidding.
15.. What makes you laugh ? Ponytail (Panda Bear) eh.
16. What makes you cry ? Germs (Yeasayer): can't argue with that !
17. What's the worst that could happen ? Muengue Mwa Ndolo (Coco Mbassi) Can anyone translate this ? I would like to know.
The next song was "Grazed Knees" (Snow Patrol): I'd settle for that.

New Additions

2011-03-02T17:57:00.002-05:00

Not the cups. I'm still feeling a little snarky about the whole collecting/curating "trend" I was talking about a few posts ago. I realized that leaving my blog, hmm... unattended for some time has been akin to leaving the house while on extended travels elsewhere. I have returned refreshed (if, let me confess, somewhat worn by little --metaphoric-- earthquakes at Greenhouse City and, well, something else, but we'll not go there), but my home here had gotten dusty: some broken links in my blog roll (fixed or removed), and because middle age has set in and I seem to need everything in one place, some additions of new items to my lists, some that I had mentioned in earlier posts but now do not want to back track to find, and others found via other blogs that I'd rather have right here. The others are Finnish. I am not, not an ounce, not a genome, anything Finnish: it is really more of an obsession with sound and winter: I love the sound of the language. I can count to twenty and say "hello" on a good day, and have memorized the word for cat, kissa, like our word "kiss" with "sah" (double consonants pronounced separately) because I love those creatures mightily, but that is all. And I do like a wintery landscape, as those who have been following since this post have likely noted. So in addition to Dave in Suomi and Daydreaming in Helsinki (sidebar) who have stopped writing (but who am I to judge ?), I've added a few that I've been reading (Finland for Thought and Life in Finland), as well as Hel-Looks, a blog that tracks what people are wearing on the streets of Helsinki. Aside from things Finnish, there is January Magazine (literary), sans everything (literature and Canadian politics-culture respectively), A Cat of Impossible Color by Andrea Eames, a Zimbabwean born writer who now lives in Austin, TX (I have no idea how I found that blog. I just like it). Under my "Good Things" Listings (I know, I know: I should think about recatagorizing these, but not yet), there is Read Free Books Online , a site that offers all kinds of books to read (not to download, usually). I have a hard time reading novels online; my eyes get tired enough from reading blogs and work, but there it is, and it is marvelous. Also Next American City, which thinks hard about living well and green and on bicycles and in what a city ought to be. As for "Opus is Gone," I checked. If you click on the "letter" that now pops up, explaining that Opus is napping, you will go to Berkeley Breathed's page, where you can find information on his other work as well as Bloom County and its sequel. I guess Flawed Dogs created some controversy, as it seems to be a children's book, but the cruelty that some people perpetrate on animals (dog fights) is described in details too disturbing for some. It's another post, how we've defanged fairy tales (literally) and taken out the scene where Bambi's mother is killed (see here, eg), etc., but thinking about Breathed's book brought this all to mind again. And then there is his art, which is, well, poignant and funny all at once. So that's the round up.

I could get all meta-narrative, meta-blog post about a post that is still riding on some snark about collections and then presents a collection of links, but we won't do that. I'm more in the mood to think about the egregious number of parentheses in this post, but it seems to suit: this post is a parenthesis of sorts, a nice pause to just sit down and look.

As for my 'art,' ahem, Corel Painter is really quite the thing, isn't it ?

Accidental Tableau

2011-02-24T20:54:00.004-05:00

It just happened. I don't how they piled up or even how they ended up in the teacup. Morning, afternoon, evening, I realize as I stare quizzically and groggily at them: the cup and one spoon are from this morning's five am cappuccino. Another spoon from yogurt and honey I'd had as a snack when I got home this afternoon; the third... oh yes, I'd had tea after falling asleep on the couch mid evening. I'd used a different cup, and even rinsed it. But put the spoon in with the others. They are still there. Markers of an ordinary day and the whole of it evidence of an unplanned evening nap, and the peacefulness of a late evening where some things, cups and spoons and worries and work, must just be left to rest.

Perhaps I should also add, that in this peaceful evening, in fact, making a habit of having a little time for one each night, I have been reading, resting quiet and undisturbed under my covers as my spoons under water, Peter Høeg's The Quiet Girl, Den stille pige, and while missing dearly the snowy and still, suspended, landscape of Smilla's Sense of Snow, have been finding it a fascinating piece, virtuosic and odd, a page-turner and luringly suggestive of what various critical theories could make of it (and is up to it). I won't recount it here, only my deep surprise that it was not well received in Denmark (and who knows: maybe not here either), a fact I only discovered when I looked for information on its English language publication date (2007). It came out in Danish in 2006 and The Danish Literary Magazine has an article by the Norwegian author Kjaerstad on his own surprise at the novel's reception. It doesn't really give anything of the plot away, so feel free to read it here. Kjaerstad calls the novel, or one aspect of it, "high baroque," and I think this does capture the over all tone of the work, though it is all at once a detective story, science fiction, and more. More often than not, the scenes between characters recall to mind Isak Dinesen's stories and I wonder if anyone else has sensed this. Is there such a thing as a Danish-baroque sensibility ?

What We Live With

2011-02-12T09:35:00.022-05:00

Dear Reader:

I promise to read something else. Rather, I promise to blog about something other than what I've read in the NYTimes, lest you begin to suspect that this is my only source of information/stimulation outside of the cappuccino and Excedrin combo to which I often also refer, and, alas, have resorted to again this morning as I also munched on toast and read the aforementioned publication in the predawn light (it turns out, apparently, that when one habitually

gets up way too early on purpose, going to bed just a little earlier and hoping to sleep just a little later does not work. Wide awake at 5:40. Drat.).

In fact, for days, I have had in mind to write a post about something else, somewhere far away, that has nothing to do with some things, but here it was and here I am, brain not quite in gear enough for that post, but with enough wherewithall (these are all puns, people..) to post less of a post than notes for one, so here we are: the Magazine, which I usually resist until later on Saturday and then only for the puzzle at first, h
as a brief article on a blog phenomenon I had been unaware of, i.e. people posting photos of their stuff, but their artfully arranged things. Rob Walker, the columnist, offers several observations and a sound working theory of why this is happening, wherein, again, I learn a vocabulary word, or rather a new use for an old one, curation:

...the most satisfying examples now often depict more workaday stuff, treated with an unusual level of observatory respect; they frequently echo the “humble master pieces” featured in a Museum of Modern Art exhibition of that name several years ago: just as that show prodded viewers to reconsider the paper clip or the matchstick as “marvels of design,” these (humble) blogs recontextualize things most people ignore. Perhaps some of us are in more of a mood to accept beauty in the everyday, rather than aspire to the latest gleaming luxury.

And then there’s the way this stuff is arranged. There’s certainly nothing naturalistic about it; these are practically inventories. It has become a cliché to talk of “curation” as the great skill of the info-saturated online world, but probably what matters here is the overt display of that skill — the de facto announcement that someone is in charge. After too many years when stuff seemed to rule many lives, these things have been culled, sorted and mastered.

Not that I don't suspect that these photographers aspire to the MOMA ideal (and even an exhibition or book contract of their own), and not that I don't on some level find Walker's control theory compelling. In fact, the highbrow (if that is what it is) intellectualization (ditto) of the whole simplification movement ---or, let's be kinder--- its transformation from merely throwing stuff out to arranging what one has in order to enjoy it anew is refreshing, but the example blogs (see below) that Walker cites appear to me as cataloguing than curation. Yes, it is a kind of artful cataloguing, but this is what catalogues are nowadays, and I mean certain mail order catalogues, not exhibition catalogues. I confess, up front, I have not stopped the onslaught filling my physical mailbox, in part because of the visual pleasure of, say, the Garnet Hill, Sundance, even J.Jill catalogues (this is still an ad-free, unsponsored blog. I merely state the truth. Deal). I shop online for these things, if at all, but I do enjoy an afternoon cup of tea with a slew of new catalogues, the ones which arrange a rather minimalist number of items per page, quite artfully photographed, with descriptions that do mimic those other, i.e. museum collection catalogues: "unique shapes overlap to create modern artisanal styles;" "the long shirt;" etc. There is a cataloguing impulse/device/gimmick out there in the blogosphere, what I ate, what I knitted, what I photographed, cats in sinks; even Stuff White People Like is, at root, a catalogue. Were I to go all academic about this, there would be a lot to say here about the reinscription and performance of display, i.e. how it has been reappropriated and repurposed (optimistic) and how life is now structured by advertising techniques that we are supposed to be savvy and ironic enough to recognize (pessimistic, though not unrelated). The columnist notes, although he does not use this term, that the objects in the blogs he examines are decontextualized (he says "recontextualized") from everyday life: grouped against neutral backgrounds, a collection of bobbins or measuring spoons offer themselves as interesting in se ipsis, but one gets tired of walking with Certeau, so to speak, no matter where the walk goes. So I am less interested in this manipulation of the quotidian as a socio-anthropological phenomenon, clear on the fact that things arranged well give us pleasure (neatness counts, goes the aphorism: you'll like/use your stuff if you can find it, says common sense; you'll appreciate what you have if you maintain it, says mom, yes, sew the buttons on, etc.), than the groupings or arrangments that arise in context. Yes, I suppose this is the backbone of every decorating magazine and even of a certain spirituality (remember the "home altars" movement ?), but I do not mean faux context or creating a context (spiritual space, e.g.). After having read the column, I just poked my head up and peeked around: what have I bothered to arrange, I thought, and aside from the visual pleasure, what might it say ? That's all: lots of writing here to serve as an excuse for the first thing I thought of, my rather transparently readable arrangement of glassware, stored in, as is probably obvious, what should be a liquor cabinet, pictured at the start of this post. Enjoy. Let me know.

Blogs mentioned in the NYTimes column: A Collection A Day 2010; Things Organized Neatly

Snowland

2011-02-02T18:11:00.006-05:00

Late Winter Afternoon

The snow itself seeks

a roost in the trees' branches.

Inside: tea on, rest.

I am borrowing from Liz at Cassandra Pages (see sidebar), who as a disciplined and actual writer, did not abandon her blog, but wrote only short prose pieces and poems, haikus among them, for all of January. Determined not to become a once a year poster to my own blog, I sat down this evening too tired to really write anything, so decided to risk embarassment and take up haiku myself for one night to get started. I've been fussing over the last line, but what the heck. Too bad "the welcome arms of home" has six syllables is what I've been thinking, because that is much more the general idea.

It is wintery here, all right, today, and coming home this afternoon after some tense meetings at Greenhouse City and running errands finds me fairly wiped out. Now the oven is on and dinner is cooking, and I could really do with that cup of tea. I've saved it for myself for later, having fought off a pounding headache with an extra cappuccino this morning (so much catching up to do: I replaced my broken machine here with a Sirena machine bought on the cheap, in case you've been waiting for the end of that story...).

At the right is a picture of Snowland, not my snowy land, which has so far escaped the full force of the storm now in place, but the Snowland where my love lives and where we may make a home (complexities abound, but in middle age, all kinds of configurations seem possible that in younger years may not have appealed). So that's it, tonight: a post about snow and love, fatigue and possibility, and just about how the thought of a cup of tea can get one through the last hours of a long day.

And Now I Feel Guilty. And Hungry

2011-01-30T10:23:00.006-05:00

I love marmalade, and this tempting photo in the NYTimes attached to a recipe for marmalade, somehow put me in the mood to blog again. Actually, that is overstating the magical powers of the photo or the substance. For all of the time I have spent "away from here" as John B puts it, I have spent not an insubstantial amount of that time thinking that I should be writing here. So, yesterday, I was poking around, both here and at Blog Meridian, Willo's, and the Cassandra Pages, Steph's, etc. really emjoying everyone else's ongoing blog world as if visiting another time and place, almost another life. In that sense, Cassandra (Elizabeth)'s post of a photo from some years ago in Vermont was very apropos. How does a life, one's own continuous life, seem to suddenly ---though it isn't sudden--- become a life so different from the life and self that one once knew ? As readers of this blog (hearty souls, for certain !) will know, I had an abrupt and quite unwanted break in that continuity before I'd begun this blog, once so forceful that I experienced it as exile. This is a much more happy circumstance, but has brought with it stresses all its own: I've gone from being quite single and contentedly so, to falling in love with a man with whom, we two agree, we'd like to make a life together. Complications and adventure abound: it is long distance, children are in the picture, job stress (Greenhouse City has turned Dickensian, but I am hanging in) and potential relocation issues lo---, well, no, they don't loom as much as they open up so many possibilities and uncertainties. About which I'm most likely to write very little, details being what they are, and this blog being unknown to him. It's kind of my place, my diary in the sock drawer, so I've been wondering about that, too: the blogs I've mentioned are openly tied to their writers' identities. I know there are other bloggers out there that do what I do (academics are notorious for it, as are doctors and therapists, privacy issues being what they are, or, in the case of academics, academia being what it is): any thoughts on the "sock drawer blog," so to speak ?

Ahem: back to my tale of getting back here. Either Willo really reads her sitemeter thoroughly or she mistook my last blog post for 2011 instead of 2010, but there it is, posted below, how nice to see me back. Yes, wouldn't it be, I thought. So here I am. I'll be coming around to visit you all more obviously. Thank you, Willo !

Wish I'd Thought of This & A Coffee Cri de Coeur

2010-01-20T22:39:00.004-05:00

Via Seattle Coffee Gear (where I have spent a great deal of time of late, lusting over their machines and watching their fabulous "how to" You Tube Videos), I found Internet Cafe Hobo. Of course it's the BBC. Now, this is a fun way to see the world... Too tired tonight to say much more, except to say that my current espresso machine is broken, really, really broken.

And, people, how stiff do you like (or make) your cappuccino foam ? Are you a "micro" foamer, or do you prefer a stiffer foam ? One ~~snooty~~ professional style video insisted that "one never spoons the foam out of the pitcher." Uh-Oh. I intend to refine my technique, I think. As soon as I have a machine that actually has pressure in the steam wand again. Sigh. To the left is the image of one I lust for, though I'm not actually certain I'd buy something this expensive even if I could afford it. I'd like to play with it, though, let me tell you...

From what I've read and seen on the videos, there is clearly an anthropology dissertation (or two or three) to be written on espresso culture and rituals. I suppose I could get into a rant on consumerism and how we've been sold the idea about being "serious" equalling spending serious money on equipment and accessories ---and this seems true of almost any endeavor these days---, but I do love the techie beauty of these machines and the real knowledge that seems to go into a good number of morning coffee rituals out there in the world. I, on the other hand, am not exactly an amateur, but I have a plastic tamper, folks. Maybe it's the challenge...

*As usual, dear reader(s), I am following my passions here, and have no financial connections to SCG or the machine pictured.

The Year of Changes

2009-12-27T08:42:00.006-05:00

It is amazing how I can just stop blogging. Log off one night, no intention of being gone, and then, zap ! eight months gone. Eight. Reader(s), I apologize. I don't know what got into me. Nothing is wrong or was wrong, though, I admit, as summer approached and my joy and relief at having finally secured a position in a place the likes of Greenhouse City took hold, I began, for the first time in about four or five years, to be able to rest, really rest, and to let my tension-filled body finally sink into bed, onto couch, in chair in the sun, the fatigue leaching out in a slow ebb that left me realizing how much, emotionally and intellectually, I'd kept a bay from myself during non-Greenhouse City years. The end of exile, sort of, but in a new place. Of course, post-exile, there is a lot to do. My new circumstances have been a return of the deepest magnitude, and (but ?) I began to realize that I felt, if not out of practice, unpracticed: having arrived, after the initial set-up and transition, there was a deeper kind of setting up to do, a re-establishing of myself in that world, and ---what I think I had not anticipated, at least in terms of its depth--- a re-establishing of myself in me: I have found myself returning to both projects unfinished and desires left unfulfilled; I've travelled more than I have in a good four years, professionally or personally, and the professional travel and projects that went with it at first left me feeling shakier than I'd like even to admit to myself self. Nostalgia rewritten: nostos means return; algia, pain/longing, so "nostalgia" is normally, of course, a longing to return; I have had a case of the pain of return (there does not seem to be a word for that, though I am mindful that the nostoi of the ancient Greeks, of which we really only have the Odyssey in its fullness, are very much about both, the heroes battling their way toward a home, they and it forever changed). On the first few trips out, my knees were weaker than I would have thought, even to myself. But all went well, even better than well.

I have come "home," to realize, what I thought I already knew: I am older, I am behind in terms of the things I would have liked to have accomplished by now: perhaps it is only middle age setting in in earnest, one of those factors I did keep at bay, either simply through my attitude toward life (my older relatives tend to be surprised that they are as old as they are and just keep going: I am much the same), or because I could not bear that time was passing and I was no longer in the world in the way I wanted to be. Even now, I tend not to think about it (Greenhouse City is, happily and remarkably, full of "returnees" and refugees of all sorts), until I meet friends from old or talk with colleagues during these aforementioned travels, who talk about their careers having peaked or retiring at sixty (the latter seems impossibly young to me to do that), and I think, or rethink: is life really that far along ? Is life really that close to.... what ? A limited number of choices ? I tend to reject that out of hand. I wonder, if my life had been the sort where I stayed in one place for quite some time, if I would have evolved into the kind of person who has, what I call for lack of a better understanding of it, a life plan, and one that cooked along accordingly, at that. I am at the point where peers talk about x number more of projects, then that's it, they'll stop, career done, move on. And I wonder how they view me: am I the flexible one, or the one without a plan in a way that is daunting to them, off-putting ? Perhaps, I also think, during exile years, I stopped making certain kinds of plans, so strong was my sense of disappointment and despair, so estranged my exile from the world that was my home.

Whatever the case, here I am: returned, now toughened back up a bit, back. And now, having arrived ---how did I know this would be the case ? because when life was good before, this is often what happened--- and now life is good again, so: other things have opened up, and these are the sorts of things that would entail tremendous life changes on my part. I greet these with enthusiasm on the one hand and, upon reflection, pause on the other, wondering if, deep down, this option, to which I am powerfully and emotionally drawn, is opening up a fuller existence, or might foreclose upon the very things, rooted and dormant in me for so long, that are now just again flowering in the light of this new day and place, so long sought and so hard won ?

In short, and, in keeping with the tenor of this blog, I apologize for its obliqueness when it comes to specifics, I am (and how can I be ?) so happy and so uncertain suddenly and all at once. I am, though, once again back to this blog. I thought about it often, but the energy it took to restart and reintegrate left me no extra time for more writing, and I have missed it. So hello again, out there, whoever has come and stopped by.

Ha. Another One

2009-04-20T20:38:00.006-04:00

Some of you may recall that in the summer, inspired by Carbon Trace, I began to hunt (cyberly) Academics Who Bike. Got another today, by the usual method, aka, not looking. I was looking for information on Toronto and biking, and, lo ! Stylocycle came into view. She explains herself in this post. I'm adding her to my special category sidebar.
On another note, I've finished The Glister. Hmmm... still pondering.

Add to list of books not to forget about reading:
Larry McMurtry, Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen, Telegraph Days; Reread Lonesome Dove
Cormac McCarthy, The Road
Jeanette Winterson, Weight
Steven Sherrill, The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break

I'm behind as far as The Road goes, I know. A lot going on these past few years.

The 2009 Pulitzers are out, but I am very underwhelmed at the moment. I hadn't been paying much attention, but in the fiction and poetry category at least, even the finalists seem weak. Not undeserving at all, but perhaps safe or too mainstream/ establishment (?). Elizabeth Strout's "novel in short stories," Olive Kitteridge won for fiction, and WS Merwin for poetry (The Shadow of Sirius). Worse, Drew Gilpin Faust's brilliant book on the civil war, This Republic of Suffering, was pitted against Annette Gordon Reed's The Hemingses of Monticello, to which it lost. Tough call. Both are extremely important works, and both so extremely deserving. I presume Pulitzers cannot "tie," but I haven't looked into this. Faust's is really the better book, though: better written, beautifully researched, intellectually captivating. I must be in a very contrarian mood, sitting here arguing with the Pulitzer committee in my head. 'Nite.

Lists

2009-04-12T12:17:00.008-04:00

Steph, in a meme of some sort, posted a list on her site: a three year reading list of books that she wants to read, should read, never got to. Here's her explanation of the whole project and where she found it:

Project Fill-in-the-Gaps was created by Moonrat on her blog Editorial Ass: fill in the gaps in your reading lists of classics and contemporary fiction. Make a list of 100 titles, give yourself 5 years to complete reading the list, and give yourself 25% "accident forgiveness" - consider the task accomplished if you achieve 75 titles in the time span. I found this via some blog or other..."

I'm not big on those group lists like "the best 100 books" or projects like "the big read" --- not a communal reader, I'd guess, or not a book club sort. So my reaction to the project, understandably, was no reaction. Without getting into the specifics of my education, I've done my time with multi-year reading lists of inordinate length. Appeal of repeating this experience: zero. I do carry around lists like this in my head, but they change or emerge by happenstance, say, when I come across a title consciously forgotten but now on view in a bookstore or library, and then I remember that I've wanted to read it. And so I usually buy it/check it out on the spot. But I think we all have similar lists, of symphonies unheard, recipes untried, places to visit, etc. Will the naught decade be the decade of lists ? I blame that book, which seems still very popular among, hmm, I'll stretch it and say the 32 and under crowd, but I've mostly heard it mentioned by people in their twenties: One Hundred Things To Do Before You Die. It seems to have spurred a whole movement of "life lists," (or "Bucket Lists," based on the movie). The worst ? The writer of the original book, a travel book, died at the age of 47, list unfinished, not eaten by crocodiles or anything exotic, but from a head injury suffered in a fall at home. Enough to put one off the idea entirely. But it hasn't. The idea spawned (I mean this in the demonic sense) an entire industry ---and maybe a generation--- of people who see life as a hop from one bullet point to another (was this inevitable after Power Point ?). I wonder if their lives will pass them by while they are busy checking off events and experiences... On the other hand, like titles that I suddenly reapprehend as desirable reads, perhaps the lists are a way of holding up our true self(ves) to the mind's eye, so that it doesn't get lost in the daily routine that keeps offering up the "someday" that will be different. All of this is getting philosophical and far from my original purpose for my entry, which is not a three year reading list, but one formed in the now of the latest NYTimes Book Review today. The first three are not in it; it is that when I read the review, I remember them. Every week, I tuck it aside and later in the week, I recycle it, and only if I am very organized have glanced through it again to remind myself of what I might like to read. Dear Reader(s ?), though I mention this newspaper quite a bit, it is not my only source. I also feel, for example, that I need to listen to the Wrens, but this impulse did not come from the Times. Aside from any other books I may have mentioned, which I may or may not have read by now, these are the books on my mind:

Current Read: ~~A Meaningful Life, LJ Davis~~ finished, 4/13
Keep Forgetting, But Really Want to Read: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz
The Age of Shiva, Manil Suri
More Jonathan Lethem (I loved Motherless Brooklyn)

In the Book Review this week (children's books caught my eye this time around, mostly, I notice):

Amiri and Odette, Walter Dean Myers, illustr. Javaka Steptoe : "the legend of Swan Lake moves into the projects."
The Yggyssey, Daniel Pinkwater, illustr. Caleb Brown (why hadn't I heard of Pinkwater before this ?). The main character is a girl named Yggdrasil Birnbaum, presumably after the great ash tree stretching from beneath the earth to the heavens in Norse mythology. I wonder how accidental the last name is: it means "pear tree" in German.
The Graveyard Book, Blueberry Girl and Coraline, all by Neil Gaiman
It would also be hard to pass on CAT, "written by Matthew van Fleet and photographed by Brian Stanton. All kinds of cats, in motion and rhyme." Why should the "2 and up" crowd have all the good cat books ?
~~The Glister, John Burnside.~~ (finished, 4/19) Scottish fiction, teenage boys vanish in the woods for years until another teenage boy begins to realize what is going on. Read the review. My potboiler plot description does not capture what intrigues me about it. The review does.

Well, off to listen to the Wrens, finally, via the link I created here. Happy Easter, for those of you who are celebrating today.

Image from "Amiri and Odette" lifted from NYTimes Book Review website.

"Call it a field..."

2009-04-08T20:10:00.004-04:00

I've finished Dogs of Babel. While I write, I'm making a version of a recipe I saw in the newspaper today, a kind of breakfast-for-dinner meal, poached eggs atop peas. The peas should be sprinkled with bacon, but I don't have any in the house, so mine will be plainer: I have some cornbread, I'm thinking about sprinkling it with Parmesan cheese. I'm sure it's not supposed to be a full meal either, but eggs, peas, and cornbread sound fine to me.
Parkhurst's novel is written in stunningly beautiful prose, the tale of a man, told by that man, the husband of a woman who is found dead at the foot of an apple tree in their backyard, their Rhodesian Ridgeback nosing the body and yelping out the cries to neighbors, one of whom finally looks over the fence. In the UK, the book was more precisely titled Lorelei's Secret, since the dog, Lorelei, was the only witness to what happened. The words "elegiac" and "parable" have been frequently applied to this novel, and when it sustains that tone, which is most of the time, the novel shines, the prose is a glimmering field of love and grief, the ineffable and the unknowable. "Babel" is a reference to the husband's profession as a linguist, and his growing obsession, which he pursues in the name of research, of teaching the dog to talk, or at least to communicate, because he is convinced that Lorelie can make sense of what happened: why was his wife, Lexy (there are elements of allegory here), climbing a thirty foot tree in the first place ? Police forensics determine quickly that Lexy did not jump, but, Paul wonders, did she "let herself" fall ? [Fall. From an apple tree. Reference to Babel. Are these allusions clear enough ? Apparently the apple tree and the fall were not enough for the publishers who changed the title: the story of Babel is not mentioned in the book.] The novel retells the story of how Paul and Lexy, who owned Lorelei before she met Paul, met and married. Lexy is a mask maker, an artistry that takes a macabre turn when she is commissioned to make a modern day death mask of a teenage girl who has died of cancer. Contrary to what Paul expects, the mask, while limning the girl's features, is full of life: "She had painted the face white, a stark white background, with a field of bright flowers that stretched from cheek to cheek. The colors were vibrant --- no soft pastels, no pinks and baby blues. There were stems and leaves in bright, vivid greens, topped with blossoms of read and purple and yellow and teal, their petals touched with gold like a glint of sunglow. There were not the kind of flowers that would have been sent to the girl's funeral... These were wildflowers, windblown and growing every which way." It is one of several crucial moments in the novel where Paul is taken by surprise by Lexy's work, both by its nature and execution, and his inability to fully comprehend the artist in her and the mercurial emotions that reside behind her own mask of everyday self burn away, like a purifying flame, the glinting, sunlit elegy of his narrative of their romance. But there is no purifying flame: as do many in grief, Paul eats out of cereal boxes, lets the laundry and dirty dishes pile up, and pursues his project with Lorelei. In this world, which is like our own but is not, there is a "famous case" of a French talking dog from the sixteenth century, followed by another famous case, in Paul's own time, of a criminal who altered the anatomy of dogs until he succeeded, we're told, in getting it to talk. It is a criminal case, with the mad doctor now jailed, the dog having testified in his own words. When Paul finally does encounter the dog, we will find that it is not clear at all that the dog can talk, putting the idea that "everybody heard it" back into proper context. As his sane department chair and colleague remarks, "whole courtrooms in Salem were convinced they'd seen witchcraft performed." It is this off the cuff remark that leads to the oddest and least successful aspect of the book, a shame, I think, because the author uses it to create a very plotted climax that feels out of place. (For those of you as sensitive as I, nothing that horrendous happens to Lorelei.) Paul meets up with the followers of the criminal who altered jaw after jaw of dogs, cruelly, to create his talking marvel. Paul has contacted the man in prison, and is properly horrified by the sketches the man sends him, yet goes, when invited, to what might be termed a hell's den of hobbyists, all of whom are pursuing the same gruesome practices, and who have kidnapped the famous talking dog, Dog J[ob ? he started with "a" we're told, and had worked his way through eight other dogs, "A" through "I", hacking and sawing in his apartment until he "succeeded"]. It is in this underground den of the Cerberus Society that Paul realizes his friend may be right. To add angst and horror to the tale, it turns out that Lorelei, who had turned up at Lexy's door as a puppy, bleeding from the neck, had escaped from this society's kennels, and after a predictable police raid, Paul returns home to find Lorelei gone. So the reader must wait as the plot moves toward Paul's discovery of the truth, incomplete, until Lorelei is found, not outwardly maimed, but with her voice box removed ---an unnecessary bit of horror and overdetermined symbolism--- a truth it will not require Lorelei's "voice" to solve, merely and instead, Paul's simple recognition of the nature of a loyal animal. The weakness is not that the book shifts its mythologies from biblical to Greco-Roman (that trick has been easily managed in many a book), but that this section's desire to drive home the monstrousness of the project, the crime against nature, if you will, of physically altering the dogs, does not really reflect anything in Paul's yearning or his methods (he imitates sounds, tried to get Lorelei to nose at picture cards, has a symbolic computer keyboard built), and except for the fact that every epic journey requires the hero to descend to the underworld (and Parkhurst has this in mind. Paul narrates toward the beginning: If I could, I would begin the way poets used to do.... I sing of a woman with ink on her hands and pictures hidden beneath her hair. I sing of a dog with a skin like velvet pushed the wrong way."), these moments in the basement and the authorial decision to maim Lorelei, feel contrived, are contrived, as is the odd scene where Lexy climbs atop Paul in bed wearing the one death mask that parents of a deceased child had rejected: a cherubically happy face painted atop the outlines of her actual features in death. You want to hold up a hand and say, we know, we know. No need to harm the dog, to set the mask scene in New Orleans: the grotesque and its surreal quality don't heel well [thought about it: sorry, "heel" is the right word here] to elegy and the clean lines of parable, it doesn't make it more complex; it pulls the plot too far in an unnecessary direction. It is part of a parallel in the narrative where both Paul and Lexy (Paul after Lexy's death) have engaged in different kinds of magical thinking, a thinking of which each is disabused by the intrusion of reality (if Paul's trip to Hell can be termed that), but taking the knife to Lorelei's throat [the surgery is not described, O Dog Lovers], only grinds away at an awareness that has already permeated the whole text, and by this point in the narrative, Paul's conscious and intellectual self as well. I wondered, half aloud while reading, if Parkhurst had become nervous about momentum, and hence, a last minute, toward-the-end-of-novel dognapping. The novel recovers well enough at the end: we see that we, along with Paul, were staring right at some clues we could have deciphered, and the one remaining mystery to Paul (why Lexy fed Lorelei a whole steak on the day she fell) is, I'd guess, already clear to the reader. The story of how we never really know each other, innocent before the Edenic Fall (when, a philosopher named Vasil ---who exists only in the novel--- supposed animals lost their ability to speak), and how we do, self consciously, carnally, and imperfectly after, how the climb up the apple tree mirrors the attempt to restore that perfection by building a tower to heaven, is all beautifully and subtly drawn. The dogs of Babel, to follow out the metaphor, are at as much of a loss as their tower-building masters. It is only when Paul is able to think like a dog, outside of speech, that he is able to solve the final piece of the puzzle by understanding ---and experiencing--- the instincts of Lorelei. It is a beautifully and originally imagined piece of work, one I hope no one passes up because of its flaws. Billy Collins once wrote these lines to describe poetry:
Call it a field where the animals
who were forgotten by the ark
come to graze under the evening clouds.
In the end, the novel is Lorelei's field, her space under the apple tree; she, forgotten by the human arks that were supposed to keep her safe while they, if only for a moment, but with irrevocable consequences, pursued their own rescues. Lorelei, the silent dog in the evening of her life, who, as instinct would allow and demand, ate a tempting morsel, oblivious to the loss that would follow, but finally, in the end, by sheer force of life and that same instinct, by being only a dog, and not Eve, keeps her master from falling too, and returns him to himself, to her, once again on solid ground.

Steampunk in Progress

2009-04-07T23:40:00.005-04:00

Raw notes instead of a post. From a 2008 New York Times article:

"...steampunk, a subculture that is the aesthetic expression of a time-traveling fantasy world, one that embraces music, film, design and now fashion, all inspired by the extravagantly inventive age of dirigibles and steam locomotives, brass diving bells and jar-shaped protosubmarines."

Steampunk Cat pictured here, is sold by Citrus Tree on Etsy. What's funny is that, in general, in its literary manifestation and in all of those blog sites where young men are wearing bowler hats and vests, steampunk is not an aesthetic that appeals to me ---though I like the cat a lot--- and I'd guess that if I had to name the quality that limits its appeal, it would be weightiness: the encumbering gravity of the diving helmet, the Victorian petticoat and boots, the frocks (not all steampunk aficionados are into the dress up end of this). In the article, Jake von Slatt, the proprietor of something called The SteamPunk Workshop, says that steampunk "is the intersection of technology and romance," but this doesn't quite do it, because the Romantic aesthetic and the steampunk mise-en-scène do not quite coincide. But the connection to the victorian era is obvious: HG Wells, Verne, the steam engine, in short, the age of industrial marvels, beasts of machines that snorted, clanged, and and changed the view of the landscape forever (dirigibles, trains, and the diving bell all had profound effects on how one could experience the landscape, and so, one's sense of existence). There is an old book, part of a PBS series, Shock of the New (now revised), that talks about this, but it is about modernism, the antithesis (at least on the surface) of the aesthetic of steampunk. Not to overstate the obvious, but steam is the crucial element here, bespeaking all manner of archetypes of the elemental (fire and water), the transformational (the evaporation of water into hot steam), breath made visibile (and so, the life force of human and machine is linked), obscurity and loss/being lost (fogged mirrors, engine rooms, factory floors, all full of steam pouring out everywhere, mmm... Toni Morrison would have a field day with this, given what she wrote in her Nobel Lecture on whiteness and the literary imagination. Note to self: think about this, seems very fruitful). And of course, the beasts, black against their white breath, the iron horses of the rails, grey dirgibles with flame in their bellies. Most of the reading I've done seems to claim that steampunk rests on one contrafactual: the internal combustion engine is never invented; everything else, though, is fair game. (But does this really mean that we'd all still be in hobnail boots ? What of the women of steampunk ? Back to the corset and bustle ?) The answer, over at a blog I found while pursuing these musings, Daily Steampunk , is, to my despair, yes, if you take the corset pictured here to be typical, as also the unfortunate term "steampunkettes." So I need to do some serious research, that is, for any of you twenty-somethings and below reading, from real databases not found via Google, sources from vetted journals and articles, and see what's being written on this. To my mind, "steampunkettes" not withstanding, this seems to be a very male place to play, very rigid, very heavy. Maybe this is not being fair to the second half of the compound, the "punk," which is often an autopilot signal for subversive or counter-cultural, but it seems there is a lot of reinscribing of norms here. This is not polished thinking at all; writing late again, too late to read the book I bought when I thought I'd have time to read (sigh). Finally reading The Dogs of Babel. Seven pages in.
PS I like the cat because it is not Victorian. In fact, it has the feel of Newark, NJ, when you fly in over all those flaming and smoking oil refineries at twilight. It has that feel, a different one, to my mind, than corsets and pocketwatches. Is anyone still with me ?

An Extremely Short Bedtime Story

2009-03-30T22:25:00.005-04:00

...Once upon a time, we all walked five miles to school, uphill in the snow, dodging the velociraptors while reciting the names of state capitals...
At my place of employment, now known as Greenhouse City (because it has one, not because I have anything to do with it), a young woman of twenty listens to some of us (with hyperbolic references to mastodons roaming the earth) reminisce about typewriters, carbon paper, etc. Jokingly, I say, only two 'fonts:' pica and elite. Yes, chimes in another colleague, until the IBM selectric ball. Then we got rid of the return, too. She looks at us, suddenly very serious. You know, she says, I've never seen a typewriter. I mean, I have, you know, in the movies and stuff, but, not an actual real one. [Silence. We all require coffee before speech returns.]
Let's leave it at that. I cannot bear to repeat the conversation she has a bit later with someone else on this same ancient implement, when she learned that hitting a key used to make type strike ink and paper. Perhaps if she were into steampunk ?
In fact, no typewriter could be located within the building for a show and tell. I have one, though, at home: my father's Remington, green, in a hard case. Does anyone remember that aroma when a typewriter case is opened ? The must of ink, eraser dust, metal ? I also have some things to say about steampunk, but that's another post.

Photo of modified mac via http://bifsniff.com/technology/steampunk-brazil-computer-i-want-one; other examples can be seen at "The Seventeen Hottest Steampunk Computer Creations"
A good list of Steampunk Books can be found here. It all really started with Gibson & Sterling's The Difference Engine, but, right, another time, another post.

Take A Cup, Drink It Up

2009-03-20T00:26:00.006-04:00

...and let your neighbors in, I think the children's rhyme goes. Tonight's koan: when is your neighbor not your neighbor ? Answer: When his house has disappeared from Google Earth.

John Stewart's Interview with a Vampire (Cheney, in absentia).
My feelings exactly. I also just wanted to move on from my silly night of anagrams. Much to do at work these days. All good, but more than humanly possible, it feels. I'll be working the weekend, too, it seems, so enjoy this clip for now.

Video downloaded from Raw Story.

Enamelled Fin Hop

2009-03-12T22:03:00.002-04:00

That four hours of sleep thing is not good. It was a busy day at Greenhouse City; I could not get out of there when I had planned to be long gone, and can't say tonight has been very productive. I drank coffee, not espresso, but coffee, at the office, which I never do, and my cup of tea is going to toddle me off to bed in a minute, just fine. So somehow, I think via following links out of Crooked Timber (sidebar), I found a site of "Anagram Poetry" (all the poems have titles that are anagrams of the poets' names, absolutely hysterical). Who knew that TS Eliot was "Toilets ?" Okay, I guess if I had ever gone to the trouble, it would be obvious. but the imitation is of high quality, which makes it even funnier:

Toilets
by T.S. Eliot

Let us go then, to the john,
Where the toilet seat waits to be sat upon
Like a lover's lap perched upon ceramic;
Let us go, through doors that do not always lock,
Which means you ought to knock
Lest opening one reveal a soul within
Who'll shout, "Stay out! Did you not see my shin,
Framed within the gap twixt floor and stall?"
No, I did not see that at all.
That is not what I saw, at all.

To the stall the people come to go,
Reading an obscene graffito.

We have lingered in the chamber labeled "Men"
Till attendants proffer aftershave and mints
As we lather up our hands with soap, and rinse.

The take on "The Love Song of Alfred J Prufrock" is pitch perfect. WC Williams becomes "Islamic Owls," and so on. So, I wondered, what could I do with the title of this blog ? I am too tired to think for myself (or for anyone else for that matter), so I turned it over to the brain of hive mind, an anagram generator found here. Some results are nonsensical, but others, such as "Enamelled Fin Hop," have a poetic appeal. I left out the definite article for the first try, and some other favorites are: "Leafed Helm Pinon;" "Flanneled Pie Ohm;" "Headline Men Flop;" and "Heaped Felon Limn." I added "the" and asked for the first 100 results (55,556 found, it claims). With punctuation added, some are even funnier: "A defilement ! Help, Hon !;" and "A Helped Feline Month; along with "A Hinted Phoneme Fell," seemed catchy. Well, I told you this was a silly post.

Very Lazy, Very Late Night Post

2009-03-12T01:20:00.000-04:00

I ~~haven't even~~ just added her to my blogroll ~~yet~~, but Chiara Kael's blog, Coffee Cycle Chic, lines up three things of which I am dearly fond, and basically in the order that they occur in my life (it is iffy as to whether the third element is ever achieved, but it is striven for. Not in a Manolo Blahnik kind of way, more in a "to thine own sense be chic" sort of ethic). But I can linger over her blog, clicking links, and with its beautiful graphics and caffeine-imbued sensibility, it serves as a kind of virtual café, complete with posters (links) for good causes lining the walls. So I've swapped in the graphics from her blog header in lieu of any thoughtful content but by way of sincere introduction. I'm already dreaming of the coffee... I have to be up in four hours. All my fault. Coffee has been seen around here before. 'Nite.

This Will Be A Home Study Course

2009-03-09T18:09:00.003-04:00

Via the Where Blog , comes this post, "Introducing the New Urbanism," which aims to provide a basic reading list introducing the concept. I've copied below the top five here directly from the post, all, I think, good reads, though I don't know number two at all, and am only vaguely acquainted with number five. "Urbanism," of course, is a very restrictive concept, and [yet ?] I find myself wondering how the ideas in these books might intersect with the ideas from places like Complete Streets, the burgeoning discussion on Carbon Trace of what one means by "bike culture," and the idea of the "1 Mile Solution," also found there. Cities and towns tend to get conflated in discussions of urbanism, new and old, and suburbs and exurbs become really, really annoying places that many theorists would seek to banish, connect, or reconstruct (so that they are cities or towns). But I digress a tad. Let's say that I'm waiting for the New Oppidism (see why it will never catch on ? Because the Latin word for town, oppidum, does not make a pretty word), as distinct from the NU. There is a very thoughtful secondary list in this post that includes some interesting and/or classic picks, such as Mumford's The Culture of Cities (1938) which opened up the conceptual framework for many other writers, and Will Self's oddity, Psychogeography: Disentangling the Modern Conundrum of Psyche and Place (2007). I'll be working my way through the secondary list for some time to come. Three other books came to mind, though only one of them has to do with urbanism qua urbs: A Pattern Language (1977), by Alexander, Ishikawa, and Silverstein, a book that has had a growing influence on, among other things, small (not micro) house design (see Susanka's The Not So Big House); the children's book, out just last month, beautiful graphics (I cannot bring myself to say "graphic children's book"), My First Book of Urban Planning," by CJ Hughes; and, for extremely un-thought out reasons, what we call a gut feeling, DeLillo's Underworld, whose barren landscapes strewn with the refuse of human existence (Fresh Kills landfill and the airplane grave yard ---"The Boneyard" in Tuscon, AZ are prominent) and sly cuff, with "under," at the "sub" of suburbia ought to haunt any new urbanist. Only the second is "about" urbanism, but it would be fun to add them to the list. For those whose interest in vehicle graveyards has now been piqued, try this post on Mental Floss.

Here, finally, is the list from The Where Blog:

The Top 5

1. The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs (1961). At about 450 pages, “concise” is probably not the most apt description of this book. But, as this is the single best written, most accessible, most compelling book I’ve ever read about cities, I’m willing to forsake the concision criterion even in my first recommendation. If you want to know what can make cities pleasant, safe and interesting places to live, read this book. If you want to read one of the best non-fiction prose stylists of our time, read this book. It’s a classic, and deservedly so. As one Where reader put it: “It’s a great book for explaining why we care about all of this.”

2. The Option of Urbanism by Christopher Leinberger (2007). While not as fun to read as The Death and Life of Great American Cities or The Geography of Nowhere (see below), this slender volume briskly highlights difference between drivable sub-urban development and walkable urban development, and does a good job of explaining the benefits of walkable city neighborhoods. It’s good primer on the basics of density, zoning and the hidden subsidies fueling drivable sub-urban development.

3. The Geography of Nowhere by James Howard Kunstler (1993). This book is an exploration—and excoriation—of the rise of suburbia and sprawl. It also explains how the more traditional patterns and places of city life and country life are superior to the “geography of nowhere.” Accessible and ferocious.

4. Cities Back from the Edge by Roberta Gratz, with Norman Mintz (1998). According to a Where reader, this book is “in the spirit of Jacobs” and discusses “how existing cities can be improved with citizen participation in contrast to destructive master plans.” The book is filled with lots of specific ideas about how to improve downtown areas, all of them lavishly illustrated with real life examples from successful efforts in dozens of cities.

5. How Cities Work by Alex Marshall (2000). Squarely aimed at the lay person, this book seeks to discover what forces shape places and cities—and finds that one of the most powerful forces is political choices, particularly those having to do with transportation policy. A Where reader gave this recommendation: “It’s not comprehensive, of course, but it’s a good snack, possibly the kind that could interest a person in a larger meal.”

Image taken from the review of My First Book of Urban Planning, from which the NYTimes reprinted the image. The NYTimes review is linked to the title above.

Lazy Sunday Afternoon Blogging, II

2009-03-08T13:39:00.003-04:00

Reading about nutrition, food, limited budgets and what is good for us. Isn't it the same with books ? I do not mean that physical hunger is a metaphor, or ought to be made one, but I was reading this post from Unlimited Magazine about The Canada Food Guide (to compare it to the infamous US pyramid, if you must know what I was doing while about the blogosphere). But the mass marketed, over processed overpriced "bad food" seems akin to the mass marketed, over processed, overpriced forms of entertainment we indulge in, including all of that cable and gaming, etc., when a good book, a really good book, will set you back much less. Overpriced junk vs. truly fulfilling nourishment, for body and for soul. Since this is a lazy Sunday afternoon entry, no conclusions or analysis are on offer. Let's just think about it. Here is the post from Unlimited, which is all about food and poverty, not books:

About a decade ago, while I was wandering in and out of the shops in Provence, I noticed that the really crappy foods – the sodas and candy – were markedly expensive. The “good” food – you know, the dark leafy vegetables and other organic matter that forms the girth of the food pyramid – were, well, dirt cheap.Back home in Canada the inverse was, and is, still true: bad food = cheap; good food = expensive. In Avignon, I found a perch near a carousel in the town square to people watch. I saw a man walk by, ripping the knob off a baguette. Someone else passed by talking on two cellphones at the same time Michael Pollan, a consummate food writer and a kind of agro-activist through journalism, has pointed out the skewed value North Americans put on food in the Omnivore’s Dilemma, In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto and countless articles for the New York Times Magazine. Charge more for the crappy food and less for the good stuff, the reasoning goes, and we’ll consume more of the good stuff. Kind of like with gas: high prices force us, more than environmental conscientiousness, to re-consider our consumption habits.The issue is more complex than this – subsidized farming, for starters – but you get the point.The flip side is the person who can’t afford to pay more for crappy food, let alone an organic chicken breast served with 100-mile asparagus and potatoes you grew yourself. This is where two friends, Tracy Hyatt and Jennifer Windsor, came up with a social experiment: With agflation shooting up like mortgage rates, the pair wanted to see if they could each eat for $80 a month. And eat healthy. Thus was born the Working Poor Diet, which raises funds for the Edmonton Food Bank.You can follow their hunger pains and mood swings online. There are rules, including no free food, including handouts from friends and family. The Canada Food Guide is gospel—though oatmeal, rice and tea from the Dollar Store have become staples and a bounty of bruised apples from Save on Foods were a bargain.

For comparison, here is the US Food Pyramid.

Lazy Sunday Blogging

2009-03-08T11:58:00.005-04:00

Since today is literally short of time, I thought I'd play at the meme that has been going around the net, but that no one has seen fit to tag me with. I don't know if that is a good or bad thing. And, I didn't realize until I signed in this morning that my last post was my hundredth. Considering how long I've had the blog, this is nothing to be proud of, but still, I'm glad I'd put some effort into that one. Numbers have an irrational hold on us, and somehow, a hundredth post sounds as if one ought to do something to suit the occasion. So I'm glad I wrote about Gertrude, cats, and the Gerbil News. Okay, the meme:
Here are the instructions.
1. Put your music player on shuffle.
2. Press forward for each question.
3. Use the song title as the answer to the question even if it doesn’t make sense. NO CHEATING!
I am worried in advance. I have a lot of Christmas music loaded onto my ipod. I really fear the worst. But let's give meaningful randomness, or accidental meaningfulness, a whirl:

The results are below. Eh. Not as funny as the "______ needs" Google search that was going around. Then again, that "shuffle" algorithm is an odd one. None of my my recently added music appeared, such as my Miranda Lee Richards album. Numbers 11,12, and 15 are, I suppose, the funniest to me because they seem apt (11 and 12), or just amusing (15), and I'm really glad that the answers to 13 and 18 did not appear as the answer to 19 ("How will you die ?"). It also seems that everyone's blog has a different set of questions. I'm looking for the definitive ten or twenty questions. Anyone ? Now, I suppose I should turn these into a playlist ---I'm skipping the Christmas songs--- to see how it all sounds, but the hours are burning away today. Back to laundry, lunch, and a little less randomness.

1. How do you feel today ? Secret O'Life (James Taylor)
2. Will you get far in life ? Breakdown (Jack Johnson)
3. How do your friends see you ? Blue Christmas (Elvis) I knew it...
4. Where will you get married ? Hoy No Quiero (Julieta Venegas)
5. What is my best friend's theme song? Between the Bars (Elliot Smith)
6. If someone says, "Is this ok ?", you say: Winter Wonderland (Aimee Mann)
7. What would best describe your personality ? These are the Days (10,000 Maniacs)
8. What do you like in a girl/guy ? Empty Frame (Eno and Cale) Funny.
9. What is your life's purpose ? Reckoner (Radiohead) Ooh. Hits very close to home.
10. What is your motto ? I Wish I Felt Nothing (Wallflowers)
11. What do you think about often ? Relax, Enjoy Yourself (Randy Newman) True
12. What is your life story ? Eisenhower Blues (Elvis Costello) Also true !
13. What do you want to be when you grow up ? Fiery Crash (Andrew Bird) Ouch.
14. What do you think when you see a person you like ? Soul Searchin' (Solomon Burke)
15. What will they play at your funeral ? Feed the Tree (Belly) Hysterical. I'll put it in my will.
16. What is your biggest secret ? Got a Feelin' for Ya (Kelly Willis)
17. What do you think of your friends ? The Living (Natalie Merchant)
18 What's the worst that could happen ? Set Yourself On Fire (Stars) That's pretty bad !
19. How will you die ? Beachcombing (Mark Knopfler & Emmy Lou Harris)
20 What is the one thing you regret ? The First Noel (Bing Crosby) Fail.
21. What makes you laugh ? Say Yes (Elliot Smith)
22. What makes you cry ? You Got Something (JJ Cale)
23. Who is your secret admirer ? Reunion (Stars)
24. If you could go back in time, what would you change ? The Eyes of My Beholder (Lucy Kaplansky) Sounds deep. What does it mean ?
25. What hurts right now ? Into My Arms (Nick Cave) No, no, no.

2009-03-03T23:30:00.008-05:00

I am taking full advantage of this snow, ice, work at home thing to browse about the net on a snowy day, extra cappuccinos in hand. Why had I not found Gerbil News before ? It is hystericalIy funny. My eyes hurt from reading too many entries. I was going to save this for a post on Saint Gertrude's Day (March 17th), but this lovely mock epyllion by Con Chapman (take that name for what it's worth...) cannot wait. Saint Gertrude is the patron saint of cats, and it was in quest of some information about her that I found The Gerbil News. I am not Catholic, but a patron saint of cats, especially one who has a mouse running up her staff in her traditional iconography, is too good to pass up. According to several blog sites, in addition to being the patron saint of cats and those who love them, Gertrude of Nivelles also looks after "gardners, travelers in search of lodging, and the recently deceased," the last of which, I suppose, are merely travellers in search of lodging in a different realm. She is invoked against "rodents, fear of mice and rats, and fever:" all sorts of reasons for this come to mind by implication, e.g. fever and diseases carried by rodents, etc., but no one seems to say why she negotiates these particulars of human existence with the one Almighty. In pictures I've found of her, she is often surrounded by mice. Not merely the mice on her staff, but rather contented looking creatures who seem to have mistaken her for their patron.

The website from which this image is taken explains that mice are christian symbols for souls in Purgatory, and this may explain it. Mice do not appear to have a patron saint of their own, but my research consists only of several search engines' first page results.

By James C. Christensen

Other images, such as the one on the left, do surround her with the furry ones themselves. Good night, all. I shall be setting up a small suitable shrine for Saint Gertrude, or thumbing through my Sylvia books and imagining what one might look like from my non-traditional and quasi-polytheistic approach religion and the numinous. But go and read "A Band of Feline Brothers."

Snowbike and Poaching, Part II

2009-03-02T12:23:00.003-05:00

I know I said I was going to get rid of it, but I cleaned it up first, then looked into making an Xtra-Cycle out of it (feasible), then took it for a spin once and a while (the new bike is better, but the steel frame on this one is X-tra tempting...), and now look at it:

Meanwhile, I have been very tempted by Bullitts from Larry vs. Harry, but they cost more than Xtra-Cycles and, I think, would have to be imported. Hmmm. With the new job at Greenhouse City, it is possible that I could end up in Copenhagen for a weekend this summer. Time to test ride a Bullitt ?
Meanwhile, via Carbon Trace (for a great entry photo, cut the /bike out of the url and just go to http://isocrates.us), I've found the PPE Blog, a wonderful account of a biking Englishman in acquiescent exile ---so he says--- in the Netherlands. The photography and descriptions of biking around towns and country places are wonderful. And I have a soft spot for any self-declared exiles out there. Time to clear off the car before the next round of snow (we're up to a foot, but in a break at the moment), and shovel out from what the snow plough left banked up in front of my front tires.

Poaching

2009-03-02T09:55:00.002-05:00

It appears that the entire eastern seaboard is shut down, closed, at rest, quiescent because of snow. It's funny; it doesn't feel like a raging storm or blizzard, but all of the schools are closed, according to the radio, and many businesses aren't exactly encouraging people to brave the conditions to get to work. So I am working (ahem) at home. I've discovered this, via The Tidings of Magpies, an absolutely lovely poem:

What I Believe
by Michael Blumenthal

I believe there is no justice,
but that cottongrass and bunchberry
grow on the mountain.

I believe that a scorpion's sting
will kill a man,
but that his wife will remarry.

I believe that, the older we get,
the weaker the body,
but the stronger the soul.

I believe that if you roll over at night
in an empty bed,
the air consoles you.

I believe that no one is spared
the darkness,
and no one gets all of it.

I believe we all drown eventually
in a sea of our making,
but that the land belongs to someone else.

I believe in destiny.
And I believe in free will.

I believe that, when all
the clocks break,
time goes on without them.

And I believe that whatever
pulls us under,
will do so gently.

so as not to disturb anyone,
so as not to interfere
with what we believe in.

Posted here

This Breaks My Heart

2009-02-27T18:08:00.004-05:00

This story, reprinted here from the BBC without permission, broke my heart the first time I read it, and I've thought about it so much since that I went back to the story to see if there had been any kind of an update. It doesn't look as if there has been. Imagine having a companion for 54 years taken away like this. I hope this old sailor gets his pal back. I'd buy the thieves another bird if they'd just give this one back. Standing offer. Does anyone out there in blogland have any more on this ?
Cockatoo, 54, stolen during raid

Cocky might have been at sea for years, but he does not swear

A 54-year-old cockatoo called Cocky has been stolen from his owner who bought him as a chick from a market. Former sailor Leslie Proctor, 86, said he bought Cocky, thought to be worth £1,000, back with him on one of his last voyages and wanted him returned.
The lively cockatoo, which can squawk its name, and say "ta-ta" had been asleep at Mr Proctor's home in Blaydon when he was snatched on Tuesday night.

Police said Cocky might have been stolen to order.

Mr Proctor said Cocky had "quite a temper" and was "a handful". The former Merchant Navy sailor who was at sea for 22 years, bought the bird as a chick from Paddy's Market in Sydney, Australia. He said: "I brought Cocky back with me on one of my last voyages and he's been with me ever since. He's good company and I'd very much like him returned to me."

Despite the bird's seafaring ways, he was never taught to swear. Instead, the great sulphur-crested cockatoo can say his name, "Cocky Proctor", "cup of tea", "good night" and "ta-ta".

Pc Anthony Holliday feared Cocky might have been stolen to order. He said: "The thief or thieves seem to have known what they were after. After getting into the house they went straight for the bird cage, removed the padlock, and stole the bird." A police spokesman confirmed it was the only thing that was stolen in the burglary.

Ah, Mr. Proctor, my heart aches for you and your little friend. May he find his way to you again soon.

Time To Read

2009-02-26T18:46:00.003-05:00

I found this lovely blog, Lotus Reads, in the "Blogs of Note" section, a place that has some interesting writing, but not the kind of thing I'd bookmark or check back with. This one, though, and all of its linked blogs and literary reviews, is, in contrast, a kindred spirit. How do all of these people out there find time to read, write so articulately, and make their blogs so beautiful ? I find myself, at least lately, barely able to read the people who are wriiting about reading. How to get any real reading done ? From this blog alone, I've already found a long list of books I'd like to spend time with. This must be my most inelegant post to date. Very tired. Too many books, too little espresso, even less time...

Now, This Was Fun

2009-02-21T10:24:00.006-05:00

Is this a meme ? I suppose it is. I found this on Steph's A Commonplace Book:
"DIRECTIONS: Type your name and the word NEEDS in quotes (e.g., "John Needs") into Google and see what comes up." For hers, click the link here.
Here are mine, all of the first page search results. They're almost poetic. Few of them are true (of me, anyway, but I suppose numbers 2-4 could always come in handy:

Cordelia needs girls/models
Cordelia needs a touch of luck
Cordelia needs omnipotent control
Cordelia needs more than $1400
Cordelia needs a home
Cordelia needs closure
Cordelia needs 2 stop getting drunk
Cordelia needs to hear and Fred hangs up
Cordelia needs someone to treat her fair

Thanks, Steph ! That was fun !

Addendum: Not content to leave well enough alone two seconds after posting this, I decided to find out what "Cordelia doesn't need." Remarkably, only one page of search results was returned, but there's almost a theme here, if we forget about the incongruity of the last one:

Cordelia doesn’t need the gods
Cordelia doesn’t need to show it off
Cordelia doesn’t need to save her soul
Cordelia doesn’t need enemies
Cordelia doesn’t need him anymore
Cordelia doesn’t need me to be strong
~~Cordelia doesn’t need diapers~~

What's On The Pod

2009-02-18T19:09:00.007-05:00

I'm a bit under the weather (literally, too: waiting for rain to turn to pretty white snow), so here is what is currently on the pod, which is in turn coddled by some very nice speakers:

You can click on the image to blow it up. I'm undecided about the REM, but it does seem to fit. I'm enjoying the list, anyway.
Here's the itunes/imix link, which makes a prettier cover, but won't let me copy it.
I updated all of my links last night, but still hope that the Marmot and Underground Ozarks will make a comeback. So they're still here.

Res Novae, Urbes Pro Populo (New Things, Cities for the People)

2009-02-16T12:13:00.003-05:00

Repurposing Urbanism:
I've been enjoying The Where Blog while on my extended blogging hiatus (the hiatus applied mostly to writing, not reading), a blog that I think brings together ideas about the new,or as I like to think of it, the "repurposed" urbanism, one that grapples with the reality of surburbs that have no urban hub ---they are housing developments built out on what was farmland---, megamalls, and all things decidely non-urban. I often think, especially when I read the blogs of our cycling academics (see sidebar), that many of us envision an urban infrastructure of sorts for transportation (or should I say locomotion ? walking, cycling, public transport), local shopping, and community,while hanging onto gardens, yards, and less costly square footage. It's this complex and potent brew that seems to thrive in our imaginations and our websites, something post- the urban-suburban, beyond the town and country binaries that simply keep swapping out elements from each other to build a better version of what they already are (vs. transforming them all together). The Where Blog keeps track of many other fine blogs, many expert at paying attention to things we ought to notice (or to tell us to give them more than a passing shrug of the shoulders). Here is one such analysis, reminding me of John B's exercise over at Blog Meridian, trying to get his students to grasp the importance of describing ordinary things. Well, here you go:

from a blog called Pasta and Vinegar, quoting a book by someone named Rob van Kronenburg:
“Just think back a decade or so. Did you not see cars on pavements and guys (mostly) trying to fix them? Where are they now? They are in professional garages as they all run on software. The guys cannot fix that. Now extrapolate this to your home, the streets you walk and drive on, the cities you roam, the offices in which you work. Can you imagine they would one day simply not function? Not open, close, give heat, air…

As citizens will at some point soon no longer be aware of what we have lost in terms of personal agency. We will get very afraid of any kind of action, and probably also the very notion of change, innovation - resisting anything that will look like a drawback, like losing something, losing functionalities, connectivities, the very stuff that they think is what makes us human.
(…)
If as a citizen you can no longer fix your own car – which is a quite recent phenomenon - because it is software driven, you have lost more then your ability to fix your own car, you have lost the very belief in a situation in which there are no professional garages, no just in time logistics, no independent mechanics, no small initiatives. (…) Any change in the background, in the axioms that make up the environment has tremendous consequences on the level of agency of citizens. They become helpless very soon, as they have no clue how to operate what is ‘running in the background’, let alone fix things if they go wrong. As such, Ambient intelligence presumes a totalizing, anti-democratic logic.“

Who's Your Best Friend ?

2009-02-16T10:08:00.003-05:00

This is a just in case post, info found via Blog Meridian. Neko Case, alt-country singer extraordinaire, had offered to donate five dollars to an animal rescue organization, Best Friends Animal Society, for every blogger who reposted the link to a free download of a song from her forthcoming album, Middle Cyclone. Now, here's the thing: by the time I'd found my way back into the blogosphere and had caught up to my reading on John's website, the offer had expired (Feb. 3). Yesterday, however, the New York Times magazine had an article on Neko Case and mentioned the post a song/donation project. I know all about real time vs publishing time, but in hopes that the offer will be revived and extended, I'm posting the link here: People Got A Lotta of Nerve.

The free download still works, and I left a query on the blog site.

Of course, you can always just donate to your local animal shelter or rescue group. Believe me, they need anything you can give, and it need not be money: old towels, household cleaning supplies, old blankets, spare cat litter, etc. Just call and ask. Most organizations have a wishlist, and there is bound to be something you can give.

Buttons, Beans, and The Blogosphere's State of Investigative Prowess

2009-02-10T00:51:00.007-05:00

My inner etymologist surfaces: the movie Coraline has apparently flooded the internet with questions about the origin of the word for "fear of buttons," koumpounophobia. The biggest question is what is its origin and is it a "real" word or something that Neil Gaiman made up ? It's real: it comes from the modern Greek word for "to button," κουμπούνω, (koumpouno) which comes from the ancient Greek word for "bean" (κύαμος, kuamos), which makes sense, because the ancients didn't have buttons, but some buttons resemble beans, + πονέω (poneo), "to work hard." So you can see where the modern Greek word comes from. Check any modern Greek dictionary, attach "-phobia" to the noun form, and you've got yourself, well, a legitimately rooted word. I wasn't going to write a separate entry, but this got to me, reading the silliness out there. I fear for our nation if people can't do basic research. Goodnight.

It's So Bad, We're Starting to Want to Help People

2009-02-09T22:54:00.006-05:00

I read so much, info glutton that I am, I have just spent half an hour trying to retrace my steps to find where I read (but I did read it) that things on Wall Street are now so bad, the article baldly went, that an increase in grad school applications is up, especially in MPA (Masters of Public Administration) programs, aka the gateway to civil service and non-profits. Cynics. Ironic, of course, that the world of high paying sector jobs would crash just as the new social idealism that swept Obama into office has also taken hold. No segue, just links:

The New Service
Idealist.Org/Action Without Borders
The American Red Cross
US Department of State/Jobs (with links to more opportunities)
Organizing for America (MyBarackObama.Com)

My we all find a way.

Not Shuttered For Good

2009-02-08T21:15:00.004-05:00

I wondered if I'd be able to start up again without remarking, or rather lamenting, how much I'd let go unsaid, but not unthought, in between. Too many long days at---- what to call it besides "the job" or "the option," as I've been doing ? Every morning, where I am now, and it has been frigid, I walk past a little greenhouse appended onto the back of a larger building. Inside, beautiful cacti and succulents fill the glass enclosure with their climbing greenery, and I love to look at them. Their safety reminds me of my own luck. Housed in their proper environment, they thrive, they produce, they breathe. It is not as if I have need to grasp the fact that I was unhappy before; I think that was obvious, in many ways, the catalyst for this blog. Now, once again, too late in the evening to give this its due, I will try to get at something complicated. I had not led a charmed life before I came to that point that I have called "exile" in this blog, but I had led a fairly consistent professional one, no scratch that--- I had had a consistent professional identity. Even I did not know how much I needed it, or how, when outside of it, how difficult the ideas and ideals that I had often drawn upon and assumed I lived, such as Berry's "Be joyful though you have considered all the facts." would find their limit. I knew, these past few years, that I had hit up against a new kind of limit, one where the facts, considered, vanquished a good portion of joy, taxed and even defeated my ability to be playful and creative, because, frankly, the intellectual and social life I had had, vanished behind me. And, after it seemed that that kind of life was gone for good, I was able to step back into it again, but picture the action movie where the parking garage door may clamp down before the protagonist can get the car through, the air running out before the astronaut can back in the airlock, Jack Bauer looking for the truth, and then you will have a sense of how singular, narrow, and unlikely the chance that this would happen. There were, you know, interviews and such, and I remember at one point, after learning that I had been recommended to go up the next level, lying in bed, and literally picturing a barred gate swinging open onto a green field, and willing myself away from the cliché and the hope all at once, knowing that I just could not continue doing what I had been doing. And now I am back in a world I know, and, unfortunately for this blog, so fully engaged with it that I let many posts written in my head slide by with a cup of tea at the end of the day or evening. I had a few, including what I was going to ominously title "The Dead Guy's Desk," which is my desk. I can't call the person who used it before my predecessor in any real sense, and, worse, he is only metaphorically dead. Maybe I will still post it, in some form: a discussion of what happens when your phone number and desk were previously assigned to someone who came to a controversial end. And so many thoughts on Obama and the inauguration. But all that will have to wait. I wanted to open back up again, so to speak. I'm even set to travel again soon. And that's the news from Greenhouse City. Ah, there you go: perfect, we'll keep it at that: I work in Greenhouse City. Good Night.

Great Britain Schools Its Wayward Child In the Ways of Empire

2008-10-14T17:37:00.003-04:00

Now that it's becoming fairly clear that the Brits are leading us out of the finance mess (never, I mean never, elect a President who cannot manage the ownership of a baseball team), I found these contrasting stories quite telling:

The Right Thing (so far): "Simpson 'Expects Sack from BBC'"

The Wrong Thing: "Buckley's 'Sorry, Dad' Piece Leads to Exit"

The news about Buckley underlines the fact that it is increasingly impossible (if not already and actually impossible) for us as a nation to engage in political dialogue and dissent based on analysis of the issues at stake. Subscribers, outraged by Buckley's column, have apparently been cancelling subscriptions en masse, the NIMBY approach to the ideals behind the First Amendment. To be fair, Buckley offered to resign his column; it should be to the great shame of the National Review that they accepted his offer.

Funny that the BBC has taken the stance that the views of a respected journalist ought to be, you know, respected.

Old Bike

2008-09-26T22:17:00.005-04:00

There it sits, the Schwinn that was my ride for years, not spared the indignity of being seen with flat tires, cracked sidewalls, and rust. Since this photo was taken, when I was going to list it for a dollar on Craig's List, I have pumped up the tires (the tubes, amazingly, are intact) and scrubbed some of the rust from the frame and parts, and hatched a much more foolhardy plan: perhaps I can turn it into an Xtracycle. As I noted in a rambling comment on Carbon Trace, the frame is a very sturdy one and the fact that I could not carry an Xtracycle up the three flights of stairs (see apartment building visible in the bike photo for the kind of stairs we're talking about) is no deterrent to this strange dream of keeping my longtime bike with me. Refurbishing, even without the Xtracycle free radical attachment, would be costly, which is why I bought a new bike instead in the first place. I don't need two bikes; I've got a rack and panniers on the new one, but still, the idea is taking on a life of its own. I keep the old tires full now, waiting.
That bike and I, we went places together.

Post Scriptum: Listening to a bit of Elvis Costello, as what could be more appropriate after McCain got his American History wrong ? So, here are the lyrics, by J.B. Lenoir, that Costello croons and rocks in the sadly apt "Eisenhower Blues." Music here.

Hey everybody, I was talkin' to you
I ain't tellin' you jivin', this is the natural truth
Mm mm mm, I got them Eisenhower blues
Thinkin' about me and you, what on earth are we gonna do?

My money's gone, my fun is gone
The way things look, how can I be here long?
Mm mm mm, I got them Eisenhower blues
Thinkin' about me and you, what on earth are we gonna do?

Taken all my money, to pay the tax
I'm only givin' you people, the natural facts
I only tellin' you people, my belief
Because I am headed straight, on relief
Mm mm mm, I got them Eisenhower blues
Thinkin' about me and you, what on earth are we gonna do?

Ain't go a dime, ain't even got a cent
I don't even have no money, to pay my rent
My baby needs some clothes, she needs some shoes
Peoples I don't know what, I'm gonna do
Mm mm mm, I got them Eisenhower blues
Thinkin' about me and you, what on earth are we gonna do?

I'm Back

2008-09-24T23:05:00.002-04:00

Whew. That was close. I almost became a regular blogger back there in August. I've been so busy, happily so, adjusting to the new job and trying to get into a rhythm of biking to work. I seem to have had the opposite problem of John at Cycling in Wichita, who was having trouble with cooler temperatures; the heat was getting to me. No reason to sweat, the slow bike movement claims, unless, you know, your ride involves going uphill on the home commute and it's a humid 80+. So I waited. We also had some fierce weather, as in lightning almost every afternoon, but the idea of biking in remained a siren song. Now, I've had some beautiful mornings, and I'm fairly addicted to mornings in the high 60's-low 70's, the ride up past beautiful farmhouses and green lawns (I settled on a longer route than the one I filmed, to avoid the car-whizzing road on the most direct route). I'm out at about 6:45, and here is the thing I enjoy most amid the dewy fog rising off of the green all around me, the dark lifting to orange, and it's a funny and poignant sight all at once: high-schoolers waiting for their buses. I turn the bike out onto the street, and halfway up the block are a gaggle of children in uniform, mostly African-American, who by now are getting used to me, but for whom I provided quite a spectacle at first glance. Adults, of course, are so ridiculous. Giggles, "where she goin' ?"; "hey, it's bike lady." Up and over the hill, where the road opens to farms and houses set back behind trees, it's mostly white kids, two or lone standing at street signs, already dressed to perfection in the costume of their tribe. My favorite is two punk girls: the tunics, the tights, the leather boots, gelled hair, black eyeliner, lacquered lips and nails, who never fail to stare in open-mouthed wonder and disdain as I ride past. They look so awkward and assured all at once. I suppose the adjective is incongruous: me, with the cool of the air on my skin and the scent of morning making its way past my cappuccino fueled self, while they scan for the bus, anxious as if something might mar them before the yellow doors swing open and sweep them off to their world, backpacks and cellphones, lockers and rules, that beautiful and ruthless self-consciousness of teenagers, two of whom lean against the street post, snicker, and silently telegraph what the hell are you looking at ? But I see their eyes slide as the bike glides by, how freely it escapes the yellow behemoth coming up from behind as they await the hiss and the hot air of the unfolded doors and I ride on.

The Pink Bike Lady

2008-08-20T23:51:00.003-04:00

Many thoughts, no time. But did read a marvelous story, found via EcoVelo, of the pink bike lady. According to the comments section, not only has this woman travelled the world via her (heavy) bike, but she is a daily commuter as well. I just liked the story and the way the writer thinks she is a nut and then realizes that she is "serious." Still pondering that, and gender showing here, admit that I think of "serious" as a guy word, when used to indicate an intense and/or highly competent level of doing something.

Also found The Practical Pedal, a free print/online bike commuter magazine out of Bozman, MT. It doesn't look as if they put out a summer issue this year, but the blog is updated. Good stuff and a sense of humor. Alas, I've never been to Bozman, but had the pleasure of spending about six weeks living in Missoula one summer. I went all around that town on a bike found in a friend's garage. Good memories, there. Great town. There was a wonderful bookstore (I still have a bookmark from it) called Freddy's Feed and Read, gone now. Memo to self: find and scan in bookmark. I know where it is: in a copy of Janet Kauffman's Places in the World a Woman Can Walk, which I bought there. Now, where is the book ? It really is amazing that I can remember the places where I've purchased books: the town, the stores, the light, what the shelving looked like. Needless to say, BNB (Barnes & Noble, Borders) purchases all run together in the way airports do during a long trip. Rambling here, going to bed.

I need some serious sleep. And I'm serious about sleeping.
PS. For those of you who cannot stand the anticipation, I bought the silver teapot. It has arrived. Photo soon.

You Go, Girl

2008-08-20T00:37:00.004-04:00

I was going to write a short sentence excusing myself from blogging these past few days due to sunshine, sushi, and Campari over ice. I came across this: "Armed 85 Year Old Woman Makes Intruder Call Cops". I grew up in a house where four rifles hung on a gun rack above the piano, where I learned to target shoot by the time I was five (a skill long gone, though the cute photo of me in my fluffy pink winter jacket holding the gun endures), yet I do not own a gun, think that too many people have too many guns and that said guns aren't meant for hunting, and yet... my first thought was approval and admiration. I don't know if I admire more the fact that she held the burglar at bay or that she had the guts to own a gun in the first place. They say you should never carry anything for protection that can be turned against you, but then, you can be strangled with a shoelace. Well done, Leda Smith. You go girl. Remember to reload.

Same to this woman, 93, who actually fired at ---but missed--- a burglar in her house. In their infinite wisdom, the CA police will not charge the woman. Well...yeah.

Biking and What Matters

2008-08-16T01:36:00.003-04:00

The post on AWBs (Academics Who Bike) has brought some new readers (hello there !) and some delightful conversation. I also must stop watching the Olympics and go to bed before two. So, I was visiting Post Secret while waiting through a boring stretch of volley ball, and came across this postcard, which I've appropriated (after properly referencing, you should kindly note).

My derrière is fine (I've been told), but a sentiment and a benefit not to be overlooked. And a new clue for how to spot an AWB on campus.

Stolen Manifesto

2008-08-15T23:59:00.001-04:00

Found at Wheel Revolution. Evoked forgotten time when this was posted on my refrigerator. (Blogs are the new fridge doors ? In some cases, dear reader.) Some specifics are for men. Who cares ? Goes with the current career change/biking/meaning of life themes on my mind now. I love "Be joyful though you have considered all the facts."

The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

By Wendell Berry

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.

So, friends, every day do something
that won't compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.

Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millenium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.

Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion -- put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?

Go with your love to the fields.
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn't go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.

Academics Who Bike

2008-08-14T00:35:00.005-04:00

AWB's, we'll call them, because BA's or AB's (Biking Academics/ Academics Biking) takes away their Ph.D.'s. I wonder if this is a new phenomenon, or if academic types who already have blogs (and bikes) will be starting up new, subsidiary blogs to accommodate their interest in bike culture and bike commuting. (I should add that I mean "subsidiary" in the business sense, not in the sense of "less important.") On the few biking blogs that I read, Bike Commuters and Bike Portland, a large number of the bike commuters, as was humorously remarked on Bike Commuters, seem to be IT people, not a few of whom work at universities. So it is good to see some from the academic side with biking blogs: John, of Blog Meridian, who has been known to drop by these pages, now writes of Cycling in Wichita, and a Springfieldian (MO), has just launched Carbon Trace. You can see I have a really large sample here, but that is not going to stop me from announcing a new phenomenon (academics do not call it a "trend" unless they are statisticians), the blogs of academics who bike. Based upon my sample (cough), AWBs appear to have a strong desire to compartmentalize, hence a separate blog for this facet of their existence, yet express an equally or more powerful will to integrate the actual biking (but not the blog) into various facets of their lives, e.g. it's not '"about the bike;" it's about bike culture and environmental and social concerns, and about not getting squished. Well, okay, sometimes it is about the bike, but not in that spandexy sense. I can actually see the rationale behind the separate blogs, as this is something that has already been happening: each blog attracts its own community, so establishing a new blog allows one to make contact with and link up with those who have those same interests, or as Andrew Cline of Carbon Trace put it, he did not want to go "off topic" in his other blog, which is about his academic subject. Since my blog has no topic and my career is a secret, I have not branched off. So I have started a new section in the sidebar: academic bike blogs (ABBs ? No.). I expect that at least one of the subjects of this post will have suggestions as to how to enlarge the list. And then we shall study these creatures in their natural habitat.

"This Is Not 1968"

2008-08-13T23:55:00.001-04:00

Fifty-four seconds in, this gets surreal. Does she hear herself ?

Choose one to complete Condi's thought process:
a) but if it's not your neighbor, it's okay. No contiguity, no problem.
b) sure, this happens in LebIsrealastine all the time, but they don't know where their borders are.
c) Iraq ? ~~WMD.~~ ~~National Security.~~ ~~Oil.~~ Not Czechoslovakia.
d) What thought process ?

Route to Work

2008-08-04T02:04:00.007-04:00

All of those videos at Copehagenize.com, Amsterdamize, etc., have: a) made me wish I lived in the Pacific Northwest again; b) made me really think about the enormous difference between suburban cycling (where the best roads go nowhere) and the kind of city cycling in those videos, where it seems that real stores you need are actually in the town you live in and not on the periphery of it all. With that in mind, I rigged up my video camera to my handle bars and decided to let it roll while I rode my bicycle along my route to work. Since it was Sunday, I wasn't going to work, but I have been riding it every once and a while at different times of day to see how feasible it will be to bike commute a few days a week when my new job starts up. It was a beautiful evening here, no humidity, in the low 80's - high 70's; nice breeze. I am a complete neophyte biker-vlogger, hence my camera's riggings did not prevent the picture from bouncing more than it had to at times, and there is abrupt editing where the camera suddenly rose to the trees or dove to the pavement before I could steady it. The video ends at a stop sign at a stand of pine trees, beyond which lies my new and much happier career. I'd suggest you turn the sound up: the sound of cars whizzing by at speeds higher than marked contrasts with one beautiful and quieter segment of the trip where crickets can be heard in the background. The roads in this video are what would be called quite decent for cycling: there is a wide shoulder in most cases, though I aim the camera low at some points to show how sewer grates and other obstacles can cause one to swerve. If I am lucky enough to have readers from abroad, I should point out that none of these roads have signs or markings asking drivers to share the road with bicycles. A shoulder is not a lane, but a buffer between the car lanes and the land. Recently, drivers have started swerving onto shoulders without signalling in order to answer their cell phones, which they cannot use on the road unless they have bluetooth headsets and "hands free" operation. At one point, you can see a very long and beautiful sidewalk that runs parallel to the road, but not a single pedestrian is to be seen on it (or on my whole route). Enjoy--- and once again, apologies for the quality. I'll learn. Up too late again. Tea. Editing the [bleep] video.

Sunday Afternoon Tea

2008-08-03T12:14:00.008-04:00

Things with me for years have been falling apart. Some weeks ago, I quite comically (because this ended well), went straight through the bottom of my canvas deck chair while balancing my MacBook Pro and the morning's cappuccino. This morning, the second of the set made a funny ripping sound just in time for me to avoid a repeat. So I had to think... how long have I had these chairs, so reliable that I hadn't given a thought to their age ? Oh, since about 1991. Last night, I found more water than condensation would warrant in the burner well of the stove after I'd made my cup of tea. I confess, I knew that lime deposits from previous places had weakened the seal around the spout, though scrupulous I was about cleaning them off. The spout had not been thoroughly water tight for years. I love the shape of this particular kettle, seen at left in a photo whose angles perhaps best reflect my mental state when I really need a cup of tea. I intended to have this kettle until it became a burden for my next of kin, but it has now become unwaterworthy, so what to do ? Its shape and sheen has made it something of an objet d'art for the kitchen, a good thing since the kettle is never off the stove. While I may look into a possible repair, in truth, it suffered a few scratches from the last move, so replacement may be best. The pot is no longer made. I apparently just missed an auction on ebay (perhaps theirs was leaky, too ?), but after some sleuthing for another stainless steel option of suitable objet status, found instead a kettle of orange enamel and sufficiently swoopy modernist lines, above. I am very drawn to this euphoria-inducing shade of orange. Then I lost the link to where I'd found it, and having retraced my steps, also hit upon this stainless steel beauty with bakelite handles (left). I am taken with both. And that, for the moment, is that. I have not made a decision. Both are unavailable locally, so I will have to continue with a leaky kettle until I decide and the UPS truck arrives. I can manage, if I fill the kettle to below the spout line to boil, but pouring involves overflow. Yes, I have pots and a microwave, but afternoon tea around here is practically a ritual, and proper ritual instruments are de rigueur. I note that the spout of the stainless steel pot seems of a piece with the pot, whereas the retro orange one looks to have a soldered spout, which is the issue with the current pot. Well, out into the day to clear my head and do some grocery shopping. Maybe a bike ride once the afternoon heat lifts.

Of Books and Bloodsuckers

2008-08-02T22:14:00.006-04:00

Being a night owl myself, it was only natural that I became the volunteer to ferry my niece across the sea of asphalt which is our state to a book party for the midnight (ahem, 12:01 am) release of Meyer's Breaking Dawn. I've not yet read the previous three books chronicling the ---chaste--- romantic entanglements of teen Bella, new to her school, with the also teenage vampire, Edward, aargh, never mind, just read this bit from Patty Campbell's summary of the first book, Twilight, on the Amazon.com website:

Meyer has achieved quite a feat by making this scenario completely human and believable. She begins with a familiar YA premise (the new kid in school), and lulls us into thinking this will be just another realistic young adult novel. Bella has come to the small town of Forks on the gloomy Olympic Peninsula to be with her father. At school, she wonders about a group of five remarkably beautiful teens, who sit together in the cafeteria but never eat. As she grows to know, and then love, Edward, she learns their secret. They are all rescued vampires, part of a family headed by saintly Carlisle, who has inspired them to renounce human prey. For Edward's sake they welcome Bella, but when a roving group of tracker vampires fixates on her, the family is drawn into a desperate pursuit to protect the fragile human in their midst. The precision and delicacy of Meyer's writing lifts this wonderful novel beyond the limitations of the horror genre to a place among the best of YA fiction. (Ages 12 and up)

I understand that a werewolf rival for Bella, Jacob, eventually crops up, offering her a chance for children and a more normal life (I am not making this up).
Yes, that "YA" is young adult, and yes, the 12 and up (to about eighteen) set of mostly teenage girls was eagerly in line for books, costume contests, trivia contests, etc., from about eight pm on. Some had on tee-shirts, proclaiming "Team Edward" or "Team Jacob," to declare which of Bella's suitors they thought should win out. Harry Potter fever had never quite grabbed my niece, though she reads everything in sight and by age thirteen can complain of "overplotted" novels while swatting at her cellphone, so this was the first "release party" we had been to. Another girl wore a tee on which she had inscribed, "Wizards are so '07," so some have moved on. The point of this post ? The point, dear reader, is that I am very tired. It was also wonderful to be around so much youth and energy. I loved the way they all found each other, met friends of friends and saved places in line for total strangers, admired each other's homemade costumes and buttons, and were just doubly energetic and doubly as patient as the adults around them. We were among the first ten of so in the door, and when we came out, those waiting on line cheered and whooped. My niece got in the car, I snapped on the reading light, she breathlessly read the first page to me (of the second chapter; the first was included at the end of the last book), opened her cellphone, sent a text with a photo of the book in her hands, called a friend and practically screamed "I AM HOLDING IT !" I dropped her off at one-ish, haven't had a text message all day. I assume she is finished by now, maybe finally asleep. A glimpse of only a small part of the readers in waiting is on the right.

While we were all happily seated, a man I'd guess to be in his fifties cycled up to this cycle-unfriendly strip mall to take advantage of the bookstore's extended hours, and parked his 27 speed (?) orange Raleigh right next to the concrete post I was using as a perch (not being a parent, I did not have the lawnchairs pictured above at ready in the trunk just-for-events-like-this). He left it unlocked and without a word to anyone, for long enough to make his way through the crowd to an iced coffee and a book, long enough for me to have taken this picture and put away my phone before he emerged, carrying said items. As he climbed back on, I uttered, in spite of myself, "You didn't even lock it." "What ?" he turned and asked. O, me and my mouthy brain, I thought, repeating what I'd said. "Oh," he assured, "I figured with all you nice folks out here it would be okay." Then he looked at me and the gaggles on the sidewalk filling out their trivia packets. "Well," he added, "You little vampires have a good night."

I Feel Better Now

2008-08-01T11:03:00.003-04:00

I keep waiting for the NYTimes to tell me stop cribbing its photos, but hey, I must be doing them some kind of favor by picking up on their stories. As if in answer to my despair of July 31st. Now that's what I was talking about !

In Strangers, Centenarian Finds Literary Lifeline

Late Night Note

2008-08-01T02:24:00.002-04:00

It's morning, actually. Very close to the time that, in the old job, I'd be getting up. Profound psychological theories of subconscious revenge/compensation aside, as well as the fact that I am on a vacation of sorts, I must stop having a nice, sugary, stiff cup of tea at eleven. Eek.

The Way The Future Used To Be

2008-07-31T23:59:00.000-04:00

Last night, perhaps because I had watched this video of two people lucky enough to enjoy a summer ride in Amsterdam, chatting about the bike culture in that city and in Copenhagen, I wondered where the future had gone.
I still was mulling over thoughts I'd had since my previous post on the surveillance creeping into our lives (proudly Foucault-free, and that took work); that kind of Orwellian future is more than fulfilling its promise daily, but what about the other one ? No one would be hungry. People would be sheltered, the old cared for, our land used well. I suddenly pictured myself old and simultaneously felt time running out and against me. One day, we will, no doubt, have high speed trains carrying us throughout the country as a matter of course. Roads and paths and trails will make it possible for us to bike and walk and otherwise locomote around our towns and cities without having to start up the car each time. I felt a real sense of despair for this country, for possibilities lost, resources mispent, potential of what is still a young country unfulfilled and sidetracked. A few months ago, I was in line at the drug store when a quite elderly woman mentioned to the pharmacist that she was really debating continuing a medication or not, since the price kept going up (she did buy it). When I came up to the counter, the pharmacist admiringly mentioned that the woman was ninety-five years old. On principle, I thought, if you make it to ninety, you ought to get a break. You should get your medicine free, your property taxes abated. By eighty, you should be getting a pretty steep discount. Proper care and comfort at the end of life should be a given, not a privilege. The theme of this post, I suppose, is that it would really take very little for us to make life easier for each other, wouldn't it ? Alas, that future has not yet arrived, but in glimpses at life in one place or another, we see that it is possible now. Ever the optimist, if I make it to ninety or so, I fully intend to haul myself, my artificial hips, vat grown organs and longevity-enhanced cats onto those clean-running high velocity trains if I have to crawl off my Segwacycle.

Afterthoughts: I really debated posting this at all. I don't usually rant, and have done something akin to that in this post and the last. And I am fully aware of the intracies of argument and political theories that lie behind what I have casually presented here. It was the despair and the hope raised by the particulars that was the catalyst here (are you really telling me that we can't make a wide shoulder on every road built in America and mark it for non-car use: pedestrians, bikes, non/motorized wheelchairs, slow scooters, and, yes, Segways ? I mean, how hard could that really be ??). Okay. Enough. To bed. Il faut cultiver notre jardin. (Sorry.)

In fact, we don't think choice is a good idea...

2008-07-29T13:34:00.002-04:00

I think I'll go for a bike ride, let the wind blow through my hair, walk barefoot across the grass and watch the kids skateboarding in the local park, maybe then go home and have a nice onion bagel (not whole wheat or multi-grain)with Parkay on top. Ah, the crimes and misdemeanors that used to pass for normal life.
I remember telling some pre-teen cousins how great it is in the summer to ride down a country road at dusk, the cool from the trees brushing your skin and the breezes lifting the hair off your neck. At last, one of them ventured, meekly and disapprovingly, "that's before they had helmets, right ?" Now that it's tantamount to child abuse to let an unsunscreened child go barefoot anywhere, and skateboarding is forbidden anywhere in public except in special parks that look curiously like oversized dog runs, you'd think that we'd be catching on. Only a matter of time before we make children of ourselves. And children don't get choices; these are introduced gradually, usually per the just-enough-rope-to- (almost)-hang-yourself, until the increasingly delayed factor of personal responsibility makes adulthood a reality. And so, the way to limit real human freedom, to ultimately make people forget all about it while thinking they enjoy it every time they choose between twenty brands of canned peas or laptops, is first to reduce real human freedom to consumer choice, and then to take away that choice altogether. The reduction of RHF is at the moment heavily dependent on selling human beings the idea that being monitored is something that is done for you, not to you. Since this is what the current generation of parents ---and I mean that current generation in the news, you know my favorite paper----, "helicoptering," e-mailing summer camp because Susie didn't get her favorite juice, going to the dean over Timmy's first B+ since fifth grade, building game rooms at home so they don't go out (yes), calling their adult children's bosses on the phone (yes), considers healthy and necessary, it has been very easy to reverse engineer the process, and reduce them to a state they associate with safety, and worse, moral superiority. Or as one twenty-something, who is a thirty-something by now, put it to me during a discussion of privacy rights and data collection some years ago: "I don't worry about that stuff; I'm not doing anything wrong."

So, I could not help but notice the pattern I've just outlined make itself so clearly obvious in this AP article over the weekend. Note the phrases in bold especially, then, gee, I don't know, go ride your bike on the sidewalk to your local cafe and have a nice, cool martini before your insurance company offers to put a probe in your liver. For a discount, of course...

Insurer offers discounts to drivers with monitors

July 28, 2008 4:15 PM EDT

TRENTON, N.J. - A high-tech monitoring device makes it possible to reduce insurance premiums for drivers who avoid jackrabbit starts and slam-on-the-brakes stops, an insurance company says.The catch? Bad drivers who take a chance on the program may wind up paying a surcharge instead.Auto insurer Progressive Corp. has begun offering its drivers the chance to cut their costs based on how they actually drive, not only on their age, credit score and number of tickets or accidents on their record.The monitoring device - sort of like a black box for cars - tells Progressive what time people drive, how many miles they've driven, how fast they accelerate and how often they hit the brakes. It does not track where people go.Under Progressive's program, customers can earn a first-term discount of up to 10 percent just for signing up. When they renew their policy, their rate could decrease by up to 60 percent based on their driving habits. But it could also increase by up to 9 percent.Richard Hutchinson, a Progressive general manager, said the program is designed for drivers who are consistent and safe."We want people to know that the program is not right for everyone," Hutchinson said."It's for people who drive at low-risk times of day and who keep alert for others on the road," he said. "They don't make fast lane changes or follow too closely behind other drivers so they don't have to overreact or slam on the brakes."

Progressive began the program in Alabama in late June. It's also been made available in Minnesota, Oregon and Michigan. A national rollout of the program will continue through 2009.It starts in New Jersey on Aug. 8. The company will be the first to offer such a program in the Garden State, whose motorists have the highest auto insurance rates in the nation at an average of $1,184 per vehicle.Other companies also recently began offering similar options.GMAC Insurance and OnStar vehicle services last year started a new program that allows motorists to earn an extra discount based on the miles they drive."The consumer is really being given an opportunity to potentially reduce their auto insurance premium in exchange for giving their auto insurer access to information that currently isn't available to them," said Michael Barry, a vice president at the Insurance Information Institute.The concept has been utilized elsewhere, too. After conducting a pilot scheme beginning in 2004, Norwich Union launched a pay-as-you-drive insurance program in 2006 in Great Britain.

Several insurers in recent years have offered monitoring of a particularly vulnerable population of drivers - teenagers. Under American Family Insurance Co.'s program, for example, a camera records audio and video images of the road and the teen driver when motion sensors detect swerving, hard braking, sudden acceleration or a collision.There's an extra benefit to monitored driving programs - they help cut traffic congestion and pollution, according to the Environmental Defense Fund. But Charles Samuelson, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota, told The Star Ledger of Newark for Monday's editions that the group has worries about privacy ."We see this as kind of a creeping abduction of people's data," he said. "Basically, once they collect that data, it belongs to the insurance company. That's a big problem."Progressive spokeswoman Tara Chiarell disagreed, saying the customer owns the data and Progressive doesn't sell it or share it. The company uses it only for claims purposes. She also said Progressive has never been subpoenaed by a court to submit pay-as-you-drive data.Customers can access their data on a secure, password-protected Web site, which allows them to get an up-to-date view of their driving habits and how those habits are affecting their rate, she said.AAA Mid-Atlantic spokesman David Weinstein said if a link between electronic monitoring and accident probability becomes clear, they would like to see all drivers' insurance premiums based on that information, "not just select drivers who grant their permission."

The Word Field, Deconstructed

2008-07-29T03:22:00.008-04:00

Courtesy of something called Wordle, the thoughts on this page reduced (?) to color and frequency (=size), courtesy of some semi-randomizing algorithm. Common words are removed.

"Nor Yet Asleep With Our Lamp Unfurnished..."

2008-07-27T22:37:00.007-04:00

Beth, the author of The Cassandra Pages (see sidebar), lost her father-in-law on Friday. He was ninety-nine years old, lucid until just about his very end. She has written of him often and well, the posts about him collected under the title of The Fig and the Orchid. A long and fascinating life, that, alas, proves once again how very short and precious life is indeed. No orchids, but almond blossoms here, as Beth spoke several times of how he longed for the green almonds of the land of his youth.

Image via Wikipedia Commons.

Having A Life is No Excuse

2008-07-26T11:41:00.003-04:00

Welcome to any who have found their way here via John B's blog, Cycling in Wichita. I'm days late in getting to the welcome, so apologies if you've been circling in a holding pattern, waiting for a new post. Can anyone translate that sign in the last post ? (Those photos open up much larger in a new window, you know.) John B apparently has a life and three blogs: I merely have a life that, of late, has gone from tumbling from one cesspool of exhaustion to the next to one in which I have rested, deservedly, I hope and think, on some cushiony pockets of sloth. But he is right: I see bikes everywhere. Unless the NYTimes city blog (see previous post) is playing with my head, I really need to get out more, because I see bikes everywhere only in one place. Here is another vehicle one doesn't see often (or at all) in the wastelands between city and country.

Why, O why, I wonder, do we not build for to accomodate walkers, bikers, segways, wheelchairs, etc. Could it be that it suits the infrastructure that we keep off the streets ? I have a whole big post tangent to this topic coming up. Stay tuned. Am off to the bike shop for few things, then to the garden before it gets too hot to do anything.

One note to do with biking, and then another about something that is probably worthy of a separate post all together, but which I had best write down before I forget. First: my area has police on bikes. This is a surprise, since I have never seen them in my part of town before, but ran into them, almost literally, the other week while they paused on the road across from a small park/playground, of necessity standing on the small and rutted shoulder between curb and street. It was dark. Though it looked as if their bikes had lights mounted on the handle bars, they were not turned on. They were wearing no reflective clothing at all. I understand the need for stealth (if that's what it was about), but it was all I could do not to roll down the window and give them a lecture on how not to get killed. I felt about eighty, imagining in my head what I did not do, as I drove too close to, and then past, what I at first thought were tree branches moving in the wind (no, cops on bikes): "Sonny, a helmet won't help you if a car drives into you and across your midriff. Here, Sonny, I've got some reflective tape in the car. Let's at least get some around your wrists and ankles so that you can get home alive to your mother..." If I live so long and keep my brain to boot, it will be fun to do this when I'm old. At present, after almost circling back, I decided not to risk being harassed for the rest of my existence for telling representatives of the peace and safety realm what they surely already know.

Completely unrelated item: as many of you must also, I can see the names of a number of wireless networks in the area when I connect to my own (my computer shows anything within range, locked or not). Of late, a new one has appeared. Its name is "White Power." This disturbs me to no end. I wonder if: a) they are too stupid to know everyone can see it; b) perfectly aware that everyone in this diverse community, which includes a number of ethnic groups as well as nationalities, can see it, and they are offering up this ugliness to affront and to intimidate.

Hidden Bicycles

2008-07-18T13:32:00.005-04:00

Okay, one not so hidden, and, as is evidenced from my last post, I've got biking on my mind lately (and happy for the company: thank you, John B., for your comment !). Both of these pictures come from today's NYTimes. The first, of the not-too-hidden-bicycle genre, is from the international section containing an article on the rise of the Dalit politician Kumari Mayawati, pictured on the posters shown in the market. At the center of these posters is a flag of a bicycle and a raised hand. Nothing to do with the story, I'm sure, but I'd like to know what's up with the bicycle. I can't read the script or the language, and would be grateful to know what it says.

Next up, from the City Room blog (but found in print in today's Metro section), is a picture of a mural, already literally whitewashed ---sometimes the metaphor is so literally true that it is painful--- because the rat signalled an anti-snitching campaign that the city has been trying to overcome. To the left of the rat, is, I believe, an abstract image of a cyclist, maybe a messenger, crouched low over the handlebars. My primitive photo editing did allow me to add a big yellow arrow pointing at what would be the cyclist's nose.
From there, you can see the shape of the helmet atop his head, and in the strong vertical line to the right, a strong, squared arch of the shoulders and jacket/messenger bag caught in motion, the legs and body folded over the frame of bike. Do you see it, too ? Alas, gone with the rat. Instead of painting over all of this art, couldn't our dear censors simply have found the artist and/or changed the caption of the noosed rodent's stop sign ? "Stop Poverty ?" "Stop Strangling Free Expression ?" Or with a few brush strokes, transformed the slipknot to a nice tie (rat race and all), and added a simple "Stop for Bicycles ?" I hate it when good art is wasted. Damn.

Bespoke Money

2008-07-12T12:12:00.006-04:00

(Pun.)
Wow, it has been a long time. All unintentional, as almost every day I have thought of something to post, but then have fallen asleep or into a book as I have (now, finally), segued into a new phase of my life. I now have a very short commute (a little over nine miles, round trip), and last summer's purchase, the incredible gas-saving car. It is not a hybrid, but gets 38/40 easily. I could also, as it turns out, bike to work. So courtesy of Bike Commuter, I plugged the numbers into the mileage/carbon footprint/money to be saved calculator ----under commuter tools---- and assuming that I would be steady, but lazy (I picked 3 days a week for frequency), you'd think with the short commute and the wonder car I would not save much money, but, wow, was I wrong:
Your daily gas savings is $4.95 dollars and 22.85 lbs of CO2 will NOT be added to the atmosphere
Your weekly gas savings would be $14.85 dollars and 68.54 lbs of CO2 will NOT be added to the atmosphere
Your monthly gas savings would be $59.40 dollars and 274.15 lbs of CO2 will NOT be added to the atmosphere
Your yearly gas savings would be $772.20 dollars and 3,564.00 lbs of CO2 will NOT be added to the atmosphere
Sorry. I know that these numbers should be in green. Still, I am greedily impressed. If I add a fourth day, I would save over a thousand a year. A thousand. Now, this is important, because I took a pay cut for a happier life, and in the back of my mind, I've been scheming about how to make up the difference. My new and happier career will be rather all-consuming, so I've been looking at ways of simply cutting costs. Geez S, she cried, Holy Moly. This is really an almost painless way to do better. Now, don't get me wrong: I have a strong love and/or use for new electronics, sushi dinners and lunches, a good drink, dry cleaning, espresso. So I am not in a dire situation at all. Luckily, my question has been about how to maintain my current lifestyle without, if you follow me, cutting back on it. Here, I thought, is a perfect example of how "nickel and dime stuff" can turn quite substantial. It would mean, even with a short commute, that if you did not have a bike, it would pay for itself over the course of a year. So every time I bike to work round trip, I pay myself 4.95 into a special account (or whatever the daily rate is, per the calculator), and by the end of the year, I have quite a premium in addition to shapely calves. Nice.

Hemless

2008-06-01T11:11:00.002-04:00

This morning, I looked at, or rather, actually saw, the towel rack in my bathroom, which contains no towels (they are flung over the shower rod), but, I am ashamed to confess, a week's worth of work clothes folded over the rack each afternoon and topped with a successive layer, Monday on the bottom, Friday on the top. The intent is to get them off as quickly as possible and hang them later after sorting what needs to be laundered. Alas, there is quite a bit of archeological psychology that could be done. At the very back (bottom), forlorn and askew, is a long gray skirt, one of my favorites, a piece of blended three season wool that usually never makes it back into the closet because it is often unearthed from where it rests to be worn again. Now hanging at a steep angle that clearly reveals its longtime placement on the rack, it hangs with its hem undone on one side, the threads still in place. It was unhemmed by a boot buckle. How long has it been there, I wondered. It has been, if the previous photo did not give this away, a period in my life where overwhelmed with uncertainty, responsibility, and fatigue, I have let things at home fall where they may. I only make way for myself in the moment: clear newspapers to read new ones, run the dishwasher to have dishes, sleep because I simply can't stay awake.
Downed hems are a giveaway: the surest sign of neglect of self ---not of appearance, that's been, for what is worth, kept up--- it has been the inner space that has been in disarray, favorite things, plants, pursuits, pushed aside for the "later" that feels as elusive as a gasp for air that is never quite deep enough. How long, I think I was asking myself as I gazed at the hanging hem, has it been since I could really breathe ? Years. And yet today, I can exhale. Several days ago, just in time for summer, came the news that the chance I had taken has paid off: I will be leaving behind the work I have referred to as "the option" and returning to the field (the life) I know and prefer. It is only on this blog, and to a few people close to me that I have been able to complain about being employed in a position I have not at all liked. Somewhere, sometime, I will write about the class difference, or maybe life experience difference, that fed into various responses to my dilemma. All I can say is that if you've had your dream job/profession, and you are forced to live outside of it without finding something of equal force, it is hard to be the person you were. I fought to get back, and when it seemed beyond reach, here it is: I am returned from exile, to different borders, but returned nonetheless.
The skirt is going to the tailor soon. It needs to be taken up.

Swamped Buddha as Rorschach

2008-05-17T13:16:00.013-04:00

I am sitting on my porch with my legs stretched out in front of me into the sun, listening to an album by Lucy Kaplansky. I have a headache making its way around my eyeballs in spite of the previously mentioned Saturday breakfast of cappuccinos and Excedrin. The opening song, "Tides," is very powerful, or perhaps it only echoes the thoughts that have preoccupied me of late. I thought long and hard about actually reporting the song I was listening to when I began this entry because of the potential for misunderstanding the coincidence (and it is) for a pun in bad taste with the photo also posted here, which is, of course, an AP photo from Rangoon. These past weeks have seen earth come to life this spring in such violent ways: Burma, the earthquakes in China, the tornadoes ripping through the midwest. And here, I won't keep you in suspense for your Rorschach: what do you see in the photo ? Ruin or something spared from it ? Rain, flood, and temple roof all around it, the Buddha, still upright and apparently unharmed, seems to offer its gaze of calm to the landscape. Perhaps my interpretation originates in some deeply founded psychological premise I have about life. Perhaps it is how things look at the moment. I have, after all and somewhat inadvertently, done something that has left the outcome of my circumstances precipitous (that is, dangerously balanced between one extreme and another). No bodhisattva, I am unfortunately at one with the forces that threaten to both rend and repair my life, by which I mean the life I lead, and not, thankfully, my physical self. I have never been one to toss it all for something else if there is to be a gap between the former and the latter. It has been convenient, though, to construct a narrative that might sound that way, say, to an interviewer, to explain certain sudden movements. In other words, I can construct a narrative of myself that makes me seem like a risk-taker. Not an overly bold one, mind you, but one enough to: a) be apparently convincing and moderately impressive; b) make me wonder if it might not be the true way to see things.
On the other hand, when I did these things I never except for once consciously described it to myself as risk-taking behavior (unless one counts my profession in general, which, trust me, is not usually described in this way). No, I thought, and do predominantly think, of the things I did as being compelled by circumstance. Not that I did not have choices within those circumstances, but the circumstances themselves were not what I would have liked or made. Attribution theory has its limits. So here I am (not). I wonder if, as we approach or enter into middle age, that a biological craving for security begins to make its way into our consciousnesses, much as the urge to leave home and get out on one's own predominates in one's teens and twenties. Perhaps it is simply the calculus of age and time: at forty and beyond, there are only so many fresh starts and do-overs left. That sense of the infinite possibilities of lives that could be led has diminished somewhat. But certainly not courage ? People who know me well, those onto whom no narrative of my life need be foisted, have often called me strong. Perhaps the circumstances that have made me so or seem so (my first thought is often what choice did I have) are akin to the overtraining of an athlete: now, as I await the outcome of certain possibilities, a phone call or an e-mail sets off in me a feeling I never really had before: a weakness in my chest (not the rapid heartbeats many talk about, but a feeling as if my heart has suspended its work for a minute or so), weakness of the limbs, a quick-gripping, all encompassing sweep of fear. Knowing that there is action that can be taken always makes me feel better in any circumstances, so it has been a strange time of generating even more possibilities "just in case," pondering, with seriousness and a profound sense of the finite, the possible lives that still may be left to led. While I pursue them, I have realized that I begin to ponder how logistics for taking care of what I now hold dear (people, pets, precious things) would make possibility x or y or z hard/less appealing/impossible/tough. Talking yourself out of it, in layman's terms, but so far, I have not., at least, completely. I was reading the blog of a young diplomat (here), who at one point says that he felt that when something wasn't going his way, he would only have to wait it out, and eventually, the tide would change. Of course, from what I read of the blog, this sentiment is not coming from someone who simply lets circumstances roll by or over him. But it gave me pause: I have no such confidence in tides, so to speak, or to put it more plainly, I have no faith in a predictable rhythm of fortune, or, as I said many entries ago, that we get what we deserve. Earthquakes, tidal waves, tornadoes as proof. Randomness is a bitch. I must admit my hand in creating my current condition. I set this in motion and now am left to wonder if I will get through what I have wrought. It is a strange time: the sun is out, the music plays, my refrigerator runs and is well stocked. I eat and am warm at night and in comfort under the sun. The cats play and sleep under the covers. Worry, not tragedy, consumes me. For that, there should be some candle to light, some small flower of thanks to place in front of what is unmoored.

For those who would like, here are the lyrics to "The Tide," but you need the voice behind them for the full effect. I can't say I identify with the little girl the narrator was, but the first two stanzas with their chorus are another story as are the last:

There are demons in the water
There are devils in the sea
There are dangers in the current
When the tide goes out of me

I could drink you under the table
I could drink you out of town
I could drink you off the planet
Drink myself into the ground

Chorus

And I have nothing for you tonight
I have nothing for you tonight
I have nothing for you tonight
I have nothing for you

I was made to be a good girl
Carried buckets made of stone
Full of envy, full of sorrow
On a tightrope all alone

And all the time I was on fire
I burned with every stride
And now I see this anger
Is the horse I choose to ride

Now you say you want something nice from me
Well if you find it, take it, it's on me
In the meantime don't bother me
The tide has washed the nice from me

Chorus

In the nothing are the voices
And the pictures of my life
In the nothing of the sky
Is an ocean made of light

In the nothing of my silence
Is a sad-eyed little girl
On a tightrope she is singing
As she passes through this world

Chorus

Alas for Joe Sorry

2008-04-30T21:26:00.002-04:00

Just a short post tonight. No update on the "alms" except to say that its possibility is still afoot. No, this is to report that the blog I praised so highly several posts ago, Home for Tea, has gone dark: after getting a thank you for mentioning it from its pseudonymous author, I visited it several days later to find that it was open to "invited readers only." I was not among the invited, and there seemed to be no way to contact the author to ask for an invite. I have occasionally tried again, to be greeted with the same message. This evening, I found "this blog has been eliminated." I can only hope that the author has perhaps decided to write for print publication and is working away at the manuscript now. Darn: it was so well-written and funny. Where are you Joe Sorry ? I look forward to the novel one day.

An Alms for What Was Seemingly Lost

2008-03-29T12:29:00.005-04:00

"I seem to see a road; I seem to be on a road, walking. I seem to walk on a blacktop road that runs over a hill. The hill creates itself, a powerful suggestion. It creates itself, thickening with apparently solid earth and waving plants, with houses and browsing cattle, unrolling wherever my eyes go..." Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

Something has happened this week where in my own life the hill seemingly creating itself has, for a moment, offered itself as a lush and fertile landscape, alive to the wayfarer. It was good to feel that again, even though it unrolled only in glimpses and what may come of it is not clear.

I remember the mornings
the gray dewy quiet
the smell of the grass and the trees’ bark
the silence on the paths
coffee and the Paradox
of why I am not there.

It's Here !

2008-03-19T20:59:00.006-04:00

I am actually blogging from my XO. It came in a plain brown box that had the OLPC logo on the side, left on my porch by FedEx. Up and running in ten minutes after opening the box and inserting the battery. The keyboard is as tiny as advertised but I have thin fingers. it found an open wi-fi connection easily (mine is WPA and it can't handle that yet.) More as I progress...

Photo posted a bit later from my usual machine.

Update 22 March: I discovered that I have the latest build of the machine, so it handles WPA easily: all I had to do was to type the password for my Airport network (no manual hexadecimal conversion of it necessary), and I was on my own network. Nice.

My XO

2008-03-15T22:07:00.005-04:00

An evening update on something I've been waiting for: my XO laptop from One Laptop Per Child. The organization encountered some setbacks after I'd ordered/contributed (see here). Early donors who expected to receive their laptops by Christmas did not all get them on time. As a last minute donor, I had nothing to complain about, and still have not lost faith in the idea behind the program. I can be woefully under aware of how inhumane large corporations can be: while Negroponte never intended to make a profit, other companies were happy to begin creating versions of low cost laptops once they realized that ~~developing nations~~ impoverished countries were actually interested in OLPC's vision. I could ramble on about that aspect, but you've probably read it: suddenly, Intel, for example ---with other hyenas not far behind--- is pushing inexpensive Windows driven machines, the better, they argue to prepare children for the operating system of the first world (no metaphors there, right ?). XO is Linux based, its software open-sourced, and the whole project sustained by volunteers who have contributed an amazing amount of know how and ingenuity. Negroponte was formerly associated with MIT and OLPC has, I should clearly note, people on salary, but the difference in models of humanity is striking: OLPC has tried to operate on a model of cooperation, a philosophy that even seems to be embedded in the ways the laptop allows users to link and communicate, whereas, well, whereas the now profferred alternatives do not model this sort of thing. Tonight, for the first time when I had typed my reference number into FedEx tracking, I found that my XO is due to arrive early next week. Apparently it has really shipped ! I look forward to receiving it, playing with it, telling you all about it. I wish there were a way that OLPC could have matched the laptop that went to a child to the donor: I've no wish to violate anyone's privacy, but since I understand that the laptops went out to the children some time ago, I wonder about the child who received "mine." How's it going out there, whoever you are ? I wonder what world it has opened up, what questions you have, if it has changed what you can learn, if you're having fun ?

Expansion

2008-03-15T13:04:00.002-04:00

Amazing how one can get caught up in appearances. The wide blank left margin of my blog had really begun to annoy me, so I converted it to something called "stretch." And it has. Much indecision over how large the font for the actual posts should be, and no idea as to how to make the right margin justified. I've read through all the "help," but cannot seem to effect this change. Any advice and comments welcome. Note how skillfully I've avoided cleaning up the run-on sentences in the last post.

Mid Evening Cup of Tea & ...

2008-03-11T22:04:00.004-04:00

[Late comment in place of some edits. Run-on sentences here, and a few things I will fix next pm. Please endure until then]

Usually the paper, some work if I'm unlucky, a check of blogs. I've added to my sidebar People Reading, where the author photographs and interviews, each day, at least one person she has come across in public who is reading a book. It helps, of course, that the blog comes out of San Francisco, where one may walk, take public transportation, and thus actually encounter people who are not running in and out of their cars amid miasmic strip malls. I've also begun to follow a blog I call by its fictional author's name, Joe Sorry, but whose title is really Home for Tea. It's a novel, really, to come into being through the daily entries of one thirteen year old British boy, the aptly designated Joe Sorry, whose social invisibility at school is only minor compared to a Mom who sometimes stays away nights and who often drinks too much, the vanished Dad, all, it is implied, brought about by the death of his sister the year before. The blog is touching and funny all at once: forbidden pets because of his mother's alleged allergies, Joe has recently made his own "ant box" to keep in his bedroom. So far, so good: no escapees.
Both of these are daily blogs, something I never intended mine to be (though I wish I could post more often than I do), and this had led me to think of how much I do appreciate what many of us now call our "daily reads," those blogs we check in with each day and in which we expect to find new writing. Perhaps daily reads, or blogs in general are a new (?) form of serialization; certainly, reading Joe Sorry has brought to mind Dickens, not because of style, content, or geographic origin, but because Dickens' "novels" were first published in installments. Reflecting on this (and on the deeper and more academically astute a piece I would be writing were I not trying to get my thoughts written before complete exhaustion erases them completely) brought me to another pastime I've indulged in of late, and that is a series on HBO called "In Treatment," where every night a new installment of a therapist's session with a patient occurs (all fictional), and over the course of the sessions between the therapist , Paul, and his patients, and Paul with the therapist he is seeing, a complex narrative emerges from this kaleidoscopic montage that tells the story of Paul's shaky marriage in the throes of his erotic counter-transference with a seductive and vulnerable patient and the stories of the lives of several other patients, whose issues ---naturally--- arouse the vulnerabilities in Paul's psyche. And one can see plainly, thanks to the beautiful acting of Gabriel Byrne , his struggle to harness them for therapeutic work rather than fall prey to them.
By way of writing this I am revisiting my surprise that I am enjoying this show at all. A friend had praised it, saying how difficult it was to "watch people in so much pain because they cannot communicate." How, I thought, could that description possibly recommend it ? Why would I subject myself to other people's pain night after night ? Yet I confess that I have sat through many an episode of Law and Order without that question coming to mind. And for that matter, King Lear, Greek tragedy, etc. The whole idea (therapy sessions) seemed quite dull. However, I looked it up and decided to watch an episode for the sheer pleasure of watching Diane Wiest, who plays Paul's therapist. Soon, since HBO repeats everything incessantly, I found myself catching up on the stories of all of the characters, enjoying how cleverly the whole storyline(s) had been put together. And so, again, my theme: beyond the mere "series" as one says of television shows, the "serial." And I'm thinking about this, and my pleasure in Joe Sorry and the sessions that come as regularly as appointments: how both, in a way, reflect that dynamic of pleasure that is found, as those who think about the workings of therapy have written, in the discontinuous narrative whose premise is that there will be place and space to continue it, the anticipation of where it will pick up. In one of Paul's sessions with Gina (Diane Wiest), she assures him that no matter what he tells her, she will not abandon him. There is something in that statement that the diegesis of the series reflects. In the episode it is a stark and powerful moment (the acting is superb). I do not mean to imply that there is a compact between the reader/viewer and the serial that is unique here, and I'm quite aware of the theories that would make narrative one animal and describe the pleasures of all narratives as, in part, what I describe here. Shall we say I am simply intrigued at the moment, by the configuration this pleasure can be found in, as a literary anthropological question, what possibilities these "daily reads" offer us, and why they might be emerging in the way that they are now. Some of this very muddy. Feel free to comment. I will write back as time permits. I didn't have the nerve to title this post "Mid Evening Cup of Tea and Serial." But there, I've done it in the end.

Lonely Bench

2008-03-03T18:56:00.002-05:00

It has snowed of late, and one day not too long ago, I had the chance to take a morning walk in fresh and hushed snow, no animals moving that I could hear, only the occasional far away snap of a twig that might have signaled an overbalance of snow, a bird, or both. I walked a long way without thinking about it, enjoying for once the state of being only in the present, wholly intent on the keenness of the air and the stillness shared by myself and the landscape. Finally, I walked out along a road that slowly converges with a road running somewhat parallel to it: the narrow end of a pie slice, so to speak.
There is, before the slice gets really thin, a group of apartments set back in the woods; I could smell woodsmoke from fireplaces, and saw a few children with sleds and their improvised stand-ins dash across the road to a field containing a fairly mountainous and now generously snowy dirt mound. There was a small playground, enclosed by a wire fence. When I had reached almost the narrowest point, where I planned to turn back, I glanced into trees, and then I saw it: a lone bench amid the trees, facing, at some distance and no relation, the wire fence shielding the playground. Lonely bench, I called it. I wondered how it had come to pass that this bench, apparently still sturdy and gathering snow, had come to be out in the slip of woods alone. What had been here, once ? The road I had been walking on had, at this end, clearly once been split into undeveloped land, to make an offramp for the busier road in the distance. What had it been a part of, once ? Though I call it lonely, the bench seemed peaceful, as if gathering onto itself the calm of the falling snow, resting, sheltered by the shoots and saplings and boughs like those it had been born from. I have been that way before and not noticed it. In the snow, it seemed to reassert its form, its singular presence calling its offering to the passerby: lonely ? bench. Sit with me.

Postscript: The image needs to be viewed full size for best effect. Clicking on it should open it in a new window.

Now I Want A Braun T3 Pocket Radio

2008-02-25T19:06:00.003-05:00

Gizmodo had this interesting comparison between Braun products designed in the '60's by Dieter Rams and designs of Apple products today. Uncanny. The originals are quite attractive. Martha Stewart has never suggested collecting these. Sure beats ironware ! Confession: Not that I have ever collected a thing her magazine suggests. But I do collect various household objects, functional ones, such as mid-century pottery. I admit, the Rams objects evoke a fond aesthetic response. We may have had some of these things when I was a child.

PS. Head pounding and it is not a weekend. No such thing as a migraineur's (is there such a thing as a migraineuse ?) high tea, apparently. Even two rounds of a very brisk English Breakfast blend along with the green bottle's offering have not made, if you will excuse this, any headway.

Migraineur's Breakfast

2008-02-19T23:01:00.004-05:00

It must say something when I look at this photo and think delicious. A typical weekend breakfast, this. Saturday, head pounding upon awakening, a fix in every sense from the cappuccino machine and the lovely green bottle. Much stress lately; enough that I am also reacting to foods that normally don't bother me. I am allergic to only one thing (crab), yet today, two bites of a strawberry shortcake at the office started my lips swelling and me running for the Benadryl. I wonder if increased levels of cortisol up the ante when it comes to allergic reactions ? Benadryl made me very sleepy by the time I got home, so napped am now up too late with less done than should be. I am not used to being allergic to things. The budding morning migraines are another matter: I munch on Excedrin ---it works faster--- without a thought, best with coffee. More anon. Have been aghast that I've posted nothing in so long. Many thoughts on the morning drive, lost to the days that have followed.

An Outlier's Field Day

2008-01-14T22:59:00.000-05:00

I started to write this in the comment section to my last post, in response to John B and Steve, and then I realized I was saying what I said I'd say later, so I turned it into a post that is still very much off the top of my head, but nonetheless:

What I'm struck by in this primary season so far are the number of outliers who keep surprising the media, and better, take turns moving from outlier to within the field of norms, i.e. Huckabee, Ron Paul, Romney (seems staid and "norm"al, til the Mormon factor gets in there), Barak, Hillary (I'm tired of calling Obama by his last name and Hillary by her first. I get not overusing "Clinton," but there is more to it than that). You can offer up the "people want change and what looks like change" argument for all of these, but when you look at the field of candidates, it seems that only Giuliani, McCain, and Edwards are holding down the center of the field (as norms, not as centrists). And McCain has his outlier moments, for sure. Joyfully, the center candidates do not seem to appeal to the majority of people, and with the usual consolidating mechanisms split (evangelicals, Republicans) or holding their breath (Dems), people seem to be considering choices they may have found unacceptable or unimaginable before. So:

Thanks, both of you, for your comments. I have more to say on the Hillary/Obama issue, particularly on what John B is calling the "claims on our collective guilt," as I have seen a lot of that surface, but perhaps, at least among whites, as an occasion for self congratulation. And, before I go on at all, I am not implying that I mean you, John B. I have a hypothesis that the mainstream (i.e. still quite white) media got swept up in predicting Obama a sure thing by a wide margin in NH is because the Iowa result gave white people a chance to congratulate themselves for not being racist. For the under fifty set, the idea of Obama in this light alone is apparently exhilarating. For the record, I am white and under fifty, too. I had seen the Steinam piece, and, in passing, I thought, "yup, women of any color got the vote after black men, and we should think about that." I had also seen, in the same issue or a day earlier (?) an article mentioning Myra Dinnerstein, a professor emerita of Women's Studies (73; for Hillary) and her daughter, Julie ("39"; for Obama). This article was supposed to be all about how feminism's moment is past (or "post") and the generation gap. Dinnerstein's daughter said of voting for Hillary that “The idea of a woman being president just does not seem to be as powerful or as revolutionary to me as it does to feminists of my mother’s generation,” and that is the quote I've been chewing on, because (a) it saddens me (again) that voting for a woman does not seem "powerful" --- I'm certain she means as a symbol, but her word choice is telling, and to me, not much older than she, revelatory of a certain naïveté among women, and (b) because making a "revolutionary" choice is still not the same thing as voting for the the person per se, hominem ipsum/ipsam. When I said "we are not going back," I meant it both as you construe it, though the whole term "post feminist" gives me pause: it was more of a refusal to be shoved back into the positions or paradigms offered by earlier stances now broadly termed "identity politics," and, of course, I meant in the strongest terms that "Iron My Shirt" is over. I mean, Baby, iron your own shirt. The misogyny of that slogan/demand is striking, the youth of the men holding those signs was striking, as is the permissibility of lashing out at Hillary Clinton by employing the terms and strategies of identity politics, i.e. that Hillary won NH because of a "sympathy vote" from women, which one would surmise is not the same thing as men and women using their minds to choose who would be the best candidate. The Times and now some other news stories are hot on which is more taboo: to be misogynist (but they don't use that word: they say sexism, which has less bite) or racist, and I think that is a very dark undercurrent in all of this: the positive energy from some quarters seems to derive from self congratulation, whereas the undertow asks how subtle or not should one's hatred and fear of one symbol or another of real change be. To my mind, for some, "moving on" to the feel-good choice of Obama is one strategy for avoiding one's subconscious (or internalized) racism and misogyny. Being liberal, in the sense of being truly free of social baggage while not abandoning one's history, is, or should be, a Herculean, not a Protean, task.
In that sense, it was interesting in this morning's Times to read that the youth of the Christian right (perhaps we are better off to speak of Evangelicals 35-40 and under ?) are also caught up in this task, preferring Huckabee, whom the traditional evangelical establishment has kept at a distance. There is a split, there, too, that the Times at least for now wants to limn by generational lines, yet, they report, while Huckabee seems too liberal (in the traditional sense of that word), the under 40's are turning to him because he seems more centrist and sensible. I am paraphrasing, and have not reread the article, which I read at five am this morning. So please read and draw your own conclusions. In a recent issue of Harper's, the Index gave the statistic that the portion of US citizens who have lived half or over half of their lives under a president named Bush or Clinton is 1/4. Can this be correct ? If so, I can see why Hillary Rodham Clinton, would not appear or appeal as much more than a symbol of the status quo or a nostalgia for the Clinton years (Clinton le mari, that is). From John B's writings, I trust that he has thought it through, and though I will be voting for Rodham-Clinton, I respect that John's choice has come from a hard won place in his head and heart. Maybe the most radical or revolutionary thing about this election will be that voters will no longer be so predictable, that people will stop talking about electability and get back to talking about electing, and/or liberal and conservative will redefine themselves as practices and not platforms.

I am very fatigued, dear reader(s), so this is not as polished as I would like, but I did want to post something.

Will someone please explain to me...

2008-01-09T23:27:00.000-05:00

...why anyone is surprised that Hillary won New Hampshire ? "Shocking Win" ? Au contraire. Perhaps the press did not count on the backlash, not confined to gender, catalyzed by writing her off, calling her a cry-baby, grinning all too openly about the iron my shirt signs. Why did we not have headlines of the sort that greeted Obama's Iowa victory ? Rodham-Clinton's win is just as "historic," just as much a break through moment for the nation. We as a people should be celebrating that our nation has finally set in motion the possibility that a black man or a white woman has a real chance to be president. What Hillary accomplished no woman has ever accomplished before. I felt the gap between myself and Chelsea, the first daughter in history to stand next to her MOTHER as she celebrated winning a presidential primary. What a different world will be hers in her middle age (I hope)! I was young when reporters followed Geraldine Ferraro around the supermarket to see if she used bargain coupons. I remember. And we are not going back.

At The Pivoting of the Years

2008-01-01T00:10:00.000-05:00

Happy New Year, All. Two brief items before bed. First, the Koontz has been good reading so far: one of the characters turns out to be a mobster-turned-monk whose conversion was occasioned by reading Kate DiCamillo stories. Title and author are not mentioned, but the references to the stories about the "china rabbit" and the "mouse who rescued a princess" are clear enough. The mobster monk, Knuckles (yes, there is a lot of, er, transparency here) finds his lost vision of himself by rereading and rereading what would be The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane until he understands why it makes him sad. I was much taken with this. Then the ghost of Elvis showed up. Unnecessary, in my view, but I'm hanging in. The story carries one on, as mysteries tend to do.

Second, after much wavering, and, if one cares to note, no shoe-buying, I ordered (or should I say donated ?) an XO laptop, which some of you may recognize as the device offered by the One Laptop Per Child initiative. OLPC Link HERE. In brief, because there is much more to say that I cannot articulate tonight, the OLPC is Nicholas Negroponte's dream of supplying children in extremely impoverished parts of the world with laptops and internet connections to the rest of the world. He does not deny that these children and their peoples need food, clothing, medicines, and shelter; his idea of the laptops is, essentially, that they open up a world of possibilities before unknown. And, of course, this requires an infrastructure of servers, electricity, etc, so this is exciting and daunting. Yet a friend of my mother's remembers Roosevelt's rural electricity project, electric light and the radio finally coming to his farmhouse in the thirties. The idea of "donating" is a program called "give one, get one," i.e. one buys two, and one goes to you and the other to a child. There is also the offer of free TMobile hotspot for a year for "donors." I must say I felt more like a purchaser. I confess: I wanted one of these cool, ultra connected touchscreens, linux driven, python preloaded, solar chargeable, (I believe I shall have to buy the charger separately if they make it available to the public) machines. The website states that they will send the XO for "the child in your life." I am the child in my life; I lean toward geekitude. And we circle back to Brother Odd and his mobster monk friend: Knuckles found his childhood self in storybooks. We will have to see what the XO holds for me.

Fireworks outside. Let us hope 2008 brings peace to the world and to all of us. Goodnight.

Brother Odd in Lapland

2007-12-31T00:41:00.000-05:00

Today, gray and rainy, the house peaceful, clean and still glowing with Christmas lights, I had the physical sensation of my heart centering itself in my body, my racing brain at rest. Maybe it was that everything extraneous has been put away: the house felt serene with the rugs vacuumed, tables polished, the Christmas reindeer in their place (see last year's post). The cats snoozed on the couch and the bed, full grown girls now, stretched out, paws and legs akimbo, in their fur-abouts, as Dylan Thomas once wrote. And I was in the kitchen, having polished off my two cappuccini under the sway of the still present scent of the chocolate chip cookies baked yesterday afternoon. The mixing bowls, still in the dish drain, did not stand a chance: lemon biscotti were a perfect excuse to turn the oven on again (the cats turned over on their backs, a display of belly fur). I made my way through the newspaper between batches, wrapped ham and cheese in pastry dough for savories for New Years, and so kept the oven going well through the real estate and magazine sections. If you count the paper, I read a lot. If I think of how I used to devour books, my overloaded brain and body have barely managed it. It really was the first day in a long while that I felt that I could breathe. A trip to the bookstore was in order.

Naturally, the minute I started the engine, rain and little shards of hail poured down on my car, but this only made the vision of sitting at home again with a new book and a cup of tea more appealing. I had a list, but, good news for those who think reading is going the way of the Smith Corona, the bookstore was out of stock when it came to a good number of my choices. And so I left with two, Let The Northern Lights Erase Your Name, by Vendela Vida, and Brother Odd, by Dean Koontz. The second is a stretch for me; I am not much for horror or mystery, and haven't read the other Odd Thomas books. A review from a while back had made it intriguing, and there it was. Home again, tea made, feet up, cats unchanged but for a reinterpretation of what was akimbo where, I settled in. Never one to have two books going at once, I did sample up to Chapter Three of Brother after giving the first twenty pages of Northern Lights a go. The latter's opening of landing in Helsinki in the winter drew me in (that is one of my fantasies), but not before I had a good, satisfying taste of the Koontz. Hours later and Let The Northern Lights... finished, I have realized that I quite inadvertently brought home two books in which the protagonists are chasing ghosts, whose lives are riddled by and with eidola* whose substance cannot be grasped for what they are, but lead the main characters in each toward the promise of being able to grasp them quite clearly, and, at least in the case of Vida's book, denies itself before her eyes. I shall have to finish the Koontz book (I am deep in, but need sleep and wanted to write, and must get up early to dip the biscotti in melted chocolate and start the fruitcake) before I can see how far I can/should take this aleatory opportunity for comparison, but so far, I find it quite compelling to think about them side by side: Vida's, for example, takes place mostly in the pure white landscape of northern Finland and Norway, then Lapland (Finmark), in blankness and muteness (the main character cannot speak the language), and all the while, or most of the while, since it is winter so far north, it is dark, and every time she lays her hands on something she thinks is real or true, it slips away from her. Brother Odd, as far as I have gotten, starts out chasing bodachs (slithering shadows that portend disaster and feed on doom) through the dark winter night of the monastery. Odd's quarry is not at all figurative: symbolic, but not figurative. He sees the dead in their unrest as well, truly mute and not held back by a language barrier. How strange, to have carried home two books where the characters crunch through the snow in the dark and cold night, chasing a glimpse of an apparition, fearful to find it, fearful not to. One may reply that this is an archetypal plot, and this I certainly know, but the fact that I ended up with these two books, both winter landscaped quests for, ultimately, identity, that is resonating with me, as my own quest of late has been haunted by winters or the longing for one.

[*The term eidolon (pl. eidola) is (Classical) Greek for apparition, an appearance, a phantom. It appears in Plato, and in Gorgias, the Greek sophist, who wrote the Encomium of Helen, and in other places. So far, the concept seems applicable to both novels.]

Farewell, Benazir

2007-12-27T21:44:00.000-05:00

This morning, I was so stunned to read the headline on my news feed, "Bhutto's Assassination..." that I checked the Times website, thinking I could not have missed something like that. According to the reports, Bhutto was murdered a mere thirty-six minutes before I came upon the news, probably while I was padding around the kitchen, sipping my cappuccino. The snippet of an interview that she had given to Ann Curry, played this evening on NBC, was heart-rending: what if, Curry asked her, she died ? Would the return to Pakistan have been worth it ? Two women, sitting in comfortable chairs at the moment, but who had both in the past taken risks with their lives. A look passed between them, and Bhutto answered by recalling her father, to whom she spoke the day before he was executed. He regretted, he told her, that he would not see his children marry, that he would not see his grandchildren. She hoped, she told Curry, that god would protect her, that she would live to see those things. A well-spoken, articulate woman who clearly loved her country, she will see none of those things. I am deeply cynical about the US's sudden fearfulness about Pakistan's stability in the aftermath of her death. It seemed that they had given up on her, favoring the other opposition leader, Nawaz Sharif, who has now apparently pulled out of the elections. Bush ("grim faced" they said) was quick to denounce this terrorist activity, but I wonder if Bhutto's strong faith in actual democracy had become inconvenient. I remember when she was elected Prime Minister, a role model for many women of all faiths and political stripes across the globe. Goodbye, Benazir, may the God who knows all and any faiths rest your soul and bring your children and husband peace.

It's A Long, Long, Island

2007-11-23T17:46:00.000-05:00

Yesterday was the annual family trek out to a remote spit of Long Island, way out there, exit 60 something or other. We went into Manhattan to pick up some city relatives, then out onto the island, where, on a beautiful warm and sunny day, we whiled away what should have been several hours of drinks in front of a fireplace in some of the worst traffic we have ever hit, right out of the Queens Midtown Tunnel. Arrived at last, we sensed, rightly or wrongly, as we slugged down our wine, snarfed cheese and crackers, and huddled near the fire (the warmth had gone out of the day in more ways than one) that we were being secretly held at fault. We had arrived before the stated dinner hour, but not in the usual timeframe of leaving several hours before it to watch a game, kick back on their enormous couch (= size of flatscreen), and refuse voluminous trays of appetizers (the best, alas, had seen a better hour by the time we made it through the door). I did, in a way, miss that precious time to relax, but did have a much better appetite for the real feast, and that it was, traditional turkey, stuffing, too many scrumptious side dishes, and seven pies to choose from for dessert. Then a repeat return trip, minus most of the traffic. Many of the local relatives were talking of going out to outlet stores at midnight or getting up at three to shop at four, whereas my immediate branch of the family, being hibernators instead of hunter-gatherers, had a) already shopped in October; b) lightning-quick dsl and a shopping list set to go; c) no intention of shopping until a few weeks before Christmas.
I love the Friday after Thanksgiving for a reason that is apparently disappearing: it is a beautiful quiet day. To wake up in one's own bed, have cappuccinos and breakfast slowly, call friends, read the paper section by section; by afternoon, a little Christmas music, a little lazy cleaning, maybe. The sun was streaming in through the windows, my Thanksgiving cactus had opened two pink flowers, cats were playing and then contentedly dozing.... marvelous. Now, time to write, call another friend for a telephone tea time, and maybe, just maybe, a little internet shopping/browsing. Manhattan reminded me that I do miss living in a city. If I were living in a good walking city, I'd be out tonight, probably would have been out today, just walking and looking. It was fine, though, to slip into a late afternoon nap with the cats nearby, an option in city or country. How is everyone else's day after going ?

A later PS: And I learned a new word that I like a lot, via a blog called "Ankle Biter:" kleptocrats. According to the blog, these are the folk who confiscate the security risk objets du jour at the airport, and, yes, sell them on ebay.

Delocation, Dyslocation, Dissed Location

2007-11-18T19:28:00.000-05:00

That is, "dys-" from the Greek, meaning "bad." Burned your tongue lately at the 21st century's equivalent of Chock Full O' Nuts ? (Actually, Chock is looking better and better these days. Look here.) Before their rampant ubiquity and super-size mentality took hold, Starbucks had great coffee. I lived in the Pacific Northwest when Starbucks essentially was the local coffee shop. Now, alas, far from its native home, it seems to serve up milky diluted brews and scalding teas in only paper cups (Starbucks used to have real plates, real cups, real silverware). So:

How did I not know about this, a "Delocator" that will take you away from the neighborhood Starbucks (not that there is anything wrong with some rare Starbucks, where they still know how to make coffee, but when, you know, you need a real cappucino made by independent folk who want to make good coffee and a living), and to a list of real neighborhood coffee shops ? Its content is user-created, and it includes cinemas and bookstores, too. You can go mobile with it, perfect for long days in unfamiliar towns. Found via Slate. I sense that my few readers are coffee hounds. Get to it, you folks, and add some content. I'm counting on you !

White Rabbit With A Pocketwatch, Bottle That Said "Drink Me"

2007-10-16T23:27:00.000-04:00

Well, metaphorically anyway, life has been like that. Luckily, no rolling up of the hedgehogs for croquet. At this point, I would most likely be a hedgehog in that scenario... As usual, I'm very short on sleep and even more short on free time. The science section of the Times is sitting next to me, unread, for one thing. Will read with morning cappucino at five. Check. Piece of chocolate chip pound cake before bed will cost a bit of sleep, but worth the cost. Meanwhile, after hearing about it ad infinitum, I visited the Radiohead site and downloaded In Rainbows. I had no problem accessing the site (the hype must be past); the dilemma, as everyone knows and if you experience it as one, is what to pay, since that is what the buzz is all about: you pay what you think it is worth. From what I have seen on the net, people have apparently been conditioned by itunes to pay 9.99, as if this is a fair market, standard, or "honest" price. I paid nothing, being a) not a Radiohead fan, and b) ---as we all know--- too short of time to listen before purchasing. The thrill of legally adding so many free songs to my itunes and pod has made me look favorably upon Radiohead. And, I actually like the songs. So I'm wondering: will they add a "Buyer's Remorse" button where those who feel they should have paid more can pony up, and those who overcharged themselves get a refund ?

President Bushed

2007-08-31T10:52:00.000-04:00

I had occasion to dip into the fall Phi Beta Kappa Key Reporter this morning, and on page eleven, under "Phi Beta Kappa in the News," found the following intro to an item," President Bushed announced May 30 that..." Typo, yeah, I'll bet. Giggle. PBK doesn't strike me as particularly liberal politically. Liberal arts defenders, yes, but I'll bet the old guard is not amused. I am. They'll blame spell check, right ?

Cones, Repurposed

2007-08-20T21:42:00.000-04:00

Hurricane Dean has brought in a new phrase along with its class-4 destruction: the weather forecasters keep talking about the cone of concern. This "cone" is a modeled projection of the anticipated sixty-five mile radius (I use that term very loosely) of a hurricane's striking distance, the cone shape being produced by, one assumes, force vectors. The term has been used at a specialized level for years, but forecasters across the nation must have had a seminar, as a quick google 'round the block will reveal that Hurricane Season 2007 is the moment that the "cone of concern" has emerged among the hoi polloi. I think it is a marvelous term, and will have immediate application to venues outside of meteorology, e.g. I'm sorry, but that's not within my cone of concern. Or , if that strays too far from analogy, I suspect it will make itself a presence in political/military strategyspeak, where the phrase can still invoke its reference to an approaching threat e.g. The increased presence of insurgents has created a cone of concern reaching from Fallujah to Baghdad.

The word "repurposed" is here for John B, who lives in a place that has apparently been blessedly free of corporate edu-lingo.

An Evening at Home

2007-08-09T21:37:00.000-04:00

The cats and I are watching Guarding Tess (1994). In the scene where Tess has the chauffeur take off from a gas station without her security detail, you can see the prices at the pump. Regular: 1.09; premium: 1.24. Sigh.

Playing Tag

2007-07-25T22:47:00.000-04:00

I've gotten my first tag, courtesy of John at Blog Meridian, who was himself tagged as an "Indie" Blog, which his tagger, Bittersweet Blue, describes as meaning "quirky and unknown." John makes a point of saying that my blog is not quirky, so I suppose that leaves us with "unknown." Uh, thanks. Not to leave my reader(s ?) with the wrong impression, John B does compliment the writing here, and that is very nice of him. So, since I have been given the task of tagging at least five, here are mine, no surprises, since I don't have a secret list of faves that I've been hiding from everyone:

Commonplace Book, written by Steph Mineart, is not unknown, at least not as unknown as some ~~branded~~ awarded the Indie badge, but tracks the quirks of human existence and her own adventures in life with her partner, also named Stephanie, her good friends, a few cats, and a VW Bug named Phoebe. A marvelous collection of her own book reviews, recipes, links and images, bound in among the details of her daily life: am incisive and witty mind lurks here. Read it. Steph is "Indie" in the truest sense, since she lives in Indianapolis !

Then there is Snarling Marmot, from Springfield, MO. a lovely place tucked away in the southwest corner of the state (you can get to Eureka Springs, AR or Tulsa, OK faster than you can get to St. Louis from there). "La Marmot" snarls when necessary and celebrates when called for. Life: what to do about it.

Two Dishes But To One Table I consider to be a great find. I have no idea how I found it, but linked to it immediately and haven't stopped reading it since. Evan Genest, a high school science teacher in NYC, has a fine eye for things that should not escape us. I suppose that, given his profession and his love of science, it should not be surprising that this blog has a great, "hey look what I found" kind of tone. When the author encounters something, he is interested.

Willoboe (the title is the author's first and last name, run together) is a blog from Omaha, Nebraska, with roots in the Dakotas and other plains states. Willo writes eloquently about her life and the family, neighbors and friends who populate it. A beautiful sense of place permeates this blog: Willo's sense of the geography and history of the plains and her personal relationship to it makes her a distinctive voice.

It was hard to make a fifth and final choice, but I decided to go with Dave in Suomi. Suomi, for those who may not know, is Finnish for Finland, and Dave Schultz is a professor/researcher in meteorological sciences, usually from Tulsa, OK, but currently living and working in Finland. He decided to start a blog specifically to record his adventures in Helsinki and environs. He is not a daily blogger, but writes on a regular basis, has a sharp eye, loves his work, and, it seems, the Helsinki Testbed. An Oklahoman among the Finns, serious science, a language with more vowels than consonants in any given word almost guaranteed: how is this not quirky, aka fiercely unique ?

Finis Legendi

2007-07-23T21:32:00.000-04:00

I read straight through, forays to the kitchen for slices of blueberry poundcake and cups of tea the only interruptions, until about 2:30 am last night (yes, technically this morning). No spoilers here. I found it a very satisfying read, though since I was drawn into more and more suspense about how it would all turn out, the later twists and turns of the plot started to make me impatient, and I had to ramp it down a bit and remember to take in every moment, that the end, well, would come only as the plot and details bid it. I do not mean the outcome, i.e. the burning question of at least one fact that could be discovered by a quick dip into the last chapter. (I did not look, to be clear.) I mean that, for the reader, the richness of the ending is only to be found in the fullness of the reading that preceded it. Not to be missed, that. As in all epic tales, a reader might be disappointed by skipping to the end in order to find satisfaction. Consider the very, very, very end of the Iliad: the brooding vengeful anger of Achilles is hardly unknotted in the lines that tell us the battle will continue after a break for the funeral games for Hector. Do we know, depending on where we left off, how/if Achilles got his revenge on Hector ? How/if the body was returned ? Do not, dear reader, take this example as an allusion to HP and the Deathly Hallows. This is not about literary merit, either; merely a brief aside on the pleasure of reading. It just seemed the right moment to think about reading, impatience, and pleasure. Enjoy HP, if still reading, and take to heart this bit of Rowling's dedication "and to you, if you have stuck with Harry until the very end." Stay by him and take it all in. Every page now. Every page.

Reading...

2007-07-22T23:42:00.000-04:00

Picked up Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows this afternoon, one day after the rush, and have been reading since early evening. On page 477, so should finish tonight. I have no idea how it turns out. I've read most of the HP books, and wasn't particularly aiming to read this one, at least so soon. I actually thought well, once Saturday passes, I'll look at some spoilers and find out how it all ends. But I didn't and there it was in the store, and here I am, reading like a fiend. What a wonderful feeling !

The Lake

2007-07-19T00:55:00.000-04:00

This is the lake out in the pines where I have spent some lovely afternoons this summer. It is a small place, tucked away off of a two lane country highway, picnic benches, grills for barbeques, lifeguarded but not forbidden when not. For residents, five dollars for the summer. There is a day pass for those from out of town who happen by. I think it is two or three dollars, and, given what urban types on the east coast are used to paying, I always hear murmurs about what a bargain it is, and it truly is: children can drag their floats and tubes and floating alligators and sand pails and shovels into the water while their parents and grandparents can plunk their beach chairs right in the shallow water, eat their sandwiches and oranges, and the lifeguards don't yell and there is no ten foot tall sign about restrictions on no tubes, no Marco Polo, no having fun, as seem to be so common everywhere (say, at my community pool). You almost never hear a radio, and if you do, it is back from the beach under the shade trees by a picnic, turned low, usually to a ball game, a horse race, or some quiet music. There is an ice cream stand, and children brave bare feet across the parking area, dollars clutched in wet and sandy hands. Okay, not only children. Much older folk circle their lawn chairs in the shade, some groups speaking in a mixture of English and the German of their youth.Every once in a while, the local patrol car circles both sides of the lake, the young officer enviously eyeing the water and the dock where, all day long, long legs and short legs, old and young, run, walk, or skitter to the edge and over the side in a polished dive, the belly flop, a cannonball, the nose-held-legs-first jacknife, all in all the perfect splash.

Middle Age

2007-07-13T21:27:00.000-04:00

Mmmm... Cosmopolitans at a restaurant on the lake, appetizers, a drive home through the country in early evening. Friday.
Mmmm... Extra strength Excedrin, strong cup of black tea with extra sugar, good movie on tv. Fresh sheets on bed.
It's all good.

Eureka Music Update

2007-07-05T21:40:00.000-04:00

Well, I have to say, this is the fastest (maybe the only) personal reply I've received from a website like visiteureka.net. The managing editor, Ian Mullen, returned an e-mail within an hour or two, and then another later. To my list, he added one more song, from the episode "Once in a Lifetime." If he's right, there are only three songs, and we've found them. What I called "The Ride of the Valkyries," he titled "Cavalcade of Brunhilde's Sisters;" another name for the same piece (I'll double check). There is still some background music, I think, to be listed, so let me know if you hear something familiar and have, uh, a Eureka moment. Really, the drugs are wearing off, I promise. See list in previous post for udpate.
7.6.07 Confirmed: "Ride of the Valkyries" and "Cavalcade for Brunhilde's Sisters" are the same piece. Thought so. My father liked to mow the lawn to it, but that's another post.

Hungry and Dopey are not the Seven Dwarves

2007-07-05T16:30:00.000-04:00

They are instead the effect of antihistamines, shovelfuls of which I have been consuming since last night, when some sudden but quite real allergy attack visited upon me the whole demonic scenario of fits of sneezing, itchy, itchy eyes, face, mouth, and general pre-anaphylactic malaise. All the while, thunder menaced our little nostalgic barbecue. Okay, perhaps not "shovelfuls" of antihistamines, but it feels like it: I started in on Zyrtec, but that takes a while to build up in one's bloodstream, so it was recommended that I supplement with something quick-acting, like benadryl. You can only imagine: I'm starving, but just about too sleepy to eat. Trying to stay awake long enough to devour the goat cheese, pesto, and pinenut ravioli simmering on the stove. Downloading a movie while I write. Can nap while it downloads. I wish I could set an alarm for the end of a long download. There must be widget for that somewhere, right ? If anyone out there is creating one, please make pleasant sounds for the alarm. No screaming chickens, Homer Simpson, or rap-oxious beats, ca-va ?
Speaking of charming sounds, or sound at least, in my doped and insatiate state, I spent some downtime on the couch rewatching an episode of Eureka (the sci-fi, not the anime). The episode, called "Dr. Nobel," has a song on it, that after much jumbling of keywords on a few search engines, I discovered (eureka ! sorry) to be "Eve of Destruction," performed by Novillero. It's not available on itunes, but their website (see below) supposedly has a link to their Facebook page where one can find the song (I couldn't). I have liked a few other tracks that I've heard on this series, but I haven't been able to find out what they are. Novillero, for example, is not credited with the song in the credits for the episode. Official and unofficial websites didn't have any info either (yes, I've been on the couch a long time today). Anyone out there with either the dvd of the season or downloaded episodes who can add to my three item list below ? Thanks to John of Blog Meridian, I'm working my way through a very cool list of music from all places around the globe, particularly French speaking Africa. John ? Anyone ? Good ear, has seen Eureka ?

The list:
Theme Song for Series: performed by Mutato Muzica: www.mutato.com; I have an mp3 of the theme, but that's too much up/downloading for me right now.
Dr. Nobel Eve of Destruction, Novillero (not on itunes)
Purple Haze Ride of the Valkyries, Wagner
(Hendrix’s Purple Haze is not played in the episode)
Once in a Lifetime Can't Find My Way Home, Steve Winwood (this find/update courtesy of Ian Mullen, managing editor of visiteureka.net)

Cordelia Learns A New Word And An Unrelated Annoying Fact

2007-06-29T23:02:00.000-04:00

Googie. I have been following Steph Mineart's tales of being part of a (new) VW Bug inspired, tongue-firmly-in-cheek pilgrimage to Roswell, NM, at Commonplace Book. Firstly, I have learned that the new bugs are referred to by their loving owners as "pods." Better, she kept referring to things, buildings, sites, as "googie." After the third or fourth "googie," I realized that the old fallback of using context clues was not making me very clueful, so I looked it up. I quote from answers.com:

"Googie" describes a futuristic, often outrageous, building style that evolved in the United States during the 1950s. Googie architecture was designed to attract customers. The name "Googie" comes from a famous coffee shop in Los Angeles. Like the shop, Googie buildings often have flashing lights, sharp angles, boomerang and flying saucer shapes, and lots of glass and steel. On the east coast, googie ideas were expressed in the zig zag rooflines of coffee shops.The Googie style is sometimes called called Coffee House Modern, Doo-Wop, Populuxe, and Space Age.
---The article is attributed to Jackie Craven.

Annoying Unrelated Fact: One cannot download Jackson Browne's "The Load Out" with its companion piece, "Stay," from the itunes site. For people who may know the song only from hearing it on the radio, this is the song about packing up from a performance and getting ready for the next road show that completely transforms the familiar lyrics "stay... just a little bit longer..." into something more bittersweet. As several reviewers on the itunes site noted, they had not realized that there were two separate tracks involved; it is always played as one.
But downloading Smashmouth's "I'm a Believer" (hey, it's catchy) suddenly made clear the joke in the Clinton Sopranos spoof: Journey, "Don't Stop Believin';" Clinton: "I'm a Believer," holy crow, I must have been really tired these past few weeks. Ha, ha, okay, now it makes sense why Bill's got his money on Smashmouth. Beautiful that the name of the band gives it a dark side, too: I'll bet there are a few mouths he'd love to smash. And I mean the old-fashioned kind of smashing, punching, not the urban dictionary definition. Hopefully, the writers of the spoof weren't implying the latter either.

Googie, good. Missing "Load Out," bad. Friday, excellent.

15.2 Hours

2007-06-22T18:21:00.000-04:00

More or less, give or take, in the place where I currently find myself, 15.2 hours constituted my official longest day of the year yesterday (though today will hardly be noticeably different). We've had beautiful weather, and I am now officially on about six weeks vacation, so I had it in mind to do something special with the day, or at least to be awake for all of it. It started out quite well, with a jolt of cappucino:
This was shortly after dawn, and another ~~dose~~ cup followed soon after. I soon had breakfast on and laundry going, not the stuff of a legendary day, but I wasn't out for that, wasn't looking for the big trip, the special event, the dawn or evening plunge into the sea. A nice bike ride in the afternoon would have been nice. My one ambitious project was to force myself to actually go to the dealer of a certain type of automobile, as my current beloved vehicle is still beloved, but rapidly showing the signs of having exceeded its natural lifespan some time ago. I would see to it, do the test drive, play those preliminary car-buying games, and then have enough natural daylight left to recover. The dealer is some ways away, so I called before setting out, only to find that the agent I'd been talking with was out for the day. I suppose I could have gone anyway, but I'd dealt with him on the phone, etc. etc. So I didn't go. I ran some errands out in the bright day instead, breezes sweeping the trees and flowers around, sun everywhere. Perhaps it is the relief of vacation finally here, compounded by having survived a trying round of cutbacks at work, perhaps it was the idea of all that time, all that luxurious time. I bought some birthday presents for a soon to be eighty-one year old friend of my mother's, groceries, finally my own copy of The Kite Runner, which I have picked up and put down at least twenty times since last summer, thinking "wait until you have time" (am I the only person out there who admits to just getting to this book ? I admit it with genuine happiness that I now have time to really dig in). By the time I came home, my plans for late afternoon cookie baking and then a foray out to the local lake were being countervailed by heavy legs and a webby brain. Not coincidentally, I assume, had come along a mass of dark thunder clouds, thickening the sky, dropping the temperature, ratcheting up the breeze to something more menacing and imminent. Scarcely had the tea been made, the laptop and other assorted electronics been unplugged or surge protector assured than did the lightening crack right next to boom after boom, did the cats affix themselves to the carpet fibers under the bed, and I ----. Cup of tea in hand, blanket fetched from bed, body on couch (it was by now very dark), The Kite Runner clearly demanding more energy than I had, I kept hearing in my head, Dream of Thunder, Perfect Mind. That's the coptic, not the film or, I take it, the band. I don't know were the "dream of" part came from, it doesn't seem to be part of the title, though I think I remember it as the title in one of my textbooks in college or elsewhere. It was the title that kept repeating itself, though I looked up the whole text today (linked above), and, of course, how apropos it was, at least the first lines, for such a display of force going on outside of my window. I am often energized by thunderstorms, and have vacuumed, showered, written, and/or baked when conditions have suggested otherwise: the real electricity (or is it nitrogen ? or both ?) in the air, the cooling and clearing sky: I've gone out to meet it. Nothing so rash as dancing around in an empty field, but something so foolish as sitting out on my porch, rain drenching me, lightening flashing away. Only when I lived in a tropical climate did I find disappointment with thunderstorms. The huge rain and enormous crashes of light and sound seemed to bring only more humidity and steaminess, as if some giant had taken a shower and we were trapped in its bathroom. I would dearly like to experience thundersnow, a phenomenon known to occur in the midwest where I lived, but not one that visited during that time. Thunder, I thought, perfect mind.... A mantra or, more likely, a koan, reverberated, and my own consciousness fell away. From my 15.2 hours, subtract three, which, to judge from the gray pallor of the sky to which I opened my eyes, seems only to have been day in technical sense. The rest of the day/evening revived itself: the cats emerged, I put on another cup of tea, started dinner, and tugged my laptop out to the balcony to watch the sun go down, the neighbors' lights go on across the little woods, the birds coming home, the summer settling in.

Update, 6.23.07: I was intrigued, when I browsed for the text, by the mention of a "Thunder, Perfect Mind" short (6 minute) film, by Jordan Scott (daughter of Ridley). An even shorter version (4 minutes) was used for a Prada perfume commercial, though I found the original (?) version of that, fully credited to the director and with rolling credits at the end, on YouTube. It was filmed in Berlin. It juxtaposes a woman on a train reading the text of the Nag Hammadi poem (voiced over in English) with vignettes of a woman in situations related to the words, or meant to relate to the words. The perfume image at the end is jarring. It's a very poetic piece. Commercialism, the arts, the twenty-first century: whose product placement is whose here? The film.

Human Beauty

2007-06-17T19:57:00.000-04:00

Tonight I came across a wonderful blog, quite by accident. Perhaps I really ought to take up surfing (the in the water with a board kind), since recording my way to this fantastic photoblog is, uh, revealing. Perhaps this stream of consciousness will be valuable to those of you out there for whom this is meaningful information: I was looking for confirmation that the gruesome bug I found crawling on my couch was (actually, is, since the cats have not had their way with it yet) an earwig. Confirmed. Apparently, there is also a band named "Earwig" and a slew of blogs which also incorporate "earwig" in some form into their titles. I didn't click on any of these, or the band. Instead, for some odd reason, the search also brought up an entry in Dave Barry's blog from 2006 on a Folger's commercial called "Happy Morning" that has quite the cult following. Thinking that there must be a more recent "Happy Morning" episode, I googled that title and among the blogs and other arenas mentioning the same piece over and over (apparently there is no sequel), I found, several entries down from the link to Happy Morning, a link to Parigo Studios.

They are based near the Kansas City area in Lexington, MO. They do wedding portraits, but these are perhaps some of the best photographed you will ever see. There is a real artistry here, a real feel and eye for the human condition: this is art in every sense. Do not be misled by any associations you have with the words "wedding photography." The photographs happen to be mainly from weddings; they are about all other sorts of things. I've copied this one, from the wedding of "Joe and Julie," who, the blog says, met on their grade school bus. I love the photo on the left--- (the bride looks so young !): it captures the lovely quirk to her smile, lights upon the je ne sais quoi of her attractiveness, all in a glance. her joy in this and several other photos almost brought tears to my eyes. One should be so lucky to be photographed like this in one's lifetime. I've added this site to my list of midwest blogs.

For contrast, here is "Happy Morning." Blogdom seemed agog at its genius and its truth about us humans. Again, justaposition works best here; I need say no more. I'd rather reuse my Illy grounds than drink Folgers, so I may be biased.

Pie Weights and Spring Cleaning

2007-06-14T15:00:00.000-04:00

On June 3rd, I wrote optimistically, I cannot believe it has been almost a month since I've posted, especially since I visit my blog often to use my own links to stay up to date on what everyone else has been writing. There will be a real post here by the end of this weekend. Off to garden before the rain hits first.

Right. It is a very, very busy time at work, and truth be told, I've been paying more attention to other people's blogs than my own. I've also been trying to bring my very rusty French up to speed via everything that is available on the web. Even compared to five years ago, the increase in the number and quality of resources available on the internet is wonderful and astounding. I wonder if this has to do with the Barcelona Accords (link to be posted), since a number of the best sites are from within the EU and are aimed at getting university level students ready to function as students or perhaps even in entry level business positions in other countries within or bordering the EU. I have been listening to French audio at RFI, and taking the little quizzes on aural comprehension is humbling. I'm at about 65%, maybe 75% when I am not tired. Alas, I have never had the opportunity to live in a French speaking country, but I am getting ready to travel again, and with middle age comes boldness.The desire to communicate and comprehend simply quashes the fear of messing up and the imagined horror of one's own incomprehensibility. I'd forgotten how happy the very sounds of other languages make me (as you can tell from at least one posting, I know Latin, but that is not the same sort of thing). I had also planned to learn another language, just for fun, something for me. For a long time, I thought maybe Irish Gaelic, since we have family on the west coast of Ireland and when I was very young, my cousins used to speak to me in Gaelic. Perhaps on that note, it is not new enough, or exotic enough, but it will have to wait. I actually window shopped for languages the new-fangled way: I went to sites on the internet such as omniglot, and listened to samples of languages I thought I'd like to know. I hit up Rosetta Stone's site, as that is actually a very good method for learning a language (they're not kidding in all of those ads). For a long time, I have been interested in northern Europe, and so I listened very carefully to Swedish (also a maybe), Danish (didn't like it as much as I thought I would). I did more than this, of course, but perhaps this aspect is the most interesting part, that one can sample grammars and lessons on line, one can see if there is a real aural appeal. Naturally, there are many reasons people learn a language. In my profession (sorry, yes, the vagueness will have to stay), the Northern countries also would offer some practical opportunities. Finnish. Yes, it has fifteen cases and vowel harmony, but I've encountered cases and spelling shifts in other languages. I have found an excellent course, Finnish for Foreigners online, and have been working through it at a leisurely pace. There, all in one breath, is what I have been up to in my spare time. yes, of course I plan to go to Finland...

Maybe there is a connection here to the picture I posted. In late May/ early June, I spent some time getting my apartment in better shape. Even after a few years, I find that a number of things are parked exactly where I (mis)placed them "temporarily" immediately after I moved in. So it was a surprise, and a pleasant one, when in the middle of making a pastry crust for a peach tart, I thought, "oh, I wish I had those beans I used to use for pie weights [to keep the dough from rising up when the crust cooks]," and I reached down to where I would have kept the can in the old place and put my hand directly on the right thing, which had been sitting there waiting for me all that time. So I had all of these thoughts about how spring cleaning, or even hunting about in a cabinet for a specific thing, can suddenly raise or lift a weight from the past. No puns on pies or gaining weight, which, uh, I don't really do.

So there it was, my old Illy Cafe can, marked so that I didn't try to cook the beans, sitting on the counter next to the latest Starbucks bag, espresso the constant, a small bit of my past self refound as it should be. It all worked literally and metaphorically (it had been years since I made the peach tart). My reconnection with modern languages feels the same: I used to do this , I think, quite surprised, that I was understanding as much French as I did, that is is all still in there, somehow, and the sheer pleasure of that has taken the edge off not a few of my days.

I've added some links on the sidebar: a great and current blog by a meteorological scientist working in Finland Dave In Suomi, and that of a Finnish journalist and geneologist there who writes of her life and work, Daydreaming in Helsinki.
Thanks to Willoboe, whose blog brought Dave's to my attention. And now, I really do have to get my constantly sleep-deprived self back to some real work !

What Taste Loves and the Body Refuses

2007-05-07T00:20:00.000-04:00

Crab cakes, homemade and simmering under the lid of the pan; Vietnamese coffee, served up as you find it in Houston and Saigon (Ho-Chi-Minh City to you little ones), sweet chilled condensed milk in a glass(in Houston, with ice), thick brewed hot coffee poured on top; almond torte for dessert; salad in between: spring greens, herbs, beautiful little tomatoes. I can't eat any of these things. I love them all. My only real allergy is to crab, an allergy now full blown to the point of meriting an Epipen, which I carry everywhere, in case of accidental ingestion. I grew up eating crab, fresh from the ocean, Mrs. Paul's, didn't matter, crab is good, delicious, sweet. Other foods are stuffed with it; can't touch those then either. The severity of the reaction apparently inched up as I aged, until one year in my thirities, I found myself driving myself to an ER around midnight, scratching fierely itching swelling palms and on my steering wheel, slipping off my sandals at a light to rub the soles of my feet on the clutch. I was taken in immediately, even ahead of a guy with his arm dangling at an inhuman angle who said "You go 'head, honey," as I pointed him out to a triage nurse, who, I was sure, had made a mistake. My whole body was red and swollen by that point. No more crab, ever. This allergy may migrate, expand, to other shellfish and maybe to salmon, I'm told (iodine is the common factor), and thus the secondary reason for the Epipen. With the coffee, it seems to be the condensed milk, or maybe the contrast of hot and cold. Cappucinos, as you'll see from several posts, do not bother me. The almond thing is fairly new, not as severe as the crab, though maybe related to it, but a flag of caution all the same. As if anaphylactic shock weren't bad enough, the severe intestinal distress brought on by the lot of these, and anything else my body's weak point can't handle, is, uh, gut wrenching (sorry, sorry, I know. Have blogs no boundaries ?). I've a long standing diagnosis and some remedies for the effects of my fickle system, though nothing to make it less fickle.

At the moment, I absolutely have to go to bed, so let me get to the first point, and return to others later in the week: due mainly to the first and severe condition, though somewhat due to the nature of the beast in its entirety, I have become one of those people, who query the hosts of parties, pass up what is termed "oh probably tuna salad" at potlucks, prods suspisciously at fillings, and after praising someone's garden to the skies, says no thank you to the salad, please. One of those. The rub of it all: I love food, I love to try new food, and except for the crab, which is so clear cut, other foods sometimes get a pass, so I sometimes forget and eat merrily away. If I am lucky, the awful spasms come later, when I am at home and have time, but I have sometimes been fantastically unlucky and nowhere near home. Sorry to break at such a cliffhanger, but I really do have to go to bed. Comments welcome, special diets and amateur diagnoses should know better.

Short Post: NHH's, or, Nausea Ad Nauseam

2007-04-21T23:42:00.000-04:00

I will be catching up on things this weekend. The VTI tragedy is also very much on my mind. This post is really a brief interrogatory: re the Don Imus fiasco, how is it that this incident and its result, which was catalyzed by and continues to feed upon language deemed unacceptable in civilized society, seems to have given every journalist in the US and elsewhere permission to repeat the exact words of this slur ad nauseam ? Everyone in the media, it seems, can now use the phrase with impunity, except, of course, Imus. For the record, I am a very strong proponent of First Amendment rights. Rather than debating whether they apply in Imus's case per se, I am more interested in the disparity in the claims for legitimate use (or maybe, in the lack of them, since I have yet to see one news anchor or commentator defend, or be called upon to defend, the repetition of the offending phrase). The whole thing really feels like kids saying to an adult, "Tommy said it first. I'm just telling you what Tommy said..."

Chemical Farms

2007-04-11T12:26:00.000-04:00

I had wondered when we would find out who had supplied the poisonous wheat gluten to Menu Foods, the company that, as it turns out, manufactures a great deal of the "unique" and expensive (as well as generic) cat and dog food in the US and Canada. The latest link in what is now a devastating chain of broken trust between pet and owner, owner and brand name, brands and their suppliers, etc., has come to light. Though I did not see it in the print media, sites such as The Daily Kos were talking about it last week. I found it after checking the update on MenuFoods' site. It is a company called ChemNutra ("The China Source Experts"). The irony of the spliced "chem+"nutra" is now only too obvious, as the fact that one would buy wheat gluten, something so easily, but not, I'm sure, as cheaply ---and I mean in every sense of that word--- produceable in the US and Canada, from that slave-labor dependent, human-rights denying, dog-shooting nation. I suppose if I wanted a monolithic, but perhaps more famous theme blog, I would try to chronicle a year of trying to live without, or buy any products made in China. Trust me, I've given it a casual go, and it's not easy, except on the most superficial level. By-products are everywhere. For example, would you have known that Science Diet also used ChemNutra as its supplier for their one recipe that contains wheat gluten ? Read the package, and it seems as if it's all coming from the US, or at least places that respect human rights. The only good news ? Since ChemNutra is a US company, they can be sued and held responsible. Here is how their website describes the company:

ChemNutra imports quality ingredients from China to the U.S. for the feed, food and pharma industries. We are a professionally managed, American owned company experienced in negotiating, securing and delivering ultra-competitive pricing on high-quality chemicals and ingredients from quality-assured manufacturers in China. We bridge the business and cultural gaps…including all regulatory, compliance, import and transportation requirements.

We specialize in Taurine, L-Cysteine, Glycine, Vital Wheat Gluten, and Glucuronolactone, and we also handle many other ingredients.

ChemNutra imports over 4,000 tons per year, and our customers include several Fortune 500 companies.

Note, when you go to their products list, that the "chemicals" they are talking about are human and animal nutrients, including a long list of vitamins. Naturally, ChemNutra has been quick to name its Chinese source, a company one presumes is beyond the reach of true regulation and the law. Simply click on "Media Info" on their web site to read the whole press release, excerpted here: ChemNutra Inc. yesterday recalled all wheat gluten it had imported from one of its three Chinese wheat gluten suppliers – Xuzhou Anying Biologic Technology Development Co. Ltd. [...]ChemNutra did not ship to facilities that manufacture food for human consumption, and the distributor ChemNutra shipped to supplies wheat gluten only to pet food manufacturers. The total quantity of Xuzhou Anying wheat gluten shipped was 792 metric tons. ChemNutra learned on March 8 from one pet food manufacturer that the wheat gluten it had sold them – all from the Xuzhou Anying - was among ingredients suspected as a potential cause of pet food problems.

That's seven hundred ninety-two metric tons. And "among the ingredients suspected as a potential cause" stills sounds too hopeful, doesn't it ?

Let me close this post with a report from the AP wires from today's local paper, as irony by juxtaposition says so much more than I might be able to sum up otherwise:

BEIJING: One person died and more than 200 people fell sick after eating food that may have been contaminated with rat poison at a hospital restaurant in northeast China, state media and the hospital said Tuesday.Xinhua News Agency said the victims included patients and staff at the Heilongjiang Provincial Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine. It said the victims all ate porridge for breakfast at the hospital's restaurant Monday, and investigators suspected the water had been contaminated by rat poison.
Mass poisonings are common in China.

My ipod's Five W's

2007-03-19T21:12:00.000-04:00

First, I admit to owning one (30 gb video version, black), and second, confess to playing it more through my Bose or in the car (definitely not a Bose in there) with one of those fm transmit devices than to actually podding up with earbuds, though this may be due to the nature of my work and the hours I keep. I spent some excellent time during summer evenings watching videos on its tiny screen, earbuds in, podded out on my porch.

The point ? Over at Two Dishes But To One Table Evan, the author, has a response to someone asking how many songs on his ipod begin with the "5 W" question words: who, what, when, where, and why. This seemed interesting, especially as Evan termed it, these are "the questions I walk around listening to." As confessed, I haven't done much walking with them lately, but I was curious to see what would turn up. Alas, apparently there is a paucity of questions in the songs I spend time with, but here is the result of my search of my ipod library. Out of 316 items:

Who is this Man ? ; Bob Telson/Lee Breur Gospel at Colonus
What A Wonderful World; Armstrong
What a Bore; Muzzle
When We Collide; KD Lang
O Brother, Where Art Thou ? (Album)
Why do the Nations So Furiously Rage ? (Handel, Messiah)

•Unless you count the album title for O Brother, Where are Thou ?, it is interesting that the only two songs that actually ask a question come from oratorios.

•No where’s or why’s on my list, at least not as the first word or a question.

And so I decided to check for "how ?," the artful question that binds the five W’s into a narrative. I found three, but note that only one is interrogative, asking in what mannner; the other two express magnitude:

How Shall I See You Through ? (Gospel at Colonus again)
How Great Our Lord; Randy Newman’s Faust
How Far You’ve Come The Wallflowers, Rebel, Sweetheart

Image: St. Patrick's Day Ice Storm, 2007

Lapsed Blogging

2007-03-12T21:29:00.000-04:00

Am exhausted. Working hard and on the hunt for my true work simultaneously. Am watching 24 and barely following, e.g. just figured out Charles Logan was the president last season. Will give this blog some time someday soon. Meanwhile, suffice it to say that porci gruniunt means "the pigs are grunting" in Latin and I could have lived quite well, I think, without knowing that.

No no info on my last post; I could never discover the story behind what I saw.

Late Sunday Afternoon Blogging & On (Not) Going Home

2007-02-25T19:13:00.000-05:00

It is snowing quite nicely outside, chocolate chip cookies are fresh
out of the oven, and I've made my way to the couch with some of those
and a cup of tea. It's awful how fast the weekend goes, but perhaps
that is what makes this late afternoon time of greying skies and
swirling flakes so delicious. It is wonderful just to be in this moment
after a strangely tiring week.

On my way home midweek, Thursday, I went along the main road through town, which unlike Main Street, has become a busy road, splitting lakeside from countryside, and mixing little cottages with a Burger King,WaWa, MacDonald's and Seven Eleven, a Firestone, a gas station, and a generic autoshop in all of three blocks. There was a car pulled over to the side opposite me, also a police car, an older man in a yellow school crossing-guard poncho, and two young police officers standing next to a new-looking compact car, light metallic blue, whose passenger side door was open, and into which they were peering now and then. Traffic was stop and go and the speed limit is very low; I looked over at the car. At the wheel, eyes closed and head slightly slumped, was a fairly elderly man. There are a number of retirement communities in the area, and the car could have been headed back from the supermarket up the road back toward home. It had been raining, and now there was a sheen as the sun came out: kids were walking home from school, cars kicked up spray. The officers and crossing guard did not look anxious, as if they were waiting for an ambulance. Perhaps they had not determined what was wrong. The man's face was quite visible to me across the road: he was comfortably dressed, looked like flannel and a jacket; his skin had the pale softness that the old often have; pale lashes, red gone to grey. He had a cap on; some grey hair. It was a beautiful afternoon and the sun glowed on his skin, the closed eyes, the tilted head. The car was pulled over neatly onto the shoulder, perfectly straight, wheels aligned. Perhaps, I imagined, he felt something coming on, a diabetic sugar low, pulled over and had time to communicate and is now just resting. I hoped, but I saw no movement, nor did I see the officers attempting to get him out of the car. The scene was very quiet, a pause where only the slushing of car tires kept any rhythm at all.

I hoped, but as the light changed and traffic began its slow advance up the hill, I had such a powerful image of an old man, feeling well enough, gone to market in his little sporty car, all set for home, and then--- And then. Perhaps it was because I was on the last leg of my commute, having imagined for miles the cookies and tea I would soon be savouring, but the idea that he had gone out for a simple errand, had left his house, looked at the things that comforted him and that he loved, perhaps was already imagining returning to, was unshakable for quite some time. For a brief moment, as my car passed out of view of his, I wondered if a cat was waiting for him at home, a spouse, a loyal dog. How short life is; out for an errand, and you're gone. I've known people who have had terrible, protracted deaths, others who knew it was coming, others suddenly gone. Not the point to debate the merits of each here, and no point in that, really, at all. I don't know what happened to him; no has story appeared in the paper. I wonder, did he get to go home again ? For the sake of that gentle, sun-touched face, I hope so.

Stand in Awe

2007-02-14T20:16:00.000-05:00

and sin not; commune with your own heart upon thy bed. And be still.

For the record, I am Episcopalian, so ecumenical as might be construed as heretical, sometime church-going. It may be that nostalgia for the beauty of the King James, the comforting familiarity of ritual have as much or more to do with my religious self than any firm sense of God (or god, or gods). I do not struggle with this. This little bit of Psalm Four, though, stumbled upon a few years ago, often presents itself to me in times high emotion, good or bad. I realize that I have tried to make it, stripped of any particular theology, a rule for living: awe is not a bad stance, a transmutation of fear or surprise into something more conciliatory. "Sin not:" don't do what you shouldn't. And communing with one's heart covers sleep lost to anxiety, thanks before sleep, dreams of all kinds. It is the last that is the hardest: how to be still, when and how to quiet one's soul.

And so this question has come to me recently. Things are tense at the job I do not like; cuts are imminent, and I am practical enough to appreciate an unloved job that brings financial security as opposed to no job. Which brings us to this post's real topic: fear, the taste of fear. I mean this literally. I had no sense of this until about five years ago, when I was suddenly and cruelly upended by someone --- by several people, but someone in particular--- in whom I had placed much trust. The result of my loss was shattering, and physical: a long-distance and excellent driver since I got my license, I could not go through an intersection, even on a green light, without fearing that cars would suddenly come across. I did not trust cars to stay in their lanes, and even now I tense when I see a car waiting to enter the roadway, so shaken has been my sense of how reality operates. And there were ---and are--- physical sensations, face feeling hot, body feeling weak, a buzz in the ears, and most of all, a strange and lingering taste in my mouth that has returned as late, one that, when I first tasted it, took months to identify: fear. The taste of fear.

Having read about it in novels, accepted the phrase as a reality with no experience of it, I found it in my own mouth. I do not think I can do better than the clichés I have encountered: a tang, an odd metallic flavor tinged with bitterness, no dry mouth required, though often present. When I was younger, though I had occasions that ought to have begotten it (such as, e.g. having a gun aimed at me by someone who thought my lover was sleeping with his wife. Yes.), that taste did not come to me. Other anxieties, less dramatic, but certainly worthy of it, deaths in the family, not getting a wanted position, nose-diving in an airplane, did not awaken it. My young self perhaps had other options: anxiety shaped itself into lustful desires, high states of excitement, tolerance for alcohol, long walks through various cities in the night, depression, aches in the legs. I wonder now if this taste of fear comes with age and/or with an internal clock that tracks an evolutionary urge for survival. For example, I'm quite sure young people serving in Iraq have tasted fear. Younger than myself, they've found it can't be washed away by cigarettes or beer, I've no doubt. Extreme situations would find their way to a primal response. But for myself and others who have led relatively unextreme lives, I wonder if this mechanism, this taste, presents itself with age. Should I say mechanism ? I don't know what it would have me do but swish my tongue and feel anxious. The peculiar tang is no mystery: it is adrenaline. Maybe in youth it channels itself into alternate forms of action; in middle age, its presence seems far less veiled: danger it calls, warning. Middle age, like it or not, not as many chances. The primitive ---or primal--- brain isn't fooled by "you're as young as you feel" stuff. Fight or flight drips down my throat, a raw bitter substance whose alchemy seems to depend more and more on the force of my conscious will than any subconscious interpretation and transmutation of it. Itaque haec habent. It's a simple question I wanted to articulate in this post: does fear present itself to us more physically as we age/run through one too many encounters ? Does this arise out of a deeply ingrained survival mechanism of our species ? If so, how to act on it, how, as we began, to be still ?

All double entrendre intended in this last---

Candlemas

2007-02-06T23:28:00.000-05:00

File under "heirlooms, one:"

This weekend, I inadvertently celebrated Candlemas in a very traditional way. Due to the sheer arduousness of recent weeks, I had left a few Christmas decorations here and there, especially my small collection of reindeer decorations: among which, a beautifully painted hobby-horse style toy that sits on the mantle, and a silver candelabra in whose antlers tea lights may be placed. The most precious is pictured below, the the photo does not do it justice, and as soon as I can find and scan in a better photo, this sentence and the current image will disappear.

This "electric candelabra," which is made of, it seems, wrought iron with plastic candles, is, I realized, my true and only family heirloom. Worth little economically as far as I can tell, these little reindeer pre-existed me and were part of our family's Christmas throughout my childhood. They are the bearers of a love story: on their first Christmas as a married couple, 1960, my parents, not yet my parents, my mother, thirty two and father , forty three, having met , fallen in love and married after prior and separately enduring divorces, were walking down Myrtle Avenue in Brooklyn when they saw these reindeer in a shop window. They took it back to their apartment on Clinton Avenue, and it was lovingly assembled and lit every Christmas season thenceforth, with the story of its origin repeated with every unpacking. Looking closely, you will see that time has made its mark on this set: the plastic "halos" are dulled and slightly scratched; one Christmas, the middle deer lost its antlers, and in spite of my father's efforts to restore them, became a doe instead. Of late, the sleigh runner has fallen off each Christmas, and super glue seems to hold it for the season only. When my parents retired and moved to another house, I returned one Christmas and did not see the reindeer. In the new house, its traditional place on the harvest table not easily replicated by the new dining room table, it had remained packed in the box. I remember mentioning several times that I missed the reindeer, and my parents offered to send it to me by post when I returned home. A few weeks after I flew home, a box arrived in the mail: the reindeer in their original packing box, with a note from my father retelling the story of that Christmas Eve on Myrtle Avenue. I never saw my father again after that Christmas: he died in September of that same year, and so when I take out the reindeer every year, and unfold the note, now preserved in archival sheeting, but still tucked in the box, there is a moment of such poignancy, of stillness, a sacred (if I may) connection between my mental image of my young parents in Brooklyn and the onward rush of lives and years. Childless, I ponder the fate of my heirloom as I unwrap, then later disassemble the deer from the base, and rewrap in fresh newspaper, this object most precious to wait another year.

This year, this weekend, the rewrapping of the reindeer took place on Candlemas, though only later was I reminded of the old saying that Christmas decorations not put away by Epiphany should wait until Candlemas. Candlemas is the traditional day for the church's blessing of the candles to be used later in the liturgical year, so it seemed right all around that that my private ritual had accidently taken place on that day. This weekend, I also realized with much misgiving that the original box (pictured below) will not last many more years. The box, also part of the story, the ritual, the beautiful glowing reindeer made in Saint Joseph, MO --anexotic place to my New Yorker parents--- to Brooklyn, is crumbling, more packing tape than box. Everything else except the bulbs, is original, made to last: the wiring with its two-prong plug, the little cardboard pieces that keep the halos around the candles. The box will be gone in a few years, and I will have to pack the reindeer, my father's note, and the year's Christmas cards in a new container, and the wiring may go, too (so far so good, and that can be redone). I will probably not have children at this point, though in my dreams and in my body, it is still possible. I have niece, and many years from now, the reindeer may go to her, but for now, and I hope many seasons, the two bucks, a doe and a sleigh, four wobbly electric candles, rest on their iron stand and mean the world to me.

Of the Byzantine, two items

2007-01-31T08:27:00.000-05:00

Two items from this morning's NYTimes:
An article on Lars Brownworth, who teaches at the Stony Brook School, and has a podcast on the Byzantine Emperors called 12 Byzantine Rulers. I applaud the the very idea (anything about Byzantium is good for people who think multiculturalism, globalism, and its conflicts and influence began in the twentieth century), and also the fact that the podcast seems to have brought the uber-snooty to their knees: "While listeners address him in their e-mail messages with the respectful honorific 'professor,'" the Times writes, "Mr. Brownworth, in fact holds only a BA from Houghton College in upstate New York. He started teaching at Stony Brook only in 1999..." Emphasis, dear readers (?) is mine. Don't get me wrong; I love the Times; that the lesson afforded by podcasting and other democratizing media is worthy of note by them is both ironic and important: intellect will out, and it is still present in the population at large. Houghton must be crowing right now. That, and a teacher's life from 1999-2007 really must be reckoned in dog-years.

Then there was this, which I quote in its entirety, in the World Briefing section:

President Fidel Castro was shown on state television for the first time in three months, standing with President Hugo Chavez at a two hour meeting said to have taken place in Havana on Monday. Mr. Castro, 80, looked stronger but still frail in the images. He dropped from public view six months ago after undergoing emergency surgery for intestinal bleeding and was last seen in an Oct. 28 video clip looking very frail and walking with difficulty. His illness is a state secret.

State secrets not being what they were in Byzantium, clearly.

Snow Today

2007-01-29T23:31:00.000-05:00

Tandem hodie erat nix. Nives non tam altiores erant, sed satis celebrandis causae. Prima luce omnes arbores, omnem terram texit nix, et, eheu, quoque meum vehiculum et vias. Ad mensam adhuc agere mihi necesse erat, et ita per vias ivi. Iter amoenum factum est, formosum ! Nives novae et albae in arboribus pendebant, et tacite et in pace per iter nivosum egi. Laeta eram: nix, "cappucinium," et silentio mundi mihi me restituerunt.

I've just always wanted to do that.If you like the occasional Latin, you'll enjoy this Finnish site, Nuntii Latini, which broadcasts (also for podcast) in Latin once a week. The EU is also considering using Latin as a common language. Now that would be something. The Finns, who happen to hold the EU presidency right now, seem to be spearheading this, very fascinating since their language does not derive from the Romance languages. Since Finnish has something like fourteen noun cases, I'll welcome Latin.
Mirabilis had a reference to all of this sometime back, but this evening, at least, Mirabilis seems to be down/changing shape.

Update on Mirabilis: the author had a brief post, saying that she was switching blog providers and would be back up soon. Sigh of relief.

Which Cat Am I ?

2007-01-24T17:22:00.000-05:00

Okay, on a good day this is my inner cat. From the way I answered the questions, I thought I'd end up worse. Whew. I don't do these quizzes too often, but couldn't pass up this one. I was stuck, though, on the last question: as a cat, would I want "a long, sleek body" (the one I chose) or a "long swirly tail (gave me pause). Actually, all of the choices were appealing except "big red nose." What would that make one ? Sylvester ?
Hobbes... Oh, I miss Hobbes. And Calvin, too. I'm happy to be Hobbes (the cat, not the philosopher; Hobbes Feles is not very Hobbesian.) And that's a good thing. Coincidentally, I'm in the middle of playing Randy Newman's Faust and the song of the moment ? "Life Has Been Good to Me."

In fairness to the other species, dogs, that is, and to celebrate the return, in some form, of Bloom County, I give you a link to Berkeley Breathed's "Flawed Dogs" Page, which has a link at the bottom to the "Flawed-Dog-O-Matic." Try it !

And my plea: please consider adopting shelter/rescue pets. There are wonderful animals out there: smart, intelligent, healthy, young and older, who will bring much joy to your life.

Which famous feline are you?

You're Hobbes. First of all, the makers of this quiz would like to congratulate you. You have our seal of approval. You are kind, intelligent, loving, and good-humoredly practical. You're proud of who you are. At the same time, you're tolerant of those who lack your clearsightedness. You're always playful, but never annoying. For these traits, you are well-loved, and with good cause.
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How we live now

2007-01-22T20:59:00.000-05:00

I found this site, called Normal Room on the Commonplace Book blog (see sidebar). This is really enjoyable and interesting site: people who are just people and not interior designers (the "normal" of the site's name)are invited to upload photos of their homes, no matter their condition or location. The site comes out of Finland,but there are shots from all over, from Sweden to Cyprus. So far, as might be predicted, people who like what they have have posted shots, though a few people have braved it and shown rather primitive bathrooms, flaking ceilings, etc. The point of the site, as noted on its homepage, is to let others see how people decorate around the world (so it has no overtly political purpose). What has so far been pleasing about it to me is that it really does seem to have attracted typical folks from all walks of life: students who have photographed their study space, young singles who have uploaded photos of their first places, as well as some elaborate and beautiful places as well.

This is an idea with much potential, and I hope it catches on in more countries. In hopes that it will, and that people can share their living conditions and ideas of beauty and comfort, here it is, on my low-traffic blog.

It reminds one, humbly, how a plant in a sunny window can make a person more "house proud" (I mean that in a good sense) than many rooms of furniture.

Hey Sailor, What Ship ?

2007-01-15T23:20:00.001-05:00

Or Requiescas in Pacem, Tillie Olsen.

After I read the obituaries last week, the first time I read "As I Stand Here Ironing" came back to me so vividly. There are no interesting circumstances surrounding the first time I encountered Olsen's work; instead, I remember the power of the narrative itself, so distinctive a voice, such dignity and fatigue embued in the simple task of ironing. "Hey Sailor...", as refrain and story, has haunted my own skull, on and off, when the time is right, for years. Read John Leonard's "In Praise of Tillie Olsen" from The Nation. Maybe he is a little younger or a little older than I am, or was more sheltered, as his own account would predict. I knew about black people and poverty,and alcoholism and silence too, but I had never encountered a voice that so eloquently spoke of the human condition stripped of its eloquence. She put into words what my child's eyes had seen. She knew, and that was my surprise. I didn't know about leftists and working class movements (though I would soon learn) when I first read the stories. It was the sense of revelation, not that she knew what I had lived, because I hadn't lived those things, but that the world was like that, and someone saw that, could tell it others. There is a depth of soul there that one does not find, say, in Raymond Carver; though I admire his stories and think they owe much to Olsen, there is a cadence to reality in Olsen that is missing from Carver. It's the cadence of hope, I'd venture, of the characters' sense of themselves as fully human nonetheless, whereas Carver's despair derives from, oftentimes, the characters' self-perceived smallness, or worse, I have sometimes suspected, from Carver's association of economic brutality with brutishness and some desire to portray its emergence.

Tired tonight. I had a three day weekend, and gray and rainy though it has been, it was wonderful. I had a streak of ambition on the housekeeping front, perhaps stemming from my rescue of those pairs of shoes, perhaps because some energy and creativity is really coming back to me (not that these are exclusive. I overhauled ---or hauled out--- the master bedroom closet, folding sheets and sweaters into organizer boxes, neopolitan pinstrip fabric ones, with little windows for viewing the contents, and binning handbags, gloves, and scarves. Oh, and the obligatory hanging shoe storage, of course. The goal was ostensibly the obvious: to be able to find stuff, not trip over shoes and other articles on the floor of the closet, to make room for the Christmas stuff, which now must be restowed, and keep falling onto my head for the better part of a year. The real ~~motive~~, need, the one that probably had me avoiding the whole de-cluttering activity, was that I had some folders, even a few tote bags, that contained papers from my previous life; some just thrown in during the last minute move, receipts, old mail, even grocery lists, others, though, were loaded: either documents or letters that open the whole all up again, some needing keeping, and others just waiting for the shredder. Mission accomplished, I am happy to say. That, and finding needed items in the morning was becoming the equivalent of negotiating an avalanche at an ice skating rink. The old cats' ashes are perched up there on the shelf, but those I left in place. I need to know where they are, so they are in a spot with other precious mementos. I love my young cats, but I miss you, old girls.

Speaking of, the cats had a high time with all of this activity, the revelation of the forbidden zone (they are banned from the closets), and, in spite of NO SNOW YET, an evening of cookie baking (ginger snaps). Half of these to be mailed off to a friend in the midwest, who is, indeed, knee deep in it, and who will have to slither to work tomorrow and the next several days. As usual, up too late when I shouldn't be. But the house smells good, much of it is clean, and hey, a cold front is coming in. And so, this post's image is clearly not a shoe, but an incredible motivation for getting out of bed in the morning (five is going to be really hard tomorrow): there will be coffee posts on this blog. While in line at the nearest (I wouldn't call it local) Starbucks, this special roast, Casi Cielo, was sitting on the rack out in the middle. The aroma was overwhelming, and I wondered if it would make a good cappucino. I must have done more than wonder, because I bought a pound. I like a dry cappucino (foam and espresso only), so it might be dilute if you add a lot of milk, but, O, the flavor ! Perfect with fruitcake, or with the Times in the morning, and, one hopes, perfect for the 5:00 am dose of reality replete with wide-awake cats perched on the counter ledge, preening and craning their noses toward the steamed milk. 'Night, All.

Epiphany

2007-01-07T22:49:00.000-05:00

This is going to be such a prosaic post for such a wonderful day. Three Kings Day, La fete des Rois. Never mind that yesterday was the real day--- the twelve days of Christmas, done. Maybe that is why my energy suddenly dropped off late this afternoon. I did not make it to church this morning (I miss my old one and get rather homesick when in the one here, but truth be told, I have fallen out of the habit, and have taken Sunday morning for myself: quietude, cats in the sun, NY Times on my lap), but Advent through Epiphany is my favorite time of the year. No galette, either, since we still have the fruitcake and it came out exceptionally well. I chopped the apricots and figs for a new one to be made tomorrow afternoon. My mother came over yesterday and we ran some errands and had lovely late afternoon with tea and large hunks of fruitckae.
I am keeping the Sportos, pictured. I trekked out to Marshall's to revisit the boot that started me on Sportos in the first place (a style from last year, the Allison, I think. They didn't have it in my size at M's). It was no higher than the Amelia and not as attractive. Settled. I could really do with some snow right now. The shoe thing must be some kind of turn-of-the-year ritual for me. I have set about cleaning the master bedroom closet, and "found" some shoes that just needed sprucing up. Now they are cleaned and polished, sitting in a row. Even my old pair of LaCanadiennes, plain black, just over the ankle snow boots that I bought years ago when I was in New York, heading downtown from the public library when it started to snow unexpectedly. I think I had crossed onto Broadway at that point, and found a shoe store having a January sale. I bought what was available, and had no idea of how good a sale I'd encountered until, with the boots wearing out, I had checked the brand on the label and then looked online for more like them. The sticker shock ! I covet the Tillie's (or Tilly's, I think), but haven't worked up the financial nerve.

Too much NYTimes this weekend, actually. I read a sad story about a woman who lost her husband to a brain tumor and had intimations of my own short time on this earth; between polishing shoes and chopping fruit, I must find a way out of this morass that my career has become. Remember, during the Columbine aftermath, when the kids trapped in the classroom with their dying teacher held up a sign to the window that said "Person Bleeding To Death" ? Metaphorically of course, that sign could be in my window, especially every Sunday night. Then there was the cover article in the magazine, about the baby sitter turned incompetent and possibly murderous nurse (no parallel there, thank goodness). It kept rattling around in my head that the author took note that the babysitter, her former babysitter, always found someone else at fault for what happened to her. The very thought led to too much introspection on my part. What if really bad things have happened ? What if people really have, for their own psychological reasons, perpetrated bad acts upon one, caused damage that one did not incur? The article walks a fine line (the babysitter-nurse, as it turns out, was a victim of incest, which "explained" why she was the way she was, which was someone so incompetent and unsure that she could not admit she was wrong, ever). None of her story sounds like mine, not in the least. It is that a story so distant in every way from mine opened up the whole thing again, the aching question of one's own potential complicity in a fairly catastrophic event, or series of events. The fact that our society is quick to find fault with the person who suffers, too shallowly Freudian to face up to the fact that on an everyday scale, a civil and humane scale, people can be quite uncivil and lacking in humanity. The inhumane we apparently have no problem comprehending, or are so bombarded by it that we cannot associate it with ourselves, as in the dim feeling that many people treat the Iraq War as something apart from themselves and their daily lives. A reality tv event, survivor on a grand scale. The other extreme, finding fault with the sufferer, I have seen only to well years ago when the AIDS crisis hit: why were some sick and others not ? Were you thinking positively (a great irony of word choice there)? I've seen this with cancer patients as well, people with even good intentions implying that attitude, strength of faith, secretly desiring to get well/die were causing things to turn out the way they were going. I understand it: we all want to think if we do things right, we will be spared. Perhaps what I felt from the author of the NYTimes article was her own anxiety not about how she could have hired such a person, but about what she shared with her and could not acknowledge: a vulnerability to other people's secrets, a realization that she was laid open to more complex and perhaps darker motives than she had expected.

I wish I could wrap this up neatly, find my way back to the Three Kings, the presents for the saviour-child. Perhaps it is enough to look around at this end of the season, see fine shoes waiting for my feet to fill them, cat pressed against my side, soft lamplight, chopped fruit in a bowl, the house warm, the rain outside.