091.366 - 2016 project and my own poems in 2015

every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that appreciates

my own poems in 2015

I am creating a manuscript of my numbered poems in 2015, so I'm re-reading them, proof-reading actually, and smiling at their variety and depth, and sometimes at their fun and playfulness.

090.366 - 2016 project and King Arthur

every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that appreciates

King Arthur

from my very first encounter with him, some story in which he rode through and casually did an amazingly perceptive Good Thing, I was awed by King Arthur.  this was long before Disney turned him cutesy.  if the only Arthur you know is Disney's, you've missed the Real Thing.  these are not children's stories and they are.  they are stories for children of all ages, and so darkness weaves its way through so many of them, all of them, I think.  I mean, here is a king, an aristocracy, and a government committed to Doing Good.  not the Christian kind of Good, real people Good.  the Christian thing was added later and didn't graft well.  but it must have amazed and amused people all the way back to cavemen or wherever the story originated (pagan England, I think) to have a government that Did Good.  maybe cavemen didn't know that power corrupts, but I suspect they did.  and sure enough, in all the stories, powerful men or women committed to Doing Good get undermined by being human.  even a little kid can read that, can understand that.  but still!  they did do so much good, and then, of course, all their secret wrongs caught up with them and in one battle, the whole Round Table is destroyed, and a dying Arthur goes off with his three queens to some magical - but not magical enough - other island.  he never returns.  and no government since has even tried to Do Good.  ah, but I've read every Arthur story I encountered, even some pretty poor ones, and read several magnificent Arthur books, so I'm not the only one fascinated by the Arthur story.  Hail Arthur!  may his story intrigue us forever!

089.366 - 2016 project and the dark part of the day

every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that appreciates

the dark part of the day

when we have poetry readings.  or literary readings.  or one man shows.  or plays.  some people even have movies then.  some of us wake up and work, as clear-headed and uninterrupted as we're gonna have it.  some of us get ideas for poems then, or the inspiration for a story.  some of us can finally hear what our neighbors really said, and weigh that against what we thought we heard.  some of us wake and listen to Harleys riding by and smile at good memories.  some of us dream away most of the dark part of the day.  roughly 28,800 seconds that most people use only for sleep, but some of us use imaginatively.  yes, I appreciate the dark part of the day.

088.366 - 2016 project and Robin Hood

every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that appreciates

Robin Hood

what a sly idea!  who'd've ever thunk it!  someone lost to history did and the idea "immediately" became a folk idea. suppose a hero, a hero from the impossibly rich class of course - aren't they all?  whoever heard of a hero from the untouchables?  the ordinaries?  no, a hero is a prince, a knight at least, the unacknowledged son of a wealthy warrior.  those are the rules.  now suppose a hero who is a traitor to his class.  yes!  gasp!  that is the secret appeal of Robin Hood.  a rich man who turns against the sheriff, against the church, against his fellow rich men!  a hero with enough moxie to get away with it, and enough charisma to draw other disgruntled rich men to him.  think of that!  a disgruntled rich man!  a disgruntled rich man - whatever does a rich man have to be disgruntled about? - who decides to become an outlaw!  now so far, it's not really such a shocking story.  actually, in every land and in every age, some rich man has been upset about the laws that didn't favor him personally enough.  here's the trick though.  this disgruntled rich man invents a motto that makes him seem a hero for everyone.  yes, this disgruntled rich man will steal from the rich and give to the poor.  the poor!  the poor?  why, that's you and me! what a wonderful idea!  let's go stand in line!  don't be stupid!  (as usual, that phrase comes too late.)  "the poor" doesn't mean you and me!  of course not, silly!  "the poor" means other rich people who are somehow on the raggedy, threadbare edge of rich!  what?  "the poor" really means the rich?  of course it does!  who else could it mean?  who else would a disgruntled rich man at his most generous even notice?  so Robin Hood helps a "poor" landowner, a "poor" knight, a "poor" former official.  he does rob the rich, people who had so much money that only an accountant could show them that the theft disturbed them.  "look!  Robin Hood stole almost as much as you spent on lunch last Thursday!  almost as much as you lost at roulette on your third spin last Friday!"  yes, Robin steals a bag of gold from a person who has a castle-ful or a church-ful of gold.  sheesh!  then he gives it to a rich person who is having trouble paying his taxes.  aw!  or to a rich person late on her rent.  her rent?  what in the hell is a rich person doing paying rent?  yes, you have to not pay much attention to detail to be taken in by these stories.  how big a deal is a disgruntled rich man who turns outlaw and steals from the really rich to give to the threadbare rich?  the king comes looking for him!  yes, the king!  in disguise, but still the king!  and talks him into giving up his outlawry and rejoining his class of very rich, so he can have his castle back and join the king's army.  not bad, huh?  amazing how I loved that story as a child, and have never been able to completely give it up.  Robin Hood stays a hero to us common folk even when we see that he never is even aware of us!  bless him! bless that phrase "steal from the rich to give to the poor"!  even after we know what it really means.  Robin Hood!  may his hero-ness upset rich people forever!  viva Robin Hood!

087.366 - 2016 project and my friends

every day in 2016, write a sentence ora paragraph or a poem that appreciates.

my friends

you might find them boring.  they don't usually engage in gunfights or messy divorces or even reality shows.  they mostly live for poetry, which means they have another way to make a living.  as well as I can tell, they do not live quiet lives of desperation.  some of them have fun.  some of them are busy buying houses and cars and all the things they're supposed to.  some of them raise children.  some of them are busy with other interests.  most of them gather in small groups to celebrate poetry, their own and that of others.  and I appreciate them.

086.366 - 2016 project and Joseph Campbell

every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that appreciates

Joseph Campbell

wow!  who knew someone could make a life's work of studying story?  who knew one could travel the whole world collecting stories?  coming to understand cultures through their stories?  coming to understand stories through their cultures?  who knew one could find a single plot-line running through myths from many cultures?  no one knew. Joseph Campbell invented all that.  then went on to consult with George Lucas in the construction of Star Wars.  he also wrote magnificent books luring us into his world, _The Hero with a Thousand Faces_, _The Hero's Journey_, _The Masks of God_ (four books he wrote about mythologies the world over), and others.  he taught us all how to write legend and myth.  and he did it all with an amazing humility and generosity, with an astounding lack of bias, with gentleness and patience.  Joseph Campbell, I bow.

085.366 - 2016 project and specificity

every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that appreciates

specificity

yes, I appreciate specificity.  damn, it's rare!  but when it's there, I appreciate it.  when a newspaper makes specific allegations, instead of talking about corruption, I appreciate the specificity.  when a politician makes specific charges about his opponent instead of talking about malfeasance, I appreciate the specificity.  when a preacher...oh, nevermind.  when a police spokesman makes a carefully nuanced statement that adheres to facts, I appreciate the specificity, even though I may laugh at the attempt to imply something that is not true.  when a reporter actually quotes a scientist rather than attempting to translate what he or she said, I appreciate the specificity.  even when you and I are talking and you specify exactly what you know and identify what you surmise, I appreciate the specificity.  thank you each and every who partake in this.  I bow to you.

084.366 - 3016 project and Microsoft Word

every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that appreciates

Microsoft Word

imagine me shaking my head even as I write that.  yes, Microsoft Word.  using Microsoft Word is like invoking a Swiss Army knife of construction vehicles - say a crane and a steam roller and a pickup truck and a cement truck and an asphalt truck and a truck that carries glass panels and a bulldozer - when all you need is a hammer.  yes, when I write, I use a text editor.  a text editor lays down a string of characters, characters like you're looking at now, and provides you carriage returns and line feeds and not much else, all you need for writing simple things like poems and essays.  but some of my friends write more complicated things, in which they need honeysuckle vines braided through the letters, or underlines, or bold characters, or italic characters, or text that flows around a picture, or footnotes, or different fonts for different elements of the composition, and for those special effects, you can't beat Word.  well, you might be able to, but no one else would know about your special program, so they'd worry about using any file you built with it.  they don't really know Word either, but they trust it and thousands of other people do too, so if you want to exchange files with other people - communicate - then you'd better use Word as your intermediary.  so yes, I appreciate Word, but warily, like someone who watches a crane and a steam roller and a pickup truck and a cement truck and an asphalt truck and a truck that carries glass panels and a bulldozer work together to do what a pair of pliers might accomplish.  it is amazing to watch all those vehicles dance together, and sometimes the product is something one just can't do with a pair of pliers or a hammer, like braid honeysuckle vines through text characters.  so I appreciate Microsoft Word, even though I have my own reservations about it.  go Word.

083.366 - 2016 project and books

every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that appreciates

books

almost every night when I was little-little, my mother read a story to me, and later to me and my little sister.  I don't know that it happened this way, but I imagine me watching my mother read from the golden books and from the children's story books and thinking, "I can do that!"  I knew the stories.  when Mother would try to fudge and take a shortcut across the story, I would pounce.  "Nunh-unh," I would indignate, "It says blahblahbostickems!"  and Mother would wearily go back to where she'd shortcutted and read what was really there.  until one night, she'd had it.  "Well if you know what it says, Mr. Smartypants, you read it."  and I did.  so from then on it was my job to read to my little sister, then to my little sister and my little brother.  my little sister must've taken over when my second little brother showed up.  I had moved on to other books.  I loved the Odysseus stories, and stories about the Greek gods and goddesses, who were naughty!  I discovered history books, and became fascinated.  they held real stories, but about real people, who had actually lived!  my grandfather introduced me to books that showed me how to do things!  the school library had books I wasn't supposed to read!  I thought that was a hoot! so, books!  yes, books.  thank you Mr. Gutenberg for inventing movable type, and making books so cheap that we the people can have them.  thank you, internet, for making them even more accessible.  and thank you authors for having written so damned many!  books!

082.366 - 2016 project and my heart

every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that appreciates

my heart

duh!  my life has, in a sense, been about two things:  my heart and books.  I never quite confused life and books, but books were where stories were, and life was more interesting in stories.  in life outside of stories, we played, we ran around, we fought, we laughed, but we never ran into fairies or pixies or trolls or gremlins, not really.  so books were important and I'll probably appreciate them next.  but today, my heart.  it's been beating for about 74 and a half years now even though I'm only 73 so far.  early on, the doctor noticed that it didn't sound quite right, so he checked as soon as I was born.  yep, there it was, a murmur.  A murmur?  like words kinda whispered but almost spoken?  I don't know what it sounded like then.  I didn't notice it until I was about four, when I noticed that when I was going to sleep and while I slept, soldiers marched outside.  that was pretty cool! soldiers marched around our house while I went to sleep and while I slept.  oops!  and then I noticed that I could "hear" them too when I put my hand on my chest over my heart.  hm.  then after first grade, I was taken to the hospital and kept there for a week doing a bunch of silly things the doctors called tests, except I didn't get any grades that I recognized, and there was no way to prepare for the tests or to do them over and do better.  ah!  all the secretive-booggedy-boo was about my heart.  and allegedly the results meant I couldn't be a boy any more. hunh!  of course, I went along with that!  no, I ran, I rode my bicycle, I climbed, I played soccer, I swam, I boyed as well as I could, but always aware of my heart.  which kept on pumping and pumping, and kept on sounding weird, but no longer like soldiers.  once I heard a cement mixer running with a brick inside it, and decided my heart kinda sounded like that.  after we came back to this country, I learned it sounded more like a washing machine with tennis shoes in the load, or some other unbalanced load.  but it kept on working despite my doing a lot of things I was told I mustn't.  somehow I made it past my teens, survived my twenties and my thirties, and drifted into my seventies with that heart still beating, still sounding weird, but still beating.  it still is tonight. but now you know a secret:  if now and then the rhythm of one of my poems gets a little ragged, it's possibly because that's the way I've heard rhythm since before I was born!

081.366 - 2016 project and Dancing With The Stars

every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that appreciates

Dancing With The Stars

oh man!  I love the dancing!  I love other people dancing anyway, but two hours of watching people who know how dance half a dozen different dances?  heaven!  and I love the women's costumes, especially the ones that are barely present. (yes, I'm shallow.)  I love watching the men, especially the tough men, discover that they can master a wholly different discipline.  but oh!  mostly I love watching human bodies move gracefully to music!  bless this show! long life!

080.366 - 2016 project and the QR code

every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that appreciates

the QR code

that it exists, that someone knows how to make it, that an app can take an URL I give it and encode that URL as one of those more-or-less square designs,  that old technology (print) can take part in the richness and depth of the internet.  that simple people like you and I can use the code without ever having to learn it, or having to draw with a steady hand.  long live the person or persons who devised it and the ingenious folks who made it so damned simple to use, whether to leap from a page to a website or to encode an URL as "one of those things".

079.366 - 2016 project and Internet connection

Every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that appreciates

Internet connection

Normally I don't even think about it, it's just there. Tonight it isn't. I appreciate that it normally just works. I appreciate that it has enough security to protect me, sorta, but not so much that I have to argue with it to get anything done. I have no idea how much I depend on the internet until I can't reach it. Thank you, internet connection, for normally just working. Thank you, engineers, for making it that way.

078.366 - 2016 project and acknowledgers

every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that appreciates

acknowledgers

sometimes, after I've read at an event, someone comes up to me and says, "oh!  I liked that poem you read about X, and I liked that you did Y with language in it!"  When I recognize that I did have a poem about X, and that I did do Y with language in it, that's an acknowledgement and the person is an acknowledger.  Thank you, acknowledger, for listening attentively and seeing either something I know or something I hadn't seen.  your comment is gold among the many comments I get.

077.366 - 2016 project and Ron Slovikowski

every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that appreciates

Ron Slovikowski

the other story.  I had known Scott Asnin about ten years when he called and asked if I wanted real work.  how did we get there?  that's a long and complicated story and probably irrelevant to this appreciation.  suffice it to say that Scott got me hired by Martin Marietta near Denver, and introduced me to Ron Slovikowski.  what did we three have in common?  we rode Honda motorcycles; each of us worked on some aspect of exploring space in which we were experts without knowing it; we all worked at Martin Marietta; and we lived in (Scott) or near (Ron and I) the foothills of the Colorado Rockies.  some days we rode to work together, some days we met at Martin Marietta, each with his own story to tell.  as it turned out, Scott was sane but Ron and I were not.  Scott eventually decided to carpool safely while Ron and I daredeviled our ways to work and home.  we found several more or less parallel routes, and maybe a dozen just plain silly ways to get to work and home.  we were in our early thirties, no longer quite invulnerable, but not ready to admit it.  we saw and heard and smelled essences of the Colorado foothills that could only be experienced from a motorcycle seat.  (well, just maybe from horseback, or walking.)  and we survived.  and all three of us were sent to Los Angeles to work on the Viking project flight team.  southern California let us fly our motorcycles over new terrains.  but those are the circumstances of our friendships.  for what do I appreciate Ron Slovikowski?  for all I learned riding beside or behind him, the outer limits, I think, of riding a motorcycle and surviving.  Ron had done graduate work in mechanical engineering, had experience working on sailboats, played guitar, loved finding new people to prove himself against.  he also taught me to watch networks in office politics that I hadn't imagined.  our life-paths untwined, but we kept in touch.  he has been busy doing things I can barely imagine, and I suspect I've returned the favor, but we still email.  Ron Slovikowski, another good friend for a really long time!

076.366 - 2016 project and Scott Asnin

every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that appreciates

Scott Asnin

oh man!  Scott Asnin has been my friend since 1966, maybe since 1965!  I didn't even know how to make a friend back then, so it was all his work.  I can still remember his bright eyes (hard to do when they're black) and big grin the afternoon we met.  I didn't even know how to grin back then, but I automatically tried.  I can't even imagine now what that must have looked like.  how long ago was 1965?  We both had short hair, I think mine was a flattop. and we both wore suits to work, so we could look like every make-believe-engineer around us.  (real engineers get licenses and become partners in the firm.)  we were both making more money than we'd ever imagined, and he was saving his while I was spending mine to balance him out.  who won?  well, he retired when he was forty-somethin' and has never had to go back to work.  I worked til I was sixty-nine and retired very carefully.  by the time he retired, he had bought his land in the foothills of the Colorado Rockies, built a cabin on it, been named the engineering employee of the year a couple of times, invented new techniques for the work we did on trajectories, and survived Houston without having to escape in the dark of night.  oh!  and he'd proven himself as my friend several times over.  we even shared an apartment once for about three months - isn't that the limit for grown men? - when we'd each just gotten a divorce.  we rode motorcycles together way back when I still rode a Honda - he was one of the nicest people and I faked it - and introduced me to Ron Slovikowski, but that's another story.  Scott Asnin!  a real friend for a really long time!

075.366 - 2016 project and the Viking longship

every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that appreciates

the Viking longship

imagine!  a ship because it really can go to sea, but it has no deep keel or centerboard so it can enter rivers and even streams.  it can work in water only one meter deep!  it can land on any beach, or any riverbank or stream bank that is not too precipitate.  in the ocean it skims across the surface, and can handle waves that are ten to fifteen times as high as its hull.  it carries cargo, or warriors, or both.  it is fast, typically 10 knots, occasionally 15. it worked well as a trader's or a merchant's vessel, but it worked best as a raiders' or invaders' vessel.  it could land, maraud, and escape before "homeland security" could pull itself together.  it could deliver an invading army, then put back to sea, and land another army behind the defenders who had gathered to defeat the original invaders.  it brought the Vikings into France where they became the Normans and spread into England, Italy, Sicily, and Jerusalem.  it was an amazing vehicle in its time.  it still is today.

074.366 - 2016 project and "my" 2001 Harley-Davidson NightTrain

every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that appreciates

"my" 2001 Harley-Davidson NightTrain

why "my"?  it isn't mine any more.  in a sense, it doesn't exist anymore.  a couple of brothers bought it to customize the heck out of it and create someone else's fantasy of a Harley-Davidson NightTrain.  but "mine" still runs in my dreams, I still ride it in my dreams.  we go to wonderful townlets, villages, sometimes towns out in the desert, at the desert's edge, or far out on some point of a mountain overlooking the wilderness, sometimes in this year, often in the previous decade, occasionally in some timeless space.  do I really appreciate it then?  is anything in a dream real?  but it recurs in different dreams, never the point of the dream, just present, just comforting, just necessary when I need to get somewhere else.  so I'd have to say yes, I appreciate it.  I'm pretty sure it has a better suspension now, as we seem to glide over any terrain, even rocks.  if I could, I'd tell the engineers at Harley-Davidson how the new suspension works, but whenever I stop to examine my ride in my dream, I wake up.  but I still appreciate that wonderful machine!

073.366 - 2016 project and the library

every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that appreciates

the library

do you remember discovering the library?  the public library, not the school library.  books everywhere!  more books than you could read in a week, a month, a year!  books you might never want to read, books you might never slog through, but books and books and books you might very well read and even re-read, reference books you'd never imagined, enough story books to fill every night of your life!  for me it happened in Clovis, New Mexico, after my parents collected their kids from two places in Texas and dumped us in a house I can't remember except that it had wooden floors and paper walls inside, and a back yard big enough that you could start to run.  the fence had a gate I could open, which let me into the alley down which I could get to a major street, and up which I could get into a neighborhood that didn't welcome kids like me.  but if I went out the front door of the house, right across the street was a building that I presumed was a house like ours, except it was tucked away at the back end of grounds with trees and grass and paths and benches.  in the front of those grounds was a big structure like a stucco fort. quiet questioning of people I found on the benches revealed that the big structure was the county courthouse, which seemed to have everything in it, an office for the sheriff, part of the county jail, offices and offices for important people who did things I couldn't understand, several county courtrooms, rooms and rooms and rooms for lawyers to do secret things with people, even the people in charge of collecting the garbage had an office there. and the little house-like building?  oh, that was the county library.  yes, the county library was kind of an outhouse for the county courthouse.  I didn't know what a library was, and was a nosy kid, so I went in.  no one kicked me out.  OMG!  books everywhere!  it even had niches where a person could sit out of other people's way with books on either side of the chair!  shelves broke the main rooms into narrow strips with books on both sides of them.  OMG!  OMG!  it had a room with books for children!  I went in scornful, expecting run-dick-run books, and sure enough it had a dozen or so of those and maybe a hundred Golden Books, but it must have had at least a thousand books with no pictures or almost no pictures.  books about cowboys, books about pirates, books about soldiers, books about detectives, books about dogs, books about cats for heaven's sake!  and they would let me just sit and read!  one day a librarian let me in on another secret.  I could get a library card!  then I could borrow books, take them home, read them, and return them.  I could check out six books at a time!  well, you can tell: the library was a miracle, and I had access to it!  sixty-some years later, I still think the library is a miracle! and I still have access to it.  (not the one in Clovis, but any of the ones in Los Angeles.)

072.366 - 2016 project and Trader Joe's unsalted Organic White corn tortilla chips

every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that appreciates

Trader Joe's unsalted Organic White corn tortilla chips

some things I appreciate are so foolish that it's a relief to confess how much I appreciate them!  Trader Joe's unsalted Organic White corn tortilla chips are one of those.  they're as close as I can get to real tortilla chips, you know, those greasy, crunchy, perfect spoons for ladling in salsa or guacamole or sometimes just blissfully crunching away on them.  after you have CHF, you also have a low-sodium diet, and much of what you thought was just normal becomes forbidden.  before Lindy learned about Trader Joe's unsalted Organic White corn tortilla chips, I thought all crunchy foods were forbidden.  not true!  bless whoever thought up Trader Joe's unsalted Organic White corn tortilla chips!  the first week after we learned about these miracles, I think I ate five bags and gained five pounds.  we agreed that was maybe too much of a good thing.  so now I have one bag a week, on Saturdays, and some weeks I even forego that.  and some Saturdays, like today, Trader Joe's unsalted Organic White corn tortilla chips arrive as a surprise, and I close my eyes, open the bag, and munch.  yes, bless Trader Joe's unsalted Organic White corn tortilla chips!

071.366 - 2016 project and language

every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that appreciates

language

as I understand it, we are born with language, we just need some guidance in making the right sounds in the right order.  as some of us can attest, we have to keep learning those sounds and that order even when we allegedly have grown up.  but anyway, a baby quickly detects that, out of that ocean of noise coming at him, some sounds make sense, and some orders of sounds make more sense.  he or she is desperately trying to make sense of a world that floods him or her with noise, with color, with touches, with smells, with tastes, and some will claim with other sensations.  but back to language.  we have invented dozens, maybe hundreds, of languages, and a baby quickly learns the one he is immersed in.  while grownups still exclaim over his or her learning vocabulary, suddenly she or he is making sentences.  if we read to the child, the child quickly figures out writing.  Kari Hawkey recently showed us an example of a two-year-old's story written on paper - lines that wriggled and twisted even though they were basically straight lines across the page, one after another down the page, filling the page.  how fascinating that she or he already has most of the ideas of reading and writing and story!  and once we decode those symbols, the world is ours!  we can read stories for ourselves, read stories grownups aren't ready for us to read, read about things like bicycles or governments or schools.  and some of us grow up to be brilliant users of language, we inform and influence and entertain people who have never seen, heard, or touched us.  viva language!

070.366 - 2016 project and bridges

every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that appreciates

bridges

when I was in high school, trying to figure out what to do with my life, I had two guideposts:  I was good in science, and I was good in math.  maybe I had a third:  I wanted my life to accomplish something for other people.  man!  for the longest time, those led nowhere.  I don't remember the zigging and zagging at the library that let me fall into books about engineers and engineering.  maybe a librarian helped me.  as I said, I had precious few clues.  but those books about engineers and engineering finally gave me a direction.  engineers used math and science to build things humans needed, like roads, and dams, and bridges!  something about bridges got me reading about all the learning engineers had had to do to build bridges that would stand up, would resist storms and earthquakes, resist marching feet and traffic.  I just knew I would love to do that, build bridges, especially since some bridges are so damned beautiful.  the clincher, of course, was completely irrelevant and wrong.  one of the books had a picture of each of a dozen successful engineers, and each stood by his favorite horse, overlooking some worksite.  wow!  I could work with math and science, make things people needed, and ride horses?  sold!  well, engineers rode horses in the early 1900s, but they mostly didn't by the 1950s.  I didn't know that.  but they do still build bridges, and they do still build beautiful bridges, and a person can get lost for hours, maybe days, looking at pictures on the internet of beautiful bridges in the world!  I never built any of those, although I did study engineering, then physics and math, and I did program computers and build things people needed and things people wanted.  and now I write poems, which in a way are bridges, bridges that connect people to thoughts and emotions they might never have without them.  and it all started with bridges.

069.366 - 2016 project and taquitos

every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that appreciates

taquitos

they don't even live up to their name!  reading it, you'd think they were little bitty tacos.  no!  some jerked beef, I think, some cheese, maybe a little potato, maybe some refried beans, maybe some extra spices.  all rolled up in a tortilla to make a tube with its ends sealed, then deep-fried!  oh my goodness!  they're one of the most sinful of cheap foods.  they have to be!  once upon a time, I must've been sixteen, because I remember I was driving, I think I was driving some girl home, and she cried out, "Oh!  Stop here! Stop here!  Stop here!"  We weren't doing anything naughty, so I pulled into the drive-in, and she ordered half a dozen taquitos.  oh my goodness!  sweet lady, I should remember your name if only for this one gift!  we split them and I learned a new idea of heaven.  after we finished them, I took her home, then drove up and down Albuquerque's Central Avenue finding places that sold taquitos - not every place did - and sampling them.  I may not have done that.  I was pretty determined not to cross my mother about my curfew and lose the opportunity to use her car on weekend nights.  but memories distort reality, don't they?  in my memory, I wandered home around two ayem, as nearly drunk as one can get on taquitos. next morning I needed no breakfast - can you imagine that of a teenaged boy? - and just sat there grinning.  trust this story like you would any sixty-something-year-old memory.  but trust that hazy, foolish-fond introduction to taquitos.  goddam!

068.366 - 2016 project and refrigeration

every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that appreciates

refrigeration

what a simple idea!  keep things cold!  it keeps most bacteria and most other microlife from doing what they normally would do, like live.  it keeps food edible longer than nature would.  it keeps us alive in a hospital.  it keeps us comfortable during summers.  and yet the simple idea didn't occur to us until we could make it happen, then we invented several ways to bring it about.  now we use them, those ways, and sometimes argue about which way to use under what circumstances.  but for now, the point is, we can do it, keep things cold, including ourselves, and we do. bless us!  bless engineers!  and thank you, refrigeration.

067.366 - 2016 project and water

every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that appreciates

water

in particular potable water, water you can drink, water that hasn't been messed with by a corporation.  I don't know this, I never thought about it when I was a kid, but I suspect I drank water any time I was thirsty when I was a kid.  I don't know when exactly the change occurred, but in my teens sometime, some well-meaning grownup told me water was healthy for me.  I couldn't swear to this either, but I suspect the very next water I drank smelled suspicious and tasted nasty.  being a teenager was like that, anything a grownup told me was good for me immediately became poison.  for years I drank coffee like it was the only thing that tasted good and smelled wonderful.  and then CHF.  congestive heart failure.  no more coffee, no more tea, no more anything I useta drink.  water.  bless water.  thank you world for water.  it tastes neutral and smells neutral, it tastes and smells like life.  water.

066.366 - 2016 project and New Mexico

every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that appreciates

New Mexico

isn't that weird?  shouldn't I appreciate California where I've lived over half my life?  or Los Angeles for the same reason?  but this afternoon I appreciate New Mexico, where I passed through important intervals of my life.  I was born there.  I left there for Brasil before I really experienced New Mexico.  after Brasil, after my family was ripped apart and reassembled, we were planted in New Mexico again.  I finished puberty there, I think.  learned about girls and girlfriends.  had poetry flashed in front of me and dismissed.  learned there was no god for me.  worked in the desert in fours, threes, twos, then alone.  saw the stars in the desert as if I'd never seen them before.  learned about learning in college, then again in graduate school.  learned about having a wife and a child.  then a smattering about children while I pursued physics and poetry.  New Mexico was there for me as a desert, as the greening border of a desert, as forested mountains, as a refuge at the edge of people and of what I thought was the real world.  New Mexico was there as not my home but where I lived, a strange world, not quite the real world, a part of the United States and not part of them at the same time, a place to escape into then escape from.  New Mexico.

065.366 - 2016 project and serenity

every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that appreciates

serenity

oh man!  for nearly forty years of my life I was volatile.  mostly I hid that behind a pleasant smile, only occasionally cursing.  I was never very good at cursing, so I would soon embarrass myself and shut up.  but the pleasant smile and the shutting up only masked a rage that my poetry mentor warned me was going to kill me.  eventually I found a clinical psychologist and worked with him for five years and talked and cried and hid and eventually re-wrote my life story with insights and empowerments I discovered working with him.  then I availed myself of the training and development techniques offered by what became Landmark or Landmark Worldwide.  oh my goodness!  had serenity always been there for the choosing?  maybe so.  for thirty-some years I have lived with serenity.  Yes, I get angry, express it and get over it, but I don't harbor grudges.  mostly.  Republicans are my exception.  I claim they earn it and re-earn it, but most of my days are mostly serene, which gives me a lot more time to work clear-headedly.  yes, I appreciate serenity.

064.366 - 2016 project and chemistry

every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that appreciates

chemistry

it's a science I never learned, not like I learned physics.  (my son has a Ph. D. in the mysterious realm where physics and chemistry touch and overlap.)  I studied for my introduction to chemistry well enough to pass the tests as they came up.  I followed instructions in the required and attached lab course, and mostly connected the labs we did with what we read - that is, I could write the lab reports like the lab instructors wanted to read them.  but the material didn't sink in.  I can't remember today how to detect potassium in a solution, and definitely couldn't figure it out.  I can more-or-less read the periodic table, and I know to be awed when we add another element to it.  I know how important hydrocarbons are, and I remember being awed in class as the teaching assistant kept adding links to the chain, and producing another chemical whose use I vaguely knew from work.  but I know it's a science, it's not just hocus-pocus, and I treasure that people are able to do brilliant work in it.  I want to say "all hail chemistry!" but I remember also that many people don't.  so chemistry, I salute you and appreciate you.

063.366 - 2016 project and car maintenance

every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that appreciates

car maintenance

once upon a time I owned a 1952 Hudson Super Jet.  no, it wasn't an airplane, it was a car, a car in need of maintenance.  the year was 1960 or 1961, so the car was in some sense old.  the first maintenance I did to it was to replace everything in the drivetrain behind the engine back to the rear axles.  I did.  why?  because the hydramatic transmission needed work and I thought any real car ought to have a manual transmission anyway.  but a manual transmission required a clutch assembly and a different driveshaft and a different universal joint and different axle assemblies, so a major reassembly.  it was a very big-boy thing to do, especially while one was newly in college.  and I did it.  and it satisfied whatever need I had.  I've been perfectly happy for real mechanics to do car maintenance for me ever since.  for a long time I pretended that my experience had taught me what I needed to know about car maintenance.  no, no, no!  when I look under the hood now, I am amused to recognize the battery still and what is probably the engine.  not even car engines today look like my old six-cylinder inline with a carburetor and exposed sparkplugs and sparkplug cables, a distributor and its timing, an oil filter, a fan belt and a cam-chain.  everything in my old Hudson was crude compared to the magical devices that get us about today.  so mechanics, play on!  thank you for understanding what produces the magic, and thank you for keeping it running. live long and prosper.

062.366 - 2016 project and Star Wars

every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that appreciates

Star Wars, 1977

What a magnificent trilogy of movies!  What inspiring stories!  What great special effects!  They spoke to the flagging idealism of my generation.  They told stories worth hearing, with heroes and near-heroes we could believe.  And wanted to.  We were just old enough that we could no longer believe in a just world or pure heroes.  Arthur seemed unlikely and Galahad impossible.  To prove it, our country elected Nixon president.  But Han Solo we could get.  And hope for.  And some of us learned about Joseph Campbell and the hero's journey, but that's a parallel story.  Star Wars.  Thank you.

061.366 - 2016 project and once upon a time

every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that appreciates

once upon a time

these are the light tales of legend and myth.  not the Beowulfs, not the sagas, not the Greek gods lightly aiding one group of humans or another.  once upon a time means you are safe in a terrifying world.  cats may talk or fight with swords, a dragon may complain or even knock over a castle, but somewhere there's a hero and he or she does not arrive with an army or even a troop.  this is comforting.  it means the trouble, however hopeless it seems to us, is our size.  if we had been born to armor and capes, we could have righted the realm and won the princess' or the prince's heart.  if we had been born smart and witty and funny, we could have outsmarted the troll.  but the point is, whether or not we could fix what needs fixing, someone can, one person.  there's not a problem a city has that one person could fix.  certainly no state and no nation has a problem a knight errant could correct.  the world is horrible in ways that require many people working together just to make a problem better, less hurtful.  once upon a time soothes.  we can relax into that world.  we can go to sleep clutching that book.  in the morning the real world will be there again, but for a few hours we held onto once upon a time and its promise of a fixable world.