121.366 - 2016 project and alacrity

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

alacrity

yes, alacrity.  you probably need me to remind you what it means:  brisk and cheerful readiness, cheerful willingness.  you know it in the way the vets set up for and run The Last Sunday, the poetry reading in Culver City.  you know it in the way Richard Modiano introduces an event at Beyond Baroque.  you know it in the way Jason Brain or Sean Hill do anything.  now that I've got you thinking of it, you can probably name a dozen other examples.  but it's not something that naturally occurs.  maybe rarely it does.  no, it's something a person brings to what they're doing.  something a person gives you freely, and you're almost embarrassed to receive, it is that special!  thank you to people who bring it, admiration, appreciation.

120.366 - 2016 project and promptness

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

promptness

I haven't any.  or none to speak of.  left to me, I'd see the doctor when it was convenient.  have you ever run into a time in your life when you were just whelmed by "damn!  it would be convenient to see the doctor in about an hour!"  because of course you have to dress for it and drive there, and wait til (s)he's ready to see you.  no, of course not.  nobody on any planet I've visited ever woke up and thought, "gracious!  it would be convenient to see the doctor this morning."  no, someday might be convenient for a hike, another might be convenient for a party, a third might be convenient for visiting a friend.  so left to me, I'd be on my bed about to croak and think, "Damn!  I meant to see the doctor!"  that's me and promptness.  so I admire and appreciate - and resist - Lindy's getting me to call for an appointment and the doctor's nurse calling me back the same day and setting me up an appointment for the next morning, all the while I'm thinking, "darn!  but I have writing to do and a book to read and...."  yeah, bless all you prompt people near me and around me and out in the world.

119.366 - 2016 project and Clovis, New Mexico, 1954-55

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

Clovis, New Mexico, 1954-55

really?  1954-55?  I will never get the arithmetic of my life figured out.  but I know I graduated from high school in 1960, and counting back from that, yes, 1954-55 would have been the time we spent in Clovis.  I can't tell you that Clovis was particularly accepting.  we were just another white family moving into and out of the town.  Clovis had an Air Force base, so white families did that all the time.  but it must not have been unaccepting either.  as well as I knew, the congregation of First Baptist Church loved their pastor and didn't particularly give a damn one way or the other about his family.  that's what made it so good for us.  we'd been ripped apart a year before, yanked out of Brasil, dumped in the United States, separated - my sister and I stayed with one aunt for a while then with another.  no one ever explained anything to the kids.  my little brothers thought the rest of us had died.  then suddenly my folks were back together, smiling, collecting my sister and I, smiling, collecting my little brothers, smiling, and carrying us off to Clovis.  we may not have been strange to Clovis, but Clovis was alien to us.  I learned to play baseball there, or something like it.  I rode my bicycle everywhere it would go, including out of town.  I learned the meaning of caliche.  I learned to repair my own bicycle.  I got a job and could buy my own bicycle parts without asking my folks for money.  that is, I began to make a new "normal" for me, and accepted that nothing would ever be the same as it had been in Brasil.  I may have been a foreigner in Brasil, but I was an alien in this country.  oh!  I think I learned to sound like an American in Clovis, except I spoke written English.  I had no idea what language the kids around me spoke, but that was part of the new "normal" too.  thank you, Clovis, for mostly ignoring all that, and just providing a space in which I - and I think my sister and brothers - could begin to adjust.  we were immigrants in a country everyone told us was our home.

118.366 - 2016 project and titles of poetry books

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

titles of poetry books

yes, titles of poetry books.  many of them are mundane.  _Selected Poems_ or _Collected Poems_ usually of So-and-So, often from year1 to year2.  so straightforward they seem to promise boredom, but aficionados know they hold treasures.  but you can't title every book _A Treasury of Poems by So-and-So from Year1 to Year2_, that would be boring too.  some titles entertain, _Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats_.  but many, perhaps many many, are koans for non-Zens.  Take mine, for instance:  _Fixes for No Problems_, _Haiku Foryu_, _Navigating Maleness_, _Poems for Harley Riders and Other Transcendentals_, even _Under the Influence_ which does not mean what you might think.  but I didn't invent this kind of titling.  Here are some titles from books near me:  _In the Shadow of the Bomb_, _Psychosis in the Produce Department_, _Spider Road_, and _Beating on Iron_.  each gives you a glimpse into the contents, a hint of what you'll find, a koan to meditate on before and after you read.  I admire their cleverness and their capturing that lens-mirrorness that I associate with a koan.  I bow to those who devised them.

117.366 - 2016 project and tablet computers

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

tablet computers

I don't use one well.  watching me work with a tablet, a space alien might be reminded of the video clip in which a tot-let carefully un-tweezes a picture in a magazine and calls out, "Mommy, this magazine is broken."  yes, Lindy can do anything with a PDA.  I am not quite a Luddite, but there's a pew near theirs reserved for the likes of me.  but I appreciate a tablet.  some of you know I present my poems from a tablet, an iPad as a matter of fact.  but I don't compose on it.  or almost never.  and I have a Pixel C, which comes apart and becomes a tablet.  and a Surface Pro 3, which also comes apart and becomes a tablet.  (yes, I'm a computer nut.  I confessed that to you back in post 033 in which I admitted to owning 7 computers.)  but tablets.  oh for pity's sake!  allegedly you can do anything with a tablet.  on television, you see people with a tablet unlock a fortress, fly a helicopter, launch a missile, all kinds of things.  I don't think any of my tablets have those powers, but any of them is vastly more powerful than the computers I worked with when I began this journey in 1965, or in the dozen years after, and none of them has to read a tape to do any of its tasks!  (that was a joke for really old timers.)  but really, you can write text with one, edit it, fight off autocorrect.  you can include a picture or a drawing or an exploded diagram, and flow the text around it or through it.  (you can even write or edit a blog entry on a tablet!)  you can take a photograph or a snapshot or a selfie, you can tinker and toy with that picture, you can send it to another person.  you can email and facebook and twitter and do other ways of social media.  you can do hundreds of things with a tablet that I haven't even thought of a reason for - it's true, I'm pretty pedestrian about what I do with computers.  but I'm sold on tablets and computers that transform into tablets.  I'm not sure wearables can replace them.  but then, I once wondered - aloud, I'm afraid - what useful task one would ever do with a personal computer.  I did.

116.366 - 2016 project and healing

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

healing

I don't mean curing, I mean healing, the human body's great power to fix itself.  we don't regenerate limbs, we don't always come back as strong, but look how many times you've had a sprained ankle or a dislocated arm or a slight fracture.  most of the time, most of us are back in the game in a few days.  broken toes?  there's nothing much a doctor can do, or there wasn't when I broke mine, yet they heal.  for most of my life, through a lot of hurts, I've relied on healing.  Joan of Arc got an arrow through the shoulder.  now she may have had some help that you and I can't call on, but she may not have.  she may have just healed, and been out there leading an army again in days!  so let's hear it for the human body and healing!  Hurray!  Yippee!  Huzzah!

115.366 - 2016 project and pills

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

pills

aren't you glad for pills too?  (pills:  tablets, capsules, etc.)  in this age when so many of us allegedly stay alive so we can take pills - or is it take pills so we can stay alive? - aren't you glad it's pills we take instead of grindings and syrups and potions and teas and supplements and other gruesome gruels?  (I didn't say I like taking pills, nor do I suggest that you do, only that pills are easier on us than most other ways of taking medicines.) oh, and I forgot suppositories - wouldn't you really rather take a pill?  so thank you, Big Pharma, that in your neverending struggle to get us and keep us addicted, you chose pills as your vehicle.  it was kind, and whoever heard of a kind drug supplier?

114.366 - 2016 project and freeways

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

freeways

ah!  1950s technology!  in Dwight Eisenhower's time, we imagined that personal vehicles and commercial vehicles had achieved their acme.  how could you improve on the family automobile?  or the eighteen-wheeler?  it was kinda like evolution, which had reached a dead end in humans.  just so, transportation had reached dead ends in the family automobile and the eighteen-wheeler.  oh, and the bus.  so we built a magnificent set of highways all across the continent!  you could get from anywhere to anywhere else on those highways, or using tributaries to them.  people came from Europe and other places to admire our highways.  they did.  but then the damned Germans built autobahns.  hmpf!  so we devised freeways, and built them.  they were like highways, but wider, smoother, and stronger.  vehicles could have traveled faster on them, except legislators, with good reason, doubted our ability to travel faster than 55 miles per hour.  slowly we convinced them that we could be trusted at speeds up to 65 miles per hour, really, we could.  we even claimed that in remote-enough places, we could be trusted at speeds up to 70 mph.  evidence shows that we sorta can, so that's where we are today.  but the freeways!  they were built to take the kind of pounding we'd've given them if we could travel at 100 mph, so they've lasted decades!  and it's a good thing, 'cause we've shown we're not smart enough to maintain the highways, much less the freeways or the bridges.  someday they will crumble under our continued pounding on them, and we'll stand around, looking surprised, wondering what happened.  meanwhile, we can get from anywhere to anywhere else, not only with our family automobiles and eighteen-wheelers, but with our military vehicles!  yes, if we ever need to fight a war inside our borders, we can get military vehicles to wherever we need them!  well, unless a bridge collapses, or a highway gives out, or a freeway crumbles.  then we can cry and wonder where Eisenhower is when we need him.  maybe he'll come back.

113.366 - 2016 project and Sir Walter Scott

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

Sir Walter Scott

have I mentioned that I love historical fiction?  I do.  or I did back when I had time for fiction.  I swear!  since I entered this world of poetry and readings and writings and gatherings and scatterings, I have started maybe a dozen books and finished maybe three!  but when I was a kid, meaning before the jumps from Recife to Miami to St. Louis, I useta read and really go under, immersed in whatever I read.  along about the age of ten, I think, I discovered Sir Walter Scott.  now he knew how to write historical fiction!  actually that's not true, he invented writing historical fiction.  (read what the Encyclopaedia Britannica says about him.)  and he wrote it so well that other people couldn't help trying it too, and so it expanded and expanded into the generous genre that it is today.  I didn't know that then.  I was just a kid.  I was just thrilled that anyone could make those old times come to life so well!  _Ivanhoe_ and _Rob Roy_ and _Quentin Durward_.  Oh man!  I can almost recapture my wonder and my dreams then by reading good historical fiction now!  Thank you, Sir Walter Scott.

112.366 - 2016 project and education

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

education

what the heck do I mean by education?  probably most of what I've learned since I escaped from the public schools.  what I learned in college mostly went into my education.  what I learned in graduate school certainly did, but it alone would be a curious notion of education.  who needs or can use rigorous training in advanced physics or advanced mathematics or what in the world makes up poetry?  those were my subjects of study in graduate school.  they affected my education, but kinda like accents and umlauts affect a language.  it's funny that I say my education began after I escaped from the public schools because I escaped from them *such* a little know-it-all!  and then the first thing I learned starting work at White Sands Missile Range was that I knew nothing, or rather that I knew way too much but it was all wrong.  well, not all wrong.  basic English survived.  math and physics were not wrong, just innocent and naive.  history names and dates were okay, but what happened was subject to question.  but the real problem was that I escaped with a gazillion answers and no questions.  I had to learn and re-learn and re-re-learn so many times that my answers were false or at least shakily supported.  in college, I recognized that I had to question everything I had been told and much of what I was being told.  in college I began to collect the tools I needed for those questions.  in college I began to create my own narrative for history, my own guesses at how people worked and what they did, and how they explained that.  so in my real education, I learned questions.  my real education has taken up all the years since high school, and still goes on.  I know so many more things now than I did when I graduated from high school, but I know so much less.  and I have so many, many more questions.  that's the education I appreciate.

111.366 - 2016 project and Albuquerque, 1956-60

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

Albuquerque, 1956-60

Albuquerque is the center of New Mexico, but don't tell that to the politicians who gather in Santa Fe.  it is a city of over half a million people now, but was half that size then.  I think I remember a celebration of the city's crossing the quarter-million mark.  I was born in Albuquerque in 1942, but left in 1944, I think, to go to Brasil.  sometime after I was yanked out of Brasil and dumped in this country, around 1954, we peregrinated to Albuquerque again.  Albuquerque was an adventure, a half-vast (both senses) city big enough to sprawl but not big enough to terrify.  on  my bicycle and on foot, I wandered much of the southeast quadrant of the city then, partly just wandering and partly looking for a job.  (funny, I eventually found one not far from home, but not til I had looked at a lot of places that weren't near home.)  Albuquerque had many empty lots we used for games of football and baseball (I was beginning to get the hang of them, or thought I was).  it had a plethora of churches, some of them not much bigger than a family house, some of them as big as a bank or a jail.  it had an Air Force base and Sandia National Laboratories.  grownups did a gazillion mysterious things - someone would say "I'm a quartermegastender" and either never explain or tell you he distended the megasts into frumpkins - but mostly grownups disappeared during the day.  kids probably mostly stayed home, but I became acquainted with the ones who roamed.  I met kids who had just moved into "town" from failed farms or ranches, I met kids whose fathers had divorced their mothers then been reassigned elsewhere. I met kids who had lived in Japan or Indonesia or Thailand, places that  way out-exotic'd my Brasil.  and I did get a job, and then a paper route.  I earned enough to buy my own clothes, then enough to buy my .22 Long Rifle semi-automatic rifle, enough to buy my .32 Smith & Wesson revolver, enough to buy leather and learn to make a gunbelt and holster for my revolver.  you see, way outside of "town" in Albuquerque in 1956-60, I could still get far enough away from houses and people and drive-in movies and wrecking yards to actually be in the desert-with-brush-and-scrub before the mountains, and I could shoot to my heart's content as long as I didn't shoot toward the city.  Albuquerque 1956-60 was just what I needed, or it's what I found and I adjusted what I needed to fit it.  I probably never knew Albuquerque, 1956-60, like the kids who grew up into it, or the kids who moved there from other places in this country, but for a stranger and foreigner lost in this country which people kept telling him was his "home", it was a good place to make the transition to.  it was never home, but I became adept at seeming at home there.  or thought I did.  thank you, Albuquerque, 1956-60.

110.366 - 2016 project and sleep

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

sleep

once upon a time sleep was a non-issue.  wait.  is that true?  or is it a myth?  crap.  I don't remember, but I think true.  I think that for much of my life when I should have been a grownup, I slept when I needed to and didn't sleep when I didn't need to.  one exception occurred when I was shipped to England for five days.  I arrived on the morning the conference started, and managed to drive on the English side of the road from Heathrow to England's version of NASA Johnson center.  (no, I don't remember their equivalent to NASA nor their equivalent to Johnson Space Center.)  I barely stayed awake for the meeting that afternoon or for the social that evening, then drove groggily but on the English side of the road to the bed'n'breakfast where I stayed.  the people at the B'n'B kindly hurried me to bed and I slept a couple of hours and woke and could not get back to sleep.  for four days, life was like that.  I fell asleep in every meeting, mumbled my way through every social, and couldn't sleep through the dark time of the day.  (this is called jetlag, if you don't know it.  if you don't know it, I urge you to stay unacquainted.)  then I flew back from Heathrow, and spent a similar week here readjusting to real time.  sheesh!  but as I say, in my own mythology, for most of my "grownup" life, I slept when I needed to, usually during the dark hours, and didn't sleep while I needed to be awake.  then I retired, and roughly a couple of years later began life with CHF (congestive heart failure), spent eleven days in the hospital, and came home with my sleep cycle completely out of whack with being a grownup.  usually when I'm in a social event like a poetry reading or a literary presentation, I stay awake.  so far I always stay awake while I drive.  but at home, I sleep two hours now and two hours then and two hours some other time.  it's a little more regular than that, but not a lot.  most days I wake sometime after two in the dark and before five in the dark, ready to start my day.  most days, sometime after eight in the morning and before ten in the morning, the world tucks itself away behind my closed eyelids for a couple of hours, then does so again after fourteen o'clock.  you can see, sleep leaves me plenty of day to get my work done, just oddly apportioned if I were a grownup.  here's to sleep!  manage it while you can.  I think you have an appointment with a time when sleep manages you.

109.366 - 2016 project and women's costumes on DWTS

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

women's costumes on DWTS

now you may already know how shallow I am, so you may have already jumped to "skimpy" or to "almost non-existent" or to "a few well-placed sequins and feathers".  no, you're thinking of some other show.  you haven't or don't watch DWTS.  oh!  you can't translate DWTS?  sorry!  Dancing With The Stars.  no, many of the costumes involve a full skirt that skims the floor, or a pretend full skirt with amazing and well-placed slits that show off the full leg, then disappear!  yes, they also have costumes that make a bikini look like a party dress, but rarely.  most of them flirt with the notion of a full dress or a short skirt, but cut to show off the mostly magnificent legs and toned bodies of the contestants or of the professional dancers.  and remember, those bodies are busy dancing, ballroom dancing.  the samba, frinstans, must make Brasilian carnaval dancers wonder "what have they done to my samba?"  but the costumes!  oh my!  they float, they swirl, they wrap, they fly, they twirl.  DWTS must hire wizards to make those costumes behave like they do!  long live the wizards!  long live DWTS!  long may we enjoy the spectacle and the dazzle!

108.366 - 2016 project and living on Burbank Blvd. 3

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

living on Burbank Blvd. 3

I've told you we've lived here on Burbank Blvd. for 20 years now.  I'm about a hundred and ninety-three now, but was once only about fifty, and sometimes mistook myself for fifteen or so.  so I useta walk down to the 7/11 for a sixpack of beer or a bottle of milk or a bag of potato chips, necessities, you know.  now I never thought of these during the day or even the evening.  no, it was often full dark and sometimes near midnight.  most nights nothing happened, I strolled down to the 7/11 and bought whatever I needed, then strolled home, encountering no one.  but some nights were more interesting.  one night a boy and girl had pressed themselves against the next-door apartment building wall to better explore what they were just learning.  maybe they thought the four-inch thick hedgelet there disguised them.  in any case, as well as I could tell, they never even noticed me walk by either time.  on another night, walking home, I came upon a blood-stained knife - the blood more or less covered the point and about two inches of the blade.  I kicked it into the street where I'd never seen toddlers walk or pick up things.  no, there were no bodies about, just the knife.  but the best nights came later.  on my way home one night, a bra dangled from about knee high on the hedgelet.  on another night, farther away from the 7/11, a half-slip coiled between the sidewalk and the curb.  on a different night still later, this time on the sidewalk, a lacy pair of panties waited.  now in no story I've concocted does a young woman walking along a sidewalk late at night decide to take off one of these items and leave it for some man to find.  not unless she's gonna stay to be found too.  in fact, I haven't invented any story in which that happens, say, as she walks from the car she just parked toward the door of the building.  no, there's some mystery here that I'm not prepared to solve.  but I do appreciate living on Burbank Blvd.

107.366 - 2016 project and living on Burbank Blvd. 2

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

living on Burbank Blvd.

We've lived in the same apartment building for twenty years.  We moved once, two years ago.  If this neighborhood were a community, we'd almost be elders by now.  OTOH, if this neighborhood were a community, I wouldn't know it, and I don't think Lindy would either.  We live in the neighborhood, but not of it.  I have the impression most of our neighbors do too.  Most of them move in, smile say hello or maybe wish us well, and then are gone.  On our side of the street there are two fairly large apartment buildings where I suspect transient families like us live.  (You might laugh about transients who stay for twenty years, but the cops haven't chased us on.)  Across the street is a row of little post-WWII houses (in case you've forgotten, WWII is World War II - yes, there was a World War I).  Seventy years of owners have made each distinct from its neighbors, but they are still all basically the same size and each still faces the street with a door and two windows.  If there is community over there, we've seen no evidence of it, but as you might deduce, we haven't looked for it.  So we have a collection of residences with no apparent interaction between the people who use them.  It's a place that suits us fine.  Yes, I appreciate living here.

106.366 - 2016 project and living on Burbank Blvd.

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

living on Burbank Blvd.

I have to grin when I write that, because we'd lived here years before I realized I appreciated it.  Burbank Blvd. out in Encino is still a major street, but it only lives up to that billing twice a day.  When people go to work around seven to eight in the morning and when people go home around five to six in the evening, Burbank Blvd. is a river in flood, that is, is a river of cars that clump together and drift by honking at each other but letting other cars join them in the mess from sidestreets and even from parking spaces alongside the traffic lanes.  I've even seen them accommodate a car that is trying to parallel park during the madness!  Most of the rest of the time the road is almost empty unless a pedestrian is trying to cross Burbank Blvd.  Then car drivers race along the street from one direction then from the other making sure there is never an interval of traffic-free road long enough for a sane person to cross.  Not to worry.  Most of us trying to cross have lived here too long to be sane.  And of course, now and again some young man needs to prove himself or his car by attempting freeway speeds or race track speeds on what is clearly a domestic street.  It doesn't matter though.  We survive.  There is more I appreciate about living on Burbank Blvd., so I may have to return to this topic.

105.366 - 2016 project and generosity

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

generosity

"well, yeah," you might say, "each of us appreciates generosity when it comes to us!"  yes, although that's not what I meant.  but the thought did begin that way.  in a workshop the other day, we were characterizing poets in Los Angeles.  It wasn't the point of the exercise, just a tangent we had wandered into.  and I was struck first with how generous the poets in Los Angeles have been to me.  and I quickly saw that it wasn't specifically to me, that my experience of Los Angeles poets is that they are generous - with what they know about poetry, with how it works for them individually, with what doesn't work in poetry, and generous also with what they know in life, or in living in Los Angeles.  which made me wonder about people in general and I almost laughed at myself.  no, I would not characterize us humans as generous, but many of us are generous, even in the most horrific situations.  a soldier crawls out into enemy fire and drags a buddy back to a medic.  a woman provides water to soldiers even though another troop of them ravaged her village.  during a brutal "ethnic cleansing", a reporter thinks of and creates a way to re-introduce empathy to the thinking of both groups - and it works!  a nurse cares for the sick and dying despite knowing the disease is highly contagious.  not all of us can give that willingly, but some of us can.  it almost makes up for what we humans normally do.

104.366 - 2016 project and driving

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

driving

yes, me, driving.  after 40 years of motorcycling and 20 years of Harleying (they ran concurrently), I am driving.  and I do it well.  of course, much of that is the (Honda) Fit, bright red with a standard transmission (stick shift), terrific gas mileage (take that with a grain or a gram of salt - when I learned to drive, 12 mpg was astounding), and a superb turning radius (I can U-turn into the second lane over).  I can hardly believe that I parallel park with some aplomb, that I travel well with others on streets and freeways (bless Lindy and the GPS lady for navigating for me), and that my neighborhood has expanded from my zipcode to Santa Monica and Venice and Leimert Park and Highland Park and Altadena and Sylmar.  And that I have fun driving!

103.366 - 2016 project and Raymond Chandler

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

Raymond Chandler

Oh!  Oh!  Oh!  I useta love detective stories, then I discovered Philip Marlowe.  Damn!  He just about ruined detective stories for me forever!  Fortunately, along about then, a collection of women began writing detective stories with similarly jaded detectives, detectives who recognize that everyone they question tells some truth and some lies, and sometimes don't know which is which.  Their worlds so resembled my own!  But back to Philip and Raymond Chandler, his creator.  I don't know his world:  lots of money, sometimes gobs and geewhillikerses of money, acquaintances of BFD local politicians and real estate moguls, lieutenants and captains in organized crime, idle rich, not so idle rich.  I don't know those people but Raymond Chandler convinced me for a few minutes that I did, through him, and I bless him for his writing that convincingly.  Almost, I would wish him back, but that writing would seem quaint these days.  The forties and fifties are gone, and I can attest to good riddance.  But thank you, Raymond Chandler, for creating a world I could believe in, and recognize as a shadow of my own even if I don't know the people who make our world move like it does.  May you have found whatever Valhalla there is for writers.

102.366 - 2016 project and Julian date

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

Julian date

whuuuuuut?  yes.  Julian date.  now you might think the Julian date is the number of days since the Ides of March back in 44 BC.  no, no, no, no, no!  neither meaning is that.  neither?  yes, like so many things worth knowing, the Julian date is ambiguous.  for many people, the Julian date is just the DoY (Day of the Year - which is 61 on 1 March on leap years, but is 60 on 1 March on most years).  actually I am mistaken, this is the Julian date as distinct from the Julian day.  OMG!  I've gone more than half a lifetime without catching that distinction!  what one learns when one appreciates!  yes, apparently the DoY and the Julian date are the same.  tra-la!  the Julian day is something else entirely.  oh, you're gonna love this!  the Julian day or Julian day number is the integer assigned to a whole solar day starting with JDN 0 assigned to the day that begins at noon on 1 January 4713 BC in the proleptic Julian Calendar.  as a frinstans, today (11 April 2016 at 0000 GMT was JDN 2457490.500000.  now we need to go back and collect a few terms.  a whole solar day runs from noon to noon, instead of from midnight to midnight like a normal day.  a proleptic calendar is a calendar extrapolated back to before when it was adopted.  thus, no one in 4713 BC knew that it was 4713 BC or had any idea of a month called January.  they didn't know about computers or PDAs or GPS either, but they did just fine without them.  you'll probably never need to know about Julian days unless you're an astronomer or work with astronomers, but Julian dates come in handy for us normal people sometimes.  me?  I appreciate knowing about both, even getting a misunderstanding about them corrected.

101.366 - 2016 project and the number 101

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

the number 101

it's today's DoY (Day of the Year).  it identifies the freeway which runs right by the apartment building that contains my apartment.  it's a prime number (it divides cleanly only by itself and by 1).  it's the number that identifies the class that introduces college students to almost any major.  it's a number people use to show you they've been really thorough, as in "the 101 top rock'n'roll hits of the 80s".  it's the number of Dalmatians for Disney.  it's the number of poem books you'd have to read to show you were getting serious about studying poetry.  it's the number of miles you'd have to drive in any direction (except the directions that take you into the ocean) from downtown Los Angeles to begin to get out of the city.  it's an interesting number.

100.366 - 2016 project and DoY 100 of my appreciation year

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

DoY 100 of my appreciation year

in our counting system, decimals are important and double-decimals (hundredals) are even more important.  in a year, of course, quarter-years (91.3125 days) are important, but the equinoxes and solstices are not aligned with either hundredals or quarter-years.  so there's no particular reason to celebrate today except it *is* the hundredth day in a year in which I am appreciating daily.  so huzzah!  hurray!  yippee!  (three cheers) for today, DoY (Day of the Year) 100 of my appreciation year!

099.366 - 2016 project and books of poems

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

books of poems

on occasion, one of them will seem as foreign as the collected chants of the shaman for, say, a Siberian tribe.  but not usually.  sometimes one seems as exotic as a woman dancing almost naked to music whose scales I do not know.  sometimes one seems as tame as a conversation overheard but between contemporaries.  but most are the records of sensitive visitors to a magical land who meant to tell us what stuck to them there, but find the language they knew so well when they woke up now challenges them.  some throw illumination into startled eyes.  some awake lullabies you had not remembered in years, maybe in this lifetime.  some are as intimate as your own thoughts' lovers.  some reveal the thoughts of lions or plumed serpents.  some welcome you ashore after long nights of storm.  some open your own world to you, but seen through a diamond in someone else's ring.  so don't be surprised if your hand shakes a little before you open one, or if you consider postponing that opening just for a little while.  when you are more ready.  you never will be.  nor I.

098.366 - 2016 project and southern California

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

southern California

I've lived here 40 years now.  I came out for a three months assignment in 1976.  At that time I thought I lived in Colorado and only worked here for a while.  But one thing led to another and another and I've lived here 40 years now.  I got to work at JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) 13 or so years, and for JPL 10 of those.  I got to ride, if not all over southern California, then at least pretty much the breadth and depth of it.  I focused my riding in the deserts, the mountains, and along the coast.  I saw wonderful scenery, and listened to interesting people at my stops.  I married my second (and final, she reminds me) wife here.  It's been a fascinating and educational stay!  much of it has been wonderful.  southern California was and is a great place to ride a motorcycle, and it was and is a great place to write poems too.  I'm not sure I've made it my home, but I've lived here 40 years now, and when people ask where I'm from, the first answer that comes to mind is, "southern California."

097.366 - 2016 project and Irish whiskey

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

Irish whiskey

whiskey
Irish in particular
smooth!
remember the Santana song?
"seven inches from the midday sun"
the guitar work
this whiskey is like that
complicated
and not
elemental
smooth
like a caress
tongue
throat
mind
like a mist
spreading across a mire
forest
moonlight
smooth
gentle
other worldly
Rhiannon in disguise
that smooth

096.366 - 2016 project and sentences that appreciate

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

sentences that appreciate

let me lick that drop of soup you just spilled off your breast.

please.

this house has stood up to three floods, four hurricanes, and five werewolves - although I'm only taking my grandmother's word for the werewolves.

my grandfather rode circuit - that is, he preached at a small sequence of churches one Sunday after another - for twenty years, and rode damn near forty-two thousand miles doin' it.

my grandfather wore out about a horse a year, I'm told.

my husband drives so well that other people have his accidents for him.

these beets taste so good I bet your neighbors line up for your leftovers!

Honda makes motorcycles that spoil a father's prejudices.

San Francisco has streets so narrow that even a bicycle can't turn around in them.

he plays a guitar so mean that the music mugs people outside the joints he plays in.

095.366 - 2016 project and the Rachel Maddow show

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

the Rachel Maddow show

imagine!  imagine a news show anchor who spends up to ten minutes giving you the historical perspective for the lead story, then covers the lead story in such detail that it takes another ten minutes!  yes, twenty minutes on the lead story!  dear god, she makes news relevant again!  then she manages to squeeze three more stories into the twenty-two minutes she has left to make an hour of television time.  yes, she only covers the four most important stories of the day, and they are her choice of what the four most important stories of the day are, so this is definitely not "corporate news" which is the new (or new-to-me) term for the news you get from ABC, CBS, NBC, and CNN.  Rachel Maddow gives you no car chases.  she delivers news and damn near drowns you in context for it.  she is gleefully liberal.  she's not one of those "liberals" you have to take Fox News' word for for their being liberal. oh!  and she has a sense of humor!  she's funny!  on purpose!  not comedy-routine funny but isn't-this-story-a-delight funny!  by the time she's finished, I'm almost happy with the news, even when it's calamity after disaster after tragedy.  and she's very generous with identifying the local reporters who broke the story.  for me, her show is news-as-it-should-be!  thank you, Rachel.

094.366 - 2016 project and the variety of readings we (Lindy and I) attend

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

the variety of readings we (Lindy and I) attend

damn, I do!  appreciate that variety.  we hear poets from so many parts of the city, several parts that were never part of my experience of Los Angeles before January 2010 when I began infiltrating the Los Angeles poets' communities. I appreciate so many people we've gotten acquainted with, the few we've gotten to know, and the fewer we've learned to love.  I appreciate the ways the readings are hosted.  I appreciate the poems that are read, how they expand my imagination, how they expand my humanity, how they expand my awareness.  thank you participants, thank you hosts.

093.366 - 2016 project and the Gregorian rule

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

the Gregorian rule

in case you've forgotten it:  we add a leap day to the calendar every four years except every hundredth year we skip it (skip adding a leap day) except every four-hundredth year we don't skip it

what an extraordinarily clever way to solve the problem!  what problem?  the astronomical year is roughly 365.24 days long.  if we didn't correct for that pesky .24whatever, then the calendar would become a nuisance.  Christmas would slide into summer eventually, and the Ides of March would eventually happen in the fall, and so on.  trust me, people get upset over these things!  how upset?  riots in the streets upset.  sulking for years upset.  refusing to acknowledge the correction upset.  but - except for the deniers - along comes a rule that suffices to jiggle the daily calendar into almost agreement with the astronomical calendar for damn near 8000 years!  golly wow!  that's clever!  that's an amazing win!  bless human brilliance!  yea us!

092.366 - 2016 project and April Fool's Day

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

<oh my goodness!  (or badness.)  on April Fool's Day 2016, I did not.  this is my "make-up" posting on day 93>

April Fool's Day

well, the idea of it!  what a wonderful idea!  full of playfulness and mischief and fun!  obviously our Christian forefathers did not think of it.  it must have been powerfully instituted to have resisted them!  imagine how many people they threatened with the stake, or worse, for some joyful prank that upended a Christian father's dignity! bless our basically pagan ancestors for resisting the oppression!  and bless them for knowing how foolish it was to insist on a day when such was allowed!  may it be celebrated forever!  may the last man or woman left on earth grin to remember the day, and go out of his or her way to fart loudly in a church or in a courtroom then raise a middle finger to the skies!