152.366 - 2016 project and gliders

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

gliders

no, not lighter-than-air vehicles.  even a dirigible is heavier than air until you fill it with helium or hydrogen, and even then it's only lighter than the low-level, denser air.  it rises till the sum of its weight and that of the hydrogen or helium trapped in it match the weight of the air it displaces.  but that has nothing to do with gliders.  neither do biplanes, although a well-designed biplane can be lifted into the air by a breeze from the right direction.  damn, engineers have gotten good at design!  but gliders!  gliders have no engines.  nothing pulls you forward.  another airplane or a ground-based vehicle with a tether must get you airborne.  and then you glide.  You delicately balance lift and weight, with only momentum to keep you going.  A good glider pilot appears to do it by will alone.  she or he even appears to choose the descent and touchdown and slide to a stop - under control all the way!  wow!  you emerge and feel like dancing your gratitude to gravity, air currents, and engineers, except you probably think of them as glider gods.  you solemnly thank your pilot although you want to salaam at his feet.  yes, gliders.  may you be informed enough that they scare you to death, and childlike enough to do that dance.  behold gliders!

151.366 - 2016 project and genii

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

genii

Lindy just read to me about a person who started college at 11, and now at 16 has a master's degree, and is getting a Ph.D in aviation psychology.  and she wrote three books!  crimeney!  at 16, I was learning to drive, and it wasn't until 2 years later that I graduated from high school with a diploma that showed I did too know everything.  but this is about the genii.  Lindy just now read to me about a 10-year-old who finished college!  I often think our schools aren't very challenging, but I don't think she's a measure of that!  she's extraordinarily smart and has a magnificent memory!  and was allowed to use both, without being drugged into submission.  sorry.  sorry.  about the genii.  Lindy keeps finding stories about someone young enough for me to think her or him a child, who has gone off and done something that would be remarkable in an adult.  I think someone composed a symphony at 16, someone else at 15 developed a diagnostic technique for some disease, a technique that can be used in the field by medically trained people who don't need to be doctors.  most of them, though, are getting their Ph. Ds. at remarkably early ages.  remember, though, every Ph. D. means that person has made an advance in her or his field, often an advance you and I wouldn't even understand.  but I salute you, all you young critters out there reminding the rest of us of how slow we are, chewing our cuds here in the fields of human being.  think on!  do on!  be on!  enjoy!

150.366 - 2016 project and kleenex

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

kleenex

especially I appreciate the kleenex with baby oil in it so it doesn't dry and scrape your nose.  When I was little, working men and other people who didn't have to be couth prided themselves on sneezing or blowing their noses out into the great out of doors around them, then wiping off what dangled with their thumb and forefinger, and wiping that off on their pants.  Yes, men really did that.  women may have too, but I don't remember seeing one.  as a boy, I was embarrassed.  I didn't have the power to expel my snot like those men did, so like most good little boys, I carried around a handkerchief and used it.  later, after the advent of girls, I carried around two handkerchiefs, one for me to use, and one just in case,  you see, girls cried, or they sneezed - eversodaintily of course - but they never had a handkerchief.  they didn't have pockets, or so I understood.  if I could produce a clean handkerchief at the right moment, behold, I was a hero for maybe five seconds.  a minute later she once again couldn't see me, but for that five seconds I was a hero.  maybe someday my hero points would accumulate.  but handkerchiefs are like diapers, always in need of washing, always unraveling, always wearing thin.  when one got a job, part of what one was expected to do was buy his own handkerchiefs.  or I thought so.  then when we were snatched away to this country, kleenex appeared.  of course, at first it only came in big boxes, so you still had to carry a handkerchief, or in my case two.  but handkerchiefs were on their way out.  they were doomed.  kleenex had already thought of the sixpack or eightpack, and sold those for a nickel apiece or something like that.  showing up with a kleenex at the right time was not heroic, so that opportunity went away.  but kleenex was so much more gentle on noses!  even the dry kind.  and disposable!  no wonder it took over the world.  and men became so much more couth.

149.366 - 2016 project and old movies

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

old movies

once upon a time I was, let us say, ten-ish.  I lived in Recife, Pernambuco, Brasil, in a neighborhood bounded by a river, a river that ships and barges could steam up on one side, and down on the other, so a real river, not a make-believe river.  but it's not the river I'm writing about tonight, but a neighbor, a neighbor who must have had a streak of generosity as wide and deep as that river.  On Sunday nights, I think, although it would probably make more sense if it were on Saturday nights,  he would open his gates to the neighborhood, and play movies.  He must have given some signal, or maybe we all knew to be there at dark.  He would pull down a giant screen that covered one end of his porch, an enormous roofed and trellised structure, and maybe twenty-five or so people would settle into folding chairs, benches, stools, and he would play a movie from the 30s or the 40s.  Unitedstatesean movies, French movies, Brasilian movies, English movies, I think he only cared about the quality.  We watched "The Three Musketeers" shortly after I'd read the book, and watched "Cyrano de Bergerac" another night.  We watched "Carmen", and "The Hunchback of Notre Dame".  We watched Brasilian detective movies that made the Brasilians on the porch laugh, but I didn't know why.  We watched movies so scary that the only reason I stayed and watched them all the way through was that I wasn't sure he'd let me back in if I left in the middle of one.  Besides, all the grownups were staying.  I wasn't about to be more of a scaredy-cat than they were.  We watched love stories so impossibly beautiful I damn near cried, and I was ten-ish!  We watched Shakespeare's "Henry V", the one with Laurence Olivier.  Oh man!  I have no idea how I got away with going to a neighbor's alone, week after week, watching wonderful movies, but I did.  And I've loved those old movies ever since, watched them whenever they became available.  bless you, neighbor so long ago!

148.366 - 2016 project and cornbread!

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

cornbread!

can you believe it?  some people only use it for the dry filler in stuffing!  me?  I love the stuff!  I don't know if it's the crumbliness of it, the just barely sweet of it, the hint-taste of corn still in it, but I see-taste-smell-feel it (I don't think I've ever heard it) like some people do cake.  once I read through the ingredients (cornmeal, flour, sugar, salt, baking powder, egg, milk, vegetable oil) for any hint of mind control.  nope.  nothing there like optimism or courage or hope or empty promises, just plain old foods, and simple ways to combine them!.  so maybe it's the oven?  no, doesn't matter whether you use an electric oven or gas oven or one of the old-fashioned have-to-start-heating-it-yesterday ovens.  it's just good.  as if when you turn your back to open the oven, a kitchen pixie darted in and touched it with her wand, then disappeared while you turned back.  damn, it's good!

147.366 - 2016 project and 1976

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

1976

The Year of the Tall Ships!  The Bicentennial of the United States of America!  Et Cetera.  except it wasn't.  well, it was the year of the tall ships.  tall ships (full scale replicas of wooden sailing ships) sailed into New York harbor, into the port of Los Angeles, into the estuary of Washington, D.C. and a lot of other places - many of them did it right on 4 July 1976!  Yea!  Yippee!  Hurray!  yep.  we called it our bicentennial, but if we'd gone back to 1776 and looked around, we'd've found no United States of America.  We did have a Declaration of Independence.  we had twelve colonies in rebellion.  Georgia, I think, wasn't sure yet.  "Y'all just go right ahead and be revoltin' if that's what you want.  We'll sit this one out, see how you do.  If it works out for you, maybe we'll join up.  Have a good time now, bless your lil ole hearts!"  we'd had the "battles" of Lexington and Concord in April of 1775, but there was no army at either except the British Army.  The Army of the United States of America may not have come into being until 1841.  A Continental Army had been declared in 1775, and put under the command of George Washington.  there was a second Continental Congress who claimed to be running things.  The Articles of Confederation which would create one government for these colonies weren't written until 1777.  but in a real sense none of that matters.  we needed a birthday, and we declared 1776 the year of our birth, and we put on a large-ish celebration and felt very patriotic in 1976.   we love ignorance, and really don't care about details.  1976 it is then!  yea us!

146.366 - 2016 project and monsters

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

monsters

not real monsters, like Jeffrey Dahmer or Charles Manson.  there may be ways I appreciate them too, but when I wrote down "monsters" I wasn't thinking of them, I was thinking of Godzilla but more particularly of Grendel and his mother.  and in particuar I was thinking that a good monster is really only ourselves exposed.  Grendel is who we might be if we could tear the roof off a hero's hall, pluck out a sleeping warrior and eat him, armor, weapons, and all.  Grendel is who we might be without love or admiration or respect.  and Grendel's mother is one of us who had the courage to bear and raise and train Grendel.  she fled her place among us, and grew powerful enough to get back at us - we can be pretty awful to the helpless among us.  she grew powerful enough to threaten the great hero Beowulf so that in the battle between them, we worry whether Beowulf will win, even though we know he must.  he is the hero, after all.  so a good monster is one of ourselves exposed, but also one of ourselves grown inordinately powerful, and one of us for whom we will feel a twinge of guilt and of loss when the hero defeats the monster.

145.366 - 2016 project and code

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

code

once upon a time the world was very different from anything we know.  we hadn't yet invented computers, but knew a lot about them.  you see, a brilliant and eccentric mechanical engineer named Charles Babbage had all but invented one back around 1820.  it should've worked, it might've worked, if he could've gotten machine parts built to his exacting specifications, and if he'd worked out the details.  that turned out to be tedious and crazy-making and eventually Charles Babbage lost interest in what several people had sunk a lot of money into.  not a good idea, although he'd had an even more brilliant idea for how to build a computer.  sigh.  to our great good luck, though, he'd intrigued a brilliant young woman, the Lady Ada, Countess of Lovelace, who apparently sat down and wrote the ideas for writing code for his machine, and all by herself invented programming computers.  her ideas were still the foundation of computing theory as late as when I last worked in programming computers, and certainly were as late as when I taught computing theory in the 1980s.  how influential was she?  when the people who invented FORTRAN and COBOL got together to invent what they expected would be the language to end all languages for computers, they named it Ada.  do I appreciate code?  I didn't have to look up any of that history except the date, roughly 1820.  I wrote code for at least twenty years, and loved every minute or writing and testing and improving code.  in my moments of craziness, I thought computers had been invented so I could write code.  after those intense twenty years of writing code, I wrote code occasionally and often during the other 26 years of my career.  it was still a thrill.  I'd write code now, except that's not what people do any more.  this month, some guy wrote in WIRED magazine prophesying the end of code.  he could be right.  the world moves on and car drivers don't need buggywhips.  the buggywhip braiders have to find other things to do.  but damn, some of them smile and wish they could tell how wonderful it was twisting leather into a whip!

144.366 - 2016 project and twelve squared

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

twelve-squared

I don't know how public schools teach arithmetic now.  long ago in another century, it was simple and people still couldn't get it.  I did, but learned not to say so.  people didn't appreciate that, and it didn't help them get it.  back in those days when arithmetic was simple and there was nothing fuzzy about it except in fuzzy minds, we learned to count, and discovered an amazing fact:  no matter how high you counted, there were always numbers waiting!  once we'd mastered counting, we learned adding, then we learned subtracting, then we learned multiplying, then we learned dividing!  what was next, I wondered, but nothing was next.  that was all there was to arithmetic.  in Brasil, we went on to geography and other mysteries.  after I was yanked out of Brasil and dumped in this country, I learned that kids here, year after year after year, learned arithmetic all over:  counting, adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing, even though they never changed from when you first learned them!  in those faraway and long ago days, we only had to learn multiplication, the "times tables" we called them then, up to the twelves:  one times one is one, one times two is two,...one times twelve is twelve, two times one is two, and so on.  some of us observed an amazing fact:  if three times four was twelve, then four times three was twelve too!  So we really only needed to learn about half of the tables.  and there at the end of everything waited twelve times twelve is one hundred forty-four.  much later some of us would learn that twelve times twelve was also twelve squared and it was still one hundred forty-four.  obviously twelve squared was a magic number!  and it was!  it was also a gross, although I never learned why it was gross.  anyway, way back when, I was glad to learn that twelve times twelve is one hundred forty-four, and I didn't have to learn any more multiplications than that (until I hit hexadecimals, but that was way off into college).  what has any of this to do with anything?  today is DoY 144 and that brought back the twelves and the mysteries of learning.  thank you twelve squared.

143.366 - 2016 project and poets

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

poets

oh bless and praise you!  thank you for your books, your readings, your chapbooks, your broadsides.  thank you for your work, your persistence, your optimism, your sharing.  thank you for the inspiration I find in what you've done, the ideas that leap into my mind from between your lines, the plays on words I find in your work, and the plays on words I find in my mind while reading your work.  thank you for your part in this foundry, this free-form factory, this Bosch painting of ideas, metaphors, similes, and resonances, thank you for your catalogs, and the ones they evoke in me.  thank you.

142.366 - 2016 project and facebook

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

facebook

OMG!  what a timesink!  and yet it clearly rewards us, no?  so many of us check into it once a day, or several times a day, find out what our facebook friends are posting, send birthday greetings, stare blankly at announcements of events we meant to go to and now have scheduled something else over.  you may use it more sanely, more business-likely, but I have to watch myself.  I can easily spend 3 hours a day on facebook.  that's an eighth of the day!  no, no, no, wyatt!  yes, tsk!  it can be fun, it can be maddening, it can be frivolous, it can be entertaining, I guess some people can even make it serious.  in any case, happy facebooking!

141.366 - 2016 project and La Reconquista

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

La Reconquista

I probably should re-read the histories, and the legends and myths and magical stories.  surely in a real world it can't have happened like I understand it.  surely this is a romantic little boy's understanding.  once upon a time in about 800 AD, something like 750 Moors invaded the Iberian peninsula and took over Spain and Portugal.  quietly.  without a single romantic story to escape into pseudo-history.  it's kinda as if William the Conqueror had slipped into England and taken all of England over without even a Hastings!  (for those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, in 1066 William of Normandy invaded England, fought one battle, at Hastings, and then in two years took over England one little skirmish at a time.)  but back to the Moors, how could it have been that easy?  the Moors almost sneaked in, took over, then ruled Spain and Portugal for 700 years, still without a romantic story escaping into pseudo-history except for when the French invaded and left Roland at Roncesvalles.  and then along came Ferdinand and Isabella at nearly 1500, who suddenly somehow had scads of money and bought a thousand cannon.  really?  a thousand cannon?  that's what I remember.  and crumbled every fortress the Moors tried to hold against them.  they did leave behind romantic stories.  this was The Reconquest, La Reconquista,  El Cid makes a gallant appearance.  the story of the hawk and the wolf shows up.  the dreamy mystery of the Moors' last stand at Alhambra.  but even with those La Reconquista is as strange as the original conquest of Spain and Portugal.  in 800 the Moors came and in 1500 they left, having permanently affected both languages (Spanish and Portuguese).  an amazing story.  maybe I'm old enough now to read a real history of those times, but even with the make-believe history I have, I appreciate La Reconquista.  as I understand it, Ferdinand had exactly enough charisma to woo and win Isabella, then she had enough charisma to enlist the armies they needed for La Reconquista and enough vision to buy the cannon and cannon balls they'd need to wear down the fortress walls.  she also had the wit and wisdom to send the pirate Columbus off to find a new route to India.  as I understand it, Ferdinand was a great king because he was smart enough to stay out of Isabella's way.  and they were smart enough to leave Portugal to itself, and to contend with it for the new empires that the two countries built in the new world that wasn't India at all!  viva La Reconquista!  in many ways, it shaped our world.

140.366 - 2016 project and horses

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

horses

my memories are full of them!  when I was hardly more than a baby, someone photographed my beautiful cousin (she was in high school, I have no record of what she thought) holding me on the saddle in front of her while she sits on her horse.  when I was a kid, I was sure she'd ridden her horse with me sitting in front of her.  she was probably saner than that.  when I was a kid, I lived in northeastern Brasil, a thousand miles (I think) from Texas where I might have seen her again and asked her.  in one town we lived in, I could sneak away from parental guidance out to the edge of town, out to where a road led into town.  I discovered that on Friday evenings, if I got there early enough and stayed out of sight, I could see vaqueiros (cowboys) racing each other on their horses, riding for town, yippeeing and hurraying and just having a good time.  it was one of the few times I ever saw grownups having a good time.  I also discovered that on Sunday evening - harder to get away from parental guidance, but all the more exhilarating if I could - I could watch the same cowboys (I just assumed they were the same cowboys) barely able to sit on their horses, dragging back to the ranchos.  occasionally one would be singing some song that definitely wasn't a hymn.  I think those vaqueiros gave me hope.  being a grownup looked pretty dismal from my perspective.  later in my young life, I hitched a ride on the back of the horse of the aguadeiro, the man who delivered water to our neighborhood.  oh man!  oh man!  I was on a horse!  in my version of the story, the aguadeiro kept wanting to put me back on my feet and send me home, and I kept convincing him to let me ride a little further.  yes, I knew my way home.  at the end of his working day, when he turned his cart in and left his horse in a stable, he lifted me off it and I thanked him and set out for home.  it was much more adventurous than I expected.  I knew I needed to walk that way a long time then walk that other way for another long time.  I walked and walked and walked and not a damned thing looked familiar, so I walked and walked and walked some more.  not a damned thing looked familiar there either, but (I think) a couple of women asked if I was lost.  hell no, I wasn't lost.  I was right there talking to them, and I was walking home!  and I had ridden a horse!  they laughed and thought I was cute.  much later, I think, I encountered a dog who was bigger than me and wasn't going to let me pass.  I stood there and looked at him and remembered not to act scared, whatever the hell that meant.  the dog lost interest in such a dull playmate and wandered off, and I suppose so did I.  eventually a pleasant man interrupted my walk and asked if he knew me and laughed when I didn't know.  he asked if I was the son of Reverend Joseph Underwood, and seemed delighted when I told him I was, and that I'd ridden a horse!  and now I was walking home!  he suggested that I'd misunderstood my directions since I was way the hell and gone away from my home.  would I walk with him so he could show me the way?  oh, okay, yes I would.  good, but first we had to stop by and tell his wife we would be gone for a while.  (you might need to remember, this was in the 1940s and in northeastern Brasil, a world long gone.  people didn't have telephones or cars.  everybody walked.)  we did, and she invited me in for a cafezinho, a baby coffee, and I told her that I rode a horse!  and what I'd seen since then.  she marveled at my adventures and what a brave little boy I was.  I thanked her.  then her husband and I walked to my house, and he was right.  I had been walking the wrong direction.  I must have missed my turn.  along the way he told me about interesting places we passed where people did incomprehensible things to keep the city running.  finally we got to my house and the man and I were the only sane people there.  my mother and father and everyone else ran around waving their hands in the air, hollering and screaming and carrying on.  when they calmed down enough that they could be trusted, the man left me with them and, presumably, walked home.  as soon as he was out of hearing, the fooferaw resumed.  I didn't care.  I'd ridden a horse and had adventures!  oh man!  oh man!  there's so much more to tell about horses!  but not in this paragraph.  it's wandered on and away and around like a Los Angeles Times sentence, and probably has as many facts.  but it should make clear:  I do appreciate horses.

139.366 - 2016 project and attention

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

attention

oh my yes!  (i feel like a four-year-old who just inadvertently told his best secret.)  I love going up to the mic.  I admitted to a friend of mine that I never met a mic I didn't like.  I especially love being introduced as a featured poet.  I love hosting.  I love answering questions about being a poet, or about my poems.  I was thrilled to be interviewed by Junor Francis on KPFK this morning at 0100.  what do these all have in common?  for a moment, someone's, usually several someones', attention is on me.  yes, another common element is that I get to serve some greater good - poetry, the community of poets in Los Angeles, the listeners and participants at an open mic - and I do honor that.  and at some level, that four-year-old in me is just delighted with all the eyes and ears pointed at me.  thank you.  I do appreciate it.

138.366 - 2016 project and mystery

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

mystery

oh yes!  I mean mystery like whodunnit, especially murder mysteries.  but I also mean mystery like woman.  or mystery like how-do-we-solve-this-problem.  or even mystery like the night sky, of which I know the answers to so many parts and still feel wonder and awe when I look up into it.  I feel some of that watching a woman walk, particularly a young woman.  I know, millions of years went into designing that so I would feel that wonder and awe and the young woman is only doing something perfectly normal to her, but oh, evolution, thank you!  I sit and watch two women talk, watch from far enough away that I can't hear a word of it, and again feel wonder and awe.  men don't do anything like that, not even when they talk.  maybe because men are busy competing, at the "I haven't killed you yet" level.  but anyway, women mystery wonderful.  that's a sentence in any language!  how does this connect to whodunnits?  who write most whodunnits?  no wonder mystery novels take us into a world we don't recognize even though it sorta resembles our own.  yes, mystery.  I'm not sure I want to live there, but I love to visit!

137.366 - 2016 project and safety

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

safety

as a concept, you understand.  (please imagine me with a wry grin.)  I think I spent my childhood and adolescence disconnected from people.  I think that's why I had to learn so much so fast in my twenties, and learn it from people I worked with, books I finally read that my university professors had recommended.  and one of the things I learned was that normal people, or some people I thought were normal people, obsessed over safety.  well, okay, not obsessed over it, but lived as if that were their goal.  or at least talked as if that were what they lived for.  they lived in safe houses, in safe neighborhoods, where their kids would go to safe schools.  they drove safe cars and when they had a little more income, they bought safer cars.  they took safe vacations.  they saved.  then they invested safely.  it was an idea I could not grasp.  didn't they know about stray bullets?  meteorites striking people?  lightning?  tornadoes?  cancer?  in a world designed to kill you, where did they expect to find safety?  in the suburbs?  driving to work?  mingling only with other people committed to safety?  and what was the point?  finishing your life with a smile and the thought "goddam!  I never ever took a risk and no adventure ever dared touch me!"?  like I said, I didn't understand.  I rode a motorcycle.  I walked out into the desert to see what was there.  I climbed stone faces.  I jumped down onto what I hoped was a soft surface.  I walked out of or down from places I never should have gotten myself into.  I can't say I had great adventures, but I think I had little adventures.  I can't say I spent much of my life scared silly, but there were times and situations in my life in which a sane person probably would have been scared silly.  I was just improbably confident that I could find a way out or down.  and I did, up until I shattered my lower left leg in 2013 by dropping my Harley on it the second time in a year.  no, I'm not encouraging anyone else to live like I did.  but I wouldn't discourage anyone either.  it takes a certain amount of humor, a lot of unlikely training, and I don't know what else to live that way.  I've made it to nearly 74 (and can hardly believe that), and many of the people who told me about living safely aren't here to tell me about it now.  but as a concept, as something I probably couldn't have done if I'd known how, I admire it.  I don't understand, but I appreciate.  belatedly.  amusedly.

136.366 - 2016 project and wakefulness

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

wakefulness

I am not sure that is the right word.  there is a state of being in which one is fully awake and relaxed, although one could summon whatever warrior is left in him.  one needn't be ready to kill, but one could participate in a conversation or read from a book rich in allusions.  one could dress and ride if one were a rider.  it's a state of being awake and ready to participate in life, whatever life brings you.  I especially appreciate it when I wake into sleepiness, or fogginess, or alarm.  but that state, wakefulness or whatever, needn't exist only when you awaken.  it is sometimes there when you prepare for dinner out, or for a poetry reading, or a party honoring someone you love.  it is a special state, and not one you'd want always.  when you work, for instance, you want to be totally focussed on what you do, so focused that in a sense you are not present, there is only the doing.  but let this not devolve into a list of possible states.  this is an appreciation, an appreciation of wakefulness or whatever the right word is.  and it is done.

135.366 - 2016 project and storymaking

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

storymaking

it started out as simply as a way of playing.  "okay, you be the mother and I'll be the father, but it's a day I don't have to go to work."  and I think it was innocent too.  what do grownups do if suddenly they are robbed of gottados?  we were young enough that we hadn't noticed that they never do.  they don't play.  grownups never just play!  so what do they do?  I don't remember us ever solving that puzzle.  later we would set up cowboys and robbers like the beginning of a movie.  when I got a room of my own, and my mother took away my books (she knew about hiding one under the pillow!) and turned off the lights, I became a soldier back in the time of the Trojan war, or a pirate in the Caribbean, or a cowboy on a trail drive when his boss and the foreman suddenly disappeared.  these were the beginnings.  much later, in 1994, I closed a science fiction anthology annoyed, and declared "I can do better than those!"  I've been writing stories since then.  are they better?  I don't know.  they satisfy me.  they satisfy the few friends I've tried them out on.  I haven't tried them out on editors.  but it's not the interactions required for getting published that I claim to appreciate.  I appreciate the storymaking:  setting up the problem, choosing a narrator and a point of view, misdirection, developing characters, describing the action, letting them work out a solution, and writing an ending that does not wrap up too much.  I write stories I can believe, about a world I can trust, where people are glad of partial solutions, sometimes of anything that feels like a solution at all.  I not only appreciate storymaking, I love it.

134.366 - 2016 project and the Jeep

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

the Jeep

once upon a time, this country engaged in a war that required it to fight in Europe and in the Pacific at the same time.  before we could fight in Europe, we had to fight across north Africa and cross the Mediterranean to invade Italy.  the war was called World War II because it was fought all around the world at the same time.  as usual with wars, almost nothing good came out of it.  one possible exception was the Jeep.  officially it was a light-utility reconnaissance vehicle, 1/4 ton, 4x4 and it was a truck.  there were only about 600,000 built during the war, but GIs used them for everything!  well, no, of course not.   they were too light for tamping down runways, for instance,  and too big for digging a foxhole with, but they were just right as a light, fast car that could run over rough terrain, could damn near pull a tree stump out of the ground, could serve as a gunbase.  GIs loved it, I am told.  they loved it so much that when the Army released a quarter-skazillion of them for sale after the war, they sold out in days.  (that's a story I have no documentation for.)  they were so popular that the manufacturer began selling commercial versions of it after the war and the brand name is still in existence today.

133.366 - 2016 project and Conestoga wagons

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

Conestoga wagons

what?  have I ever even seen one?  for real, I mean?  what's that got to do with appreciation?  but actually, I may have.  on that terrible trip across the midwest that our family took, I think in 1949.  I don't remember it with any clarity, of course, just that it was awful.  six people who didn't much like each other, crammed into one of those terrible cars of the time, who drove from Baton Rouge to New York City by way of Springfield, Illinois, and other historical places.  why?  because there were no freeways, and no direct route from BR to NYC, and we needed doses of American history, we kids of whom I was the oldest and had been rescued from the second grade.  (the second grade in this country back then was hell.  it was a rerun of the first grade without the fun.  or at least that's how it started.  oh, and I had hated first grade.)  what the hell were we to make of American history taught geographically on that trip?  but somewhere in or near Springfield, if I remember right, we were dragged through a museum where we were supposed to not talk, not ask questions, and not touch anything.  again if I remember correctly, a genuine, real Conestoga wagon stood in the museum, "pulled" by four stuffed horses.  sigh.  I ducked under the purple rope or whatever the museum used back then, and was headed for the horses and the driver's seat when some museum person who smelled good snatched me up and returned me to my parents.  like Victoria, they were Not Amused.  but personal anecdote aside, Conestoga wagons were a Real Thing.  they were not invented for western movies, although so many, many western movies used them!  they were invented to carry cargo first.  but they were the ideal size to carry the possessions of a more-or-less middle-class family, and the tools they'd need to get started as farmers when they knew damn near nothing about farming.  yes, hundreds, thousands of families bought one apiece for a one-way trip into the unknown.  for those who got where they thought they were going, and not every family did, the Conestoga provided temporary shelter while the man tried to build a log cabin out of prairie grass.  (no one I know of has ever accused settlers of being smart, but the ones who survived were a helluva lot smarter after than before their trip.)  once the family had real shelter, the Conestoga could become firewood, or could become the wagon for farm produce and for supplies the family had to buy in town.  the Conestoga was useful in so many ways, including as decorations for western movies, that I give it a resounding appreciation.  it was more useful than the Jeep!

132.366 - 2016 project and laptop computers

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

laptop computers

or as some people call them, computers.  having worked on computers since 1965, I've seen a lot of devices called computers:  "big iron", minicomputers, microcomputers, desktop computers, several generations of servers, laptops, tablets, palmtops, smart phones.  I suppose once I get over my bias, I'll see the smart watches as computers, but I'm too cranky to just yet.  why then focus on laptops?  because I'm looking at five of my own and it suddenly occurred to me that I must appreciate them to own five!  so what do I appreciate about them?  well, they're convenient, especially the lightweights.  (a lightweight laptop is not one that barely computes, but one that weighs very little.  mine weigh as much as nearly two pounds, and as little as a few ounces.)  they're portable - you can take them where you need to work, like to a library, or where you need to be, like to someone else's speech. you can use one to do so many things!  you can take pictures, share pictures, make a phone call - with or without video - and sometimes a conference call, you can prepare text, arrange photos, I am told you can compose music on them, I know I can play recorded music on them.  you probably have thought of six uses for them that I haven't.  oddly, one of the things I appreciate about a couple of mine, is that I can hold it in one hand with my head cocked this way then that while I puzzle over what I've done and what I meant to do.  laptops now do actually work in your lap, although most still work most comfortably on a desk or a table.  so yes, I appreciate laptop computers.  may they reign a dozen years more!  (except I have a sneaky anticipation that some even more convenient form of the computer is almost here, climbing into the horizon of imagination or maybe almost into the horizon of practice now.)  compute on!

131.366 - 2016 project and the Buddha

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

the Buddha

if he hadn't existed, we would have had to invent him.  that isn't quite the saying and it wasn't originally said about the Buddha, but it'll do and it does apply to the Buddha.  I mean, what a story!  a prince is born, maybe 600 years BCE.  Rome is about 150 years old, but is still a rude village of outlaws pretending to be the hub of the world.  China is still seven kingdoms.  India almost thinks it is the world.  It has kingdoms and princedoms and other doms and the Hindu religion and a prince is born.  maybe even nobody notices, really, except for his father the king, who sets about building an island in which the prince will be protected from disease and age and war.  whatever could he have been thinking?  wasn't the prince gonna have to succeed him and know about war and diplomacy and merchants and whatever else you need to know to govern?  but let's not mess with the story.  the prince grows up as untroubled as his rich and powerful father can protect him.  at the appropriate age, the king fetches a wife for the prince and indoctrinates her into the no disturbance rules.  the prince falls in love with his lovely wife and all is still well.  oops!  and then one day!  the prince rides his favorite horse, and somehow gets out the gates of his estate.  what?  he encounters a market, with rich people, poor people, regular folks, and people starving.  he encounters a place where doctors are treating people so sick that their relatives have brought them to this place.  he encounters a man so old he is dying as he greets the prince.  the prince is horrified.  he never knew the common condition of his fellow men, he never even knew he had fellow men!  he knows no word for this common condition, so he invents one, suffering.  dear gods!  (the Hindus had fifty thousand gods, I think.)  everyone except him suffers or is about to suffer!  he never knew!  what a world!  he rushes home and tries to explain to his wife but is too distraught for coherence.  he tears his clothes off and leaves the estate again, but this time on purpose.  he has to find an end to suffering!  for himself and for people everywhere.  he finds the wise men sitting beside the river and contemplating.  he contemplates too.  no!  this is not it!  for one thing, not everyone can do this!  someone has to farm, to soldier, to judge, to make peace.  he wanders off and has other adventures that teach him more about suffering and wrong solutions.  and then he sits under the bodhi tree.  he may have sat there seconds or centuries, he never knew afterwards, and the answer came to him.  the answer was so simple he could not help but smile and then laugh.  the answer was so disturbing that the gods sent an army to destroy him.  the answer was so profound and holy that the bodhi tree is preserved forever.  the answer was don't suffer.  but how could he teach that to other people?  they were convinced they did suffer.  and they did!  he tried to show them his simple idea, that all you had to do was not suffer, just accept what's so and do what you wish to change it, but know it doesn't matter, and it doesn't matter that it doesn't matter.  people tried their best to learn.  they wore clothes like the Buddha did, they walked like the Buddha did, they begged for food like the Buddha did, they did everything but learn his simple idea, don't suffer.  except a few did.  everywhere he went, a few did, and they spread it to other people.  a single man probably can't have gone all the places he is said to have traveled, sharing his simple truth, but his truth did spread.  all he ever wanted for you and for everyone is don't suffer.  whatever it is doesn't matter, and it doesn't matter that it doesn't matter.  don't suffer.  the Buddha.  as I appreciate him.

130.366 - 2016 project and knives

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

knives

oh my, yes, knives!  wherever did I learn that appreciation?  I don't know.  in some book I read about a man who could throw a knife, and I tried and tried and tried to learn the skill.  never did.  but by then I had already watched, fascinated, as cooks chopped celery or onions, as they sliced green peppers or tomatoes or pineapples, as they carved a chicken.  how ever did I keep fingertips after watching those displays?  I useta sharpen my pencils for school with a pocket knife, and prided myself on how steep an angle I could carve.  when I learned the Boy Scout motto, Be Prepared, I immediately understood, always carry a knife, and know how to use it.  I preferred knives with some heft in the blade, so they chunked into wood.  I kept my mother's blades sharp.  except aluminum blades - do you remember aluminum blades? - which would dull as you put away the sharpening stone.  I imagined revolvers with a bayonet attached to the barrel for when you ran out of bullets.  I even designed a holster for a gun like that.  I probably learned leathercraft as much to use the knives involved as to build holsters and scabbards, and oh yeah, wallets and purses and belts and, no, I never got around to an actual saddle, but I built a model of a saddle, all tooled.  I've owned a bayonet, a dagger, a stiletto, an alleged throwing knife, and over a dozen pocket knives (serially, not in parallel).  I've owned at one time and another, three different Swiss Army knives, although I've never really considered it a knife - it's a multi-tool with a blade or two.  I almost always own at least one X-acto knife.  once when I went into a hardware store, I fell into a trance staring at a set of knives whose use as tools I could hardly imagine.  another time in a pawn shop, I added up the prices of all the knives I wanted and damn near cried because I would never ever have that much pocket money.  yes, I appreciate knives.

129.366 - 2016 project and biography

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

biography

this can't surprise you.  someone who loves history surely is going to at least like biography.  Well, maybe not.  there is a branch of history, I understand, in which people aren't the actors, the agents.  historical movements happen and people scurry to tag along or something.  clearly I don't understand that history.  on a planet where I could understand things, people would do things and maybe someone after would come along and say  "oh I see, manifest destiny!"  so I like reading about the boy who became the Duke of Marlborough almost as much as I like to read about the battles he fought and what they meant.  I confess though:  I don't read just any biography.  Joan of Arc, yes; Richelieu, never - or never so far.  Miles Standish, yes; Andrew Jackson, never so far.  Bismarck, yes; Marie Curie, not so far.  what is my rule?  I don't know, I just know the "Yes!" feeling that wells up in me that tells me I'm gonna read this one.  yes, I appreciate biography, especially biography done well.

128.366 - 2016 project and tales of the Round Table

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

tales of the Round Table

try to imagine creating them.  there you are a singer, a storyteller, maybe a harpist, full of life and the joy of life, in a world that Christianity has sealed into a thousand years of darkness.  you begin to conceive a story of a magnificent king who begins as a bright and curious boy, becomes a knight and a leader of knights, carves out a kingdom, then makes a kingdom of the whole island!  and you realize you can't tell this, not without being burned alive just for thinking it up, without burying it in Christian clutter.  so you come up with a great wizard, Merlin, who is so necessary to the kingdoms that the church does not bother him, who arranges for one great king to trick another king's wife into letting him bed her, which brings about the prince you want, but of course the king and the queen have to die tragically for they have sinned.  you have Merlin secretly arrange for the boy to be brought up by a knight so poor that even his foster children are ignored.  and after the king who needed help bedding another man's wife - that happens in the Bible too, so it's okay - dies without apparent issue, Merlin comes up with a sword in a stone that only the scrawny foster son of a poor knight can pull from the stone, so everyone accepts him as the new king.  now even your most inveterate believer in fairy tales is probably gonna have trouble with that, so you have that scrawny kid grow up into a magnificent knight and leader of knights who goes out and wins Twelve Great Battles which extend his kingship from not much more than a county to the whole damned island!  and then Merlin brings him a magic table so big around, and it is round, that fifty knights can sit around it and still talk to each other and boast about knightly deeds and so forth.  you invent a best friend knight, Lancelot, who is in love with the king's queen Guinevere - rounding out the story of infidelity that Arthur began with.  oh, oh, oh!  and you make up stories for each of those fifty knights, and some of them are so cloying that monks love them, but others are so robust they live for boys for hundreds of years longer than knights charge into battle.  you even arrange for One Last Great Battle (making it thirteen, just like Jesus and the disciples) in which Arthur and the fifty knights are destroyed even though they win in some sense.  then Arthur is carried from the battlefield by three queens - kinda like the three wise men - to some magical island where he may get to live or maybe not, you don't have to be clear about that.  and you get to tell your story and live without getting burned, and your stories outlive you by about fifteen hundred years, and people figure out that even if they can't get rid of the Christian clutter, the stories are not Christian at all, they're just wonderful.

127.366 - 2016 project and cowboys

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

cowboys

I never got over my infatuation with being a cowboy.  I admired vaqueiros in Brasil.  it probably will not surprise you that my father's disdain for them and for the way they lived only endeared them to me more.  my aunt told me that the cowboys I read about in books and in stories didn't exist and probably never had existed.  they were just story cowboys.  for a while that ruined me.  my aunt knew everything, or at least everything about Texas.  but then a bright idea struck me.  cowboys just lived in a world different from hers!  they must exist!  how else could we make movies about them?  then I found Louis L'Amour's cowboys, Sergio Leone's cowboys, Clint Eastwood's cowboys!  yes!  I also met cowboys in bars along the highway between Las Cruces and Albuquerque in New Mexico.  they told me stories about cowboying in New Mexico in the 50s and the 60s.  nope, their stories had nothing to do with those of Louis or Sergio or Clint, but they were good stories about real decisions with life-or-death consequences.  I read stories in National Geographic about "real cowboys now" and they too were not stories like Sergio's or Clint's, but were still stories about rugged life, hard work and desperate times, but mostly they fought weather or climate or markets.  so when I say cowboys, I mean both real cowboys and Clint's cowboys.  I love them both.  how wonderful to live in a world where both exist!

126.366 - 2016 project and knighthood

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

knighthood

what a funny thing for me to appreciate!  but I do.  maybe it's related to my appreciation of Sir Walter Scott.  maybe it's related to my appreciation of tales of the Round Table - I have read so many!  but even in more modern times, I cheered for Paul McCartney being knighted.  but really, when I think of knights, I think of the 11th to the 16th centuries, from the Conquerer to the Roses, when knights really armored up, led armies, fought battles, killed and got killed with swords and the like.  close-up weapons.  I have no idea why that's romantic, or why it seems more courageous than firing a rifle or dropping a bomb, but it does.  but I think it's more the code of honor that they represented, or that stories about them represented.  there they were, an eyeblink away from barbarians, and a stand for something like civilization.  like I admitted at the beginning of this paragraph, it's a funny thing for me to appreciate, but I do.

125.366 - 2016 project and writing

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

writing

I so appreciate writing!  let me be clear about that:  for me, writing is a body of commitments, starting with a commitment to write poems well, then a second commitment to write stories well, and a commitment to write every day.  so it is an engagement with language, an entanglement almost, that keeps me studying English, not only how I am told it works, but how people around me use it.  it is a commitment to speak truth, not necessarily historical truth - some of us write fiction - but necessarily poetic truth, necessarily human truth.  for me, writing is the puzzle-solving of using language well, or better, of using language strikingly.  among the consequences of writing that I appreciate are the discoveries that come from this engagement, this entanglement:  for instance that written English is different from spoken English, and once one has that distinction, that there are so many Englishes - a child's English, a young adult's English, an adult's English, a manager's English.  learning that we have so many Englishes, it takes immense arrogance to write "the" rules of English.  then learning how necessary that arrogance is, for without "the" rules of English we wouldn't be able to discern the many sets of rules we use.  so yes, I appreciate writing, and dedicate my life to it.

124.366 - 2016 project and copyediting

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

copyediting

Lindy just finished a remarkable task that she did out of love for me.  she read all 366 of my numbered poems from last year, 2015, plus the introduction, the table of contents, the after words, and whatever else was in the manuscript for my book.  by Word's count, she read 490 pages and 65,555 words.  she found those nasty little &%wes! characters that RTF editors insert into your text.  she found uncentered titles that I'd forgotten to center.  she found words like "substitiuons" and "polititicians" that I'd misspelled.  she found words I didn't need and words I did.  she found line breaks I hadn't intended and places where I needed line breaks to help a reader with the sense of the poem.  if you're a writer, you know how much fun it is to see your writing through someone else's eyes.  I accepted all of her corrections but one, and a second I don't know how to fix.  but what a remarkable job she did!  thank you, Lindy.  and thank you other people who do this work.  there ought to be something stronger to say than thank you, but I don't know it.

123.366 - 2016 project and Donny Jackson

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

Donny Jackson

Donny Jackson makes the English language do things I never knew it could, and makes the English language do them with a flourish, like a gymnast's hand-flicks after a stunt she just invented, or a wrestler leaping up from pinning an opponent whom odds-makers had bet on, or a fencer disarming his adversary, except Donny makes plain old plow horse English into a dragon he rides.

122.366 - 2016 project and low-sodium foods

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

low-sodium foods

oh my goodness!  yes, way back in 2012 when I admitted I needed help and found out I had congestive heart failure (CHF), spent eleven days in the hospital, and accepted taking a class on what I needed to do with the rest of my life (so I'd have a rest of my life), one of the things I learned was that I had to eat low-sodium foods the rest of my life.  what!  what does that mean?  oh, no salt.  no problem!  right!  well, I made it a problem of course.  what's the point of being human if you don't make life a problem you have to solve?  I didn't like low-sodium, no-salt-added foods!  everything tasted bland.  well, that was just silly.  that's what I had to eat.  so I set myself to re-train my palate.  it just takes time, if you co-operate.  meanwhile, Lindy took them on as a challenge and found helpful places on the internet.  she took on cooking low-sodium foods with zest!  soon we ate low-sodium lasagna, low-sodium chili, low-sodium pasta, low-sodium waffles with maple syrup, low-sodium bean soup, low-sodium anything with tomatoes and hamburger and beans and chopped onions.  goodness gracious!  yes, Lindy found dozens of zesty low-sodium recipes and even made up some of her own!  I learned to love spices even more than I already had, and hardly ever miss salt now.  (still a human, you know.)  thank you, love.  thank you, palate.  thank you, universe.  low-sodium foods are life-stretchers!