every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that appreciates
recipes
have you ever imagined where recipes came from? how did we ever come up with digging up roots, skinning them, and boiling them? how did we ever come up with a pot to boil them in? how did we think of baking them? of cutting them into slenders and frying them? all the things hanging open and loose - mangoes, tomatoes, peaches - they were easy. the birds led us to them, or our own curiosity. little kids put anything in their mouths. but who thought of rice? how to grow it, harvest it, dry it, cook it? but it's not so much who thought of rutabaga, arugula, spinach, and onion, but who thought to cut them up, mix them, and call it a salad? who added the vinaigrette? did our maxi-multi-great grandmothers ploddingly think of one ingredient at a time? or did some terrible woman come up with the whole thing all at once and go nuts with all the food ideas bursting in her head? did the men come home and stand in awe of the crazy woman, obviously touched by the gods, and infecting the women around her? did they tie her up and hang her spread out in a cross-position over the door of the cave? were they so worked up with their collective macho that they ran off to a ten-day hunt? did the women cower around her, listening to the sparkling wisdom still pouring from her, til they grabbed charcoal and leaves or skins and invented writing so they could record all the wonderful ideas from the crucified woman? did the hunters come back from their hunt, expecting to be feted and honored for their achievements, only to find the cave piled high with stacks of skins and leaves and find their women busy trying recipes? "here, taste this!" or "ooo! come here! smell! taste!" did the black-and-white that they'd lived in for decades suddenly turn into Technicolor? did the men suddenly feel picayune, standing there with their piles of meat, while the women experimented with sauces and roux and breads? did the men get all shifty-eyed about how they'd treated the terrible first cook? Did they go outside to cut her down? did they discover they were too late, that the crows and lizards and bugs had all feasted? do their descendants still live with the guilt of what the first men did to the first cook? is that why women treasure recipes?
Friday, September 30, 2016
Thursday, September 29, 2016
273.366 - 2016 project and light
every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that appreciates
light
people who paint tell me the light in Seattle is different from the light in Los Angeles. I grin and say of course it is. in Los Angeles you have sunshine smeared by smog, in Seattle you have whatever part of sunshine manages to get through overcast. thereby I prove myself unable to participate in their conversation. I do not see light as an artist (painter) does. I'm not sure I see it as an engineer or a physicist or an astronomer does either. maybe as a poet. I see the silveriness of moonlight. the faintness of starlight. sunlight I see as brash and swaggering, vibrant and vigorous. Seattle-light I see as shy or perhaps devious, trying for the silveriness of moonlight but only achieving shades of grey. a friend of mine who painted there, decades ago when I allegedly lived in Seattle, told me "the problem with you is that you can't see. you're not blind, but you might as well be. the world will never be anything to you except a physics lab." as it turned out, that has proved a bearable curse. I claim I appreciate light, and use its shadings in my poems and stories. but now and then I wish I could see whatever it is my Seattle friend could see. (by the way: "allegedly lived in Seattle" - for three years, whenever anyone asked "where do you live?" my automatic answer was "Seattle." I had bought a house there. my wife and child lived there. but I spent as much time in Los Angeles as in Seattle. it was confusing then, and - as you can see - confuses me still today.) <imagine me grinning at you> perhaps what I see is light, and cannot see the light.
light
people who paint tell me the light in Seattle is different from the light in Los Angeles. I grin and say of course it is. in Los Angeles you have sunshine smeared by smog, in Seattle you have whatever part of sunshine manages to get through overcast. thereby I prove myself unable to participate in their conversation. I do not see light as an artist (painter) does. I'm not sure I see it as an engineer or a physicist or an astronomer does either. maybe as a poet. I see the silveriness of moonlight. the faintness of starlight. sunlight I see as brash and swaggering, vibrant and vigorous. Seattle-light I see as shy or perhaps devious, trying for the silveriness of moonlight but only achieving shades of grey. a friend of mine who painted there, decades ago when I allegedly lived in Seattle, told me "the problem with you is that you can't see. you're not blind, but you might as well be. the world will never be anything to you except a physics lab." as it turned out, that has proved a bearable curse. I claim I appreciate light, and use its shadings in my poems and stories. but now and then I wish I could see whatever it is my Seattle friend could see. (by the way: "allegedly lived in Seattle" - for three years, whenever anyone asked "where do you live?" my automatic answer was "Seattle." I had bought a house there. my wife and child lived there. but I spent as much time in Los Angeles as in Seattle. it was confusing then, and - as you can see - confuses me still today.) <imagine me grinning at you> perhaps what I see is light, and cannot see the light.
Wednesday, September 28, 2016
272.366 - 2016 project and the rules of story
every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that appreciates
the rules of story
ah! if you have ever wrestled with them, you must know. somewhere or somehow they exist. probably someone wiser than I has written them down, at least the ones which have pinned him and left him lame or with a withered arm. me? I still work inside them, at the edges of them, or trying to find which I can loop another way. some nights or early mornings I imagine them written in ink that flamed and burned itself into the parchment, so now you can still sometimes see a glowing coal winking from a rule, and know that there an "except" waits for some story-maker to pull it out and dance with it until the coal grows dark and the story-maker's hands are blistered and he takes what he has learned into whatever stories he writes next. I imagine them in a cave, a cave that moves from hill to hill, or mountainside to mountainside, so each time you find it by a new path. they lie there, page after parchment page of them inside a heavy leather cover, and you, brave fellow story-maker, heave open the cover and search reverently and in awe until you find the rule you have run up against. wrestle with the old language, wrest past the old-fashioned symbols and archaic grammar. somewhere in that rule is the life you need for your story, in it or in its exception.
the rules of story
ah! if you have ever wrestled with them, you must know. somewhere or somehow they exist. probably someone wiser than I has written them down, at least the ones which have pinned him and left him lame or with a withered arm. me? I still work inside them, at the edges of them, or trying to find which I can loop another way. some nights or early mornings I imagine them written in ink that flamed and burned itself into the parchment, so now you can still sometimes see a glowing coal winking from a rule, and know that there an "except" waits for some story-maker to pull it out and dance with it until the coal grows dark and the story-maker's hands are blistered and he takes what he has learned into whatever stories he writes next. I imagine them in a cave, a cave that moves from hill to hill, or mountainside to mountainside, so each time you find it by a new path. they lie there, page after parchment page of them inside a heavy leather cover, and you, brave fellow story-maker, heave open the cover and search reverently and in awe until you find the rule you have run up against. wrestle with the old language, wrest past the old-fashioned symbols and archaic grammar. somewhere in that rule is the life you need for your story, in it or in its exception.
Tuesday, September 27, 2016
271.366 - 2016 project and magic
every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that appreciates
magic
magic! oh my goodness, yes! it makes no sense. I studied to be a physicist. I studied to be an engineer. neither would have anything to do with magic. I worked at least twenty years in the unmanned exploration of space. as magical as that seemed, no, it was cold hard logic at work with the forces of nature that we know. then what? who? where? when? how? I don't know, just that magic - at least magic in stories, has fascinated me since sometime after I began to read. it wasn't until I was thirteen or so that I read about some piece of magic and said to myself, "no, magic wouldn't work like that." what a funny idea, that magic is constrained! yet there it was and I clearly believed it. who? oh, Merlin had magic, so did Morgan Le Fay. the gods? no, the gods are a species to themselves. they have powers that would be magic in a human, but they are not magic. so in my stories, at least half my stories, one or more of my characters has and uses magic, but never unlimited power. some of my stories come about because someone who has magic cannot deal with the hurly-burly of this world and needs a physical bodyguard. in my stories, typically, one character has more or more powerful magic than another character. but whether I've got the hang of writing magic into a story or not, I love its use in a story - except of course, in the denouement. that has rules of its own, and they don't allow magic except as decoration. zie sprecht Wyatt.
magic
magic! oh my goodness, yes! it makes no sense. I studied to be a physicist. I studied to be an engineer. neither would have anything to do with magic. I worked at least twenty years in the unmanned exploration of space. as magical as that seemed, no, it was cold hard logic at work with the forces of nature that we know. then what? who? where? when? how? I don't know, just that magic - at least magic in stories, has fascinated me since sometime after I began to read. it wasn't until I was thirteen or so that I read about some piece of magic and said to myself, "no, magic wouldn't work like that." what a funny idea, that magic is constrained! yet there it was and I clearly believed it. who? oh, Merlin had magic, so did Morgan Le Fay. the gods? no, the gods are a species to themselves. they have powers that would be magic in a human, but they are not magic. so in my stories, at least half my stories, one or more of my characters has and uses magic, but never unlimited power. some of my stories come about because someone who has magic cannot deal with the hurly-burly of this world and needs a physical bodyguard. in my stories, typically, one character has more or more powerful magic than another character. but whether I've got the hang of writing magic into a story or not, I love its use in a story - except of course, in the denouement. that has rules of its own, and they don't allow magic except as decoration. zie sprecht Wyatt.
Monday, September 26, 2016
270.366 - 2016 project and Leonard Cohen
every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that appreciates
Leonard Cohen
can you believe it? most of my life I did not know who Leonard Cohen was. it's true! I must have half-heard a couple dozen of his songs, half-memorized them - you know how you do, "lah-de-dah" and "dum-de-dum" for some of the words - or worse, half-misheard parts of them, my attention not really on the song but on what I was doing, motorcycling, or maintaining my motorcycle, or attending a picnic, or enduring a party. and then along came k.d. lang, and I listened to her about the same way. sigh. I don't remember what she said or did or sang, but she suddenly changed from a mild "wow" to "oh! I have to pay attention to her!" so I listened and liked and admired and read about her and "blam!" she sang "Hallelujah!" by Leonard Cohen. oh my goodness! I became a Leonard Cohen fan forty years late. and embarrassedly learned I'd been a Leonard Cohen fan for a lot of years without knowing it because of my careless attention to music. tsk upon me! I think I've bought every album of his since k.d. lang performed "Hallelujah!" at the Canadian Winter Olympics in 2010. well, BFD. that's six years and not many albums. but I've also bought a lot of his old singles. and read and read and read Leonard Cohen. wow indeed! thank you, Leonard, for a long and amazing and important career! and now you're about to release a new album, "You Want It Darker". I've pre-ordered it - and I never pre-verb anything! - and bought the teaser song by the same name. thank you again, Leonard Cohen. thank you.
Leonard Cohen
can you believe it? most of my life I did not know who Leonard Cohen was. it's true! I must have half-heard a couple dozen of his songs, half-memorized them - you know how you do, "lah-de-dah" and "dum-de-dum" for some of the words - or worse, half-misheard parts of them, my attention not really on the song but on what I was doing, motorcycling, or maintaining my motorcycle, or attending a picnic, or enduring a party. and then along came k.d. lang, and I listened to her about the same way. sigh. I don't remember what she said or did or sang, but she suddenly changed from a mild "wow" to "oh! I have to pay attention to her!" so I listened and liked and admired and read about her and "blam!" she sang "Hallelujah!" by Leonard Cohen. oh my goodness! I became a Leonard Cohen fan forty years late. and embarrassedly learned I'd been a Leonard Cohen fan for a lot of years without knowing it because of my careless attention to music. tsk upon me! I think I've bought every album of his since k.d. lang performed "Hallelujah!" at the Canadian Winter Olympics in 2010. well, BFD. that's six years and not many albums. but I've also bought a lot of his old singles. and read and read and read Leonard Cohen. wow indeed! thank you, Leonard, for a long and amazing and important career! and now you're about to release a new album, "You Want It Darker". I've pre-ordered it - and I never pre-verb anything! - and bought the teaser song by the same name. thank you again, Leonard Cohen. thank you.
Sunday, September 25, 2016
269.366 - 2016 project and homefulmindedness
every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that appreciates
homefulmindedness
home - a place associated with satisfaction, a feeling of safety, acceptance, accomplishment, quiet; one's residence. homeful - to be filled with the spirit of "home", with the geist of home. homefulminded - having to do with thoughts of being homeful, with actions that evoke being homeful, with surrounding oneself with objects that summon being homeful. homefulmindedness - the state of being homefulminded. oh yes, today especially (we just got home from six days of travel) I appreciate homefulmindedness! for some reason, I just remembered a story of some Chinese or Japanese poet (Basho?) setting off on a year-long or perhaps years-long trip carrying nothing more than sandals, a walking staff, paper, pen, and ink, and a few coins. in some ways, that spirit must be the antithesis of homefulmindedness. today I appreciate homefulmindedness.
homefulmindedness
home - a place associated with satisfaction, a feeling of safety, acceptance, accomplishment, quiet; one's residence. homeful - to be filled with the spirit of "home", with the geist of home. homefulminded - having to do with thoughts of being homeful, with actions that evoke being homeful, with surrounding oneself with objects that summon being homeful. homefulmindedness - the state of being homefulminded. oh yes, today especially (we just got home from six days of travel) I appreciate homefulmindedness! for some reason, I just remembered a story of some Chinese or Japanese poet (Basho?) setting off on a year-long or perhaps years-long trip carrying nothing more than sandals, a walking staff, paper, pen, and ink, and a few coins. in some ways, that spirit must be the antithesis of homefulmindedness. today I appreciate homefulmindedness.
Saturday, September 24, 2016
268.366 - 2016 project and home comforts
every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that appreciates
home comforts
Lindy and I live in a small apartment. it has a tiny kitchen and an awkwardly shaped bathroom, it has a ridiculous little "hallway" that connects the living room, the bathroom, and the bedroom. the "hallway" is big enough to change your mind in, but not big enough for you to turn around in if you do. the living room, bedroom, and breakfast nook are big enough, but without space to spare. still, it's big enough. more importantly, we've grown accustomed to it. we know what's in there and what isn't, we know where we expect things to be. traveling, we haven't had that for six days. on the train, the seats in reserved coach class felt so cramped that we upgraded to a roomette on the way home. and we still feel compressed. (I think a Spartan might think the engineer who designed the roomette had done an adequate job, but he had overdone the concept "Spartan".) the bathroom down the hall amazes me. it has everything a bathroom needs except elbow room. coffee is ready most of the day from about 6:00 am til about 10:00 pm. so there's nothing really wrong here, nothing to really complain about, but everything feels wrong, or at least not quite right. I'm itching to get home. I miss and appreciate, oh, damn near everything about our little apartment. maybe by midnight tonight!
home comforts
Lindy and I live in a small apartment. it has a tiny kitchen and an awkwardly shaped bathroom, it has a ridiculous little "hallway" that connects the living room, the bathroom, and the bedroom. the "hallway" is big enough to change your mind in, but not big enough for you to turn around in if you do. the living room, bedroom, and breakfast nook are big enough, but without space to spare. still, it's big enough. more importantly, we've grown accustomed to it. we know what's in there and what isn't, we know where we expect things to be. traveling, we haven't had that for six days. on the train, the seats in reserved coach class felt so cramped that we upgraded to a roomette on the way home. and we still feel compressed. (I think a Spartan might think the engineer who designed the roomette had done an adequate job, but he had overdone the concept "Spartan".) the bathroom down the hall amazes me. it has everything a bathroom needs except elbow room. coffee is ready most of the day from about 6:00 am til about 10:00 pm. so there's nothing really wrong here, nothing to really complain about, but everything feels wrong, or at least not quite right. I'm itching to get home. I miss and appreciate, oh, damn near everything about our little apartment. maybe by midnight tonight!
Friday, September 23, 2016
267.366 - 2016 project and waking up early
every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that appreciates
waking up early
did I this morning? yes, of course. was it that we start home today? maybe. was it that I would wake to a new version of Windows 10 to beta test? maybe. was it that I told myself to wake early (so I might have a little time to think and to send an appreciation before we got back on the train)? maybe. I'd like to think it was the last. every time I tell myself to wake early and I do, I tell myself "See?" it may be becoming true. in any case, I love the "spare time" to think while nearly everyone around me sleeps. or the "spare time" to do some task I've been putting off. in any case, waking up early, I recommend it.
waking up early
did I this morning? yes, of course. was it that we start home today? maybe. was it that I would wake to a new version of Windows 10 to beta test? maybe. was it that I told myself to wake early (so I might have a little time to think and to send an appreciation before we got back on the train)? maybe. I'd like to think it was the last. every time I tell myself to wake early and I do, I tell myself "See?" it may be becoming true. in any case, I love the "spare time" to think while nearly everyone around me sleeps. or the "spare time" to do some task I've been putting off. in any case, waking up early, I recommend it.
Thursday, September 22, 2016
266.366 - 2016 project and satisfaction
every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that appreciates
satisfaction
I think maybe we don't give it enough savor in our lives. maybe that just means I don't recognize it enough in mine. looking back, I'm quite satisfied with what I did on the Lunar Orbiter Project, on the Viking Project, on the Voyager Project, on the IRAS (InfraRed Astronomical Satellite) Project, even on my last two participations in projects at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. I'm satisfied with the work I did after that. I'm satisfied with my years of motorcycling and my years of Harleying. I'm satisfied with my years of coffee, and my new years of coffeelessness. (imagine me grinning at you.) I'm satisfied with this trip up to Seattle, although hindsight tells me I could have planned and executed it better. I am beyond satisfied, I am pleased with becoming a poet in Los Angeles (as opposed to a poet in hiding). for the most part, I am satisfied with my hosting, although just typing that makes me wince at how many things I could do better. and I still have whatever life I have left to add satisfactions to that list. I am beginning to think no one will wrap me in the banners I won for the battles I won, and no one will push my longship out to see with me inside it and light it on fire, possibly because I don't own a longship and have never gone viking. but maybe a quieter version of cremation, and a happy-go-lucky wake and a memorial service of verses other poets have written for or about me. could happen. I may not be here to appreciate it if it does.
satisfaction
I think maybe we don't give it enough savor in our lives. maybe that just means I don't recognize it enough in mine. looking back, I'm quite satisfied with what I did on the Lunar Orbiter Project, on the Viking Project, on the Voyager Project, on the IRAS (InfraRed Astronomical Satellite) Project, even on my last two participations in projects at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. I'm satisfied with the work I did after that. I'm satisfied with my years of motorcycling and my years of Harleying. I'm satisfied with my years of coffee, and my new years of coffeelessness. (imagine me grinning at you.) I'm satisfied with this trip up to Seattle, although hindsight tells me I could have planned and executed it better. I am beyond satisfied, I am pleased with becoming a poet in Los Angeles (as opposed to a poet in hiding). for the most part, I am satisfied with my hosting, although just typing that makes me wince at how many things I could do better. and I still have whatever life I have left to add satisfactions to that list. I am beginning to think no one will wrap me in the banners I won for the battles I won, and no one will push my longship out to see with me inside it and light it on fire, possibly because I don't own a longship and have never gone viking. but maybe a quieter version of cremation, and a happy-go-lucky wake and a memorial service of verses other poets have written for or about me. could happen. I may not be here to appreciate it if it does.
265.366 - 2016 project and circumstances
every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that appreciates
circumstances
I am a little humbled. for the past three days, circumstances have ruled my living and my doing. sheees! really. I thought I'd learned to control circumstancea or live with them. not a Jedi knight, but maybe a Jedi squire. more seriously, I did what I needed to, did what I'd promised to, and circumstances did whatever they did, and we got along fine together. then circumstances decided to get bossy. actually, no, I got on the train. as innocent as that. now I knew the train advertisement said occasional network service, but I thought that meant five minutes here, five minutes there, like that. I can be ready for that, right? maybe so. I got three minutes or so twice and just over a minute once and that was it for day one. oh well, I thought, I can live with that. right? who knows? day two didn't go like that. network services flickered three times, none of them long enough for me to really connect. so I had accidental internet connection on Monday, and none on Tuesday. oh! and on Tuesday we did get to Seattle, but by the time we got to the motel room, it was 2345 (a quarter til midnight) n Yoda was right, "There is no try." oh wait! did it work? maybe. so on Wednesday I tried to confirm that it had and could not. at the motel, and yes, I chose an "inexpensive" motel, I have consistent internet connection, but I think it's about 30 kilobites per second. I tell it to post something, and an hour later I can do something else. maybe another time I'll not be so inexpensive. oh, who am I fooling? next time I'll look at my wallet again and look for the motel that most nearly fits what's in my wallet. in any case, Wednesday whooshed by me. I did participate in the celebration we came up here for - 50 years later for the Lunar Orbiter Project. It lasted about 7 hours, I think. (wow! there's only 87 of us left!) other than that I slept and waited for the internet and slept and waited for the internet. huh! and forgot to write my appreciation. tsk on me! and today I'm blaming that on circumstances, and appreciating circumstances.
circumstances
I am a little humbled. for the past three days, circumstances have ruled my living and my doing. sheees! really. I thought I'd learned to control circumstancea or live with them. not a Jedi knight, but maybe a Jedi squire. more seriously, I did what I needed to, did what I'd promised to, and circumstances did whatever they did, and we got along fine together. then circumstances decided to get bossy. actually, no, I got on the train. as innocent as that. now I knew the train advertisement said occasional network service, but I thought that meant five minutes here, five minutes there, like that. I can be ready for that, right? maybe so. I got three minutes or so twice and just over a minute once and that was it for day one. oh well, I thought, I can live with that. right? who knows? day two didn't go like that. network services flickered three times, none of them long enough for me to really connect. so I had accidental internet connection on Monday, and none on Tuesday. oh! and on Tuesday we did get to Seattle, but by the time we got to the motel room, it was 2345 (a quarter til midnight) n Yoda was right, "There is no try." oh wait! did it work? maybe. so on Wednesday I tried to confirm that it had and could not. at the motel, and yes, I chose an "inexpensive" motel, I have consistent internet connection, but I think it's about 30 kilobites per second. I tell it to post something, and an hour later I can do something else. maybe another time I'll not be so inexpensive. oh, who am I fooling? next time I'll look at my wallet again and look for the motel that most nearly fits what's in my wallet. in any case, Wednesday whooshed by me. I did participate in the celebration we came up here for - 50 years later for the Lunar Orbiter Project. It lasted about 7 hours, I think. (wow! there's only 87 of us left!) other than that I slept and waited for the internet and slept and waited for the internet. huh! and forgot to write my appreciation. tsk on me! and today I'm blaming that on circumstances, and appreciating circumstances.
Tuesday, September 20, 2016
264.366 - 2016 project and people - a poem
every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that appreciates
people - a poem
among
y'hafta get out among people again
to truly appreciate them
they're loud and they're noisy and brash
and those are the fun ones
they're friendly and tell stories
and laugh at themselves and at others
for taking ourselves so seriously
us the universe's afterthought
its idea of a joke
there are others of course
the ones who remind us of why we wore armor
or at least leather jackets
and we still keep a 9mm
and practice with it from time to time
they smile too
those others mostly
smile and put an arm
around your shoulders
measuring you for
location of wallet
or maybe of heart
measuring you for the size of a grave
or how much rope you'll take
and then there're the quiet
who'd ignore you if they dared
but you're as much a shark as the others
there are those just looking to sue
those wanting you to feel guilty
those not quite ready for a fight
but hoping you'll nudge them that far
the pretty girls practicing their skills
the prim girls looking
for something to cut off
and the clowns who want you to laugh
and all of them remind you
that we were all fun when we were kids
before we had tickets to punch
and meals to get home
and wallets and women to steal
Wyatt Underwood © 2016
people - a poem
among
y'hafta get out among people again
to truly appreciate them
they're loud and they're noisy and brash
and those are the fun ones
they're friendly and tell stories
and laugh at themselves and at others
for taking ourselves so seriously
us the universe's afterthought
its idea of a joke
there are others of course
the ones who remind us of why we wore armor
or at least leather jackets
and we still keep a 9mm
and practice with it from time to time
they smile too
those others mostly
smile and put an arm
around your shoulders
measuring you for
location of wallet
or maybe of heart
measuring you for the size of a grave
or how much rope you'll take
and then there're the quiet
who'd ignore you if they dared
but you're as much a shark as the others
there are those just looking to sue
those wanting you to feel guilty
those not quite ready for a fight
but hoping you'll nudge them that far
the pretty girls practicing their skills
the prim girls looking
for something to cut off
and the clowns who want you to laugh
and all of them remind you
that we were all fun when we were kids
before we had tickets to punch
and meals to get home
and wallets and women to steal
Wyatt Underwood © 2016
Monday, September 19, 2016
263.366 - 2016 project and the Lunar Orbiter Project
every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that appreciates
the Lunar Orbiter Project
once upon a time it was 1965 and I was fresh out of college and in my first professional job. the Boeing Company had hired me, and my boss tried to find a place in his group for an "engineer" who had a physics degree and lots of mathematics courses. somehow my boss put me to work on the Lunar Orbiter program. it was an inspired choice or decision. the Lunar Orbiter Project needed an "engineer" to do some programming work then to simulate data from a spacecraft flying to the moon. the simulated data would help train the flight team for what they'd see during the mission. we had the tools - a computer and a program that was supposed to work on it - but no one knew what to do. in some ways it was an ideal task for a new "engineer" at the Boeing Company, or in the then-new world of aerospace engineering. "here's a bunch of parts. this is what the machine is supposed to do. now build that machine and prove it works." damn! count me in! "oh, and while you're at it, learn how to work with other 'engineers'." yeah, yeah. (I need to explain my term "engineers". on my planet, there are engineers, people with engineering degrees who take engineering jobs and get an engineering license and become real licensed engineers. they sometimes become partners in an engineering firm. they are not "engineers". a lot of us get engineering degrees or related degrees and take engineering jobs with no intention of working toward a license. the world in the United States since World War II has had plenty of jobs for us "engineers" who do lots of interesting and useful work and never become real engineers. that's how it is on my planet. on your planet, you may not need that distinction, nor find it useful.) but back to Lunar Orbiter. I did sorta learn how to work with others - damn! I resisted! - and I did assemble the machine, and it did work. as a reward I got to help prepare the simulated data for training before each of all five flights, and I got to work on each flight team, helping track the spacecraft. oh damn! oh damn! it was like having a job in a science fiction book! and it led to other jobs in aerospace engineering, and in many ways it led to my becoming a poet. but those are other stories for another time. thank you, Lunar Orbiter, for starting a wonderful part of my life.
the Lunar Orbiter Project
once upon a time it was 1965 and I was fresh out of college and in my first professional job. the Boeing Company had hired me, and my boss tried to find a place in his group for an "engineer" who had a physics degree and lots of mathematics courses. somehow my boss put me to work on the Lunar Orbiter program. it was an inspired choice or decision. the Lunar Orbiter Project needed an "engineer" to do some programming work then to simulate data from a spacecraft flying to the moon. the simulated data would help train the flight team for what they'd see during the mission. we had the tools - a computer and a program that was supposed to work on it - but no one knew what to do. in some ways it was an ideal task for a new "engineer" at the Boeing Company, or in the then-new world of aerospace engineering. "here's a bunch of parts. this is what the machine is supposed to do. now build that machine and prove it works." damn! count me in! "oh, and while you're at it, learn how to work with other 'engineers'." yeah, yeah. (I need to explain my term "engineers". on my planet, there are engineers, people with engineering degrees who take engineering jobs and get an engineering license and become real licensed engineers. they sometimes become partners in an engineering firm. they are not "engineers". a lot of us get engineering degrees or related degrees and take engineering jobs with no intention of working toward a license. the world in the United States since World War II has had plenty of jobs for us "engineers" who do lots of interesting and useful work and never become real engineers. that's how it is on my planet. on your planet, you may not need that distinction, nor find it useful.) but back to Lunar Orbiter. I did sorta learn how to work with others - damn! I resisted! - and I did assemble the machine, and it did work. as a reward I got to help prepare the simulated data for training before each of all five flights, and I got to work on each flight team, helping track the spacecraft. oh damn! oh damn! it was like having a job in a science fiction book! and it led to other jobs in aerospace engineering, and in many ways it led to my becoming a poet. but those are other stories for another time. thank you, Lunar Orbiter, for starting a wonderful part of my life.
Sunday, September 18, 2016
262.366 - 2016 project and El Cid - himself
every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that appreciates
El Cid - himself
El Cid, of course, was not born El Cid. he was born Rodrigo Diaz, a minor aristocrat, near the town of Vivar, born around 1043. at 1065, he was the commander of Castille's army. huh? at 22? apparently. so he went off and won a bunch of battles and helped his king extend what was known as Castille, oops! but his king was murdered without an heir, and the only legitimate inheritors were people Rodrigo had been defeating in battle. the new king of Castille eventually exiled Rodrigo, who found work as a general for the Moors. he won a bunch of battles for them, but newcomers from Africa overwhelmed the army of Castille, and the king who'd exiled Rodrigo requested that he return and command what was left of Castille's army. he did, and won some battles, keeping the newcomers out but threatening Castille. on the side he worked at taking over the city-state of Valencia for himself and his family. in the end, he did rule Valencia for a while, and spent his last few years fighting the newcomers from Africa. he died at about 55 and his wife continued to rule Valencia for about three years. told my way, Rodrigo's life is almost ho-hum. kid grows up, becomes a general at 22, fights and wins, fights and wins, fights and wins, but his king is murdered. becomes general for his traditional enemies and fights and wins, fights and wins. is asked to return by the king who exiled him, does, fights and wins, fights and wins. wins a city of his own, fights some more, wins some more, and dies. fortunately he had a better biographer than me. one or more poets composed what we now call El Cantar de Mio Cid (the Song of My Cid), an epic poem assembled as three songs. it's not my fault; if I were making up history, it would be more coherent than this. oh! and to add to the fun, the first page is missing, and so are two pages in the middle. but it is written in Old Spanish. it is thousands of verses long, but I think each verse is 16 or 17 syllables long, broken into two lines. honestly, I don't get it. in any case, the story starts with the exile of El Cid and relates his fighting and winning and fighting and winning and fighting and winning. then the king brings him back to Castille, and he's reunited with his family, and his two daughters marry the two princes of Carrion. they turn out to be cads and cowards and stupid besides. they beat El Cid's daughters senseless and tie them up and leave them at the side of the road. their cousin rescues them and El Cid pleads to the king for justice. the king allows two of El Cid's men to duel the princes (one man to duel each prince) and El Cid's men win. not only that, but the kings of Aragon and of Navarre marry their sons to El Cid's daughters (one son to each daughter), and everything is wonderful. well, hell, the song was designed by a monk, how much imagination could you expect? sigh. how in the hell did El Cid so attract me as a kid? oh yeah, I didn't learn either of these stories! in whatever I read as a kid, El Cid desperately fought off astonishing odds and won against not only armies but monsters - a lion, a giant, and a dragon, if I remember correctly. he then had to win three tests, each involved winning a battle, but in increasingly clever ways, set by his king. he wins all three and marries the princess and lives happily ever after except, oops, the Moors re-invade (apparently sometime he drove them out of somewhere) and El Cid rushes off to defeat them again, he does, but he dies doing so. somehow it all seemed very heroic when I was a kid. I tried and tried and tried to re-imagine the story so it stayed heroic but he survives. I never did figure that out. must a hero die for the story to be epic? I still don't know.
El Cid - himself
El Cid, of course, was not born El Cid. he was born Rodrigo Diaz, a minor aristocrat, near the town of Vivar, born around 1043. at 1065, he was the commander of Castille's army. huh? at 22? apparently. so he went off and won a bunch of battles and helped his king extend what was known as Castille, oops! but his king was murdered without an heir, and the only legitimate inheritors were people Rodrigo had been defeating in battle. the new king of Castille eventually exiled Rodrigo, who found work as a general for the Moors. he won a bunch of battles for them, but newcomers from Africa overwhelmed the army of Castille, and the king who'd exiled Rodrigo requested that he return and command what was left of Castille's army. he did, and won some battles, keeping the newcomers out but threatening Castille. on the side he worked at taking over the city-state of Valencia for himself and his family. in the end, he did rule Valencia for a while, and spent his last few years fighting the newcomers from Africa. he died at about 55 and his wife continued to rule Valencia for about three years. told my way, Rodrigo's life is almost ho-hum. kid grows up, becomes a general at 22, fights and wins, fights and wins, fights and wins, but his king is murdered. becomes general for his traditional enemies and fights and wins, fights and wins. is asked to return by the king who exiled him, does, fights and wins, fights and wins. wins a city of his own, fights some more, wins some more, and dies. fortunately he had a better biographer than me. one or more poets composed what we now call El Cantar de Mio Cid (the Song of My Cid), an epic poem assembled as three songs. it's not my fault; if I were making up history, it would be more coherent than this. oh! and to add to the fun, the first page is missing, and so are two pages in the middle. but it is written in Old Spanish. it is thousands of verses long, but I think each verse is 16 or 17 syllables long, broken into two lines. honestly, I don't get it. in any case, the story starts with the exile of El Cid and relates his fighting and winning and fighting and winning and fighting and winning. then the king brings him back to Castille, and he's reunited with his family, and his two daughters marry the two princes of Carrion. they turn out to be cads and cowards and stupid besides. they beat El Cid's daughters senseless and tie them up and leave them at the side of the road. their cousin rescues them and El Cid pleads to the king for justice. the king allows two of El Cid's men to duel the princes (one man to duel each prince) and El Cid's men win. not only that, but the kings of Aragon and of Navarre marry their sons to El Cid's daughters (one son to each daughter), and everything is wonderful. well, hell, the song was designed by a monk, how much imagination could you expect? sigh. how in the hell did El Cid so attract me as a kid? oh yeah, I didn't learn either of these stories! in whatever I read as a kid, El Cid desperately fought off astonishing odds and won against not only armies but monsters - a lion, a giant, and a dragon, if I remember correctly. he then had to win three tests, each involved winning a battle, but in increasingly clever ways, set by his king. he wins all three and marries the princess and lives happily ever after except, oops, the Moors re-invade (apparently sometime he drove them out of somewhere) and El Cid rushes off to defeat them again, he does, but he dies doing so. somehow it all seemed very heroic when I was a kid. I tried and tried and tried to re-imagine the story so it stayed heroic but he survives. I never did figure that out. must a hero die for the story to be epic? I still don't know.
Saturday, September 17, 2016
261.366 - 2016 project and El Cid - the Moors
every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that appreciates
El Cid - the Moors
Mauritania was the country at the western end of the northern coast of Africa, and may be the source of the term Moors. I apologize for misinforming you yesterday. I thought the Moors already existed, converted to Islam, and invaded Spain and Portugal. no, no, no, no, no. that would be too simple. the Moors were some part of the Arab army that broke off and stayed in Mauritania while the rest of the army either distributed itself across the northern coast of Africa or rode back to Arabia for new orders - at least that's what I understand today. anyway, the Moors took a couple of years to make sure the local inhabitants understood who were the bosses then, and in 711 (yes, just like the store), some small number of them crossed into Spain. (I read somewhere that 700 originally invaded.) hunh! they conquered as much as they could hold, sent back for reinforcements, conquered as much as they could hold, sent back for reinforcements, and so forth for eight years. yes, eight years it took them to conquer all of Spain and Portugal too. wow! but we aren't done. thirteen years later they felt confident enough of their grasp on Spain and Portugal, that they invaded France. uh-oh! Charles Martel (we call him now) was busy assembling the beginning of what would become Charlemagne's empire, so he rushed troops to intercept the Moors and after the famous Battle of Tours, the Moors retreated into Spain and Portugal, which they renamed Al Andalusia, and held it for six hundred to eight hundred years. to me, it was a weird holding. the Moors remained a minority in their new holding. they had a governor, and troops, and potentates in the major cities, and were definitely the top dogs in their new digs, but right beside them, barely under them, they left the existing structure of kings, dukes, lords, barons, and knights who had formerly ruled Spain and Portugal. maybe it was fun. I think there was a lot of fighting involved, and both they and the Spanish and Portuguese aristocracy were fighters, were warriors. in any case, they fought, and the Moors governed for six hundred years. the Spanish and Portuguese began to take back Spain and Portugal respectively in about 1300, and succeeded in expelling most of the Moors, the governing Moors, in 1492. they let middle-class Moors and poor Moors stay on until 1680, I think. and what does all this have to do with anything? it's the context, the background, in which the story of El Cid happens. it's also, for me, one of the most perplexing chunks of history that we (Westerners, Europeans) have.
El Cid - the Moors
Mauritania was the country at the western end of the northern coast of Africa, and may be the source of the term Moors. I apologize for misinforming you yesterday. I thought the Moors already existed, converted to Islam, and invaded Spain and Portugal. no, no, no, no, no. that would be too simple. the Moors were some part of the Arab army that broke off and stayed in Mauritania while the rest of the army either distributed itself across the northern coast of Africa or rode back to Arabia for new orders - at least that's what I understand today. anyway, the Moors took a couple of years to make sure the local inhabitants understood who were the bosses then, and in 711 (yes, just like the store), some small number of them crossed into Spain. (I read somewhere that 700 originally invaded.) hunh! they conquered as much as they could hold, sent back for reinforcements, conquered as much as they could hold, sent back for reinforcements, and so forth for eight years. yes, eight years it took them to conquer all of Spain and Portugal too. wow! but we aren't done. thirteen years later they felt confident enough of their grasp on Spain and Portugal, that they invaded France. uh-oh! Charles Martel (we call him now) was busy assembling the beginning of what would become Charlemagne's empire, so he rushed troops to intercept the Moors and after the famous Battle of Tours, the Moors retreated into Spain and Portugal, which they renamed Al Andalusia, and held it for six hundred to eight hundred years. to me, it was a weird holding. the Moors remained a minority in their new holding. they had a governor, and troops, and potentates in the major cities, and were definitely the top dogs in their new digs, but right beside them, barely under them, they left the existing structure of kings, dukes, lords, barons, and knights who had formerly ruled Spain and Portugal. maybe it was fun. I think there was a lot of fighting involved, and both they and the Spanish and Portuguese aristocracy were fighters, were warriors. in any case, they fought, and the Moors governed for six hundred years. the Spanish and Portuguese began to take back Spain and Portugal respectively in about 1300, and succeeded in expelling most of the Moors, the governing Moors, in 1492. they let middle-class Moors and poor Moors stay on until 1680, I think. and what does all this have to do with anything? it's the context, the background, in which the story of El Cid happens. it's also, for me, one of the most perplexing chunks of history that we (Westerners, Europeans) have.
Friday, September 16, 2016
260.366 - 2016 project and El Cid - Africa
every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that appreciates
el Cid - Africa
oh my goodness! I set out to write an appreciation of El Cid in one paragraph. it became so complicated and convoluted that I got lost in it. I gave up. before I can appreciate El Cid, I have to appreciate Africa, or how Africa shows up in our (UnitedStatesian) history. basically it doesn't. Africa isn't there. which makes it difficult to have Egypt, which is one of our (humans') foundational civilizations. much of what we "know" about Egypt we don't. what we "know" is at least questionable. were the ancient Egyptians really white? or black? or brown? they were almost certainly one of those three, but we (UnitedStatesians) have messed that history up so well, it's hard to untangle. there is a real cost to white supremacy. but back to El Cid. what has Africa to do with El Cid? well, El Cid would be something else entirely, someone else entirely, or just not exist, without the Moors. and the Moors are inexplicable without Africa and without Arabs. we kinda skimp on Arab history too, but nothing like we do on African history. so let me tell you African history as I learned it in UnitedStatesian public schools. in the beginning, Africa did not exist. all we needed was the Middle East, because that's where we (humans) possibly invented civilization. and then we didn't need the Middle East either; all we needed was Greece, where we (humans) invented democracy and dictatorship. and then we had to add Italy so we could have Rome and invent a republic and develop a nation of laws and discover law'n'order. but you can't talk about Rome for very long without Carthage, so you have to have the middle of the northern coast of Africa for a little while, long enough for Rome to decide it needs a war with Carthage, defeat Carthage, destroy Carthage, and then Africa can go away again. whew. but then along comes Mohammed, who invents Islam, and who may have invented Arabs, who grew from a little tribe trying to kill itself into one of the major contenders in world history! they came bustling out of the Saudi peninsula which hadn't existed until we needed it for a home for Islam and the Arabs. they took over the Middle East, which despite our best efforts to write it out of history still existed. they fought their way into Turkey and into the Balkans. oops! We need Africa again, but only the northern coast. the Arabs and Islam poured across the northern coast of Africa, making converts as they went, and when they ran into the western coast, the Arabs encountered the Moors. (they were already living there, we just couldn't admit it because then we'd've had to have an Africa before we needed it again.) how fast did Islam spread? Mohammed died in 632 AD, and in 711 AD, the Moors, thoroughly Islamic Moors, invaded Spain and Portugal. so in less than a hundred years, Islam swept across the northern coast of Africa, and its converts (the Moors) began invading Spain and Portugal!. okay, we won't need Africa for a while again, so it can go back to not existing. we will need Africa again later when we have to explain slavery and the barrier to trade with India, but for now it can disappear again. isn't Africa a convenient continent? it appears when we need it, has just the cities or countries we need, then disappears again when we don't need it any more. no people live on it. no peoples ever form civilizations or nations or conduct trade. yeah. if we can really believe histories like that, no wonder we can believe climate change is a hoax.
el Cid - Africa
oh my goodness! I set out to write an appreciation of El Cid in one paragraph. it became so complicated and convoluted that I got lost in it. I gave up. before I can appreciate El Cid, I have to appreciate Africa, or how Africa shows up in our (UnitedStatesian) history. basically it doesn't. Africa isn't there. which makes it difficult to have Egypt, which is one of our (humans') foundational civilizations. much of what we "know" about Egypt we don't. what we "know" is at least questionable. were the ancient Egyptians really white? or black? or brown? they were almost certainly one of those three, but we (UnitedStatesians) have messed that history up so well, it's hard to untangle. there is a real cost to white supremacy. but back to El Cid. what has Africa to do with El Cid? well, El Cid would be something else entirely, someone else entirely, or just not exist, without the Moors. and the Moors are inexplicable without Africa and without Arabs. we kinda skimp on Arab history too, but nothing like we do on African history. so let me tell you African history as I learned it in UnitedStatesian public schools. in the beginning, Africa did not exist. all we needed was the Middle East, because that's where we (humans) possibly invented civilization. and then we didn't need the Middle East either; all we needed was Greece, where we (humans) invented democracy and dictatorship. and then we had to add Italy so we could have Rome and invent a republic and develop a nation of laws and discover law'n'order. but you can't talk about Rome for very long without Carthage, so you have to have the middle of the northern coast of Africa for a little while, long enough for Rome to decide it needs a war with Carthage, defeat Carthage, destroy Carthage, and then Africa can go away again. whew. but then along comes Mohammed, who invents Islam, and who may have invented Arabs, who grew from a little tribe trying to kill itself into one of the major contenders in world history! they came bustling out of the Saudi peninsula which hadn't existed until we needed it for a home for Islam and the Arabs. they took over the Middle East, which despite our best efforts to write it out of history still existed. they fought their way into Turkey and into the Balkans. oops! We need Africa again, but only the northern coast. the Arabs and Islam poured across the northern coast of Africa, making converts as they went, and when they ran into the western coast, the Arabs encountered the Moors. (they were already living there, we just couldn't admit it because then we'd've had to have an Africa before we needed it again.) how fast did Islam spread? Mohammed died in 632 AD, and in 711 AD, the Moors, thoroughly Islamic Moors, invaded Spain and Portugal. so in less than a hundred years, Islam swept across the northern coast of Africa, and its converts (the Moors) began invading Spain and Portugal!. okay, we won't need Africa for a while again, so it can go back to not existing. we will need Africa again later when we have to explain slavery and the barrier to trade with India, but for now it can disappear again. isn't Africa a convenient continent? it appears when we need it, has just the cities or countries we need, then disappears again when we don't need it any more. no people live on it. no peoples ever form civilizations or nations or conduct trade. yeah. if we can really believe histories like that, no wonder we can believe climate change is a hoax.
Thursday, September 15, 2016
259.366 - 2016 project and Gandhi
every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that appreciates
Gandhi
he single-handedly chased the British out of India! that's what I learned when I was little. my parents spoke of this as A Bad Thing, and the other missionaries agreed with them, or they agreed with the other missionaries, I wasn't sure which. either way sufficed to convince me it was A Very Good Thing. that alone would make me appreciate him damn near seventy years later. but how did he chase them out? civil disobedience and nonviolent protest. at 7 or 8, I could not believe it - the civil and the nonviolent parts. he must've used magic. if I could learn that magic, maybe I could chase the missionaries out of Brasil. maybe I'd be a hero in Brasil! as you know, that didn't happen. when I read about Brasil now, I am appalled at how successful the missionaries were. evangelicals rate mentioning in the same sentence as Catholics as far as percentage of the population goes. we were a toenail clipping at the time I lived there, or I had that impression. but back to Gandhi. I later learned that his chasing the British out was a little more complicated than I had understood from the presentation in my elementary school. that one must have been occasioned by his assassination in 1948. I had to swallow hard and accept it when I learned he'd been a lawyer, and a very successful lawyer, before he became an Indian holy man. (he was so successful that the British Governor of South Africa treated him with respect and wariness.) and I later learned that both civil and nonviolent were real. I still have to shake my head to let in that they really worked. I thought the only kind of revolution that worked was George Washington's and Simon Bolivar's. in any case, as well as I can tell, he really was a holy man, and the British really are out of India. thank you, Gandhi, for making me believe, however shakily, that civility and nonviolence did work once and might work again.
Gandhi
he single-handedly chased the British out of India! that's what I learned when I was little. my parents spoke of this as A Bad Thing, and the other missionaries agreed with them, or they agreed with the other missionaries, I wasn't sure which. either way sufficed to convince me it was A Very Good Thing. that alone would make me appreciate him damn near seventy years later. but how did he chase them out? civil disobedience and nonviolent protest. at 7 or 8, I could not believe it - the civil and the nonviolent parts. he must've used magic. if I could learn that magic, maybe I could chase the missionaries out of Brasil. maybe I'd be a hero in Brasil! as you know, that didn't happen. when I read about Brasil now, I am appalled at how successful the missionaries were. evangelicals rate mentioning in the same sentence as Catholics as far as percentage of the population goes. we were a toenail clipping at the time I lived there, or I had that impression. but back to Gandhi. I later learned that his chasing the British out was a little more complicated than I had understood from the presentation in my elementary school. that one must have been occasioned by his assassination in 1948. I had to swallow hard and accept it when I learned he'd been a lawyer, and a very successful lawyer, before he became an Indian holy man. (he was so successful that the British Governor of South Africa treated him with respect and wariness.) and I later learned that both civil and nonviolent were real. I still have to shake my head to let in that they really worked. I thought the only kind of revolution that worked was George Washington's and Simon Bolivar's. in any case, as well as I can tell, he really was a holy man, and the British really are out of India. thank you, Gandhi, for making me believe, however shakily, that civility and nonviolence did work once and might work again.
Wednesday, September 14, 2016
258.366 - 2016 project and my seven computers
every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that appreciates
my seven computers
"what!?!?!?" I can imagine you saying. well, please, imagine me saying it right back. you, I imagine, are surprised, maybe even appalled, that anyone would own seven computers. I am astonished, shocked, astounded that I have not appreciated them before. really? (I searched my list of titles and did not find "seven" or any combination with "computer" that seemed appropriate.) yes. I have seven computers. no, I do not need seven computers. but as I faced retirement, I faced a dilemma or maybe a lemma with more than two points. (I just grinned at you.) a multilemma. you see, since 1965 I had worked - or played - with a computer, and for most of that time with more than one computer. I was accustomed, if you will, to the joys and pains of dealing with more than one operating system, more than one user interface, more than one way of dealing with files and directories. looking back on it, I suppose a sane person would have sighed and settled for having a computer with a big enough keyboard for a working person's hands, and having a smart phone. that sane person might have welcomed the simplification in his life. and - who knows? - might be drooling now, or staring out the window, or heck! might be taking dance classes with Lindy on a round-the-world cruise on a tramp steamer or something other than a cruise ship. sure, we can imagine a lot of different stories for alt-Wyatt in that parallel universe, right? but I didn't do that. I decided to get a bevy of computers, partly because I already had a start on that bevy. I didn't pick seven as an end number, I was not a system engineer about this at all. I updated my "main" computer, the Dell that had sorta sometimes occasionally temperamentally worked even though it had been that year's "monster" laptop that could do anything the year I bought it - I bought an H-P Envy and promptly renamed it my H-P NV. (I made sure it was technically capable of supporting the about-to-become new Windows 10. so far it does. although like all "old" hardware, it's beginning to limp a little. you see, a generation in hardware is about a year and a half. if you have a computer that is a year and a half old, there is something new and better for every component in it, and new computers of the same approximate cost have at least one "standard feature" that yours doesn't and yours probably can't be modified to add it. sorry. engineers can't help it. they hardly get finished building a completely new toy, unheard-of-ly better than anything available on the market, than they look it and say, "this could be faster, that could do more, and this other thingy could be replaced with a super-geewhiz-whatchamacallit I haven't even invented yet." really. they can't help it. I know just enough about engineering to have felt a little of that myself. anyway, similar thinking would wind up with me having also Microsoft's then-new Surface Pro 3, and a MacBook Air, and an iPad mini, a Google Chromebook Pixel and a Pixel C. (oh my goodness! I have an old Chromebook too, I don't think I count that one.) (Oh, for heaven's sake! I have a Dell Latitude XT2 which I definitely don't count any more. gracious!) which leaves my PDA, my smartphone, my android Moto X Pure. oddly enough we get along just fine, no apparent jealousies or animosities. just in case I confused you, let me list the seven in one place, here: the H-P NV, the Microsoft Surface Pro 3, the MacBook Air, the iPad mini, the Chromebook Pixel, the Pixel C, and the Moto X Pure. seven computers, six operating systems, six user interfaces, seven different states of the art, and all of them old enough to be replaced. my treasurer will have a fit when she reads that, but she'll get over it. or she always has. meanwhile I look at my collection, sure it's evidence that I am not sane. oh well. I'm a poet and a story-maker. who needs sanity?
my seven computers
"what!?!?!?" I can imagine you saying. well, please, imagine me saying it right back. you, I imagine, are surprised, maybe even appalled, that anyone would own seven computers. I am astonished, shocked, astounded that I have not appreciated them before. really? (I searched my list of titles and did not find "seven" or any combination with "computer" that seemed appropriate.) yes. I have seven computers. no, I do not need seven computers. but as I faced retirement, I faced a dilemma or maybe a lemma with more than two points. (I just grinned at you.) a multilemma. you see, since 1965 I had worked - or played - with a computer, and for most of that time with more than one computer. I was accustomed, if you will, to the joys and pains of dealing with more than one operating system, more than one user interface, more than one way of dealing with files and directories. looking back on it, I suppose a sane person would have sighed and settled for having a computer with a big enough keyboard for a working person's hands, and having a smart phone. that sane person might have welcomed the simplification in his life. and - who knows? - might be drooling now, or staring out the window, or heck! might be taking dance classes with Lindy on a round-the-world cruise on a tramp steamer or something other than a cruise ship. sure, we can imagine a lot of different stories for alt-Wyatt in that parallel universe, right? but I didn't do that. I decided to get a bevy of computers, partly because I already had a start on that bevy. I didn't pick seven as an end number, I was not a system engineer about this at all. I updated my "main" computer, the Dell that had sorta sometimes occasionally temperamentally worked even though it had been that year's "monster" laptop that could do anything the year I bought it - I bought an H-P Envy and promptly renamed it my H-P NV. (I made sure it was technically capable of supporting the about-to-become new Windows 10. so far it does. although like all "old" hardware, it's beginning to limp a little. you see, a generation in hardware is about a year and a half. if you have a computer that is a year and a half old, there is something new and better for every component in it, and new computers of the same approximate cost have at least one "standard feature" that yours doesn't and yours probably can't be modified to add it. sorry. engineers can't help it. they hardly get finished building a completely new toy, unheard-of-ly better than anything available on the market, than they look it and say, "this could be faster, that could do more, and this other thingy could be replaced with a super-geewhiz-whatchamacallit I haven't even invented yet." really. they can't help it. I know just enough about engineering to have felt a little of that myself. anyway, similar thinking would wind up with me having also Microsoft's then-new Surface Pro 3, and a MacBook Air, and an iPad mini, a Google Chromebook Pixel and a Pixel C. (oh my goodness! I have an old Chromebook too, I don't think I count that one.) (Oh, for heaven's sake! I have a Dell Latitude XT2 which I definitely don't count any more. gracious!) which leaves my PDA, my smartphone, my android Moto X Pure. oddly enough we get along just fine, no apparent jealousies or animosities. just in case I confused you, let me list the seven in one place, here: the H-P NV, the Microsoft Surface Pro 3, the MacBook Air, the iPad mini, the Chromebook Pixel, the Pixel C, and the Moto X Pure. seven computers, six operating systems, six user interfaces, seven different states of the art, and all of them old enough to be replaced. my treasurer will have a fit when she reads that, but she'll get over it. or she always has. meanwhile I look at my collection, sure it's evidence that I am not sane. oh well. I'm a poet and a story-maker. who needs sanity?
Tuesday, September 13, 2016
257.366 - 2016 project and my shallowness
every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that appreciates
my shallowness
Lindy said long ago that one of the things she appreciates about me is my shallowness. after recovering, I could see that I might as well own up to it. so, yes, I am shallow and I appreciate that about myself. what does it mean for me to be shallow? (please note that I am answering only for me; other men do shallow a different way. I think.) I love to look at women. I do. I could do it all day. no, that's not true, but only because guilt accumulates and drives me back to writing and reading. (I was born and raised a Protestant, no matter what I became later.) I love to watch women walk, or girls turn cartwheels, or women dance. one of the most fascinating videos I have watched lately - I was mesmerized and awed - was a group of women drumming and dancing. another was of a band of jazz musicians improvising around a tune I kept thinking I knew, but the star of the video for me was a tall, slender woman improvising - as far as I know - a dance, making it up as she did it, to music that she couldn't have expected, not like we normally mean that word, and in the process defining words like "sinuous" and "willowy" and "sensuous". I love to watch women modeling clothes, especially those gauzy or frothy creations for evening wear. or sandals. or high heels. or dresses for samba or for salsa. I once worked for a summer with a young woman who wore a different outfit every day - yes, thirteen five-day weeks would have been sixty-five different outfits - and every one of them dazzled me. (I used to have to work with one finger squeezed in a drawer so I'd focus on my work and not her. yes, it worked.) oh don't get me wrong, I love mathematics too, and physics, and what I understand of chemistry and biology, and I love reading at philosophy (okay, Wittgenstein baffles me, but that's not fair) so I'm not entirely shallow. I love some of the deeper poets, but many of my pleasures are about a thumbnail deep. I cain't help it. or I'm not gonna. just trying to explain it to you has me smiling and grinning. see what I mean?
my shallowness
Lindy said long ago that one of the things she appreciates about me is my shallowness. after recovering, I could see that I might as well own up to it. so, yes, I am shallow and I appreciate that about myself. what does it mean for me to be shallow? (please note that I am answering only for me; other men do shallow a different way. I think.) I love to look at women. I do. I could do it all day. no, that's not true, but only because guilt accumulates and drives me back to writing and reading. (I was born and raised a Protestant, no matter what I became later.) I love to watch women walk, or girls turn cartwheels, or women dance. one of the most fascinating videos I have watched lately - I was mesmerized and awed - was a group of women drumming and dancing. another was of a band of jazz musicians improvising around a tune I kept thinking I knew, but the star of the video for me was a tall, slender woman improvising - as far as I know - a dance, making it up as she did it, to music that she couldn't have expected, not like we normally mean that word, and in the process defining words like "sinuous" and "willowy" and "sensuous". I love to watch women modeling clothes, especially those gauzy or frothy creations for evening wear. or sandals. or high heels. or dresses for samba or for salsa. I once worked for a summer with a young woman who wore a different outfit every day - yes, thirteen five-day weeks would have been sixty-five different outfits - and every one of them dazzled me. (I used to have to work with one finger squeezed in a drawer so I'd focus on my work and not her. yes, it worked.) oh don't get me wrong, I love mathematics too, and physics, and what I understand of chemistry and biology, and I love reading at philosophy (okay, Wittgenstein baffles me, but that's not fair) so I'm not entirely shallow. I love some of the deeper poets, but many of my pleasures are about a thumbnail deep. I cain't help it. or I'm not gonna. just trying to explain it to you has me smiling and grinning. see what I mean?
Monday, September 12, 2016
256.366 - 2016 project and Robert Graves
every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that appreciates
Robert Graves
sometime after I was a kid but before I was allegedly a man - isn't that funny? how does one know he is a man? - I stumbled upon Robert Graves. it was in my late teens, I think, maybe as early as my second year of Latin, that I read _I, Claudius_. my first Latin teacher had mentioned it, then my second Latin teacher mentioned it too, a year later. whoa! then I found it misfiled in the science fiction, and warily sat down to read it. it sucked me right in. I even read the sequel, _Claudius the God and his Wife, Messalina_. I was disappointed to learn that he hadn't written a sequel to that. I was so pleased with him as a novelist that I read _The Story of Marie Powell, Wife to Mr. Milton_, then _King Jesus_. oh man! what a cool writer, I thought, and read his Autobiography, _Goodbye to All That_. it left me baffled. he was a poet? he only wrote novels to make money to support his poetry writing? how mysterious! (I hadn't discovered poetry yet. I knew and loved Bobbie Burns, but thought he was an anomaly.) oh, but then along came computers, and the unmanned exploration of space, and _Selected Poems of William Carlos Williams_. the world changed. my place in it changed. hunh! and Robert Graves was waiting for me again, with _The White Goddess_ and a formidable _Collected Poems_. oh my word! I read and I read and I read. (heh-heh-heh. I just looked at a bibliography of Robert Graves and discovered I had barely skimmed it in my reading. geez!) I fell under his spell and had to work my way out of it! damn, he's a good poet and writer and an interesting person! he died in 1985 after a busy and crammed ninety years thank you, Mr. Graves, for all that!
Robert Graves
sometime after I was a kid but before I was allegedly a man - isn't that funny? how does one know he is a man? - I stumbled upon Robert Graves. it was in my late teens, I think, maybe as early as my second year of Latin, that I read _I, Claudius_. my first Latin teacher had mentioned it, then my second Latin teacher mentioned it too, a year later. whoa! then I found it misfiled in the science fiction, and warily sat down to read it. it sucked me right in. I even read the sequel, _Claudius the God and his Wife, Messalina_. I was disappointed to learn that he hadn't written a sequel to that. I was so pleased with him as a novelist that I read _The Story of Marie Powell, Wife to Mr. Milton_, then _King Jesus_. oh man! what a cool writer, I thought, and read his Autobiography, _Goodbye to All That_. it left me baffled. he was a poet? he only wrote novels to make money to support his poetry writing? how mysterious! (I hadn't discovered poetry yet. I knew and loved Bobbie Burns, but thought he was an anomaly.) oh, but then along came computers, and the unmanned exploration of space, and _Selected Poems of William Carlos Williams_. the world changed. my place in it changed. hunh! and Robert Graves was waiting for me again, with _The White Goddess_ and a formidable _Collected Poems_. oh my word! I read and I read and I read. (heh-heh-heh. I just looked at a bibliography of Robert Graves and discovered I had barely skimmed it in my reading. geez!) I fell under his spell and had to work my way out of it! damn, he's a good poet and writer and an interesting person! he died in 1985 after a busy and crammed ninety years thank you, Mr. Graves, for all that!
Sunday, September 11, 2016
255.366 - 2016 project and hosting
every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that appreciates
hosting
<imagine a big grin at you> no, not hosting a cocktail hour, or a celebrity roast or a three-family barbecue or a dinner for twelve. I do not shine at those, or I suspect I do not, and have never tried. I have watched in awe as guys I knew pretty much as ordinary people did outstanding jobs at them. no, my hosting is of a narrower variety. I host poetry events. in particular, I am the host or co-host for three sequences of poetry readings in Los Angeles. I host the Nebraska Girls at Beyond Baroque open mic in Venice. I host the Westwood Branch Library Open Mic in Westwood. And I co-host the Last Saturday of the Month Open Mic in Encino - Tarzana. I think I do them well, although if anyone has graded me I don't know of it, and I don't know what criteria they would use to assign a grade. I pretty much imitate what I saw Jason Brain do with his Soapbox Sessions, and what I saw Rick Lupert do at the Cobalt Cafe, back when I first started participating in poetry in Los Angeles in January of 2010. I wound up taking on each of these three hostings in 2012, I believe, so I didn't take long going from participant to host. as well as I can tell, I host well, although I have no doubt I could do better. I think the host has three responsibilities: to honor the venue, to honor the participants, and to honor the featured readers. we honor the venue by protecting it, by arriving early to help with or do the setup, by making sure nothing gets damaged, and by making sure that our event doesn't offend any participants or hosts of other events at the venue. (the venue is the place where the event happens.) we honor the participants by getting there early, by having the chairs and microphone (if there will be a microphone) setup by the time the participants begin to show up, by welcoming the participants, by having sign-up be an orderly and hospitable process, by bringing the participants up in the order they expect or explaining a departure from that, and by thanking them as they finish their participation. we honor the featured readers by inviting them early enough that they have time to prepare, by greeting them when they arrive and showing them the facility if necessary, or telling them our (loose) plan for the event, by introducing them to the audience, by listening attentively, by appreciating them when they finish, and by thanking them again at the end of the event. in a sense, the main duty of the host is to provide a hospitable environment, and to make sure we behave politely while the event goes on. so you see, the job is aptly named. I have been doing it for about four years now, and thoroughly enjoy it. come see me sometime. I bet I make you feel welcome. <imagine another big grin at you>
hosting
<imagine a big grin at you> no, not hosting a cocktail hour, or a celebrity roast or a three-family barbecue or a dinner for twelve. I do not shine at those, or I suspect I do not, and have never tried. I have watched in awe as guys I knew pretty much as ordinary people did outstanding jobs at them. no, my hosting is of a narrower variety. I host poetry events. in particular, I am the host or co-host for three sequences of poetry readings in Los Angeles. I host the Nebraska Girls at Beyond Baroque open mic in Venice. I host the Westwood Branch Library Open Mic in Westwood. And I co-host the Last Saturday of the Month Open Mic in Encino - Tarzana. I think I do them well, although if anyone has graded me I don't know of it, and I don't know what criteria they would use to assign a grade. I pretty much imitate what I saw Jason Brain do with his Soapbox Sessions, and what I saw Rick Lupert do at the Cobalt Cafe, back when I first started participating in poetry in Los Angeles in January of 2010. I wound up taking on each of these three hostings in 2012, I believe, so I didn't take long going from participant to host. as well as I can tell, I host well, although I have no doubt I could do better. I think the host has three responsibilities: to honor the venue, to honor the participants, and to honor the featured readers. we honor the venue by protecting it, by arriving early to help with or do the setup, by making sure nothing gets damaged, and by making sure that our event doesn't offend any participants or hosts of other events at the venue. (the venue is the place where the event happens.) we honor the participants by getting there early, by having the chairs and microphone (if there will be a microphone) setup by the time the participants begin to show up, by welcoming the participants, by having sign-up be an orderly and hospitable process, by bringing the participants up in the order they expect or explaining a departure from that, and by thanking them as they finish their participation. we honor the featured readers by inviting them early enough that they have time to prepare, by greeting them when they arrive and showing them the facility if necessary, or telling them our (loose) plan for the event, by introducing them to the audience, by listening attentively, by appreciating them when they finish, and by thanking them again at the end of the event. in a sense, the main duty of the host is to provide a hospitable environment, and to make sure we behave politely while the event goes on. so you see, the job is aptly named. I have been doing it for about four years now, and thoroughly enjoy it. come see me sometime. I bet I make you feel welcome. <imagine another big grin at you>
Saturday, September 10, 2016
254.366 - 2016 project and science fiction
every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that appreciates
science fiction
but specifically science fiction up til 1986. what, you might ask, happened to science fiction in 1986? I quit reading it, that's what happened to it. science fiction didn't do anything - that I know of. no, I quit working in the unmanned exploration of space, in spacework at all, and quit reading science fiction and science fantasy. weird. weird because they'd been at least 40% of what I'd read up til then, on average and as a steady basis. if you found me outside of work, you'd probably find me reading, and if you found me reading, I'd probably be reading science fiction or science fantasy. I read Robert Howard, of course, and like everyone else I knew that read, I started with Jules Verne. I think I read one Tom Swift book, I don't think I finished it. I read damn near everything Robert Heinlein wrote. I read H.G. Wells, of course, and George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, and Piers Anthony. I read Isaac Asimov and Ray Bradbury, Greg Bear and Roger Zelasny, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro and C.J. Cherryh, Philip K.Dick and Denise Levertov, Ursula Le Guin and Sheri S. Tepper, E.E. Smith and Philip Jose Farmer, H. Rider Haggard and Frank Herbert, Elizabeth Moon and Lester del Rey, Marion Zimmer Bradley and Mercedes Lackey, Poul Anderson and Margaret Atwood. oh good grief! look at that list, and I've only started! I was not encyclopaedic but I was certainly eclectic. It was a wonderful thirty years, and now and then I get a tickle to try it out again, but there's so goddam much poetry to read! maybe someday.
science fiction
but specifically science fiction up til 1986. what, you might ask, happened to science fiction in 1986? I quit reading it, that's what happened to it. science fiction didn't do anything - that I know of. no, I quit working in the unmanned exploration of space, in spacework at all, and quit reading science fiction and science fantasy. weird. weird because they'd been at least 40% of what I'd read up til then, on average and as a steady basis. if you found me outside of work, you'd probably find me reading, and if you found me reading, I'd probably be reading science fiction or science fantasy. I read Robert Howard, of course, and like everyone else I knew that read, I started with Jules Verne. I think I read one Tom Swift book, I don't think I finished it. I read damn near everything Robert Heinlein wrote. I read H.G. Wells, of course, and George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, and Piers Anthony. I read Isaac Asimov and Ray Bradbury, Greg Bear and Roger Zelasny, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro and C.J. Cherryh, Philip K.Dick and Denise Levertov, Ursula Le Guin and Sheri S. Tepper, E.E. Smith and Philip Jose Farmer, H. Rider Haggard and Frank Herbert, Elizabeth Moon and Lester del Rey, Marion Zimmer Bradley and Mercedes Lackey, Poul Anderson and Margaret Atwood. oh good grief! look at that list, and I've only started! I was not encyclopaedic but I was certainly eclectic. It was a wonderful thirty years, and now and then I get a tickle to try it out again, but there's so goddam much poetry to read! maybe someday.
Friday, September 9, 2016
253.366 - 2016 project and the Jackson rabbit-hole
every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that appreciates
the Jackson rabbit-hole
Andrew Jackson. When I first learned American presidents, there he was: Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, Truman. why? I don't know. he caught my fancy? he, after all, was a woodsman, all dressed up and playing a fancy-man's role. he was only a teenager during the Revolution, but he served as a courier, and a prisoner of war, and was scarred by a redcoat's saber when he refused to polish the Brit's boots - or so I learned as a kid. he was a frontiersman and dirt poor, but he clawed his way into riches - partly by being a lawyer, largely by being a slave trader, which no one mentioned while I was a kid. no one also told me as a kid about the Indian Removal Act or the Trail of Tears, along which more than 4000 Indians died. as I understand it, Jackson did not enforce the Indian Removal Act but his protege and successor did, and Jackson was very influential in getting the law passed. and he signed it, of course. backtracking a little, after he became rich, he became a colonel in the Tennessee militia and Major General in the War of 1812 where he won the Battle of New Orleans and became a war hero. his became the model for presidential stories: after him, every president was born in a log cabin, dirt poor, and worked his way up as a lawyer and a slaver to become president. even Nixon used this story. some presidents have had to use variations of it, some presidents were born in imaginary log cabins set up just outside the palatial mansions on their family estates to usher them into this story. (I may exaggerate, but American history in junior high and high school sounded that way to me.) so am I missing something? let's see: log cabin, dirt poor, courier and POW, lawyer and slaver, got rich, colonel, general, Battle of New Orleans, war hero, president, Indian Removal Act, Trail of Tears, what have I forgotten? oh my! so much! the first secession by South Carolina, the second Bank of the United States, splitting the Republican Party (not Lincoln's, an earlier version) into the Democrats and the Whigs, giving the Democrats the donkey symbol - from Jackass Jackson, see? the rabbit hole swirls round and round and I probably haven't begun to exhaust President Jackson's ability to amaze - oh yes! he killed a man in a duel over his wife's honor. no wonder he died tired! (I read that somewhere on the internet - maybe they meant retired.) he crammed a lot into a confusing and amazing life, and wound up on the twenty-dollar bill despite hating paper money and a central bank. whew! if he don't rabbit-hole you, who've you got?
the Jackson rabbit-hole
Andrew Jackson. When I first learned American presidents, there he was: Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, Truman. why? I don't know. he caught my fancy? he, after all, was a woodsman, all dressed up and playing a fancy-man's role. he was only a teenager during the Revolution, but he served as a courier, and a prisoner of war, and was scarred by a redcoat's saber when he refused to polish the Brit's boots - or so I learned as a kid. he was a frontiersman and dirt poor, but he clawed his way into riches - partly by being a lawyer, largely by being a slave trader, which no one mentioned while I was a kid. no one also told me as a kid about the Indian Removal Act or the Trail of Tears, along which more than 4000 Indians died. as I understand it, Jackson did not enforce the Indian Removal Act but his protege and successor did, and Jackson was very influential in getting the law passed. and he signed it, of course. backtracking a little, after he became rich, he became a colonel in the Tennessee militia and Major General in the War of 1812 where he won the Battle of New Orleans and became a war hero. his became the model for presidential stories: after him, every president was born in a log cabin, dirt poor, and worked his way up as a lawyer and a slaver to become president. even Nixon used this story. some presidents have had to use variations of it, some presidents were born in imaginary log cabins set up just outside the palatial mansions on their family estates to usher them into this story. (I may exaggerate, but American history in junior high and high school sounded that way to me.) so am I missing something? let's see: log cabin, dirt poor, courier and POW, lawyer and slaver, got rich, colonel, general, Battle of New Orleans, war hero, president, Indian Removal Act, Trail of Tears, what have I forgotten? oh my! so much! the first secession by South Carolina, the second Bank of the United States, splitting the Republican Party (not Lincoln's, an earlier version) into the Democrats and the Whigs, giving the Democrats the donkey symbol - from Jackass Jackson, see? the rabbit hole swirls round and round and I probably haven't begun to exhaust President Jackson's ability to amaze - oh yes! he killed a man in a duel over his wife's honor. no wonder he died tired! (I read that somewhere on the internet - maybe they meant retired.) he crammed a lot into a confusing and amazing life, and wound up on the twenty-dollar bill despite hating paper money and a central bank. whew! if he don't rabbit-hole you, who've you got?
anti-Republicanism - a personal development
anti-Republicanism
I don't know that I can call this an appreciation, it's probably more of a confession. I come by my anti-Republicanism honestly, possibly not thoughtfully - is politics ever really thoughtful? - but honestly. My father was a Republican. He was a preacher, a missionary, and a Republican. He was almost as much a Republican as he was a Christian. He didn't particularly like Lincoln, but he was steadfast to Lincoln's party. Down in Brasil, before I had an inkling about American politics, I knew I was not a Republican, was not and never would be. Two men sucked me away from my own steadfastness. Well, two men and a woman. (Of course, right?) Eisenhower, so damned decent! How did he ever think he was a Republican? But he was. I was too young to vote but Eisenhower drew me, and I was embarrassed but I wavered. Fortunately Joe McCarthy reminded me of what Republicans really stood for, and I was cured. But later on I wavered again. I read Ayn Rand, and I thought the world changed, I thought I had found Truth, I thought.... Or rather I didn't. But while I was all caught up in that tumble, Goldwater came along and seemed like another decent man. I wavered again. I was sort of a Goldwater-Democrat, in as much as I was any kind of Democrat. But I was cured again, this time by comparing my own experience to Truth. You see, I was a working person. I had a job while I was still twelve, and had one pretty continuously thereafter. I was a paperboy. I was a boot-black - that is I worked in a shoe repair shop, and my job was to shine the shoes beyond the customer's satisfaction (to my boss's satisfaction). I was a drug store clerk and delivery person. I went to work for the civil service as an engineer-in-training, and I got to dig trenches, then lay the cables that would lie in those trenches, and even to connect the cables to the buildings they were supposed to power; I got to help maintain very high speed movie cameras that we used to film missile launches; I got to work on building a telemetry trailer to go to Kwadjalein Atoll and record some missile tests there; I got to work in teams of telemetry operators that recorded the results of different missile tests. I quit the civil service to work slightly more regular hours. (I think getting married nudged me in that direction.) so I worked in a 7-11 type of store for a while, but I also worked helping build experimental antennae and test them on an antenna range. My point is I had a lot of experience being a working person and working alongside working people. Now I have a friend who thinks that should have been great experience to make me side with corporations. It did not. I was on labor's side when I came to this country, just because my father was so anti-labor. Everything I learned working with and beside working people made me more and more pro-labor. We don't really have a pro-labor party. We have the Republicans, which I couldn't be, and the Democrats, who are sometimes sorta kinda pro-labor if you don't press them very hard. So I'm not much of a Democrat, but I am solidly anti-Republican, which makes me sorta kinda a Democrat. And here you have the source and the development of this anti-Republican.
I don't know that I can call this an appreciation, it's probably more of a confession. I come by my anti-Republicanism honestly, possibly not thoughtfully - is politics ever really thoughtful? - but honestly. My father was a Republican. He was a preacher, a missionary, and a Republican. He was almost as much a Republican as he was a Christian. He didn't particularly like Lincoln, but he was steadfast to Lincoln's party. Down in Brasil, before I had an inkling about American politics, I knew I was not a Republican, was not and never would be. Two men sucked me away from my own steadfastness. Well, two men and a woman. (Of course, right?) Eisenhower, so damned decent! How did he ever think he was a Republican? But he was. I was too young to vote but Eisenhower drew me, and I was embarrassed but I wavered. Fortunately Joe McCarthy reminded me of what Republicans really stood for, and I was cured. But later on I wavered again. I read Ayn Rand, and I thought the world changed, I thought I had found Truth, I thought.... Or rather I didn't. But while I was all caught up in that tumble, Goldwater came along and seemed like another decent man. I wavered again. I was sort of a Goldwater-Democrat, in as much as I was any kind of Democrat. But I was cured again, this time by comparing my own experience to Truth. You see, I was a working person. I had a job while I was still twelve, and had one pretty continuously thereafter. I was a paperboy. I was a boot-black - that is I worked in a shoe repair shop, and my job was to shine the shoes beyond the customer's satisfaction (to my boss's satisfaction). I was a drug store clerk and delivery person. I went to work for the civil service as an engineer-in-training, and I got to dig trenches, then lay the cables that would lie in those trenches, and even to connect the cables to the buildings they were supposed to power; I got to help maintain very high speed movie cameras that we used to film missile launches; I got to work on building a telemetry trailer to go to Kwadjalein Atoll and record some missile tests there; I got to work in teams of telemetry operators that recorded the results of different missile tests. I quit the civil service to work slightly more regular hours. (I think getting married nudged me in that direction.) so I worked in a 7-11 type of store for a while, but I also worked helping build experimental antennae and test them on an antenna range. My point is I had a lot of experience being a working person and working alongside working people. Now I have a friend who thinks that should have been great experience to make me side with corporations. It did not. I was on labor's side when I came to this country, just because my father was so anti-labor. Everything I learned working with and beside working people made me more and more pro-labor. We don't really have a pro-labor party. We have the Republicans, which I couldn't be, and the Democrats, who are sometimes sorta kinda pro-labor if you don't press them very hard. So I'm not much of a Democrat, but I am solidly anti-Republican, which makes me sorta kinda a Democrat. And here you have the source and the development of this anti-Republican.
Thursday, September 8, 2016
252.366 - 2016 project and more Abraham Lincoln
every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that appreciates
more Abraham Lincoln
no, no, I promise! I will not make four books on Abraham Lincoln out of my appreciation! I won't. but one more. I have to deal with Abraham Lincoln, founder of the Republican Party. now I can imagine some of you out there gagging. I can imagine some of you out there denying. those were two of my responses. I mean, here I have Lincoln as some sort of ideal man despite having been both a lawyer and a politician. and here we have the Republican Party, dedicated to the suppression of voters who don't trend Republican, dedicated to the suppression of labor, dedicated to taking back everything we (as in we the people, we the workers, we the citizens who don't own corporations or states - yes, I said states, not estates) have been granted by the government since the 1930s. (yeah, the good life, the lucky life, we American citizens enjoy has pretty much been given us, piece by piece, by the government since 1930. and yeah, the Republicans pretty much want to stomp all that out of existence. that's what they mean when they talk about small government.) so how did Abraham Lincoln, ideal man except for being a lawyer and a politician, help found the party for oppression of us workers? well, he didn't. see, politics is a strange beast, and it sometimes turns itself inside out, and you and I never know whether we're living in one of those times, one of the inside-in times, or - more likely - one of the times of transition. let me take you back to the 1850s, a much, much, eversomuch different time. the two-party system, as all good citizens knew at the time, consisted of the Democrats and the Whigs. really, I know no one ever told you that, but it's true anyway. most good citizens at the time knew that God had just created the two-party system that way, but that wasn't true either. (those of us who don't spend much time in church have no evidence that God ever bothered Himself with the two-party system in the U.S. of A.) the Whigs had been created to oppose the "tyranny" of Andrew Jackson - no, no, I'm not going down that rabbit-hole, at least not today. so, as you can imagine, they had pretty much played themselves out. meanwhile, the Democrats, the party of a coalition of corporation owners and land owners, were becoming more and more anti-abolitionist. (abolition stood for getting rid of slavery.) hm, so as the Whigs unraveled, what was needed was a party for abolition, for working people, and secretly for all those huge chunks of land about to become states out in the west! voila! Mr. Lincoln and his cronies devised just such a party and began winning elections! gracious! the Democrats had tantrums and hissies and predicted the end of the world and the end of the United States and the end of Christianity! sound familiar? eventually (1860) Abraham Lincoln won the presidency, and South Carolina bombarded Fort Sumter and the Civil War was on. yea! but while they were at it, the Republicans gave us the Homestead Act, and the law that provided state universities to states, and they wooed the corporation owners by giving huge land grants to railroads. after the war they sorta protected and sorta supported former slaves, except they quickly found it was more expedient to pretend to do so than to actually do so. so they really weren't, even then, a party for you and me, but the Democrats were worse. the Democrats worshipped at the feet of the bankers and corporation owners. and the drift began. by the early 1900s, both parties competed for who would be more subservient to the plutocrats. (please understand: no angel from on high descended and gave me the Real True History of the U.S. of A. I had to read and figure out and choose the interpretations I like best. if you have recently read a Republican history of the U.S. of A., mine must seem like a different planet, perhaps Hieronymus Bosch's.) whoa! enter the Depression, the Dust Bowl, and FDR (allegedly a traitor to his class) and the New Deal and today's politics began, with the Democrats on our side, for heaven's sake, and the Republicans entrenched on their side. so there, Mr. Lincoln, I still get to appreciate you and be grateful for you and think you were a great President even though your party is pretty much anathema to me.
more Abraham Lincoln
no, no, I promise! I will not make four books on Abraham Lincoln out of my appreciation! I won't. but one more. I have to deal with Abraham Lincoln, founder of the Republican Party. now I can imagine some of you out there gagging. I can imagine some of you out there denying. those were two of my responses. I mean, here I have Lincoln as some sort of ideal man despite having been both a lawyer and a politician. and here we have the Republican Party, dedicated to the suppression of voters who don't trend Republican, dedicated to the suppression of labor, dedicated to taking back everything we (as in we the people, we the workers, we the citizens who don't own corporations or states - yes, I said states, not estates) have been granted by the government since the 1930s. (yeah, the good life, the lucky life, we American citizens enjoy has pretty much been given us, piece by piece, by the government since 1930. and yeah, the Republicans pretty much want to stomp all that out of existence. that's what they mean when they talk about small government.) so how did Abraham Lincoln, ideal man except for being a lawyer and a politician, help found the party for oppression of us workers? well, he didn't. see, politics is a strange beast, and it sometimes turns itself inside out, and you and I never know whether we're living in one of those times, one of the inside-in times, or - more likely - one of the times of transition. let me take you back to the 1850s, a much, much, eversomuch different time. the two-party system, as all good citizens knew at the time, consisted of the Democrats and the Whigs. really, I know no one ever told you that, but it's true anyway. most good citizens at the time knew that God had just created the two-party system that way, but that wasn't true either. (those of us who don't spend much time in church have no evidence that God ever bothered Himself with the two-party system in the U.S. of A.) the Whigs had been created to oppose the "tyranny" of Andrew Jackson - no, no, I'm not going down that rabbit-hole, at least not today. so, as you can imagine, they had pretty much played themselves out. meanwhile, the Democrats, the party of a coalition of corporation owners and land owners, were becoming more and more anti-abolitionist. (abolition stood for getting rid of slavery.) hm, so as the Whigs unraveled, what was needed was a party for abolition, for working people, and secretly for all those huge chunks of land about to become states out in the west! voila! Mr. Lincoln and his cronies devised just such a party and began winning elections! gracious! the Democrats had tantrums and hissies and predicted the end of the world and the end of the United States and the end of Christianity! sound familiar? eventually (1860) Abraham Lincoln won the presidency, and South Carolina bombarded Fort Sumter and the Civil War was on. yea! but while they were at it, the Republicans gave us the Homestead Act, and the law that provided state universities to states, and they wooed the corporation owners by giving huge land grants to railroads. after the war they sorta protected and sorta supported former slaves, except they quickly found it was more expedient to pretend to do so than to actually do so. so they really weren't, even then, a party for you and me, but the Democrats were worse. the Democrats worshipped at the feet of the bankers and corporation owners. and the drift began. by the early 1900s, both parties competed for who would be more subservient to the plutocrats. (please understand: no angel from on high descended and gave me the Real True History of the U.S. of A. I had to read and figure out and choose the interpretations I like best. if you have recently read a Republican history of the U.S. of A., mine must seem like a different planet, perhaps Hieronymus Bosch's.) whoa! enter the Depression, the Dust Bowl, and FDR (allegedly a traitor to his class) and the New Deal and today's politics began, with the Democrats on our side, for heaven's sake, and the Republicans entrenched on their side. so there, Mr. Lincoln, I still get to appreciate you and be grateful for you and think you were a great President even though your party is pretty much anathema to me.
Wednesday, September 7, 2016
251.366 - 2016 project and Abraham Lincoln
every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that appreciates
Abraham Lincoln
any biographer worth his or her title would tell you I can't appreciate Abraham Lincoln in less than four books, but I'm going to try to do it in a paragraph. mainly because I've been fascinated with him, well, nearly all my life. obviously not all my life! the first few years I was busy with learning to make noises people understood, learning how to scoot, crawl, stand, walk, and run, learning to speak Portuguese, learning to get away from grownups so I could learn really interesting things like how to get stung by a bee, or strike a match, or what a fresh red pepper right off the plant tastes like when you bite into it, or how animals behave when I was the only human around. and then way before I was ready if you'd've asked me, my parents brought me to this country so my littler brother (my second brother) could be born here and so I could start school here and I never really knew what we were here for, it apparently wasn't any of my business. (we were here because missionaries then got a sabbatical every few years so they can renew their Americanness, and, in particular, so my father could complete his master's degree in theology.) but in any case I was here and among other things I learned the American presidents, Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, and Truman. (later on I was astounded to learn we'd had a bunch more.) of the bunch, Lincoln stood out for me. first there was the whole romantic notion of having in some way started the Civil War, then having kept the country together during the Civil War (it was one of the many puzzles grownups presented: how could he have kept the country together when it clearly split into two countries?), and then getting killed to end the Civil War. history doesn't make a lot of sense when you're six, but it makes as much sense as grownups do. then he was on every penny, the most common coin, so he was clearly the president of the common man, right? no, that was Jackson, who most definitely was not for the common man , no matter what people called him. I think maybe Lincoln attracted me so because he stood for something, he stood for the union of the United States. as far as I knew then, no other president ever stood for anything, they didn't have to, nobody was trying to tear anything away from them. hey, listen! I was learning as fast as I could, and grownups are no damned help! being six is hard work! and the world whirls on and years pass and I go back to Brasil and get yanked out of it again and stuffed into this country and learn to deal with that after a fashion and continue to appreciate Abraham Lincoln. crimeney, he survived having George McClellan as the commanding general of the Union forces! that alone should have been enough to drive him to suicide. once when George McClellan and his command officers were out for a ride (on their horses, they didn't have Harleys), they came to a stream and stopped to discuss how deep it was and whether they should cross it. his aide de camp, Lieutenant George Custer, rode out into the stream which flowed around his horse's legs but not up to his stirrups, and said, "the water is this deep, gentlemen, now whether you will cross it or not is another matter." George McClellan was equally decisive about fighting the War, so Lincoln had to fire him, but first had to put up with his indecision for months. well, the biographers were right, I can't begin to do him justice in a paragraph, but Abraham Lincoln was indeed a great president, such a great president that we couldn't have survived a succession of presidents like him. we prefer our presidents more like we are.
Abraham Lincoln
any biographer worth his or her title would tell you I can't appreciate Abraham Lincoln in less than four books, but I'm going to try to do it in a paragraph. mainly because I've been fascinated with him, well, nearly all my life. obviously not all my life! the first few years I was busy with learning to make noises people understood, learning how to scoot, crawl, stand, walk, and run, learning to speak Portuguese, learning to get away from grownups so I could learn really interesting things like how to get stung by a bee, or strike a match, or what a fresh red pepper right off the plant tastes like when you bite into it, or how animals behave when I was the only human around. and then way before I was ready if you'd've asked me, my parents brought me to this country so my littler brother (my second brother) could be born here and so I could start school here and I never really knew what we were here for, it apparently wasn't any of my business. (we were here because missionaries then got a sabbatical every few years so they can renew their Americanness, and, in particular, so my father could complete his master's degree in theology.) but in any case I was here and among other things I learned the American presidents, Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, and Truman. (later on I was astounded to learn we'd had a bunch more.) of the bunch, Lincoln stood out for me. first there was the whole romantic notion of having in some way started the Civil War, then having kept the country together during the Civil War (it was one of the many puzzles grownups presented: how could he have kept the country together when it clearly split into two countries?), and then getting killed to end the Civil War. history doesn't make a lot of sense when you're six, but it makes as much sense as grownups do. then he was on every penny, the most common coin, so he was clearly the president of the common man, right? no, that was Jackson, who most definitely was not for the common man , no matter what people called him. I think maybe Lincoln attracted me so because he stood for something, he stood for the union of the United States. as far as I knew then, no other president ever stood for anything, they didn't have to, nobody was trying to tear anything away from them. hey, listen! I was learning as fast as I could, and grownups are no damned help! being six is hard work! and the world whirls on and years pass and I go back to Brasil and get yanked out of it again and stuffed into this country and learn to deal with that after a fashion and continue to appreciate Abraham Lincoln. crimeney, he survived having George McClellan as the commanding general of the Union forces! that alone should have been enough to drive him to suicide. once when George McClellan and his command officers were out for a ride (on their horses, they didn't have Harleys), they came to a stream and stopped to discuss how deep it was and whether they should cross it. his aide de camp, Lieutenant George Custer, rode out into the stream which flowed around his horse's legs but not up to his stirrups, and said, "the water is this deep, gentlemen, now whether you will cross it or not is another matter." George McClellan was equally decisive about fighting the War, so Lincoln had to fire him, but first had to put up with his indecision for months. well, the biographers were right, I can't begin to do him justice in a paragraph, but Abraham Lincoln was indeed a great president, such a great president that we couldn't have survived a succession of presidents like him. we prefer our presidents more like we are.
Tuesday, September 6, 2016
250.366 - 2016 project and 250 and more mind
every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that appreciates
250 and more mind
DoY 250. 250. my first real motorcycle was a 250, a BSA 250. BSA, Birmingham Small Arms. what the hell was a gun manufacturer doing building a motorcycle? what the hell was a gun manufacturer doing building a motorcycle out of pot metal? well, it wasn't all pot metal, the frame was iron. yes, iron, not steel. but the engine had pot metal wherever BSA thought they could get away with it. thank goodness the pistons and cylinders were steel! but the advance, the little plate which controlled where the ignition started, degrees before or after the maximum compression, was pot metal. which meant that on Saturday, before you went for a ride, you'd open the engine, set the advance properly, then go for your ride, and by that time, the advance had drifted and you needed to reset it. and of course, once you opened the engine, you couldn't help but notice that two or three other things besides the advance needed resetting. I used to swear - and I mean swear - that damned motorcycle took more hours maintenance than it gave hours of riding time! I didn't remember then - while I was swearing - that it was an English motorcycle. the English would never have expected hours of riding time. they had no desert! they had no desert highways. they had no mountains nearby - they had those little bitty things a giant could step over that they called mountains - so they had no mountain highways. so many people lived so close together in England that they could barely get a motorcycle up to speed before they had to slow for a cart or a lorry or stop for an intersection, whatever they call intersections. you understand, I had never been to England, but I had read about it, so I knew nothing, but never let that stop me from opining. but I did have the evidence of my BSA 250. 250? wasn't that where this started? yes, 250. 5 cubed times 2. why in the world did they use cubic centimeters to measure displacement? why not cylindrical centimeters? but then what would a cylindrical centimeter mean? whatever it meant, the English would probably measure it with a tool made of pot metal so you could never trust their measurements. how did we trust their measurements made in physics? yet we did! they were the ones who discovered the electron, the proton, then the neutron even! they must use different tools in physics. Holy Toledo! how did I get from my BSA to physics? you just can't trust a human who dabbles in the mind! dabble! what an interesting sound! what a curious verb! dabble....
250 and more mind
DoY 250. 250. my first real motorcycle was a 250, a BSA 250. BSA, Birmingham Small Arms. what the hell was a gun manufacturer doing building a motorcycle? what the hell was a gun manufacturer doing building a motorcycle out of pot metal? well, it wasn't all pot metal, the frame was iron. yes, iron, not steel. but the engine had pot metal wherever BSA thought they could get away with it. thank goodness the pistons and cylinders were steel! but the advance, the little plate which controlled where the ignition started, degrees before or after the maximum compression, was pot metal. which meant that on Saturday, before you went for a ride, you'd open the engine, set the advance properly, then go for your ride, and by that time, the advance had drifted and you needed to reset it. and of course, once you opened the engine, you couldn't help but notice that two or three other things besides the advance needed resetting. I used to swear - and I mean swear - that damned motorcycle took more hours maintenance than it gave hours of riding time! I didn't remember then - while I was swearing - that it was an English motorcycle. the English would never have expected hours of riding time. they had no desert! they had no desert highways. they had no mountains nearby - they had those little bitty things a giant could step over that they called mountains - so they had no mountain highways. so many people lived so close together in England that they could barely get a motorcycle up to speed before they had to slow for a cart or a lorry or stop for an intersection, whatever they call intersections. you understand, I had never been to England, but I had read about it, so I knew nothing, but never let that stop me from opining. but I did have the evidence of my BSA 250. 250? wasn't that where this started? yes, 250. 5 cubed times 2. why in the world did they use cubic centimeters to measure displacement? why not cylindrical centimeters? but then what would a cylindrical centimeter mean? whatever it meant, the English would probably measure it with a tool made of pot metal so you could never trust their measurements. how did we trust their measurements made in physics? yet we did! they were the ones who discovered the electron, the proton, then the neutron even! they must use different tools in physics. Holy Toledo! how did I get from my BSA to physics? you just can't trust a human who dabbles in the mind! dabble! what an interesting sound! what a curious verb! dabble....
Monday, September 5, 2016
249.366 - 2016 project and three sentences
every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that appreciates
three sentences
three sentences
Maria Armoudian is a stand for a world that works for humans, and a stand for humans as a people who treat each other with respect, with compassion, with dignity, with kindness, with thoughtfulness, and with empathy, and a stand for journalists whose world vision includes treating humans with respect, dignity, kindness, thoughtfulness, compassion, and empathy.
Dutch Stowe is a stand for art, for friendliness, and - like a samurai - being ready to kill when that is called for.
Wyatt Underwood is a stand for good writing in any language, for optimism despite evidence, and for being ready to kill when that is called for.
Sunday, September 4, 2016
248.366 - 2016 project and the human mind
every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that appreciates
the human mind
the human mind is a dangerous place! humans should probably not be allowed in there. those who frequent the place get ideas, and you know where those lead! no wonder repressive governments do so much to prevent access! heck, even liberal governments are leery of the place and find reasons to arrest people who've been there. fortunately most of us are too well-behaved to ever be seen in a place like that, or too thoughtful of our reputations to ever associate with people who go there. take me, for instance - not to jail, please, but as an example. just this morning, I was trying to think of what to appreciate, and thought of transparent cloth, you know, the woven smoke, fog, and air that make certain skirts, blouses, and dresses that we can't see enough of. I was, thinking, of those items, and women modeling them. it was a very pleasant experience. it was. but I didn't know how to express it, so I thought about accessories for clothes like that, and remembered lacy leather, and recognized how difficult that must be to tool without punching clear through it. which naturally made me think of X-acto knives, and how wonderful they are for cutting curved pieces out of leather, or balsa wood. which made me think of balsa wood and its various thicknesses which allow you to build model planes and other just-heavier-than-air objects. which made me remember how frustrating it was to cut the tight curls of balsa that I sometimes needed for projects when I was a teenager. which made me remember - or think I remembered - seeing an impossibly thin sheet of balsa and asking the store owner who the hell could ever use a sheet like that as it must be impossible to cut. I damn near fell on my ass when he named a guy I knew! And he showed me a model airplane he wouldn't let me touch - good thinking on his part! - a bi-plane made from pieces cut from that thin, thin balsa. I went home stunned and envious. but ingratiated myself with the guy enough that he invited me to his house so he could show me how he worked on such a project. we went to his house and I disappeared, I could tell, while he worked on pieces of balsa so thin I would have destroyed them just handling them, making cuts with his X-acto knives that I knew I couldn't make with mine, even though mine looked exactly like his. I went home so awed that I couldn't work with my X-acto knives, my balsa projects, or my leather for weeks. then I had the thought - see? thinking again! you just can't trust the human mind! - that he was an artist and I was a mechanic. that thought freed me up to get back to work on balsa and leather. but you can see how dangerous a sequence of thoughts like that is - transparent cloth, transparent clothes, women in transparent clothes, accessories, lacy leather, X-acto knives, balsa wood, thin sheets of balsa wood, artists and mechanics. it had to be stopped! otherwise it might have led to not putting my hand over my heart when the national anthem is played, or not standing for it, or voting for Bernie Sanders! good lord! that's why we have to keep people out of the human mind! it's for their own good!
the human mind
the human mind is a dangerous place! humans should probably not be allowed in there. those who frequent the place get ideas, and you know where those lead! no wonder repressive governments do so much to prevent access! heck, even liberal governments are leery of the place and find reasons to arrest people who've been there. fortunately most of us are too well-behaved to ever be seen in a place like that, or too thoughtful of our reputations to ever associate with people who go there. take me, for instance - not to jail, please, but as an example. just this morning, I was trying to think of what to appreciate, and thought of transparent cloth, you know, the woven smoke, fog, and air that make certain skirts, blouses, and dresses that we can't see enough of. I was, thinking, of those items, and women modeling them. it was a very pleasant experience. it was. but I didn't know how to express it, so I thought about accessories for clothes like that, and remembered lacy leather, and recognized how difficult that must be to tool without punching clear through it. which naturally made me think of X-acto knives, and how wonderful they are for cutting curved pieces out of leather, or balsa wood. which made me think of balsa wood and its various thicknesses which allow you to build model planes and other just-heavier-than-air objects. which made me remember how frustrating it was to cut the tight curls of balsa that I sometimes needed for projects when I was a teenager. which made me remember - or think I remembered - seeing an impossibly thin sheet of balsa and asking the store owner who the hell could ever use a sheet like that as it must be impossible to cut. I damn near fell on my ass when he named a guy I knew! And he showed me a model airplane he wouldn't let me touch - good thinking on his part! - a bi-plane made from pieces cut from that thin, thin balsa. I went home stunned and envious. but ingratiated myself with the guy enough that he invited me to his house so he could show me how he worked on such a project. we went to his house and I disappeared, I could tell, while he worked on pieces of balsa so thin I would have destroyed them just handling them, making cuts with his X-acto knives that I knew I couldn't make with mine, even though mine looked exactly like his. I went home so awed that I couldn't work with my X-acto knives, my balsa projects, or my leather for weeks. then I had the thought - see? thinking again! you just can't trust the human mind! - that he was an artist and I was a mechanic. that thought freed me up to get back to work on balsa and leather. but you can see how dangerous a sequence of thoughts like that is - transparent cloth, transparent clothes, women in transparent clothes, accessories, lacy leather, X-acto knives, balsa wood, thin sheets of balsa wood, artists and mechanics. it had to be stopped! otherwise it might have led to not putting my hand over my heart when the national anthem is played, or not standing for it, or voting for Bernie Sanders! good lord! that's why we have to keep people out of the human mind! it's for their own good!
Saturday, September 3, 2016
247.366 - 2016 project and Willie Nelson
every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that appreciates
Willie Nelson
once upon a time it was long ago, but the kid who had been yanked outa Brasil and dumped into this country, then moved from one aunt to another, had already arrived in Perryton, Texas, where the aunt had enough love to accommodate two more kids, and enough room for them since her two kids were gone already, one in college and the other finding his own way into "business", whatever that meant, so the kid had a chance to look around without being terrified, once upon a time when all that had happened, the air around the kid was filled with American country and western music. Hank Williams and Hank Thompson, Patsy Cline and Kitty Wells, Johnny Cash and Jimmy Horton, Marty Robbins and Jim Reeves, Faron Young and Ferlin Husky, the Someone Brothers and the Somebody Sisters, and at least a dozen others that I knew by heart then. (Robert Graves requests of school children that they learn their history by rote but learn his poems by heart.) oh man, I might not have understood the English that flowed around and over me and mostly beyond me back then, but I knew those lonesome railroad sounds, and I knew about being in prison, and I knew about feeling heartbroken without ever having been sure about love. I knew about looking around me and longing for some girl company and finding none, chasing any away as soon as I spoke in my Brasilian accent with my odd construction of sentences. I was like Jon Snow, of course. I knew nothing, I knew nothing. What those country and western singers sang about was way beyond anything I had ever known, but I knew the ache and the pain and the longing. I think I remember once finding a safe place and hiding in it and just crying and crying and crying until I didn't need to cry any more, then having to clean myself up and wait til I could look boy-tough enough that I could sneak out of there and navigate the world with other people in it. I was so alone. yes, I had a sister available, yes, I had an aunt and an uncle available, but I didn't know how to connect or share. and that aloneness is the heart of country-western music still. I didn't know Willie Nelson then. I think he was still nosing around the edges of country-western music, trying to get in. but a sad thing, or a glorious thing, I don't know, happened to country-western music. it became popular. it cleaned itself up and became middle-of-the-road then became Christian and became middle class. I just about divorced myself from country music. but along came Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings and Johnny Cash rekindled himself and Kris Kristofferson invented himself, and they knew country music like I did. they knew about trains and pickups and dogs and prison and mainly they knew about being so goddamed alone even with a cityful of people elbow to elbow around you. and Willie still does, or the last time I heard him he still did. bless him for a trunkful of country-western songs that mostly can't be messed up even when someone slick sings them. bless him for a chestful of music recorded so we'll remember what real country-western music once sounded like. bless him for songs that bring those feelings into the 70s and 80s and 90s and maybe even into the twenty-first century. bless you, Mr. Willie Nelson, may you live long after you do.
Willie Nelson
once upon a time it was long ago, but the kid who had been yanked outa Brasil and dumped into this country, then moved from one aunt to another, had already arrived in Perryton, Texas, where the aunt had enough love to accommodate two more kids, and enough room for them since her two kids were gone already, one in college and the other finding his own way into "business", whatever that meant, so the kid had a chance to look around without being terrified, once upon a time when all that had happened, the air around the kid was filled with American country and western music. Hank Williams and Hank Thompson, Patsy Cline and Kitty Wells, Johnny Cash and Jimmy Horton, Marty Robbins and Jim Reeves, Faron Young and Ferlin Husky, the Someone Brothers and the Somebody Sisters, and at least a dozen others that I knew by heart then. (Robert Graves requests of school children that they learn their history by rote but learn his poems by heart.) oh man, I might not have understood the English that flowed around and over me and mostly beyond me back then, but I knew those lonesome railroad sounds, and I knew about being in prison, and I knew about feeling heartbroken without ever having been sure about love. I knew about looking around me and longing for some girl company and finding none, chasing any away as soon as I spoke in my Brasilian accent with my odd construction of sentences. I was like Jon Snow, of course. I knew nothing, I knew nothing. What those country and western singers sang about was way beyond anything I had ever known, but I knew the ache and the pain and the longing. I think I remember once finding a safe place and hiding in it and just crying and crying and crying until I didn't need to cry any more, then having to clean myself up and wait til I could look boy-tough enough that I could sneak out of there and navigate the world with other people in it. I was so alone. yes, I had a sister available, yes, I had an aunt and an uncle available, but I didn't know how to connect or share. and that aloneness is the heart of country-western music still. I didn't know Willie Nelson then. I think he was still nosing around the edges of country-western music, trying to get in. but a sad thing, or a glorious thing, I don't know, happened to country-western music. it became popular. it cleaned itself up and became middle-of-the-road then became Christian and became middle class. I just about divorced myself from country music. but along came Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings and Johnny Cash rekindled himself and Kris Kristofferson invented himself, and they knew country music like I did. they knew about trains and pickups and dogs and prison and mainly they knew about being so goddamed alone even with a cityful of people elbow to elbow around you. and Willie still does, or the last time I heard him he still did. bless him for a trunkful of country-western songs that mostly can't be messed up even when someone slick sings them. bless him for a chestful of music recorded so we'll remember what real country-western music once sounded like. bless him for songs that bring those feelings into the 70s and 80s and 90s and maybe even into the twenty-first century. bless you, Mr. Willie Nelson, may you live long after you do.
Friday, September 2, 2016
246.366 - 2016 project and cowboy boots
every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that appreciates
cowboy boots
oh, I can't wear them any more, but I have worn them most of my life. and a pair sits right there, waiting, just in case this bilateral sinus tarsi syndrome heals or goes away. and I think I have another pair, a spare pair, hiding in here somewhere, just in case I wear the first pair out. yes, I appreciate cowboy boots. I have ever since I woke up on Christmas morning when I was four, I think, and there were a pair waiting for me under the tree. talk about privilege! there we were in northeastern Brasil in a twenty-year drought, and somehow there were Christmas trees for American families. I have no idea how. but we had one and under it a pair of boots waited, just my size! I didn't know what they were, but I knew they were magical. "Cowboy boots," one of my parents told me, and I sort of understood. I knew cowboys were the American version of vaqueiros, and I knew vaqueiros wore sandals, and shoes, and sometimes low-cut boots, like our engineer's boots, although I didn't know that name for them until years later. I think I had seen the high-top boots that patrones wore, rich men who each owned scads of land. but I didn't care. they were mine. they were magical, and no one else anywhere around us had a pair. I wore them to bed, I wore them to play in, I wore them to town, I may have worn them to church! I think I learned how to polish shoes because I had cowboy boots. and then I outgrew them. geez! how unfair! how unmagical! and one night the tooth fairy took them, and they became magical again. but she didn't replace them. neither did Christmas. I figured out that cowboy boots must be a once in a lifetime thing. and life got complicated, you know how it is. You turn five, and your parents drag you off to another country where people insist that you get saved and you have to go to school - nothing can save you from that! - and the school forces you to read books you already read two years before and makes you sit in the corner when you not only read "Run, Dick, run" backwards but you insist it doesn't make any difference which way you read it, it's still stupid, and then you start the second grade and, dear God!, they make you read the same stupid books again! and you finally get to go back to Brasil but you don't get to go back to the little town where you lived before. instead you live in a city and someone takes you on an airplane ride so you can see how goddam big the city is and how you have no hope of escaping from it. but you find two hundred different ways to walk home from school that each take you through some neighborhood you're not supposed to walk through and you learn more than you can figure out and your parents go nuts at each other not you and you wind up back in that country with the crazy schools but at least you get a job and can make enough money to save some for bicycle parts and model airplanes and - ooo! - cowboy boots! life may not be so bad after all. that kind of complicated. but you wind up with your own cowboy boots that no one can take away from you and you wear them everywhere except to church and to bed. and you outgrow them again! but this time you know what to do, you save until you can buy some more! and you do that again and again even after you allegedly "grow up" and no longer outgrow them, you just wear them out. yes, that kind of "I appreciate cowboy boots".
cowboy boots
oh, I can't wear them any more, but I have worn them most of my life. and a pair sits right there, waiting, just in case this bilateral sinus tarsi syndrome heals or goes away. and I think I have another pair, a spare pair, hiding in here somewhere, just in case I wear the first pair out. yes, I appreciate cowboy boots. I have ever since I woke up on Christmas morning when I was four, I think, and there were a pair waiting for me under the tree. talk about privilege! there we were in northeastern Brasil in a twenty-year drought, and somehow there were Christmas trees for American families. I have no idea how. but we had one and under it a pair of boots waited, just my size! I didn't know what they were, but I knew they were magical. "Cowboy boots," one of my parents told me, and I sort of understood. I knew cowboys were the American version of vaqueiros, and I knew vaqueiros wore sandals, and shoes, and sometimes low-cut boots, like our engineer's boots, although I didn't know that name for them until years later. I think I had seen the high-top boots that patrones wore, rich men who each owned scads of land. but I didn't care. they were mine. they were magical, and no one else anywhere around us had a pair. I wore them to bed, I wore them to play in, I wore them to town, I may have worn them to church! I think I learned how to polish shoes because I had cowboy boots. and then I outgrew them. geez! how unfair! how unmagical! and one night the tooth fairy took them, and they became magical again. but she didn't replace them. neither did Christmas. I figured out that cowboy boots must be a once in a lifetime thing. and life got complicated, you know how it is. You turn five, and your parents drag you off to another country where people insist that you get saved and you have to go to school - nothing can save you from that! - and the school forces you to read books you already read two years before and makes you sit in the corner when you not only read "Run, Dick, run" backwards but you insist it doesn't make any difference which way you read it, it's still stupid, and then you start the second grade and, dear God!, they make you read the same stupid books again! and you finally get to go back to Brasil but you don't get to go back to the little town where you lived before. instead you live in a city and someone takes you on an airplane ride so you can see how goddam big the city is and how you have no hope of escaping from it. but you find two hundred different ways to walk home from school that each take you through some neighborhood you're not supposed to walk through and you learn more than you can figure out and your parents go nuts at each other not you and you wind up back in that country with the crazy schools but at least you get a job and can make enough money to save some for bicycle parts and model airplanes and - ooo! - cowboy boots! life may not be so bad after all. that kind of complicated. but you wind up with your own cowboy boots that no one can take away from you and you wear them everywhere except to church and to bed. and you outgrow them again! but this time you know what to do, you save until you can buy some more! and you do that again and again even after you allegedly "grow up" and no longer outgrow them, you just wear them out. yes, that kind of "I appreciate cowboy boots".
Thursday, September 1, 2016
245.366 - 2016 project and gadgets
every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that appreciates
gadgets
have you seen the cart that climbs? either way? wow! I could sorta figure out how the mechanism worked to climb up the stairs, but am still mystified by how it climbs down them. even so, go inventors! you rock! there's also a cane that stands and waits for you. and its bottom is this little tripod thingy that adjusts to the tilt of wherever you put it down on, so you get stable support even as you walk on rough ground. surely you've seen the standing desk? I would think you'd need a specially designed desk to make it work right, but apparently not. or have you seen a bow lately? I thought the recurved bow was an extraordinary advance, but today's bow can come with half a dozen gadgets that increase the "weight" you release, and also increase its repeatable accuracy. it looks like Rube Goldberg's bow, but that's probably because my eye is untrained. your PDA (smartphone) can count your footsteps and tell you how far you've walked today. one of my computers knows to turn on when I open the screen away from the keyboard. so yes, you can tell I appreciate gadgets, but I would disclaim a few. I've never appreciated the guillotine much, possibly because I'm more rebel than law'n'order aficionado. I have the same mixed feelings about a Taser. I'm of two minds about the floating car with the propeller in back. the extensible-retractable leash seems a mixed blessing to me. I love my Kindle app, but hope we don't give up on printed books. so, yes, I love gadgets - like the electric pencil sharpener - but with reservations. So, happy gadgeting! And go gadgeteers!
gadgets
have you seen the cart that climbs? either way? wow! I could sorta figure out how the mechanism worked to climb up the stairs, but am still mystified by how it climbs down them. even so, go inventors! you rock! there's also a cane that stands and waits for you. and its bottom is this little tripod thingy that adjusts to the tilt of wherever you put it down on, so you get stable support even as you walk on rough ground. surely you've seen the standing desk? I would think you'd need a specially designed desk to make it work right, but apparently not. or have you seen a bow lately? I thought the recurved bow was an extraordinary advance, but today's bow can come with half a dozen gadgets that increase the "weight" you release, and also increase its repeatable accuracy. it looks like Rube Goldberg's bow, but that's probably because my eye is untrained. your PDA (smartphone) can count your footsteps and tell you how far you've walked today. one of my computers knows to turn on when I open the screen away from the keyboard. so yes, you can tell I appreciate gadgets, but I would disclaim a few. I've never appreciated the guillotine much, possibly because I'm more rebel than law'n'order aficionado. I have the same mixed feelings about a Taser. I'm of two minds about the floating car with the propeller in back. the extensible-retractable leash seems a mixed blessing to me. I love my Kindle app, but hope we don't give up on printed books. so, yes, I love gadgets - like the electric pencil sharpener - but with reservations. So, happy gadgeting! And go gadgeteers!
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