335.366 - 2016 project and following instructions

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

following instructions

oh how embarrassing!  my "life story" is predicated on "I will not!"  I'm the little boy who played in the flower gardens; who learned Portuguese by talking to Brazilians; who sneaked out of the kitchen, out of the backyard, out of the little town, to play in the brush and wilderness; who found a cave and explored it; who picked three red peppers and bit into them all at once; who built a tree-house with help from another six-year-old; who lay in his hospital bed dismayed after doctors allegedly told his father that he must not run, jump, climb, ride his bicycle fast, swim out into the ocean, and thought "f*** you!  I damn sure will!" and did; who walked home along a different variation from the safe way home every day and thereby wandered into every neighborhood he'd been told to stay out of, and learned about factory workers and women who flirted with them and warehouse workers and truck loaders and truck drivers and people who ran small markets; who even made a few centavos by running errands for working people in those neighborhoods; who tried and tried and tried to build a raft that would carry him down the river that ran past his house; and so forth.  I'm the little boy who never outgrew "nunh-unh!"  sigh.  but I'm also the little boy who learned English by learning and following the rules of grammar; who learned to spell by memorizing; who learned math by learning and applying the rules of logic; who may have ridden his bicycle way out from where he had been allowed to go, but always rode it near the curb unless he had to go around parked cars; who loved streets without curbs, because then he could ride anywhere; who didn't talk to strangers unless they talked to him first; who started college in a flattop and dress clothes; and lately, since congestive heart failure, follows every instruction a doctor gives him.  thank goodness for Lindy who has found a zillion low sodium or no sodium recipes so I can eat chili, lasagna, forty-eight different Italian foods, most of whom I'd never heard of before CHF.  thank goodness for the poets of Los Angeles who tempt me outside the bounds of English as she's meant to be.  thank goodness for an imagination that sneaks me out into the wilderness of ideas beyond where I'm spozta go.  turns out I'm damn good at following instructions, and some of them are good for me, or at least for my health.  but the first rule for a poet is "don't follow instructions too well."

334.366 - 2016 project and breakfast

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

breakfast

yes!  the most important meal of the day!  (some folks say.)  mmm!  pizza!  lasagna!  roast beef with potatoes and onions and carrots!  oh yeah, and cereal.  eggs and bacon, if you can still eat salt.  pancakes.  waffles.  Belgian waffles.  biscuit with gravy.  hell, just the damn biscuit!  cornbread.  toast and jam.  breakfast!

333.366 - 2016 project and whatever I learned from Werner Erhard

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

whatever I learned from Werner Erhard

let me introduce this by telling you I found my head in a real mess this evening.  late in the afternoon, I learned that I'm going back to Kaiser-Permanente on Wednesday afternoon for another procedure, this one an outpatient procedure.  it didn't hit me that way.  I damn near died twice while I was at Kaiser-Permanente last time (half of last week).  what hit me was that I could make no plans for after Wednesday afternoon.  faced with that, I didn't want to think.  I didn't want to know.  I didn't want to see.  I wanted fantasy.  I wanted killing.  I wanted out of this world.  watching "NCIS Los Angeles" is good for that.  I did.  and then, of course, "NCIS Los Angeles" was over, and I was back into that funk.  except I knew I was in a funk, and I knew I generated that funk.  dammit!  so I looked into myself, asked questions I didn't want to ask, and eventually came up with several insights.  I didn't want this helplessness.  I wanted to be in charge of my life.  oh!  I am never in charge of my life.  circumstances always are in charge.  oh!  but I choose to live as if I were in charge, as if I could plan the next week, the next month, the next quarter, the next year.  and mostly I live my life as if my plans controlled it.  and now and then, circumstances deflect my plans.  and I do what I must to get past or through those circumstances,  then once again, I choose to live as if I were in charge.  but if I am a little wiser, I know that I am choosing to live as if I were in charge, I know that, underlying that "as if", circumstances are doing what they will, and eventually they will deflect my plans again.  damn.  this is what I didn't want to know, what I didn't want to think, what I didn't want to see.  but now that I have it, it's so calming, so clarifying!  thank you, Werner.

332.366 - 2016 project and writing 2

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

writing 2

funny, when I think of me, I don't think of my latest picture, snapshot, or photo; I don't think of a full beard, or 51 years of work (playing) with computers.  I don't usually think of 40 years of riding (20 of riding other motorcycles, and 20 years of riding a Harley).  I think of the actors I am, the agents in my world or universe.  I am a smart-aleck, I am a sketchily knowledgeable informant for anyone who'll listen, I am a silly man who loves to quip or joke or jest.  I am an assistant, or was.  (once upon a time I had more energy, and I threw myself into helping a friend move, or helping a group put on a show, or setup for a poetry reading.)  most often though, I think of myself as a writer.  I write all the time.  well, nearly all the time.  as I drift into sleep, I compose a story.  as I drift among people, I hear and record comments that might begin a story, I listen to the rhythm, the cadence, the inflection, the vocabulary of some speakers.  when I get itchy to do something, what I want to do is write - poems, stories, appreciations, emails, texts, even changing my status on facebook.  I am driven to write, and to share what I write.  now I have to interrupt myself and explain.  I don't mean I'm driven to babble.  in the hospital, I listened in awe as a woman talked to her mother (a patient), her mother's doctor, the nurse, another visitor to another patient.  for damn near four hours, the woman talked about her ills, about her mother's ailments and preferences, about the weather, about her job and the unfair politics that surround it, about which newspaper she reads and why, about her car and her dream car, about her kids and their doings, about what a good politician would do if he or she got elected, about cosmetics and cooking and baking and sewing.  now and then she took a breath to let her listener know she was changing topics; even more rarely, she let her listener speak.  I don't think I do that, not with my talking, not with my writing.  for one thing, I construct my sentences, assemble my paragraphs, cobble my status updates and my texts, my emails, and my stories.  I craft my poems.  I pay attention to my English and to my twists of English, and to the units I send out into the world.  and I'm so damn grateful for the people who make up my audience, thank you.

331.366 - 2016 project and going home from the hospital

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

going home from the hospital

in some ways a hospital is a fine place.  Shakespeare argued that in some ways a grave is.  but a hospital is.  you come in, and you basically agree to suspend your ability to choose or decide.  I mean, you can say, "no, I want breakfast at eight o'clock!" all you want, but breakfast is still at seven-thirty.  you can say, "no, I want bacon!" all you want, but breakfast is still cream of wheat.  or you can surrender, stop being a three-year-old, and eat when it's mealtime, and eat whatever meal appears.  you can accept that blood-drawings happen at the convenience of the laboratory.  that the drip bag empties just as you enter REM sleep.  that you only need to pee when the cleaning lady is mopping.  it just works most easily for you if you enter a willess state.  the hospital is going to determine what you must do, what you can't do, for however long you're there.  when you leave, you can resume living willfully, making your own choices or decisions.  (if you're in a hospital for a long time, resuming willfulness will seem like an unfair demand.  "what do you mean, I have to choose my socks?")  but you step past that too.  goddam, air!  wind!  rain!  sunshine!  OMG!  scents!  traffic!  and you get home and the oddest things seem wonderful.  a comfortable chair.  underwear.  that stain on your wall that you've meant to do something about for a year.  the ridiculous heap of computers, books, magazines, doodads, gadgets, dried-out pens, and keys you can't remember the use for.  the oddball food you like.  when you want it.  peeing without observers.  the television channels you like.  doing things you useta take for granted, like using your computers.  being able to construct two consecutive coherent thoughts!  (I'm assuming you're no longer taking too many drugs to be allowed to live alone.)  yes, a hospital is a fine place, and it's especially a fine place to remind you of how wonderful going home from the hospital is.  yes, I appreciate going home from the hospital.

330.366 - 2016 project and food

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

food

a hamburger!  roast beef!  hell, a big grilled Portobello mushroom!  some of Lindy's potato soup!  mmmmm!  you see, when I finally got to eat again - I couldn't eat while preparing for the colonoscopy or for a while after it - I was on a clear liquid diet.  yes, hot water, beef broth, jello, Italian ice.  (hot water:  I can't drink coffee or tea or pop.  luckily, Duke Ellington had a substitute for me.)  I lay in bed and imagined that big juicy hamburger, with a thick slice of tomato, and even a pickle!  mmmmm!  I was so grateful when they graduated me to an unclear liquid diet!  Oh yes!  cream of vegetable soup!  vanilla pudding!  what they called "soft fruit" - and I tried not to imagine fruit gone soft.  really!  the clear liquid diet was tasty!  yummy!  the unclear liquid diet added a hint of texture.  nice!  ooooo!  and then solid food!  Ziti with beans was delicious!  heck, even steamed carrots were delicious.  a small roll of bread!  but in this country, I was raised in the Southwest.  food is beef and vice versa.  so I ate the clear liquids, the unclear liquids, and the soft solid food, and reveled in real tastes, and imagined a chunk of roast beef, or a steak, or filet mignon.  we drove home in the rain, so I didn't ask for a hamburger, but was happy for potato soup and both chocolate and vanilla ice cream.  oops, I've once again slipped past DoY 330 and slid into DoY 331, but maybe that's okay since I'm appreciating and celebrating food.

329.366 - 2016 project and being alive

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

being alive

I nearly died twice "today".  (I am writing as if I really wrote this on DoY 329, 24 November 2016, instead of 3 days later.)  after the emergency room hours, after they admitted me and moved me into monitored care where they have me wired up and sending a bunch of measurements they can get by "listening" through patches on my skin, I had a second bleeding incident and lost a lot of blood again, and my pulse rate shot up to 180 and stayed there.  nurses helped me get back into bed and changed the bed under me.  I slept a while, then did it again.  (this was while taking the ghastly stuff one must take to flush out one's GI tract.)  but I'm stubborn, I suppose.  I managed to get my pulse rate to stabilize at 90 for hours.  they did the colonoscopy while I was completely out.  ("this will make you a little drowsy" the nurse said.  I blinked and opened my eyes in a different room over an hour later.  "oh, there you are," the nurse smiled.)  I learned late that my pulse rate had settled to 72 long enough that they were comfortable going ahead with the procedure.  meanwhile, I had lost enough blood that after the colonoscopy, they gave me 5 units of blood plasma then 2 units of blood.  (okay, I've drifted into events that actually happened on DoY 330, so please pretend that I was briefly prescient.)  yes, I lost or misplaced a lot of blood.  but my appreciation is for after that.  after I sorta calmed down and eased back into a more or less normal pulse, after the world expanded to include my whole hospital room, then expanded again to what I could see out the window and hear in the hall and from the nurses' station, then even expanded to my being able to consider the internet and my so many friends.  (warning, this is supposed to amuse you.)  after the world regained a future instead of a just now, and I could imagine cradling my new Winchester Model 94 carbine at a shooting range.  yes, I appreciate being alive.  and I count on writing more poems.  but for now, appreciations.

328.366 - 2016 project and Kaiser-Permanente

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

Kaiser-Permanente

damn.  back here.  but you know?  coming to K-P for me is like going home for most folks, I think.  "good.  I'm here.  I can relax.  if anything can be done for my ailing, these people will do it.  if nothing can, they damn well will try anyway."  I do that:  relax and cooperate, do what they say, and only interrupt when I think they have the event-sequence wrong, or when I think I remember something that might be important to them.  and most of all I try to govern my silliness.  (if you know me, you may know a serious and more or less shabby-genteel person.  if you know me well, you know a silly person underlies that one, a silly person who really really really wants to amuse or entertain you.  "amuse or entertain" may have a place in a hospital, maybe when the conversation turns casual and light, but most conversations are serious and to a purpose.  silliness only confuses and distracts.  and I even appreciate that about the people at K-P.  they are deadly serious about saving your life, or reconstituting your health, or even removing your discomfort, but they are warm and empathetic and calming at the same time.  and if they keep you long enough, they may even find a time for your silliness, and laugh with you about it.  thank you, K-P.

explanation

hm.  what to do?

you see, I spent days 328 - 331 in the hospital, sick enough that writing an appreciation was never likely even if I had had access to one of my computers.

so now, how do I continue with this project?

my plan:  write an appreciation for each of those days, in order, then one for today (day 332), then continue in order and caught up.

doesn't that sound like a good plan?

327.366 - 2016 project and rue

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

rue

what is rue?  a perennial evergreen shrub with bitter, strong-scented lobed leaves that are used in herbal medicine.  also compassion, pity, repentance, regret, or as a verb, to bitterly regret.  (it has nothing to do with the French rue, street, but is a direct descendent of the Old English hreow, the Dutch rouw, and the German reue.)  some days I know A.E. Housman's "With rue my heart is laden", and some days I don't.  I wake up to the white man's history with women, or with black people, with Native Americans, with anyone else than white men, and I want to crawl under my bed.  I want to protest that I didn't do it, but that's hogwash.  I am the beneficiary of all those acts, and unconsciously participated in my own from the time we landed in this country (roughly 1954) til now.  yes, even now, I catch myself too late acting the generous white man.  if there were a way to cut that out of me, I would.  but we are trained to it - ah, and those training us aren't even aware that they're training us.  it's the expected, the norm.  it's our society, our culture.  it's who we are.  it's who I am.  I think but cannot know that sometimes I am a genuine fellow-human.  please, universe, let that be so.  so, rue?  yes, I know it.  sometimes I live it.  and yes, I appreciate it.

326.366 - 2016 project and being linear

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

being linear

at first it seems like a limitation, doesn't it?  I can't carry on two conversations at once.  when people try, I lose both.  I can't listen to music and what someone says about it, I can do either or.  I can't write a poem and listen to you.  and I suppose it is a limitation.  take this with at least a grain of salt, but almost any woman I know can carry on more than one conversation at a time, can write a letter and talk to someone else while she does so, crimeney, can balance her checkbook while she talks on the phone!  I am in awe.  truly.  what I find impossible, they do normally.  I've even seen a young woman walking down a mallway, reading a book.  what?  isn't part of the point of walking down a mallway to window-shop?  well, but I can be linear very well.  I can get dressed and then drive.  I can eat and then watch television.  I can write a poem and then write another.  yes, I appreciate being linear, but sometimes ruefully.

325.366 - 2016 project and television

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

television

once upon a time, I was new in this country.  I was twelve or thereabouts, and thought I was smarter than just about anything.  except circumstances.  somehow I was with an aunt and uncle and three cousins, all of whom knew St. Louis and its schools and games like baseball.  being smart didn't seem to count for much, but it was what I held on to.  but there was something that made being smart worthwhile after all.  every afternoon television came on.  Howdy Doody, Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, some guy who usetabe a cowboy's sidekick and now introduced froggie with the magic twanger.  (I didn't do it, that really was afternoon television in St. Louis in about 1954.)  Oh yeah, Andy Devine, I think that was his name.  anyway, I'm sorry to say I soon excelled at pointing out when Roy Rogers shot his seventh, eighth, and ninth shots without reloading, or how absurd it was that Miss Hootenannie was captured and tied to a chair for three days without having to go to the bathroom, or other features of television in the 1950s.  my same-age cousin tried to explain to me that it wasn't smart to be smart that way.  I couldn't get it, of course.  soon I lived with a different aunt and uncle in Perryton, Texas, and as well as I remember, everyone was happier.  that is, television and I got off to a rocky start.  I didn't see television again until my family suddenly reassembled and we moved to Albuquerque, 1957 I think.  I didn't do much better with it then.  I must've mellowed with it since then.  I can now get through a whole evening of recorded television shows without mentioning anything that doesn't make sense.  I can.  some evenings.  and some, like tonight, I lean over and mention to Lindy that you really can't shoot seventeen rounds from a fifteen-round magazine.  some things on television don't change.  but television shows have, or I've mellowed.  I love NCIS and its two little sisters, I love Law and Order, SVU.  I especially love any show Neil DeGrasse Tyson hosts, or Stephen Hawking.  I cringe and love Last Man Standing.  I happily watch Chris Hayes and Rachel Maddow and Bill Maher and John Oliver.  Lindy could probably tell you other shows I love or like a lot - she, after all, does all my recording for me.  but anyway, I appreciate television.  it's like a pacifier for the mind.  these days I need one.

324.366 - 2016 project and cookies

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

cookies

geez!  how could it have taken me 323 days to remember to appreciate cookies?  ah, of course.  we hardly think of them until the year-end holidays befall us, right?  they're just there or they're not for most of the year, then - flash! - they're a staple for a few weeks, and then - flash! - they're gone again until next year.  yeah, but it doesn't matter when they're there, damn!  little crisps of sweetness, sometimes with a surprising softness as soon as you get past the crunch.  I think the best ones are just sweet enough that you notice, but heck, I also like the ones that damn near make your teeth sing with sweetness!  happy holidays!  enjoy your bounty of cookies this season!  then - what the heck! - scatter them through your year!  happy cookie days!

323.366 - 2016 project and Eeyore

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

Eeyore

once upon a time I thought I was a pessimist.  later I thought I was a realist.  now I worry that I'm an optimist. worse, a cockeyed optimist.  my basic point of view hasn't changed.  the world is a wearisomely rotten place about which the only good thing there is to say is that good things sometimes happen to good people.  (I may in fact get my carbine, my Winchester Model 94 30-30 carbine.  I do have my Ruger 9mm semi-automatic pistol.)  but basically, if you wait five minutes, the news will validate your gloom.  (Jeff Sessions for Attorney General.)  "this is optimism?" you might say, and I would wearily, warily, nod my head.  I look at what I expect to happen, I look at what I fear will happen.  yes, what I expect to happen - my Eeyore sayings - are optimism compared to what I fear.  I suspect these are the feast days before the end of the republic.  (I am assuming you remember that the republic preceded the empire for Rome.)  a year from now, those of us who remain will say to those few whom they can still trust, "I know he said he would do X, but I never in my life really expected it."  and the he you're talking about won't be me.  yes, I appreciate Eeyore.  for moments he gives me giddy hope.

322.366 - 2016 project and poetry

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

poetry

oh!  poetry!  what I do.  oops, no.  the ocean that gives context to the measuring cups which result from what I do.  I write poems.  long poems, short poems, very short poems.  poetry is the world of all poems.  Chinese poems.  Japanese poems.  poems from southeast Asia.  from India!  yes, dear god!  from India!  from Mongolia.  from Russia.  (ah!   Anna Akhmatova!)  poems from the Middle East from at least 50 centuries back!  ah Mother Africa, we are so ignorant of you, but surely poems from you and from the streams of people leaving you for 10,000 centuries?  oh, is it longer?  what a hemorrhage!  and yet it left Mother Africa the stronger for it, as well as we can tell (we haven't looked or listened very hard).  and surely poems from Africa in the last six centuries, the ones in which we created our own hemorrhage of people from Africa.  poems from Europe.  poems from Scandinavia.  poems from South America, poems from Central America, poems from the Caribbean.  poems from Mexico, from Canada, from the United States.  poems from the Southwest.  what a deluge!  I know several rivers pouring into it, and am familiar with several streams, and am adding my own, fast as I can.  yes, I appreciate poetry.

321.366 - 2016 project and Tonka trucks

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

Tonka trucks

sorry.  I needed something lighthearted.  what could be more lighthearted than kids playing with toy trucks?  well, I suppose a lot of things.  but I confess, I was glad to "light" on these.  I didn't have many Tonka trucks in my childing and teening.  they became widespread about two years too late for me, maybe four.  I remember Tonka trucks and being fascinated with them about the time I got my driver's license.  for once I was clear that my fascination with them would not communicate to girls my age, and I was clear also about the whole point of a driver's license, some time alone with a girl.  but, oops, sorry, back to the point here, Tonka trucks.  goddam!  they were just toys, right?  but they were made with such dedication to detail!  and they had such wonderful features!  some had doors that opened and closed.  some had hoists that actually hoisted.  some carried barrels of oil - as far as I know, you had to make-believe the oil, but the oil drums looked and felt authentic.  I think the tow truck came with a blue shop rag that actually felt like a blue shop rag!  it was silly and it was wonderful!  thank you, Tonka.

320.366 - 2016 project and country 2

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

country 2

no, it turns out there's a whole nuther way I appreciate this country, our country, the United States of America.  through its history.  there, once again, we find that I have an amalgam, a pressed-together of images and texts (not real, these are in my head).  my history of the U.S. starts, of course with the frivolous, sugarcoated history that annoys me now, why do they pass that drivel off to kids?  what about it satisfies some man, no doubt, and what part of him does it satisfy?  ah, a good question!  and the answer to it ruins whatever history we accumulate here.  see, this history has to teach patriotism, whatever the heck that is.  eww!  no!  shouldn't history just be an accumulation of facts?  what we did, when we did it, where we did it, and what we meant to accomplish by doing it.  um.  right away you see the problem.  much of what we did is unedifying.  we deceived, we outright lied, we murdered, we maimed, we raped, we stole, worse than that, we stole pettily - we didn't just steal land, we stole the dolls the kids played with.  we didn't just maim, we mutilated and infected.  and we did it knowingly, there was no accident about it.  we can't tell the kids the simple story, we have to pretty it up.  no matter how old the "kids" are in our expected audience.  eww!  let's pause and hold our noses together a moment or so before this stinking pile, before we pour on the toilet water, the fragrance, the perfume.  there.  that should do it.  okay then, a group of men met as the Continental Congress, did a few things, and went home, then came back - more or less the same group of men - and figuratively scampered about (they stood and sat and talked in a room in Philadelphia) trying to catch up with facts as militia and others acted on their own.  eventually they convinced their fellow citizens, at least some of them, that they were in charge and - poof! - invented an army and - poof! - declared a general and pretty much left it up to him to take control of people who were already fighting.  he did.  and he was one of those lucky choices that some people later wanted to claim was divinely inspired, except the Second Continental Congress had no trappings of divinity or even authority.  they did what they could get away with, and it worked.  mostly.  they became the de facto government of the united colonies while the colonies were still tussling over what kind of government they wanted.  their first attempt to document how they'd work became the Articles of Confederation, which were ratified by the colonies, one by one, lastly by Maryland on 2 February 1781.  The Articles of Confederation were our constitution for at least six and a half years.  from 14 May til 17 September of 1787 the Constitutional Convention met.  it was originally called to revise the Articles, but quickly became a redesign.  eventually the document was sent out to be ratified, and even more eventually it was on 21 June 1788.  oh yeah, didn't we start a war that we were now "governing"?  yes, yes, the war didn't just politely go away.  it wore on and on.  the British surrendered at Yorktown in 1781, and the fighting formally ended with the Treaty of Paris on 3 September 1783.  so, at least in my version, the war started, the Second Continental Congress met and hurried to take charge in some sense, George Washington made an army out of a raggedy militia or several raggedy militia, the Articles of Confederation were assembled, argued over, and ratified.  we won the war on the battlefield, we won the war in the peace treaty, and we put together the Constitution which makes us the nation we are....  well, it governed the nation as late as yesterday.  as far as I know, it's still the law of the land.  I admire it.  I appreciate what we had until Donald Trump was elected president.  may it continue.

319.366 - 2016 project and country

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

country

what the heck do I mean, I appreciate the country, the United States of America?  well, I do, but the country I appreciate probably doesn't exist.  it's some amalgam of a bunch of experiences, like a 4th of July picnic in Perryton, Texas, in 1954 attended by two little kids who only knew that if they hung on to each other and to the hands of their aunt and uncle, this terrifying swirl of people and noise would finish too.  It's Halloween that same year, a kids' party with real bobbing for apples.  it's riding a bicycle everywhere I could in Clovis, New Mexico, until I sorta knew the town and the lands around it.  it's a young teenager walking swaths of Albuquerque, New Mexico, and recognizing that he was never going to know it on foot.  it's learning to drive a car, then driving horribly, and finally driving skillfully enough to be allowed to borrow the car for dates or for riding by myself as far in Albuquerque as I had money for.  it's exploring Las Cruces, New Mexico, by foot and by car.  it's buying a car and rebuilding it to one more like I wanted, learning as I built.  it's dating in my own car, and getting married, and moving into an apartment, then into another, and then finding out, oh my god, we were gonna have a baby!  it's finishing college anyway then taking a job and driving from Las Cruces  to Seattle to do that job.  it's flying from Seattle to Los Angeles to work on the first Lunar Orbiter mission, then flying to Seattle to get ready for Lunar Orbiter II then flying back to Los Angeles to execute Lunar Orbiter II and repeat for III and for IV and for V.  it's flying back to Seattle expecting a victory parade - we'd done the job well, hadn't we? - and finding a gaggle of managers who thought we were a problem, "now what do I do with you?"  it's driving to Houston, Texas, in 1968, to work on the manned exploration of space for almost a year in which the country went nuts in it's own way.  Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated.  Robert Kennedy was assassinated.  cops rioted in Chicago for the Democratic Convention.  people in Houston celebrated each of those like they'd accomplished something.  it's selling our house there, watching people pack what little we owned into a truck, then driving from Houston back to Las Cruces to start graduate school and to learn what poetry meant from a master, Keith Wilson.  it's exploring motorcycling in and around Las Cruces.  it's riding a motorcycle to Denver while Sue Lynn followed me with now three kids, two cats, and a dog.  it was renting a house in Golden, Colorado, and riding to work and back as late into winter as I dared.  it's driving a truck carrying three motorcycles and whatever gear I had after Sue Lynn and I split - no, I didn't have three motorcycles, two guys I knew who'd moved to Los Angeles "temporarily" but had left their motorcycles in Colorado asked me please please please please please to bring them out to them - to Los Angeles.  it's riding one motorcycle after another over most of southern California, up to Berkeley, and then riding 7700 miles in 35 days in 2003, partly for the Harley-Davidson Centennial, and partly for the sheer "why not?" of it,  it was an odd-shaped loop across the top of the country and back through the middle of the south.  and then riding another ten years before I had to quit, but you know about that.  to sum it up, it's a crazy criss-crossing of the country and appreciating it mightily, as often as possible from atop a motorcycle.  I saw a lot of country that way, riding some 500,000 miles in 40 years.  I saw a lot of seasons in some of that riding, winter in Colorado, all seasons in southern California.  so yes, I have some experience of the country of the United States of America, but if you've been following alertly, I saw it as a loner, a stranger, a foreigner.  I suspect but don't know that there is a whole other experience - maybe several - as a fellow-citizen, as a member, as whatever it is that is not a loner, a stranger, and a foreigner.  but anyway, there you have my experience of "country" and I hope you can tell I did and I do appreciate it.

318.366 - 2016 project and the return of poetry

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

the return of poetry

I have had several convalescences lately, and each time awakened to a terror, was poetry gone?  for a day or for days, nothing like poetry moved in my head, nothing clicked like an ahah!  I walked around swathed in normal thoughts.  it was a lonely, horrible time.  in each case so far, BLAM!  one day she came back, and almost any little thing set her off.  glory!  oh yes!  I appreciate the return of poetry.

317.366 - 2016 project and coherence

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

coherence

oh man!  these must be some drugs I'm taking!  I fade out of and back into sleep with no control.  I lose a word or a whole thought while I'm speaking, and then cannot get either back.  so right now, while I have some of it, I really appreciate coherence.  you wouldn't believe what the world is like without it.  unicorns and leprechauns are the good side of it.  word demons are maybe the worst!  they snatch words away and taunt you with them before swallowing them whole.  but anyway, coherence, may you never be without it.

316.366 - 2016 project and getting my nose unpacked

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

getting my nose unpacked

I woke this morning and I hurt.  I slept until nearly time to go.  I rose and dressed and went to Kaiser with my trusty sidekick Lindy.  she helped me get to where I was supposed to be.  after some talk and some answers, the doctor arrived.  he deflated the balloon and removed it, then examined my nasal passage.  he prescribed this and that - oh I hope Lindy wrote it down! - then let us go.  it's probably taken me til now (2245) to appreciate having my facial harness gone and my nose unpacked.  but I do, oh I do!

315.366 - 2016 project and what he said

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

what he said

what should we expect from this president-elect?  what he said, I suppose.  that he's going to build a wall, a monumental and ornamental and YUGE wall all along the southwestern border between Mexico and the continental United States.  that he's somehow going to get Mexico to pay for it.  that he's going to round up and deport eleven million of our friends, neighbors, and colleagues.  I'm not sure about this one, but I think he's also going to round up and deport about three and a half million Muslims.  then not let any Muslims back into the country until legislators figure out what the hell is going on.  how much faith have you in that?  he's going to get rid of the Affordable Care Act.  he's going to obtain a Constitutional amendment that imposes term limits on senators and representatives.  he's going to impose a hiring freeze on all federal employees.  he's going to require that every new federal regulation eliminate two others.  he's going to ban for five years White House and Congressional officials becoming lobbyists.  he's going to ban forever White House officials becoming lobbyists for a foreign government - except for himself, I presume.  he'll completely ban foreign lobbyists raising money for American elections.  he will either renegotiate NAFTA or get out of it.  he will take the United States out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership.  he will direct the Secretary of the Treasury to label China a currency manipulator.  he will direct the Secretary of Commerce and the U. S. Trade Representative to identify all foreign trade abuses that unfairly impact American workers and direct them to find some legal way to terminate those abuses.  he will lift the restrictions on the production of $50 trillion energy reserves.  he will permit the construction of the Keystone Pipeline.  he will redirect the money now intended for UN climate change programs and use it to fix America's water and environmental infrastructure.  he will cancel every "unconstitutional" executive action, memorandum, and order issued by President Obama.  he will begin the process of replacing Justice Scalia on the Supreme Court.  he will cancel all funding to sanctuary cities.  he will round up and deport over two million criminal illegal immigrants, and cancel visas to foreign countries who don't accept the return of their criminal illegal immigrants.  he will suspend immigration from terror-prone regions where vetting cannot safely occur.  there are also ten laws he will start work on which will Make America Great Again.  that's what he says he'll do.  I think we should take him seriously.  do I appreciate this monumental effort?  oh I do!  I think it will completely change the structure of the country we are familiar with now.  I am awed that he expects to accomplish this in a hundred days.  I suspect a lot is hidden in those words that you and I will not like, will not be comfortable with.  it will be an interesting time, as in the Chinese curse:  may you live in interesting times.

314.366 - 2016 project and election results

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

election results

election results.  well, hell, we are good citizens, no?  so when election results do not go our way, what we do is suck it up, stick out our chins, and go on as if civil discourse were going to continue.  yes, we have to put up with legal setbacks for a couple of years, but we can sweep our guys and gals back in in two years, right?  except some of us remember the Gracchi.  they were reformers who meant to make Rome live up to its own ideals (my interpretation) and the Roman Senate killed one and sent a mob against the other, who suicided.  all I mean is that standing up to bullies who have been elected properly is a good way to die.  just to check  my "lessons from history" we leap forward twenty-two centuries and look at the Nazis.  yes, they were elected normally, properly, and turned out to be just the bullies they had said they would be.  yes, people opposed them.  you may know that didn't work out well.  okay, one last look.  in the United States in 1968.  we assassinated Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.  it worked.  both movements didn't exactly die, but they sputtered ineffectually.  more importantly, I think, the angry people, the resentful people, the hating people got the message that the government would look away.  hippies died.  leftist agitators either died or got beat up so much they couldn't remember what they were fussing about.  I had longish hair and a full beard, and people on the sidewalk felt free to threaten me.  so am I trying to discourage you?  I am not.  but I want you to go into the Trump years warned.  yes, our fellow citizens can be dangerous.  they have been storing up their resentments since 1972 and I suspect Trump has released them.  resist, pursue your dream, stand for what you think is right, and know what may be coming.  courage!  and please universe, let me be wrong.

313.366 - 2016 project and the vote

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

the vote

warning:  your hackles may be raised.  this is not history as well-intentioned people taught me in high school.  it's not even history as well-intentioned people taught me in college.  it's history as I read it when people were trying to convince me of something else.  the vote.  our most fundamental right.  you and I didn't have it to begin with.  most of us wouldn't have it for a long time.  we didn't need it.  wouldn't have known how to use it.  when our Founding Fathers said "all men", they meant all men whose accumulated holdings brought them an income of over ten thousand dollars.  no, not our scrawny dollars in 2016, when almost anyone can trade an hour's work for ten dollars.  no, ten thousand dollars that came to you for the privilege of honoring your being on the earth, because you owned hundreds of acres that other people worked, because you owned taverns where other people worked.  if you had to work for any of those ten thousand dollars, it almost disqualified you.  now obviously armies didn't include many citizens.  if the closest you ever came to work was to hold a dainty handkerchief over your nose when observing men at work, you damn sure weren't going to march around with a musket, or get your shoes muddy, or for heaven's sakes, get shot at!  you might ride around on a pretty horse and point out where men could go to get shot at more advantageously.  but if you were busy creating a country, you probably didn't even have time for that.  you met in legislative halls and had serious and sometimes heated conversations.  that kind of ten thousand dollars.  later, after the war, when the ten-thousand-dollar men were talking about another war, people who were going to march and get dirty and get shot at hollered for the vote too. the vote was then extended to white men in the middle class, white men who had worked once but now owned shops where other people worked, but did not yet make ten thousand dollars a year for looking pretty and posing for paintings.  and later, when we were burning up men so fast that we desperately needed soldiers, the vote came down to all white men.  yes, that's when my ancestors became citizens, when any damn white man, dirty or clean, was allowed to vote.  sigh.  but it was not enough.  we needed immigrants in the army, so the vote spread to men who weren't white.  and people who formerly weren't good enough to be white became white.  Irish men, for instance, then Polish.  then criminey, when damn near all men were included in "all men", women demanded the vote.  oh man!  we made them fight for it.  we imprisoned them, beat them, stripped them - in those days that meant removing about a dozen layers and forty yards of material, we froze them, we made them dress each other instead of having their maids help, and in the end, we capitulated.  "all men" now pretty much means all men and women - except where Republicans have been able to turn back the clock a lot more than an hour or so.  the vote!  we need to hold it precious.  it's our only claim to citizenship.  without it, we're just the cetera who get et.  vote!

312.366 - 2016 project and Ken Burns

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

Ken Burns

oh my goodness!  how could I have not already appreciated Ken Burns?  I have told you I love history.  I love history from books.  like Shelby Foote writes, or A. L. Rowse, or even Edward Gibbon.  dear god, Gibbon!  I had almost forgotten the hours I spent in the library reading Gibbon when I should have been focused on physics or poetry!  Arnold Toynbee.  okay, okay, I have demonstrated that I like historians, but along comes Ken Burns with a whole new way to present history, as a television story!  what an idea!  and he made it work!  oh man did he make it work!    what part of American History has he missed?  oh probably some.  but just look at his titles in alphabetical order:  America, American Lives, Baseball, Central Park Five, Civil War, Dust Bowl, Jazz, Lewis & Clark, National Parks, Prohibition, The Roosevelts, The War, The West.  lord have mercy!  each narrated more or less dispassionately, letting the facts bring out the story, but taking us also into the lore that gave context to the events.  what a fun way to see history!  what a wonderful perspective Ken Burns gives us!  thank you, Ken Burns.  (from a fan)

crosshairs

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knowledge   tolerance 

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such a small target

311.366 - 2016 project and astronomy

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

astronomy

yes, astronomy!  physics and chemistry's grandest laboratory!  and worst.  an astronomer cannot set up initial conditions for an experiment.  he or she has to say "I think it (some aspect of astronomy) works like this (description)" then look at a thousand or so examples and find no counterexamples.  a physicist has a much easier job:  he or she sets up the initial conditions in his lab to agree with the initial conditions in his or her problem then runs the experiment one, two, three, or a dozen times and if the outcome in the laboratory always agrees with the description predicted, then voila!  he or she has learned something.  either way, what a wonderful thing!  to have learned a little more about how the universe works.  to have opened up new questions we didn't even know we had before that experiment succeeded!  now, to me, astronomers are right up there with theoretical physicists.  as I understand it - be leery:  I did graduate work in physics but I took classes in physics, that's different from becoming a physicist - a theoretical physicist sees a pattern in some group of experiments that no one else has seen before, and from that pattern deduces a law or rule that the universe seems to follow.  he or she finds a mathematical way to describe that group of experiments that allows predictions to be made from it (the mathematics), then describes other experiments that might confirm or invalidate his or her predictions.  an astronomer looks at - I don't know.  pictures of stars?  of nebulae?  of galaxies?  of clusters of galaxies?  looks, perhaps, at a collection of deductions astronomers have already made and proved, and sees some pattern that no one else has discerned, sees some mathematics that describe those results.  wow!  I look at astronomy pictures and see magnificence, see glory, see wonder.  that's as close as I can get.  if I wore a hat or even a cap, I'd take it off to people who can do that kind of work - see the mathematics of magnificence, of glory, of wonder, and predict new outcomes we hadn't thought to look for.  please, gentlemen and ladies, continue.

310.366 - 2016 project and libraries

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

libraries

once upon a time I was little and lived in northeastern Brasil, and had never seen a library.  going to Baton Rouge for a year in 1948-9 wouldn't have helped much.  my granddaddy's house was stuffed with books.  what would I have needed to go to the library for?  my Baptist school in Recife probably had a library, but I don't remember it.  my point is that in 1955, I was innocent of libraries.  I vaguely knew that there had been a Library in Alexandria a hundred million years before, that it was stuffed full of scrolls and clay tablets, that a Great Fire burned the building and its contents to the ground, and that that was a Great Loss.  I remember trying to imagine a large building stuffed to the gills with books, and wondering whatever grownups would do with them.  and then, while we lived in that little nondescript house in Clovis, New Mexico, I discovered the county library.  ooo!  wait!  let me paint you the picture.  somewhere in the middle of Clovis, New Mexico, our nondescript little house stood across the street from a largely empty city block.  more or less in the middle of that city block stood a giant shoe-box, a three-story oblong rectangular prism that probably looked more like a prison than anything else.  that was the court house for whatever county Clovis was the seat for.  between the county court house and our little house stood a much more modest almost house-shaped building that was, unbeknownst to me, the county library.  one day, not knowing any better, I poked my head into the strange little building across the street.  nobody shooed me away, so I went in.  oh my god!  books!  books to the ceiling!  books on shelves so high people had to climb ladders to get to them!  books about fertilizer and books about irrigation and books about World War II tanks, and books about women's fashions in Chicago in the 1910s.  books about the Old West.  books about the New West.  books about traveling across the country from New York City to Los Angeles.  ooo!  and a huge room of books for children.  (anyone who hadn't turned eighteen was a child.)  books about rebuilding a car.  books about dogs.  books about detectives.  detective stories, Army officer stories, cowboy stories, hell, cowgirl stories!  ooo!  and best of all a bookshelf-ful of books I wasn't supposed to read.  I think I nearly fainted.  I stayed in that building and explored as much of it as I could until I knew I was late for supper.  damn!  I went home and took my scolding hoping, hoping, hoping the inside of that building stayed the same until the next time I could get there.  I became familiar with the library.  heck, I became familiar with many of the books I wasn't supposed to read!  I learned I could register with the library and check out books and read them at home!  I suppressed falling on my butt over that.  sure enough, they let me register and let me check out so many books I could hardly get them out the door and across the street to my house.  oh man!  we moved to Albuquerque, and Albuquerque not only had a library - a big building downtown bigger than the court house in Clovis! - but it had libraries!  little libraries out in the sticks where we lived, or ten miles away where a friend of mine lived!  I never found Albuquerque's equivalent of the shelves of books I wasn't supposed to read, but I looked for them.  I have been a patron, a friend, and an admirer of libraries ever since!  appreciate them?  ooo!

309.366 - 2016 project and Winchester

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

Winchester

Winchester is 150 years old this year.  "so what?" you're probably thinking.  and I suppose I might too if I'd lived here my whole life.  but I didn't, and part of my indoctrination into the United States and UnitedStatesians was reading hundreds of Westerns (books about cowboys in a West that never was) and reading dozens and dozens of stories about hunting, pamphlets and articles about gun safety and gun maintenance.  please don't think anyone forced those on me, I gravitated to them at libraries I found available wherever we lived that month, and they were in dozens of magazines I had available in libraries and stores and by mail.  as well as I could tell, guns were just a part of life, and Winchester was one of the names that made up the gun world.  so for me, it was fun this year to read about the founding of Winchester and how it came to be a "household word" and supplied rifles and ammunition in several of our wars.  later in my life I was (and still am) amazed at how many of my friends think guns are A Bad Thing and that we the people need to be protected from guns and that people who like guns must be Bad People.  hunh!  well, as far as I know, I'm not and my guns aren't.  if this were mathematics, that would prove something, but it isn't and of course it does not.  but anyway, there you have it.  growing up, and growing into UnitedStatesianness, I came under the influence of people who loved and respected guns, and so I do.  and I appreciate Winchester, and am damn glad they still make the Model 94 30-30 carbine.  hurray for me!  and for Winchester!

308.366 - 2016 project and the republic

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

the republic

I make fun of the United States, and of UnitedStatesians, and - as you may have seen - I disbelieve in their "democracy".  I make fun of the United States and of UnitedStatesians mainly because the latter, the citizens of the United States, really think they are somehow better than the rest of the world.  if they don't think that, they sure talk it, and how else are you gonna know what a person thinks except by what he or she says?  and I have also let you know I am a lifelong anti-Republican.  so it may come as a surprise that I am also a republican.  to be clear, I oppose the Republican party and everything it stands for, as well as I can tell, and I am for the republic.  for what it's worth, I think a republic is a sovereign state in which power is vested in its citizens but exercised by their elected representatives.  and yes, our president is one of our elected representatives.  as well as I can tell, we chose a republic as our form of government, did our best to keep it from becoming oppressive, and turned it loose.  it has served us pretty well for 228 years.  we have chosen to amend its Constitution several times.  I don't claim for us any particular wisdom or goodness or justice or mercy.  I think we have mostly held ourselves up to those as ideals, and at times not at all.  we are people, we are human beings.  if we don't embarrass ourselves in choosing or guiding our government, then we have done well.  what we did last year or ten years ago proves nothing about us today.  today we are who we say we are and what we do to back that up.  yes, we lie a lot, and now and then we face the truth.  I think this election is forcing us to see who we are and what we do more clearly than most elections do.  we are not nearly as pretty as we usually claim to be.  I hope we will do well in choosing our representatives and in continuing this republic.  I do not count on it, I just hope.  yes, I appreciate the republic we have had.  I hope to continue appreciating it.

307.366 - 2016 project and helicopters

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

helicopters

ooo!  I first saw one in the sky over Recife, Pernambuco, Brasil.  it flew slowly - whacka-whacka-whacka - across a sky it changed forever.  somewhere up there were airplanes without wings!  there was no internet, so I had to find a grownup who could tell me about airplanes without wings.  I think maybe the man who showed us movies on Sunday nights or maybe Saturday nights told me about helicopters, knew the word both in Portuguese and in English.  dear god!  the word was not in our Book of Knowledge!  I didn't think I'd ever encountered that before.  I wrote my granddaddy indignantly, I think, and he sent me back a model airplane of a Sikorsky somethin'-or-other.  when I got it built. I took it to the movie man to show him.  he misunderstood.  he thought I meant it for him.  after my initial surprise, I was glad.  he was so pleased!  and I had learned so much from the pamphlet that came with the model.  don't misunderstand, I've never ridden in a helicopter, except in my imagination or vicariously on television.  but I've read about them as if I needed to to keep them flying, and I built another model later and "flew" it all around my bedroom or some such world.  I do not know how to convince you, but yes, I appreciate helicopters.

306.366 - 2016 project and physical therapists

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

physical therapists

I think this is the fourth time a physical therapist has helped reconstruct me.  once I flew through the air and landed on my head and my shoulder, and broke my shoulder blade.  my orthopedist then grinned and shook his head.  "you understand - don't you? - nobody breaks a shoulder blade.  and when they do, all we can do is try to immobilize your arm to give the shoulder blade a chance to heal.  and that means some of your muscles will atrophy, and we'll have to help you rebuild them at the appropriate time."  so after three months or so of an immobilized arm, I spent three months or so with a physical therapist trying to reconstruct muscles that had forgotten what to do with a shoulder and an arm.  if I had been better at following instructions, my right shoulder might not slump so well and my right arm might do things more deftly.  and if my eyes had been green, we might have a red sky.  another time, a pickup driver veered into the lane I was riding in and a tricky break in the asphalt finished throwing me off balance, and my leg broke, I think.  in any case, I spent weeks on crutches, then another three months with a physical therapist learning to walk again.  recently I dropped my Harley on my left leg and shattered both bones in the lower leg.  uh-oh.  another orthopedist reconstructed my tibia and fibula, and another physical therapist once again helped me relearn how to walk and climb stairs.  and now a condition has befallen me:  bilateral sinus tarsi syndrome.  once again a physical therapist is teaching me how to walk again and how to strengthen ruined muscles.  what impresses me about physical therapists is that they know how the body works - all those bones, joints, muscles, tendons, nerves, and stuff.  bones and joints you and I don't even know we have,  and they - the physical therapists - can figure out exercises that rebuild the particular set of muscles and tendons that no longer work right.  and damn, if you'll just follow instructions - or even mostly follow instructions - you do get better and your body does more nearly what you expect it to do!  it's a specialty in medical work, and it takes damn clever people to figure that stuff out.  but then it takes really clever people to hornswoggle or cajole ornery critters like you and me, well at least like some of you and me, into doing what we need to do to get better.  humans are perverse!  thank goodness there are people who can outclever us and trick us into getting well or at least better!  thank you, physical therapists.