152.366 - 2016 project and gliders

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

gliders

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

151.366 - 2016 project and genii

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

genii

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

150.366 - 2016 project and kleenex

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

kleenex

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

149.366 - 2016 project and old movies

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

old movies

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

148.366 - 2016 project and cornbread!

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

cornbread!

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

147.366 - 2016 project and 1976

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

1976

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

146.366 - 2016 project and monsters

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

monsters

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