Interstellar

I enjoyed the film, but I think it's extremely uneven. I have a high tolerance for this sort of thing. In my youth I watched 2001, at the theater, many times.

Also, pet peeve, apparently the title should be Intergalactic. But in these movies, when someone mentions going to another galaxy, I never get the sense they have any appreciation for just how far away that is.

Let's go to a galaxy far, far away,
(exactly how far, let's not bother to say)
but since we've got a space-time hole
it won't take long to reach our goal,
just watch out for relativistic clocks
that lose it with their ticks and tocks.

Twisting The Night Away

I was kind of amused by this inscrutable exchange between a college student reporter and Robert Downey Jr.:

“Scarlett Johansson has never had her own superhero movie. Would you call yourself a feminist?”

“You bastard. Yeah, that’s all make believe, son.”

This is being relayed as "He said feminism is make believe."

This was from a session in which a reporter also asked him about the size of his manhood.

Remember: words only exist
so you can creatively twist
them into a form that offends
you and your friends.

Another Illinois Scandal

This is interesting, from the Chicago Sun-Times:

"Dr. Eric E. Whitaker, one of President Barack Obama’s closest friends, has refused to answer federal prosecutors’ questions about whether he had a “sexual relationship” with a former aide who pleaded guilty to stealing $400,000 in taxpayers’ money in a scheme that began when Whitaker was her boss at the Illinois Department of Public Health, court records show."

Perhaps he found the question too complex.
People mean so many things by "sex".

Purple Illinois

We have a new governor, here in Illinois, a Republican, a very successful businessman who hasn't held office before. I'm not sure what his motivation is in seeking office. He doesn't need it for the money. Is he simply public-spirited? Would he enjoy the power? The glory of actually turning the state around?

The state could use some turning around. Our finances, our public pension plans in particular, are in perilous shape. And compared to neighboring states, our economy is not doing well.

I'm not sure what a Republican governor can do with a strongly Democratic state house & senate. Yeah, it's the reverse of the national situation.

It would certainly be great
to improve the state of the state.

But it won't be much of a shock
if it turns to solid grid lock.

Elections!

Always vote for the losing name.
That way you get none of the blame.

And none will question your right to complain,
if the guy who wins proves insane.

Exposed

I really enjoyed an article in WaPo about an American physician, Lewis Rubinson, who was in Africa treating Ebola patients - when he accidentally stuck himself with a possibly-contaminated needle. It's an inside take, not really political, more just human, on what it's like to fight the disease in Africa, and then what it's like to be held in an isolation unit in America... while waiting to see if you have the disease, and watching TV:

"The TV experts reiterated that U.S. hospitals were prepared to care for patients with Ebola. How could they be? Rubinson thought. All 6,000 or so hospitals? ...He didn’t think that people were reassured by oversimplified messages."

I fear that "TV expert"
is a contradiction in terms.

And oversimplification
always gives me the squirms.

Steel Cable News

A famous tight rope walker came here, and tonight walked across a steel cable between 2 skyscrapers, traversing the river in the process.

It's a risky family tradition:

"Thirty-six years ago, Wallenda’s 73-year-old great-grandfather Karl Wallenda fell to his death attempting a wire walk between two hotel towers on a windy day in Puerto Rico."

I didn't watch it.
But I'm glad he didn't botch it.

Illinois Senate Race

I'm just going to quote from the Chicago Tribune on our Libertarian candidate for the U.S. Senate:

'Libertarian Sharon Hansen, 63, a Pontiac innkeeper, also is on the ballot. She called herself "really pro-life" but said in some situations, an abortion early in a pregnancy might be appropriate. She called herself a "very strong supporter" of the Second Amendment but favors closing the "gun show loophole." She would not forbid the purchase of assault weapons "unless the person has a really bad background." Hansen, a Christian, said she believes in the biblical definition of marriage as a union between a man and woman, but added: "I don't have a problem with people of the same sex getting married if they want to." She does not favor a federal law allowing same-sex marriage and would leave the issues to the states. "The federal government has its nose in too many things as it is," she said.'

Well, you can't call her an ideologue!

According to all the polling, the race is in the bag for the Democratic incumbent. Both the major party candidates are quoted as doing some serious waffling on the gay marriage issue in particular.

The libertarian is all over the battleground.
But lots of folks are like that, I have found.
So her apparently inconsistencies may not deter
this concerned citizen from voting for her.

R.E.S.P.E.C.T.

I was reading a rant by Sarah Hoyt, a rant that's hard to summarize because when she gets going she really gets going, but I came across this:

'...look, “respect” is almost exclusively a liberal word. Usually used in the sense of “respect the office” or “respect me because I have this credential.” When speaking to a blogger or a writer, a conservative/libertarian is more likely to use “I’ve always admired” you.'

I sat upright, puzzling over this, unsure why this might be so, but thinking "Yes, I'm far more likely to write 'admired,' not 'respected,' in that sort of sentence."

So I googled for discussions on the difference shades of meaning, and came across this:

You would have respect for a person in authority- like a policeman, a military officer with a rank above your own, or a teacher, but you may not like that person so you might not admire them.

Isn't there a tendency to respect your adversaries but admire your friends?

There's something rather fussy about a lot of contemporary liberalism, an i-dotting, t-crossing concern with following protocol. You don't really admire someone for being good at following protocol, do you? But you can respect their ability to do so.

And now I will stop attempting to dissect
the difference between admire and respect.

Maher vs. Students

Some students at Berkeley are trying to stop Bill Maher from speaking at the Berkeley commencement this year. He has made some pointed statements about what most Muslims believe, statements that have aroused these students' ire.

So far, Berkeley has not rescinded its invitation.

Patrick Popehat writes, perhaps with a trollish spirit:

"If you want to shut down Bill Maher’s hate speech against Muslims, why not invite him to a post-address debate, against your best and brightest? You’re well educated young men and women."

Please. I would pay to watch that.

But hopefully I could see
the whole thing on YouTube for free.

Mann and Kaufmann

I'm reading Thomas Mann's long novel, The Magic Mountain, for our reconstituted book club. I got to wondering what my favorite German-American writer, Walter Kaufmann, might have said about Mann.

Kaufmann wrote a lot of appreciation and criticism for 20th century German literature.

But for the life of me I haven't found anything substantial.

Mann did supply a glowing blurb for Kaufmann's book on Nietzsche. And I think they may both have been living in Princeton, New Jersey at one point. It looks like Princeton U. has some of Mann's papers and most of Kaufmann's.

With a bond of culture and speech,
I wonder if they were friends.
But for now I fear I have reached
a research dead end.

Train Meets Truck

Not far from here, today, in Northwest Indiana, a Chicago-bound Amtrak train hit a tractor-trailer rig carrying cement powder.

Great pictures of the truck ripped in two, and the train covered in powder, at the link. Nobody was seriously injured.

The truck driver "told authorities he saw the oncoming train but pulled into its path anyway because he thought he had time to clear the tracks."

If you misjudge the speed of a train,
You may have a lot you need to explain.

No Costume Needed

If you want to be even scarier
this Halloween
tell people you're a carrier
escaped from quarantine.

It might work better yet
if you first work up a sweat.

Reflections on Gifts

They said Mozart's talents were merely inherited,
Unfairly come by, and not strictly merited.
They let out an envious wail and bemoaned it.
But Mozart just practiced his gift like he owned it.

Corruption In The Social Sciences

Charles Murray, reflecting after 20 years on the reception accorded to the book he co-wrote about intelligence:

'I’m also thinking of all the other social scientists who have come up to me over the years and told me what a wonderful book “The Bell Curve” is. But they never said it publicly. So corruption is one thing that ails the social sciences. Cowardice is another.'

I've never read the whole book. I've read chunks of it at the library. As he says in this interview, the book doesn't take a strong position on the nature/nurture debate. But he clearly expects that some part of what's going on is biological inheritance. And saying that there's anything on the nature side at all, is hazardous.

I'm not really a big fan of the man. He says: "None of us has earned our IQ." This is said by way of rolling around to justifying redistribution.

None of us has earned our eye color, either. It's not the sort of thing you earn. It's more like a gift. And here's the thing about gifts. You may not have earned them, but once you receive them, you do rightly own them.

What talents you have, do not hide them.
Even if others deride them.

The Mysterious Creation of Jobs

Hillary Clinton, the other day:

"Don’t let anybody tell you that it’s corporations and businesses that create jobs."

So who creates jobs, in point of fact?
Should we say: The Invisible Hand?
Or something abstract
Like Supply and Demand?

No, it's herself:

"I voted to raise the minimum wage and guess what, millions of jobs were created or paid better and more families were secure."

No one's too sure where those millions of jobs are that she created. They're not in the employment statistics.

Somewhere there's gobs
Of shiny new jobs.
But that isn't here
Or anywhere near.

White Men

Jaltcoh, himself a white man, writes:

"Everyone knows that men and whites have historically gotten a lot of unfair advantages, and it's a serious problem. I just think that if your solution to that problem is to endorse the concept of sexism and racism (as long as they're directed against the right people), you lose a bit of credibility to claim that you're fundamentally opposed to sexism and racism."

If you must hate someone, the right men
are white men,
and maybe for a little extra hate,
go for those who are overweight.

If you limit your hate to just this safe selection,
you may escape Political Correction.

R J Hollingdale on Thomas Mann

Today I was reading Hollingdale's book on Thomas Mann, and realized I had no idea what Hollingdale had looked like, or who he was exactly.

Well, here he is:



To summarize from Wikipedia, he left school at 16 (in 1946 or so) to become a journalist, learned German in private lessons, and became an influential scholar of modern German thought. Without a degree.

Impressive.

Hollingdale sees Mann as caught up in God-is-dead nihilism.

"The whole world of Thomas Mann's fiction is erected on this basis of no values. It is because this world has no values that the major novels are so long (no principle of selection); it is because it has no values that its ideological tendency is so uncertain (no instinctive moral judgment); it is because it has no values that its most valuable inhabitant, the artist, is inverted into a decadent and criminal (the identity of the best and the worst); it is because it has no values that it is seen ironically (self-defence against the meaningless); it is because it has no values that it resorts to mythology (an attempt to create value);it is because it has no values that its only reality is physical reality and its only causes physical causes, and when it tries to account for the fact that it has no values it seeks the explanation in physiology. But because the world which this fictional world seeks to mirror really has no values, this fictional world is a true mirror and the image it reflects a true image. The aesthetic faults we have discovered in it, which are true faults, are thus in the long run faults in the subject which it reflects. Or, as the mirror replied to the monster: 'There is nothing wrong with me, it is you who are distorted'."

Rather sweeping, but makes more sense
than lots of what I've seen dispensed.

50 Shades of Worry

I haven't read 50 Shades Of Grey.

I did make a reference to it in a play.

Anyway, I saw gossip today about the movie, which is reportedly due out in 4 months. They're reshooting some of the love scenes.

"A source who works on the set told Us Magazine the original shots weren't passionate and the directors were disappointed by the stars' lack of chemistry.'"

Funny thing about chemistry. You can suspend disbelief about all kinds of practical things. But in a love story you really need to sense some mutual attraction.

If you can't feel the sizzle,
the film is bound to fizzle.

Appearance Alteration

As the Daily Mail asks:

What HAS Renee Zellweger done to her face? Bridget actress looks utterly unrecognisable as she steps out with her boyfriend in LA

Rather striking pictures at the link. You can see it's her, more from the side than from the front.

Maybe she's going into Witness Protection,
but it must be strange to stare at your own reflection,
and see a face beyond your recollection.

Quatrain on Haiku

Haiku - they're from the Japanese
whose poets used to strive
to write in lines of snappy threes
composed of 5-7-5.

Illness Paradox

I have a cold. It's better now. I had it really bad over the weekend, yet my Sunday was very productive, writing-wise. I finished the first act of my new play and gave it a new title: All Mixed Up.

I've noticed, over the years, that certain types of "feeling miserable" are highly compatible with getting work done, particularly creative-thinking type work, whether it's writing a story or writing a computer program. What seems paradoxical is that I feel very low energy, feel very unmotivated, feel like my concentration is limited... but then I get a lot done in an intense state of focus.

I wonder if part of it is that I'm so much less distractable, so I stay focused and the problem becomes more tractable.

This would include less distraction by the meta-level, the perfectionistic sort of questioning that distracts by constant asking: but is that right?

Instead I plod along
not worrying if I'm wrong.

I guess the difficult trick
is being the right degree of sick.

Left to Right

Back when I was in high school a friend told me that the ancient Greeks, at one point, had written both left to right AND right to left, alternately. You can see where this would be efficient for speed reading. Scholars call it "boustrophedon", which means "ox-turning", as when you plow a field with an ox, and you turn and go back the other way, still plowing.

The individual characters are mirrored, like Leonardo Da Vinci's famous "code". I actually taught myself to do this, also in high school. Maybe I had too much time on my hands in high school!

Recently I read that it was boustrophedon that accounts for the transition from Right-to-Left to Left-to-Right writing! The Semitic languages (such as Hebrew, Arabic, Phoenician) are all Right-to-Left. The Greeks took their alphabet from the Phoenicians.

'Greek was originally written predominantly from right to left, just like Phoenician, but scribes could freely alternate between directions. For a time, a writing style with alternating right-to-left and left-to-right lines (called boustrophedon, literally "ox-turning", after the manner of an ox ploughing a field) was common, until in the classical period the left-to-right writing direction became the norm.'

But... while that explains the ability to shift readily,
it doesn't explain why they chose Left-to-Right steadily.

I think
it was commanded
because Left-to-Right is better when working with ink,
at least for the right-handed.

Lone Star State of Anxiety

Guess where my wife is this weekend:

"Jenkins said this is a critical weekend for Dallas. Statistically speaking, this weekend is the weekend people would start showing symptoms if they had contracted the virus, he said."

The story mentions that a Dallas bus and train station was briefly closed today on a false alarm. The story says county officials are getting "several calls an hour". May they all prove unfounded.

Come back, my dear,
from the land of fear,
and enjoy
Illinois -
no cases here!

Czar

There is nothing like a czar
to bring me peace of mind.
Whatever my worries are,
they all get left behind,

knowing that concentration
of power has taken place,
knowing that this great nation
can look to a single face.

His noble words will inspire us,
no matter how sick we may be.
Who better to fight a virus
than a man with a law degree?

Don't Cry About Us, Venezuela

It's a sad situation in the people's paradise:

"Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on Thursday blamed Washington for the slump in global oil prices."

As far as I can tell, Washington had precious little to do with us "flooding the market". The action was in the states and in private enterprise.

Your oil profits are lacking?
Frightfully sorry for fracking!

Odds

At this point you're more likely to get hit by a thunderbolt
than to catch that disease that's so frightening.

But there's zero chance of incompetence causing
a national outbreak of lightning.

In Praise of Intransigience

I was looking at a new book, In Praise of Intransigience: the perils of flexibility, by Richard H. Weisberg.

First off, let me say, ethical and legal intransigience, which is what he is talking about, is certainly deserving of some praise. Flexibility cannot be an infinite virtue, since at some point it falls prey to some mind-bending recursive questions, such as:

Aren't you being rather inflexible in your idealization of flexibility? Wouldn't true flexibility allow for intransigience, too?

It's an oddly structured book. Much time is spent on the epistles of Paul, the gospel of John, and the Nazi-appeasing governments of Vichy France and the occupied Channel Islands.

He traces flexibility-idealization back to early Christianity and the rhetorical strategies adopted in its divorce from Judaism. This strikes me as novel and misguided, but I haven't taken the time to study his thesis.

Of course, he has a pressing interest in the question: how did the Europeans go along, so flexibly, with the horror of murderous Nazi antisemitism? So you can see where he might be tempted to take this issue back to the early split between the 2 religions.

What house will stand
when built upon sand?

Emotional Support Animals

The New Yorker has a great story by a reporter who pretended that various animals were her emotional support animals. She showed up with a turtle, a pig, and an alpaca at various institutions - always with a letter saying the animal was an emotional support animal (E.S.A.).

She and her borrowed turtle got into the Frick Museum.

She and a small pig got on a Jet Blue flight.

The pic at the link shows here with an alpaca in a drug store.

Why didn’t anybody do the sensible thing, and tell me and my turtle to get lost? The Americans with Disabilities Act allows you to ask someone with a service animal only two questions: Is the animal required because of a disability? What work or task has the animal been trained to perform? Specific questions about a person’s disability are off limits, and, as I mentioned, people are baffled by the distinction between service animals and emotional-support animals.

Take your pig on a plane,
take your turtle among the Vermeers,
just claim it's an E.S.A.,
and you're in the clear, it appears.

Short Lived Parole

Guy does 30 years for murder. Gets out Friday. Kills his mother Sunday.

For some, prolonged incarceration
is the optimal situation.

Chicago Marathon Today

I ran the Chicago Marathon today. My time was 5:01. Here I am in Chinatown, where my brother Mark snapped a shot:



There I am, a happy fellow,
with a cap, canary yellow.

I bought the cap on Friday on the theory its unusual Tweety-Bird color would make it easier for my relatives to spot me during the race. As it happens, I knew where to look for them, and I think I spotted my brother, and my son and son-in-law, before they spotted me.

One of my other brothers, Mike, was in the race, but I didn't see him until afterward. There's 40,000 people or so running, so meet-ups can be kind of hit or miss.

It's a race that features crowds. Fantastic crowd support cheering you on, which I loved, and crowds of runners who break into three-abreast walking so that you have to run around them.

My scheduled start was 45 minutes after the elite start. So, when I first got downtown, rather than going to the start area, I had enough time, due to quirks in the course design, to walk over to near the 2 mile mark, and catch a view of the elite East African runners zipping by. These guys are running sub-5 minute miles, so I still had half an hour to get to the start.

The Kenyans are speedy,
indeedy.

Miss Julie, Directed by Liv Ullmann

I was invited, through the graciousness of a friend, to the opening night of the Chicago International Film Festival. We saw Miss Julie, a new film adaptation of Strindberg's classic play, directed by Liv Ullmann, and starring Colin Farrell. Ullman and Farrell were both there, up on stage, to introduce the film at its U.S. debut.

They were both very charming. I've read a couple of reviews which were rather critical of the film. Here and here if you care.

My personal theory is that what really hurt the movie was a lack of chemistry between the stars. Both the stars seemed passionate, acting up a storm, but I rarely got the vibe that they were passionate for each other.

Maybe it just needed different background music?

Sometimes music in the background makes you feel
that poorly acted passion is real.

Life in the City

We had a strange shooting, midday yesterday, downtown. As a matter of fact, a co-worker of mine happened to encounter people fleeing from this incident:

"Police said Jones used an assault rifle to fire five shots at a moving CTA train as it pulled into the station in the 100-block of West Congress Parkway around 11:20 a.m. Thursday."

He didn't hit any people. Just the train.

I believe that "assault rifle", as used by journalists, is a vague term. But there's a picture at the link, of an officer holding what's supposed to be the weapon. I'm guessing it's some military-looking semi-auto rifle.

Our police commissioner reported that the stock had been cut off the rifle.

The mystery remains
what does he have against trains?

Seasonal

Winter, Spring, Summer, Autumn/Fall. Only the fourth has two names, which makes no sense at all.

Ebola in Europe

NY Times:

"Now, with Europe grappling with the first case of Ebola transmitted on its soil after news on Monday that a nurse in Madrid had been infected, European leaders are scrambling to coordinate and ramp up their response to the lethal disease."

Whatever.
Better late than never.

Here in the USA we don't yet have a confirmed case of in-country contagion. But I am not inspired to great confidence by how our Dallas case was handled.

If at first you don't succeed,
try again as you may need
to stop the bug that makes you bleed.

African Runners And Me

Somehow the Chicago Marathon people are being headlined as saying they are "ready for the Ebola threat".

Not that there's an actual threat
as of yet.

"Champas said runners represent all 50 states and 132 countries but none hail from West Africa, where the most severe outbreak of Ebola has occurred. He said some runners are coming from East Africa."

"Some" runners from East Africa? That's a very offhanded way to refer to the guys who will be out in front of everybody else.

The Kenyans will lead the pack.
I'll be toward the back,
cutting myself some slack.

Great Chicago Fire Festival

We actually drove by this event, in its early stages on Saturday night, before full fizzle had set in. The plan was to set fire to some old-house replicas on barges in the Chicago River, downtown.

It rained most of Saturday, and somehow, the house replicas failed to ignite properly.

A lot of money was poured into the show. A lot of people showed up to see it.

The houses were not ignited.
The crowd was not excited.

Bad Software, Bad!

Inflammatory headline:

The Ebola Patient Was Sent Home Because of Bad Software
The Dallas hospital's debacle highlights the atrociousness of many electronic health records.

Actually, the hospital made an initial claim:

"Protocols were followed by both the physician and the nurses. However, we have identified a flaw in the way the physician and nursing portions of our electronic health records (EHR) interacted in this specific case."

But then, the hospital seemed to take it back:

“We would like to clarify a point made in the statement released earlier in the week. As a standard part of the nursing process, the patient’s travel history was documented and available to the full care team in the electronic health record, including within the physician’s workflow,” the statement said. “There was no flaw in the EHR in the way the physician and nursing portions interacted related to this event.”

There's a lot of careful wording there, as if people were afraid of lawsuits for some reason.

I think the key word here is "available", as in the travel history was "available" to the physician. Probably (wild guess) that means the doc could have clicked a button that he didn't click. Probably in retrospect it would have been nice if the first thing he saw when he brought up the patient's info was a big blinking red banner that said "African! Feverish!".

It turns out that making that happen is one of those things in you configure in the software package:

"As a result of this discovery, Texas Health Dallas has relocated the travel history documentation to a portion of the EHR that is part of both workflows. It also has been modified to specifically reference Ebola-endemic regions in Africa. We have made this change to increase the visibility and documentation of the travel question in order to alert all providers. We feel that this change will improve the early identification of patients who may be at risk for communicable diseases, including Ebola."

You see, the software didn't fail. It just needed to be configured differently.

I'm sure the software did its best.
Calling it "bad" just makes it feel stressed.

Bikini Madness

A personable young man came up to me in the building lobby and asked me if I knew what Tinder is. I said I did. He asked if I'd used it. I said I hadn't.

It's some app where you hook up with people for quick, um, romance.

Then he said he had a young lady's profile up on Tinder, and was trying to figure out what to say to her. I suggested he tell her he liked her look. That's look, singular, not looks.

He said, well, her photo is of her in a bikini. And he showed me such a photo, on his phone, of a shapely young lady in a bikini. And he asked what he could say to her to set himself apart, since every guy would obviously be thinking she looked good.

I have no idea, I said. I've been married too long.

Actually, regardless of how long I've been married, how do you set yourself apart in an environment where all you know about someone is that they look good in a swimsuit?

He pressed me, but you must have a pickup line?

I smiled, sorry, no.

So... What was really going on in this exchange? It felt very stagey, but I still have my wallet, and he never pressed for anything but answers to his silly question. Was it a psychology or sociology experiment? Why on earth would a young man be asking ME for advice on how to use Tinder? Especially because the building lobby was loaded with college-age young men.

They might have a clue
as to how you pursue
the opposite sex
with some minimal text
sufficiently clever
that she won't say: Never!

Patience

While her man
was off to sea
for such a span
of years,

Penelope
played cunningly
without a show
of tears,

weaving and unweaving
her artful tapestry.

Believing,
without knowing,
that the object of her yearning
would return.

Countdown Continues

It's a week and a half to the Chicago Marathon. I'm signed up.

I'm better prepared than in some recent years
And thus less afflicted with various fears
But still at odd moments I'll feel my gut grab
With a sudden, panicky stab.

Translation

As I periodically do, I'm fiddling with translating a poem. This time it's a poem I'm not really crazy about, but was struck by, by Federico Garcia Lorca. Here's the Spanish. Here's one English translation. I haven't found an English translation that makes much attempt to catch the music of the Spanish, so that is what I'm fiddling with. Of course, "Poetry is what gets lost in translation".

Anyway, here's the first draft. The full poem in Spanish is a sonnet, 14 lines, rhymed abba abba cdc dcd. Whereas this is abab cdcd efe fef. And there are things in this that are not in the original:

Night rose above us both, a full moon shining.
I began to cry. Your fond disdain
Burst into godly laughter. All my whining
Was doves and moments wrapped into a chain.

Night fell below us both. Crystal of sadness,
You wept for depths from some forgotten land.
My sorrow was a wash of hurtful madness,
Over your weak but beating heart of sand.

Dawn's light united us upon the bed,
Our mouths joined numbly on the frozen stream
Of blood which neverendingly is shed.

The sun sneaked through the balcony, a beam,
A branch of coral stretched out to redeem
My shrouded heart, my bowed and sullen head.

Where

Love must lurk in both nostril and heart,
for indeed you can feel the pulse start,
when the person about whom you care,
leaves a trace of their scent in the air.

No Escape

Ann Althouse relays a T.S. Eliot quote:

"Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things."

I have a love-hate relationship with Eliot.

If he thinks he didn't express his personality in his poetry, he's crazy. Yes, when you write a poem you create an object which has some separateness from you. It never reflects your whole personality. But it definitely reflects some.

As for "let emotion loose vs. escape from emotion", it's a classic false alternative. It's obvious that poetry is typically an integration of thought and feeling. That's why it expresses personality so well, perhaps even more thoroughly than the other arts.

What is sought
is a merger of feeling and thought
crafted for the ear.

But it doesn't make the poet disappear.

Grievance

I went to a pet store,
to buy a pet peeve.
How very annoying -
they asked me to leave!

I hate that darn pet store.
I'm nursing a grudge.
Don't try to console me.
My grudge will not budge.

Upon some reflection,
I found what I sought.
I have a pet peeve now,
though nothing was bought.

Black Bear Attack

A black bear killed a Rutgers student in New Jersey the other day. So the Washington Post helpfully ran an article on how to survive such an attack. Point 5 of the 5 point plan:

5. Put up a good fight

Punching and kicking are mentioned. Firearms are not. I wonder why.

Rather than boot it,
I'd rather shoot it.

Waldron on Sunstein

I have previously voiced my misgivings about Cass Sunstein's "Nudge" agenda, but I was quite impressed by an article by philosopher Jeremy Waldron.

'More reassuring, I think, would be a candid assessment of what might go wrong with nudging. One of Sunstein’s many books (from before his time in the White House) is entitled Worst-Case Scenarios. Could we please have something like that as a companion to Nudge?'

And:

'Eventually what we are told by Sunstein is that autonomy is just a surrogate for welfare—what people ultimately want is the promotion of their own well-being and it doesn’t really matter how that comes about. At best autonomy is a heuristic: “People speak in terms of autonomy, but what they are doing is making a rapid, intuitive judgment about welfare.” I must say that I find all of this remarkably tone-deaf to concerns about autonomy.'

I haven't read Waldron, much.
But maybe I need to stay in touch.

2nd Time Around

Guy came up to me on the street today at lunch. He was talking on his phone, a Blackberry I think. Looked to be my age, dressed like a businessman. Made eye contact and asked me if I'm from Chicago. Yes, I say. He says to the phone "I'll call you right back," and then he turns his eyes to mine.

"Don't laugh at me," he began.

And then it flashed back.

"I'm sorry," I said. "But we've met before."

"Oh," he said, looking concerned, and he turned away.

It's a scam. There's not really anyone he's talking to on that phone of his. It's a prop. He has a story about how his wallet was stolen and he needs money to get home to wherever. And I dealt with him once before.

Probably I gave him 5 bucks before, and realized afterward that it was a scam. I do get suckered. But not by the same guy twice.

And... this is at least my second repeat-scam experience. There's another guy who scammed me once. His story is that he needs cash to buy gas in a bad neighborhood. Yeah, I gave him money the first time. Not the second.

Fooling me once
wasn't so nice.
But I'm no dunce -
don't try it twice!

Lost

I was reminded today, that we may be missing a play by William Shakespeare, Love's Labour's Won.

There is reason to think it was the sequel to Love's Labour's Lost.

Won has not been found.
Apparently it was tossed.

The play that's still around,
of course is Lost.

Equality of Dark and Day

I wish you all
a Happy Fall.

Unless... you're south of the equator,
where Fall comes 6 months later,
and now it's Spring,
so here's the thing,
your happiness should be greater.

Rape vs. Reports Thereof

Megan McArdle has a substantial piece entitled: How Many Rape Reports Are False?

'The number of false accusations is what statisticians call a “dark number” -- that is, there is a true number, but it is unknown, and perhaps unknowable.'

I thought of saying that in the future, when every aspect of your life is recorded, this won't be such a problem.

But I have my doubts that we are actually going to live in that future.

The future may not be as advertised.
Privacy may still, in fact, be prized.

Drinking Songs

We went to hear the CSO do Beethoven's Ninth last night, and the program described Schiller's Ode To Joy as a glorified drinking song, or words to that effect. Well, it's a celebration of friendship, which is a common theme in drinking songs.

The Ninth, which ran under an hour and a half, was the only piece on the program, but the orchestra did play the Star Spangled Banner first. It's the bicentennial of its lyrics. But its tune is that of an older drinking song, "To Anacreon in Heaven".

We came home and watched an episode of: Turn: Washington's Spies, set during the American Revolution, and, oddly enough, there was a scene in which our hero - and some British officers - were singing "To Anacreon in Heaven".

So here's to songs
you sing while drinking,
voices raised
and glasses clinking.

Cutoff Date

I'm distrustful of bioethicists, whose ethics frequently strike me as creepy.

I'm also distrustful of the designers of our latest round of health care reform, who misrepresented their "keep your doctor" product.

So here comes a guy who is both, Ezekiel Emanuel, saying it's best to die by 75:

"At age 75 we reach that unique, albeit somewhat arbitrarily chosen, moment when we have lived a rich and complete life, and have hopefully imparted the right memories to our children."

"Arbitrarily chosen". Interesting admission, that. Anyway, by sheer coincidence no doubt, we could save a lot of money on Social Security, and Medicare, if we could somehow institutionalize that particular arbitrarily chosen number.

If you're over 75,
and distressingly alive,
but feel it would be best,
to take a permanent rest,
just call up an end-of-life panel,
and turn on the Soylent Green Channel.

Still United?

Time reports:

"Results in Scotland’s independence referendum are distinctly leaning towards the No campaign, with declared local authority areas so far choosing by to stay within the U.K. by 21 to 4."

This probably affects me not at all,
but I'm hoping that the union doesn't fall
mostly because I rather strongly suspect
that the Scot's economy will get wrecked.

DWS

Gossipy insults
hurled at Wasserman Schwartz...

Politico has a long piece on how the Democrats are turning on DNC leader, Debbie Wasserman Schwartz, who many seem to feel has outstayed her welcome.

"One example that sources point to as particularly troubling: Wasserman Schultz repeatedly trying to get the DNC to cover the costs of her wardrobe."

Also, the boss in the White House reportedly doesn't care for her.

Shortly after becoming chairwoman, she pushed hard for a meeting with the president that she kicked off by complaining that she had been blocked from hiring the daughter of a donor — who’d been on staff in her congressional office — as a junior staffer to be the DNC’s Jewish community liaison.

Are they trying to portray her as pushy and greedy, while making a point of mentioning Jewishness? Are they pushing a subliminal stereotype here?

I've never been a real admirer,
but I'll feel bad if they fire her.

Heard Walking Home

Honking! Traffic jam?
Nope. It's geese on the lam,
fleeing in a swarm
to where it's warm.

Scot Free

On Thursday, residents of Scotland get to vote on whether it should be a separate country.

Wikipedia specifically says it's residents, not citizens, who get to vote.

Of course it's true
that technically there's not
a citizenship called "Scot"
until the divorce goes through.

Plus and Minus

I saw the last of the low-budget Atlas Shrugged trilogy movies last night.

On the plus side, Ayn Rand didn't live to see this trilogy. On the minus side, we don't get to hear her denounce it.

On the plus side, the philosophical statements in the trilogy are all Rand-compatible. On the minus side, her controversial views sometimes come across blandly.

I think of this last film as having 3 main sections: the valley, the speech, and the torture. Of these, by some reverse alchemy, the torture scene, which is tense and cinematic in the book, somehow became the least dramatic scene in the movie.

I do want to give a shout-out to Greg Germann who played Jim Taggart. As far as I'm concerned, he steals every scene he's in. He's a one-man drama machine of internal conflict.

I have to say, I actually enjoyed the film, but I went in with accurate expectations.

Here's the minus: the movie is not well done.
Here's the plus: it won't be seen by much of... anyone.

Killing Christians

Peggy Noonan has an article today in the WSJ that focuses on the ongoing effort to eradicate Christians in the Middle East. The WSJ hides a lot of stuff behind paywalls, but for now the whole article is here.

I'm glad to see someone talking about it. It has been going on a long time, for decades really, but it seems to be accelerating and seems to have finally come to public attention here.

"In roughly the past 18 months, all this has broken through in Christian communities, largely by way of Christian media, including Catholic news services and the Baptist press. The story has been all over social media. Pope Francis has denounced what is happening; the Vatican is talking about just-war theory."

The story has not really been covered by the establishment media. The genocide has not really been exposed by the foreign policy wonks or the U.N.

I originally grasped the scope of what was happening from reading a 1999 book by William Dalrymple: From the Holy Mountain: A Journey among the Christians of the Middle East. He visits monastery after monastery, and over and over the Christian population around the monasteries has dwindled significantly. Kirkus Reviews describes the book as "an evensong for a dying civilization". And why is that civilization dying? Dalrymple says it's due to resurgent Islamic fundamentalism.

I don't know that we can solve this problem. But we should at least begin by admitting that this is a great evil happening now.

Noonan is pretty good at reading the mood of the American people. I think she's correct that there's no current appetite for nation-building. But I think she's also correct that there's plenty of appetite for killing off a lot of these murderous Islamic State thugs, who are riding around in the open and waving flags and killing American journalists, and, generally, just begging to be killed.

Send in the drones.
Blast their bones.

Literacy vs. Numeracy

The Wall St. Journal had an article saying it's harder to learn math if you're an English speaker. Well, harder than if you're a Chinese speaker.

The argument, which I've seen before, is that the way we say the numbers from 11 to 19 is inconsistent with the rest of the system.

You know, instead of saying seventeen, we should say tenty-seven. Instead of saying twelve, we should say tenty-two. Or something like that. Apparently Chinese does something like that.

What I tentatively like about "tenty"
is that it rhymes with twenty.

Alas, who could have foreseen
that kids would be undone by "fourteen"?

Six Little Legs

I was on the computer, but felt like there was a bug on my bare foot. Repeatedly. Even after I moved the heel of my other foot to the spot... thinking that would either kill the bug, or prove it wasn't there.

So I broke my screen-focus and looked at my foot. Sure enough. A big black ant. I struck quickly.

Now the ant is dead
but everywhere I feel
a creepy crawly sensation.

I know it's in my head.
I know that it's not real.
But still I crave cessation!

Arachnid Living

Spider surfing the web,
waiting to devour,
any mosquitoes or flies
that drop by for the dinner hour.

Zero Tolerance

Ray Rice has been fired from Ravens.

He's the American football player who knocked out his fiancee (now his wife) with a left hook, judging from the newly released video. This seems accurate:

"The grainy video, released by TMZ Sports, shows Rice and Janay Palmer in an elevator at an Atlantic City casino. Each hits the other before Rice knocks Palmer off her feet and into a railing."

From the video I saw, it started when he made a face at her and she gave him a little shove, before they even got on the elevator. But who knows what was going on before that? So I don't know really who "started" the fight.

Anyway, she was clearly ready to fight him, rushing at him physically, in a girly-fight sort of way... but how threatened did he feel, exactly?

Lately, people don't like to talk about the fact that a lot of domestic violence occurs in contexts where it is the couple's practice to fight. That's what this looks like to me.

Some people may like to fight,
but that doesn't make it right.

Victorian DNA

Has Jack the Ripper been found?
Maybe, but questions abound.

The provenance of the bloody shawl,
is not the best, no, not at all.

No Habla

Spanish pronunciation, I wish I could do it better. 

Sometimes I feel I cannot even say a single letter. 

Smile!

Virginia Postrel thinks that we will soon be living in the style of reality-TV, with the cameras always rolling.

She writes in the past tense from her imagined fish-bowl future:

"Salvation or nightmare, continuous personal video had become an irresistible tool of accountability and self-defense."

I have my doubts. But already I am...
unsure when I might be on cam!

Minimum Job Creation

Our current governor is in a tough reelection campaign, and one of his key causes, at the moment, is raising our state minimum wage. He recently adopted the stunt of living on minimum wage for a week, and has gotten some publicity about the challenges he is finding in keeping himself fed.

'“Had a banana for breakfast, that’s three days in a row. You know, you have to watch your pennies,” Quinn said on Tuesday. “I’m living this week, all seven days, on a minimum wage budget, it’s hard … Yesterday, I went to a place and maybe I would’ve gotten an iced tea, but I got a water. You don’t go in and get a double cheeseburger, I got a junior cheeseburger.”'

A local finance guy says that you can actually eat pretty well if you're just one person on 79 bucks a week. And he worked out one way to do it which sounds quite plausible to me. Anyway, the ending of his blog post really struck me:

'Illinois is the worst state in the Midwest by when it comes to job creation. Every person wants a chance, but often times it’s some government law, regulation, crony, or bureaucrat that is in the way.'

I don't know whether the GOP challenger will be able to do better. A governor can sometimes redo regulations, but on his own he cannot change laws. As far as I can make out, it's expected that our legislature will remain in the hands that currently hold it. The GOP challenger formerly opposed minimum wage laws, but now favors them, perhaps after he took a lot of heat for his prior opposition. In Illinois, you see, most people thinks minimum wage laws are a good thing.

But minimum wage laws can't really be enjoyed
when you're simply unemployed.

Geckos, R.I.P.

NPR rhymes the first line, so I don't have to:

"Space is a dangerous place. That message resonated again on Monday, when the Russian Federal Space Agency — Roscosmos — announced that a team of experimental geckos tasked with copulating while in orbit did not survive their journey."

I'm not sure why the Russians wanted to do sex experiments with geckos. It sounds twisted.

On the bright side, they also sent some fruit flies in the same capsule, apparently with similar twisted intent.

Fruit flies have earned their fame
as champs at the reproduction game.

Not only did they survive,
they thrived.

And the capsule returned with more
than there had been before.

Weighty Orientation Research

Apparently, lesbians tend to be overweight, and gay men tend to be in great shape. Statistically. So says science! Federally funded science, now that you mention it:

"By now, you’re probably wondering why the government is funding a study that, so far, has largely reinforced stereotypes of gays and lesbians."

I wasn't completely up to date on the stereotypes, myself, so I wasn't actually wondering that.

Anyway, they don't seem to have a very good reason for either of these countervailing tendencies. But, to me, it looks like you could explain a lot by a different old stereotype - namely that men tend to be more attracted by visual features. This might result in those who are trying to attract men - namely straight women and gay men - working harder to achieve slenderness.

Of course, stereotypes abound,
and I'm not sure which ones are sound.

Oops

I never make

A single misteak. 

I make them in pairs

Caught unawheres.  

Mini Harvest

I shall never malign
tomatoes on the vine.

Going Long

I did a training run for the marathon today. 

As usual I found coins along the way,

Namely a quarter and three cents

Which I construe

As 26+2. 

Silly, of course. I offer no defense,

Except that a long run tends to drain

Logic from my brain. 

Not To Worry

Our strategy is not worked out,
but that's okay, you see.
We'll have one soon enough and then
I'm sure that it will be...
a most ingenious sort of plan,
the very height of clever.
And everyone who hears will shout,
"Why that's the bestest ever!"

Sturm's Yellow Wallpaper

I went to see Lorelei Sturm's The Yellow Wallpaper. She adapted the piece, from the classic short story, and she stars in it as well.

It's not quite a one-woman show. There are 2 other actors, with important things to do. But it often feels like a one-woman show, with extended periods in which the lead character addresses the audience.

It's not the sort of story that I love. A woman, suffering from post-partum depression, is confined to a room as a "rest cure" by her know-it-all doctor-husband. She then slowly loses her mind staring at the wallpaper. It's a story to give you bad dreams, but it's very well acted, particularly by Sturm herself, who gives one of those performances that just feels soul-baring.



Walls, narrowing.
All in all, harrowing.

Message of the Messy Ink Stamp

Observe the messy ink stamp from my luggage tag, from yesterday's trip home.

AIES is short for "Aeropuerto International de El Salvador" where I had a layover.

"Reinspeccionado" means reinspected.

Guess what? I was missing 2 things from my suitcase when I unpacked!

I think my iPhone charger and umbrella
got "reinspected"
and collected
by some felonious Salvadoran fella.

UPDATE:
My wife, who is still in Guatemala, found the umbrella.
So I slandered some poor Salvadoran fella.

Except, well, the charger is still missing. And she can't seem to find that.

To all you Salvadoran security guys,
I half-apologize.

Brief Thoughts On Guatemala

I know a bunch of people who live in Guatemala. Mostly it's people who have something to do with UFM, the University Francisco Marroquin, which has a distinctly pro-free-markets culture. That makes it a rarity in Latin America. They actually have a big bas-relief of Atlas holding up the industrial world with a quote from Ayn Rand displayed. Here I am with my wife in front of "Atlas Libertas".



The University seems like a well-run operation. I was invited into their network-monitoring room and was suitably impressed. The part of the school I know the most about is actually a relatively new component, the Michael Polanyi College, which is an English language operation with some parallels to the program at St. John's College, where my daughter took her degree. The central parallel is the intense usage of respectful and text-focused group discussion.

"Instead of attending a series of lectures and taking end-of-term memorize-and-forget exams, students at MPC engage in dialogues, debates, group work, creative and analytical writing, and other activities that illuminate core texts of enduring value. The program is centered on the reading of texts that invite us to explore, understand, and advance the frontiers of knowledge."

I had the opportunity to participate in a couple of group discussions, and had a great time. I hope I didn't derail the train for anybody. Sometimes my mind shoots off on tangents.

As for Guatemala itself, it's a confusing society, with a lot of talented people, a lot of good food, a wonderful climate - but deeply dysfunctional public institutions.

You can't drink the water out of the tap. It's contaminated. That's actually not so bad, if you can just remember not to run tap water over your tooth brush. I, of course, kept forgetting. I was pretty careful, and did not get sick. Well, no symptoms so far.

But the real problem is ordinary security. The streets are mostly not safe. Delivery trucks often have a guy riding shotgun - with a real shotgun.



Photo is from here, but I saw the same sort of thing in person, repeatedly. It's much worse than New York City was in the Seventies. But NYC did get better, basically by cracking down intelligently. Maybe Guatemala can figure out a way to do that too.

Next up in Guatemala: consequences from the drought that made a lie of their "rainy season" this year.

"Guatemala’s government declared a state of emergency in 16 of the country’s 22 provinces Monday as Central America suffers one its worst droughts in decades. Experts have warned that major crop losses – mostly in the region's staples of corn and beans - and the deaths of hundreds of cattle could leave hundreds of thousands of families without food."

I admit I'm glad to be back
where basics do not lack.

At Church In Guatemala

Baby Jesus in Saint Joseph's left,

With steel cable to prevent theft. 

To Be

Spanish has 2 words for "to be"

Which is often confusing to me. 

What's more, I'm studying a lonely planet phrase book, and they use 2 different forms when describing 2 different marital statuses:

I am married: Estoy casado. 

I am single: Soy soltero. 

I guess I should consult someone who can really speak it. 

Is the guide correct or do they need to tweak it?

Say What

In Guatemala

It's hard to folla

The local lingo

When you're a gringo. 

Antigua, Guatemala

No need to panic,

Although it's volcanic. 

Busyness

Posting may be intermittent. 

I'll see how I can fittint. 

Challenge

I've been amused by the ice water challenge thing. Some of the videos are funny. But having briefly submerged myself in Lake Michigan in January a few times, it doesn't look like a big enough challenge!

If an ice water challenge
is what you pursue,
instead of pouring it
all over you,
jumping right in it
is what you should do,
followed by a quick run through the chilly air
trying to dry off and get clothes on before you freeze your derriere.

At Random

Neither the Dalai Lama,
nor President Obama,
are singing "Hare Rama".

As for the Oxford Comma,
it got sick of the drama,
and went crying home to Mama.

Footnote on my lack of sources: I've heard a lot of theories about the president's religious beliefs, but I've yet to hear that he's a secret follower of Hinduism.

Building Up To Another Marathon

I did 22 miles yesterday. I was on my city street training route, that has to do with utilizing public drinking fountains, mostly in city parks. I also can stop at stores along the way.

There is some natural beauty along the way, but there's also a lot of cramped Chicago neighborhoods and industrial grit. Yesterday was big with "block parties", a local institution where a neighborhood block is closed for a day, allowing children to play in the streets, often featuring an inflatable "bounce house", or "jumping jack" as they're known around here.

My route takes me to places I don't go otherwise, and I've grown to feel these places are mine in some odd sense, familiar way-stations on my private journey of preparation for the grueling event of running 26.2 miles. I've been visiting these places for 20 years or so, usually only a few times in the late summer and fall, and I have watched them change.

Oh, look, the soccer field now has artificial turf!

Once in a while I wonder whether any of the people along the way have noticed me, the perennial visitor. I do not see other runners along my way, as a rule. These are not runners' neighborhoods that I am going through. Have I been spotted and noted as that crazy old guy who jogs though the park once in a while?

Did I run by some 5 year old, 20 years ago, who vaguely recognized me yesterday as I trotted by?

I remember discussing running with some young person who was impressed with how many marathons I have run. And I said something like, "It just happens. You do one a year, and before you know it, you've done twenty."

26.2
is just a distance to do,
but the training takes my feet
down this set of city streets
where no one knows my name.
It feels familiar all the same.

Medea at Dream Laboratory

I went to see Jeremy Menekseoglu's latest version of Medea last night, which has been getting very good reviews. Trent the Uncatchable was there, and he urged me to sit in the front row, which I noted he was NOT doing. Because Dream Theatre is a "shatter the 4th wall" kind of place, sitting in the front row sometimes opens you up for one-sided conversations with an actor in character.

Anyway, I took up the challenge, and sat in the front row. As it turned out, none of the actors really did the thing where they pick an audience member to speak to as if the audience member were really a character in the show.

The new "laboratory" space is very intimate - it was configured mostly in just 2 rows. I hear it will seat 30 with the way they laid out the seats for this show.

The show itself was quite spectacular. I had seen it before, in a version with a chorus, which this version did not have. I did not feel the lack - I guess I don't recall what the chorus did - but the drama among the central characters was not lacking. I don't want to spoil the basic myth - go do a search on Medea if you want the catalog of horrors that come from the original - but this is a full reimagining - still set in the Greek world of myth and magic - but with an incursion of modern American psychology.

I kept feeling the subtext of... this is what happens when parents divorce and when neither cares for the kids anymore. But, on steroids... or rather, with deadly spells.

In our own day, as in the Age of Bronze,
Children can become expendable pawns.

Antimeditation

People talk about meditation as if it's some one thing, but it's a variety of practices that go by that name, and these practices blur into things that go by other names, such as prayer, self-hypnosis, and even daydreaming.

You see headlines about scientific studies establishing the benefits of meditation, but if you get into the details it's really not established at all, particularly if you want to prove that meditation works better than a placebo practice. Someone even developed an "anti-meditation" practice to use for the control group, where instead of sitting peacefully you pace and focus on problems.

I'm not trying to get anyone who likes meditation to stop. Far from it. Hey, I like to do it myself sometimes. I'm just saying it hasn't been established as better than a placebo. Which is a pretty high bar, since placebos are often effective. And it could be that the scientists are just falling down on the testing job. It's not as if it's easy to measure mental states with any precision. I really don't think it is. Psychologists have to make do with gauzy instruments.

The mind is a treasure
that's trouble to measure.

Denial, It's A Job

Forbes claims that D.C. is now the nation's coolest city.

And, as if to back that up, Reason Magazine has a letter from what has to be the coolest job title going: FOIA Denial Officer.

You remember FOIA. It's the Freedom Of Information Act. And it turns out that the Education Department has someone whose job is specifically to write letters that say things like:



After something as clear as that,
surely there's no need for further chat.

When I Stopped Reading

I started reading an article with a click-bait headline:

"Why you should stop believing in evolution"

I immediately saw the cop-out subhead:

"You don't believe in it — you either understand it or you don't"

Well, this is crass equivocation on what "believe" means. To believe, in everyday usage, is not to "take on faith". It is, "to accept as true," whether such acceptance is based on scientific evidence, religious belief, etc.

And then I got to this sentence:

"Humanity, after all, is but one ugly branch on the big tree of life."

Well, my intelligence had already been insulted... but now my looks were being insulted too!

So I stopped reading.

Pseudo-intellectual snark,
I consign you to the dark.

Summertime Sadness

I've been resisting watching Dead Poets Society. For forever. I tell my wife it's because I don't like hearing about Dead Poets. Really, it's because I know one of the boys dies somehow, and I haven't felt up for that. But now I suppose I'll have to watch, as a kind of goodbye.

I don't like goodbyes.
I don't like wet eyes.
But it's not like the blues
let you choose.

Power Dynamics

Lana Del Rey is a singer who had a big hit called Summertime Sadness. In the video, it's dramatized around a lesbian relationship. I couldn't actually hear that orientation in the lyrics, but what do I know?

Then I ran into an essay by a lesbian, who wrote: 'I’ve been listening to Lana Del Rey’s Ultraviolence since its June release and here’s my review: gay conversion therapy is notoriously ineffective, but if I hear another Lana Del Rey song, I might switch teams on my own. Lana Del Rey makes me wish I were straight.'

I was somewhat amused by this line: 'And I rather like having a romantic relationship unobstructed by the stark power dynamics that inevitably come into play in heterosexual partnerships.'

Really? No power dynamics in same-sex relationships? Ever? I find this hard to believe. Or, is it just that same-sex power dynamics aren't "stark"?

But, again, what do I know?

Relationships flower
when they empower
hearts into flight
souls into light.

Hell Hounds Again

I was thinking that this ISIS mess reminded me of the Khmer Rouge mess many years ago. The U.S. pulls out of an area, and murderous hell hounds move in.

In the case of the Khmer Rouge, we stayed out, and let the murder happen. Later, we wrung our hands about how it could have happened, amid much finger pointing. (Please excuse the mixed metaphor of hands being wrung and fingers being pointed. You can't quite do both at once, but I guess you can alternate.)

One of the problems is that once we touch it, we feel that everything that happens there is our responsibility. But, we do seem to go in making promises. Take our side, people, and everything will be better. And it works for a while, to some extent. Then, sometimes, we get tired of being there. And we pull out. And some of the people who took our side take a terrible beating.

It's tough being the world cop,
and hard to know when to stop.

Proposal

As a reading, at the wedding ceremony, I read an adapted version of one of my older poems, which twice steals a line from Christopher Marlowe. My poem is called Proposal. The renowned borrowed line is "Come live with me, and be my love."

Our destiny is at our feet,

And you are by my side. 

Come live with me, and be my love. 

Come walk with me, and be my bride. 

When two hearts such as ours meet

They cannot part - become one life. 

Come live with me, and be my love. 

Come walk with me, and be my wife. 

Son Getting Married

To my wife:

Thanks for arranging the wedding rehearsal dinner. 

Attendees stayed late - it must have been a winner. 

Cadillac Mountain

I did not know that there was a Cadillac Mountain. But we drove up it this morning. And I saw someone driving down in a Cadillac, too. 

I'm told that the top of the mountain is the first place that dawn's light comes to the United States every morning. 

But we did not arise

Early enough to see dawn's skies. 

Lazy heads,

We were lay-a-beds!

TSA Says

You canna

Walk a banana

Through the scanna. 

By The Railroad Tracks

Don't blink
or you might miss
the pink
of bliss.

Horrible

Well, this horrifying thing happened yesterday in Evanston.

"Zyzanski had been with several friends when he got the gun and began showing it off, according to a statement from police. His friends told him to put it away but he removed two to three rounds, held the gun to his cheek and told friends it was empty, police said."

Please don't point what you think is an empty gun,
unless you have good reason to kill someone.

And it may be you who's dead
with a shotgun blast to the head.

Quarantine

I'm sympathetic to the helpful impulse with regard to U.S. citizens who have caught the Ebola virus. Perhaps we can help them here. But can we protect ourselves here? If you tell me to trust the CDC, etc., I will remind you of the recent episode where they left a forgotten vial of active smallpox sitting behind an unlocked door.

I hope the virus can be contained.
It's rather gruesome unrestrained.

Song of the Older Triathlete

I haul my old self

To swim, bike, and run. 

I'm no sprightly elf

But I still think it's fun

To race down the road

While I mash on the pedals. 

My times, they have slowed,

But I still long for medals. 

Contested Terms

"Feminism, noun, the advocacy of women's rights on the grounds of political, social, and economic equality to men."

That's my Google-given definition. I note that one must believe in equality, although it's a term much fought over.

But clearly you are disqualified
if you claim superiority
for the world wide
sorority.