Colonial Williamsburg

Williamsburg was the capital of Virginia on the eve of the American Revolution. Colonial Williamsburg is an attempt to re-create some sense of what the place was like, complete with sheep in some of the yards, and shopkeepers in colonial dress.

We saw a well-done re-enactment of the royal governor, Lord Dunmore, closing down the Virginia legislature. He hoped to suppress displays of sympathy for those rebellious tea-partiers in Boston. In response, Virginia legislators issued a call for a big meeting of representatives from all the colonies.

Of course, we know that idea got way out of hand!

He closed down their doors,
But helped open a mess.
Maybe Lord Dunmore
Should have done less.

Crossing the Bridge at Antietam Creek

Today we strolled sundrenched fields in Maryland, not far from the town of Sharpsburg. We walked across an old stone bridge and looked into the flowing waters of Antietam Creek.

This is the place where 20,000+ men were killed or wounded on 9/17/1862.

Antietam Creek ran red
With the blood of the injured and dead.

Live from West Virginia

When you really love to drive,
It's almost sad when you arrive.

Moussaoui Changes His Mind

Moussaoui has changed his mind. Now that he has been sentenced to life imprisonment, he's decided it was a mistake to plead guilty.

Now he believes that he could get a fair trial in the U.S. - if he could just take his confession back.

First he pled guilty to terror.
Now he says it would be fairer
To redo that plea
To "poor innocent me".
He's proceeding by trial and error!

Quarter Century Ago

It's my oldest child's birthday.

Just before he was born, we rushed out to buy a crib, and a teddy bear, at Toys-R-Us.

I remember we made up the crib, put the teddy bear inside, and just stared at the empty spot that soon would have a noisy little occupant.

The job is large:
To be in charge
Of someone small
Until they're tall.

Well, he's tall now. Happy Birthday, John!

Moussaoui Sentencing

The man is full of fury
But a nice Virgina jury
Said his childhood
Was not good.

So they rejected
Having him lethally injected,
Which was all that he deserved.

Instead, a concrete cell has been reserved.

Publicity Hound

I got a mailing today
For the Alsip 5k...

On the flyer, I saw my own face -
A photo of me, from a previous race.

Hooray, my photo was used!
As you can see, I'm easily amused.

Masked Intruder at Federal Building

A masked intruder was recently discovered on the roof of the 43-story Kluczynski Federal Building. That's kitty-corner to my sister's law office.

The intruder was spotted by a construction worker. The construction worker's boss laid a trap, and eventually managed to capture the intruder. All with no help from the federal protective agencies!

The intruder was kind of furry,
And loved to scamper and scurry.
Do you need to ask
Who was behind that mask?

Yes, it was a raccoon.

The link has a good cell-phone photo of the little fella climbing 43-story scaffolding like it was his personal tree.

But Seriously

I'm actually doing okay on War and Peace. His battle scenes and social scenes are both vivid. The battle scenes in particular often have a "you are there" quality. The scene Mike mentioned in the comments, where Prince Andre is lying on his back on the battlefield, looking up at the sky, is brilliant. Tolstoy's very observant, but the structure is sprawling, not really plotted, and sometimes he loses me on a character for a while. One of his favorite things to do is to have characters NOT know why they're doing what they're doing. But he drops hints, or just outright tells you, why they're really doing it. I find a certain amount of this to be fun, but after a while I start feeling like one of his big messages is: no one knows what they're doing. I don't like that message. But, hey, I'm only about a third of the way in. More to come. I've got to finish it in a few weeks for the book club I'm in.

Soon I may need
To pick up the speed
When I read.

Book Report

400 pages into War And Peace.
Tell me, will this novel never cease?

It has a wondrous way of going on,
And on, and on. I wish that it were gone.

Medieval Memories

There's a witch of the week!
With glee they all shriek.
We'll have a fast trial
And brook no denial.
So get a rope quick
And watch the witch kick
With no chance to speak.
Die evil freak!

Protest Heyday

I wish the crowd
Wasn't quite so loud.

Yes, that is my self-centered remark about the immigration march. They went by my window for a full 2.5 hours of chanting and drums and occasional horns, holding flags, mostly American and Mexican, but with many other countries represented as well. As is to be expected, there was some evidence of the radical left: a Che banner, a "Workers of the World Unite" banner. But mostly it looked like ordinary people.

It was hard to work with all the racket. People in the office kept coming by my window for a look, too, further disrupting my efforts to concentrate and code.

I walked among them a bit. I overheard a teenage boy, on seeing a black police van, say "They can't arrest us all." I also heard a 3 year old girl say "Grandma!" I think the younger generation is picking up el Ingles.

They need to learn English, so that they
Can read my verses every day.

Picture of crowd with huge flag.

Picture of cleanup crew.

Update: according to local Fox TV news, police put the crowd at 400,000, making it the biggest demonstration in Chicago history. They reported there had been no arrests. Is that even possible?

May Day

I think it's useful to distinguish between the leaders and the followers involved in the immigration protests.

Most of the followers are just people who came here to work. They would like to stay here because it's better here. They don't even particularly care about being citizens, but they would love to be legalized so they could travel freely, have a real i.d., etc.

I believe we've finally succeeded in scaring a lot of these people with all our talk of a big crackdown, of building a wall, and of mass deportations. I would be scared too, if I were them, even though I don't think these things will actually come to pass.

They aren't advanced students of economics, but they know they work hard and contribute to the material well-being of the country. They think maybe we would appreciate them more if we realized how much they contribute.

As for the leaders, they're a mixed bunch, including opportunistic socialists and professional organizers who just want to lead something. Their ideology is all over the place. Some of it is offensive to American sensibilities, as well it should be.

Tomorrow I should get a good view of the Chicago protesters. They're going to be marching right outside my window at work.

I'll watch the action
At State and Jackson.

United 93

The movie feels
Strangely real.

Bad Pets

Hail to the spotted hyena.
There aren't many beasts that are meana.
Even their pups
Will chew you right up
And spit you out in the arena.

The Truth Revealed

Remember the pregnant skydiver whose chute didn't open? Her instructor said it was her own fault, that she messed up the operation of both her main chute and her reserve chute. I guess that explains why she hit the ground at only 50 mph, and survived.

In this link provided by a commenter, it is also revealed that this lady was once photographed skydiving topless. She claims she did it for a breast-cancer charity stunt. Others say she did it for fun. What is this world coming to?

Tumbling topless through the skies!
Surely birds were scandalized.

Lucky

A woman went skydiving. Her parachute failed to open. She hit the pavement at 50 mph. She lived. She was already pregnant when she fell - but didn't know it. So now she's marrying the dad.

She should have been dead,
Now she's scheduled to wed.
'Nuff said.

(Special thanks to gregoryrpratt.)

Woman Paddled, Jury Addled

A woman won 1.7 million dollars today for being spanked during a company team-building exercise.

A lot of people would sign up to be spanked for that kind of money.

You might say she was spanked
All the way to the bank.

Persuasion

An adjective is not an argument.
A verb does not a syllogism make.
Colorful prose may lend a rosy tint
To heaping words that mask a deep mistake.

I recognize that rhetoric is great.
It wakes up readers, makes them pay attention.
Whether you need to charm or motivate,
A metaphor or two is worth a mention.

But at the core of what you have to say,
I recommend you have some actual facts.
So when a careful jury tries to weigh
Your case they don't declare it "way too lax."

Persuasive powers alone have sometimes won,
But better to provide the smoking gun.

No Green Light Yet

Atlas Shrugged The Movie is on the move again. No, it's not in production. That would be real news. But it's making noises in Variety again at the pre-production level, and there is talk of Brad Pitt as the male lead and Angelina Jolie as the female lead.

Perhaps it's my own fault
But I really must admit
That I can't quite picture Galt
Played by Mr. Pitt.

On the other hand, I'm willing to be pleasantly surprised.

Geographical Oddity

I'm always surprised when I'm in California and someone there refers to Chicago as being "back East."

Here in the Windy City, we refer to ourselves as being "Midwest."

Only the Atlantic Seaboard is "East" to us.

To us, at least,
Just a sliver's East.
All the rest
Is West.

Home Again

We walked the dogs tonight. We saw lots of rabbits. But they hardly compare in size to the big long-eared hares we saw in California.

The bunnies of Redwood Shores
Have ears that look like oars.

Choices in Education

Saturday evening Marsha gave a talk about education in general, and her project to start a new college in particular. A lively discussion ensued. It was sponsored by the Silicon Valley Objectivists, and hosted by Robert C. Arne.

Robert recently lost his wife, Suzanne, who was also his business partner. If anyone might be interested in partnering on the School of Choice, please let him know.

I'm all for giving choice
A voice.

Elusive

We visited the lovely Quent Cordair gallery today and had the good fortune to run into scottsch there.

Marsha liked a 3-D piece by Bill Mack called Elusive.

If you visit the Cordair website, you may find they've got a temporary software problem where you can't zoom in properly to see a given work in detail. Naturally, this is annoying the staff, since their website is a big part of their marketing.

It's hard to make an online pitch
When your website has a glitch.

Waking to the Sound of a Child Laughing

I hear a
Girl named Mira.
I think she's getting neara.

Judging by it's Cover

The latest cover of the New Individualist is a riot.

It's interesting how popular Rand has always been with (some) Hollywood people. Of course, she worked there for years.

In her Q&A book, she mentions that the real model for Roark's devotion to architecture was her own devotion to writing.

I have often wondered about the smarmy business world of conventional architecture in The Fountainhead. What was the real model for that? Was it the smarmy business world of Hollywood? Is Roark's struggle with the architectural world partly based on Rand's struggle with the Hollywood world?

Do other people in Hollywood also feel at times like they are Howard Roark, struggling to maintain their own artistic integrity in the face of the forces of convention and compromise?

Of course they do.
Wouldn't you?

Rand in Chicago

There's a little book called Russian Writings On Hollywood, by Ayn Rand. Part of the book is a diary Rand kept of movies she attended, including all the movies she saw in Chicago.

There's an error in the book. It's the editor's. He has misread Rand's handwriting. He has her going to the "State Lane" theater. If you look at her handwritten entries, which are provided in the book, you can see where that's a reasonable interpretation. But if you're from Chicago, you know it's really the "State Lake" theater, which was a major downtown theater at the intersection of State St. and Lake St. And if you look at her handwriting again, you will see that the letter is really a "k."

Let me state that Lane was a mistake.
It's Lake!

Parachute

There's a little game
Called "parachute." It came
On my nano. Free!
It will be the death of me.

Actually, I've died many times in the game already. The idea is you're operating a rotating gun that shoots down attacking paratroopers and helicopters. You move the gun by circling your thumb or finger in that little wheel-like touchpad. But it's hard to control with precision.

It isn't really
That I'm a bad aim.
Surely the wheelie
Deserves all the blame!

Big Love

We watched an episode of Big Love tonight. That's HBO's series about polygamous renegade Mormons. A couple of times they hit plot points that reminded Marsha of my novel about the same sort of group. I told her "that's how they are." I went on to assert that I had been completely naturalistic.

That last was a lie
That did not fly.

I suppose I was motivated to tell this fib after reading shannon_f_r's fascinating post about people in her writing class.

They want to write novels with nothing new.
Their characters act - just as they do.

Of course, the reason Big Love had a few similarities to my story was that they did the same sort of research I did. The feel was quite different. More like Desperate Plural Housewives.

30%

There have been 10 governors of Illinois in my lifetime.

As of this afternoon, 3 of them have been convicted on federal charges of one kind or another.

Go ahead. Point and laugh.
I'm just glad it's under half.

Guilty Pleasures Meme

I've been tagged for a meme by 1144. I won't tag anyone else. It's against my religion. But I'll answer.

The meme is guilty pleasures in given categories, with explanations:

Culinary: Cereal with Milk.

Breakfast I only eat at night.
Does that sound bright?

Literary: Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.

Disgust and despair
With a polished air.

Audiovisual: 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Cool events
That don't make sense.

Musical: Two of Hearts, by Stacey Q.

Sounds sort of sappy,
But makes me happy.

Celebrity: Catherine Zeta Jones

Age creeps up on the Rolling Stones,
But never on Catherine Zeta Jones.

Happy Easter

Dominique gets her first look at a Roark building:

She looked at the steel cages of future projections, at the insolent angles, at the incredible complexity of this shape coming to life as a simple, logical whole, a naked skeleton with planes of air to form the walls, a naked skeleton on a cold winter day, with a sense of birth and promise, like a bare tree with a first touch of green. "Oh, Roger!"

He looked at her and saw the kind of face one should expect to see in church at Easter.

Open your eyes
And rise.

Breathe the air
And dare.

Do something great -
Don't wait.

Race Daze

I hurried out the door this morning, headed for a 5k race in Munster, Indiana.

I got there with time to spare. Lots of it.

The race, known as "The Race For Tomorrow", is actually next week.

Perhaps I should have gone ahead and run.
Since no one else was there, I would have won!

UPDATE: I see what happened. The April issue of Windy City Sports does list the event as being today. That's where I saw notice of the event. I circled it, and signed up for it online. Now, once you get online, the April 22 date appears. But I didn't notice the discrepancy.

Okay, I wasn't just obtuse.
I sort of have an excuse.

April is Poetry Month

The Onion had a spoof which held that the idea of Poetry Month is to raise awareness of Poetry so you can avoid it:

'"We must stop this scourge before more lives are exposed to poetry," said Dr. John Nieman of the American Poetry Prevention Society at a Monday fundraising luncheon. "It doesn't just affect women. Young people, particularly morose high-school and college students, are very susceptible to this terrible affliction. It is imperative that we eradicate poetry now, before more rainy afternoons are lost to it."'

Diane Cameron wrote about Poetry Month and included advice on how not to teach poetry:

'The teacher read a poem that described a rose opening on a summer day, and we thought, "Oh, the poem must be about summer, or beauty or nature, right?" But the teacher would sigh heavily and say, "No, this poem is speaking about war and man's inhumanity to man."'

Does anything rhyme with month?
Apparently not, though I desperately hunt.
I have an idea, but it's just a dumb stunt:
If I lisp it, the the plural of son is sonth.

Danse Macabre

The skeletons are in a dancing mood.
One grabs a violin and starts a tune
Just as the clock strives twelve. A brilliant moon
Illuminates this lively bony brood
Who leap and twirl, their spirits all renewed.
With passion that might make the living swoon,
Knowing their little jig is up too soon,
They triple-step, by icy time pursued.

A prima-ballerina lead the way,
And even as the others tire and fall,
She seems to just fly higher into space.
At last, a cock crows. Dawn. The whole mad fray
Stops dead. But then, she stands, alone of all,
And curtsies gravely, with exquisite grace.


(Inspired by this.)

EDIT: I suppose I should comment further, that Saint-Saens is one of my favorite composers, and his Danse Macabre has been a particular favorite since my college years. I have often thought of writing a poem about it. I have even tried a few times. But I have gotten nowhere, until today, when this came to me in the form of the first line, which popped into my head. Yes, once I had the first line I had to work at it, but I find having a first line is key for me.

The musical piece is itself based on a French poem, but my poem does not follow it except in the basic idea that the dead start dancing at midnight and stop at dawn.

As for the form of the poem, in case anyone wonders, it's a sonnet in the Petrarchan style, fourteen lines of iambic pentameter with an abbaabba cdecde rhyme scheme.

Temps Climb

Warm winds blow,
Winter coats go,
And skin
Begins
At last, to show.

Dan Ryan

The Dan Ryan Expressway is, or was, the busiest stretch of road in Chicagoland. They've decided it needs to be torn up, resurfaced, and given extra lanes along a lot of its length. So they've got it half-closed. It went from 6 lanes in either direction to 3 lanes in either direction. They're predicting 2 years before it's all fixed up.

Eerie empty lanes.
A long arterial line
Clamped for surgery.

Given the mighty mess it makes
I hope 2 years is all it takes.

Reminiscent of Rearden's Relatives?

Here's a snippet between the heroine and the hero, as he gets off the phone with his sister.

"What did she want?" Vicki asked when Caleb hung up the phone and came to stand beside her.

He sighed, staring blindly into space. "She wanted what she always wants. Money. Since I sold out to the capitalist regime, the least I can do is help her out now and then." His tone was flat, as if the call had drained all emotion from him.

Later in the same book, Vicki follows up:

"What I don't understand is why your family is so hard on you. I mean, I know you chose a different path, but no matter their philosophical problems with the capitalist way--" she rolled her eyes "--I'd have thought they'd be proud of you. Even my grandmother is impressed by your achievements and she's the harshest judge I know."

Name that genre! Business novel? Philosophical novel? Nuh uh.

Caleb and Vicki almost divorce
But get a second chance.
The genre, of course,
Must be romance.

A Flea In Her Ear

We went with some friends to see "A Flea In Her Ear", the classic French farce by Georges Feydeau. I love the man's plays, but I wasn't sure how our friends would like it.

They loved it.

One of them, a professor of atmospheric science, said he usually had trouble following plots, but he had followed this one with ease, even though it was dazzlingly over-complicated. He wondered how the playwright succeeded in doing that. Quite a skill, I thought.

How to plot a farce:
Assemble a million parts
Into a coherent whole
And spin them out of control,
But pull it together and rally
For the big finale.

Flowerless

I did my first organized race of the year, a local 5k. Two of my younger siblings, Ruth and Ed, participated as well. I beat them both.

The local 5k has an unusual feature: the men and the women run separately. Ladies go first, at 9. Men follow at 9:50. Each woman or girl gets a single rose upon finishing the race.

Each man gets... the satisfaction of finishing. But no flower.

Is that unfair?
I admit, I don't care.

Statistically, I suppose
The stereotype is true:
Women like getting a rose
More than men do.

Flora Enabled the Speciation of Formicidae

Plants
Helped Ants
To Evolve.

So read the headline. But I'm resolved
To find out more precisely how these six-legged critters
Got so much fitter.

Did the plants give out good tips, like: "diversify your mandibles"?
Did one of them tell the honey ants: "make your bellies expandable"?

No Plagiarism Here

Whew! The judge has ruled against those guys who were suing Dan Brown for copyright infringement.

The case was clearly won
By The Da Vinci Code.
I'm glad - I'm nearly done
With The Michaelangelo Ode.

I plan to make money in torrents.
It opens with a dead body at the foot of The David in Florence.

Banning The Bunny

The city council of St. Paul, Minnesota has banned the Easter Bunny from its halls.

Why? Because "the city's human rights director said non-Christians might be offended by it."

But the bunny won't be banned.
He hops though-out the land
Delivering his eggs
On giant bunny legs.

Enlightenment

Over on Noodlefood, Greg Perkins describes an article by Ed Hudgins as:

"largely argued from mushy appeals to a toothless foundation in Enlightenment-era sensibilities back when rights were barely a tolerant gleam in philosophers' eyes."

I think he has his history wrong. Weren't rights a lot more than eye-gleams during the Enlightenment?

I don't quote Leonard Peikoff a lot, but what the heck, when he's right, he's right:

"Although the Enlightenment spread across Europe, introducing a liberalizing influence wherever its ideas were taken seriously (notably in England and France), there was no European country in which these ideas penetrated to the root. In Europe, the Enlightenment was in the nature of an intellectual fashion superimposed on antithetic and deeply entrenched sociopolitical structures. But the United States was a new country, a new country in a new world, and there was no such established structure to contend with. For the first and only time, the ideas of the Enlightenment became the root, the actual foundation of a nation's political institutions."

Eye-gleams?
Pie-in-the-sky dreams?
They laid this nation's
Foundation.

I Feel Safer Already

A deputy press secretary at Homeland Security just got busted for talking dirty to a cop masquerading as a 14-year-old girl.

"Doyle had a sexually explicit conversation with what he believed was a 14-year-old girl whose profile he saw on the Internet on March 14, the Polk County Sheriff’s Office said in a statements."

I guess he should claim that he knew the "girl" was phony all along.

He should say that his favorite lovers
Are sheriffs undercover.

Going Through A Phase

An incandescent crescent
Is present in the sky.

Or is it just a rocky sphere
That turned its face away from here
To look the sun in the eye?

Spring Forward

Even with the "spring forward, fall back" mnemonic at hand, I always feel confused when it's time to do the Daylight Savings Shuffle. And other people seem to get mixed up too.

Thankfully, I have a source I trust:
My computer automatically adjusts.

Momentous Day

I've finally decided that since rhyme is much derided (as a tool that's too delirious for expression that is serious) that in fact I really ought to confine my written thought to the form that everyone knows is perfect for that: prose. Or, if I'm feeling terse, I might deign to write a verse, but I'll keep it free of rhyme by avoiding words that chime, in a certain charming form with a strict and ancient norm. Tell me, please, how like you the syllables of haiku?

Daffodils trumpet
March's roaring departure.
No April fools they.

Sleep

I see the rise and fall
Of your chest,
The swell
Of your breast,
And all
Is well.

Balls In The Air

Here's a video of Chris Bliss juggling balls with background music from the B side of the Beatles' Abbey Road album. With the music on, it's eerily like dance. Thanks to Craig for the link.

I struggle
To juggle
At all.

Who knew there was a way
For balls to do ballet?

Ballet Night

Had phenomenal seats for ABT's Le Corsaire. Angel Corella was awesome as the male slave.

The women went "Woohoo!"
When Angel flew in view.

Horowitz vs. Kirstein

We drove over to St. Xav's to hear David Horowitz and Professor Peter N. Kirstein debate "The Iraq War: In The Classroom And Beyond".

Horowitz is quite a character. He was once an anti-Vietnam-war leftist, but is now a pro-Iraq-war rightist.

Kirstein is a leftist historian with an emphatic speaking style and lots of facts at his fingertips.

There was a big security contingent of guys who looked like off-duty cops. Horowitz got heckled to some extent, especially as the event was winding down. But it never truly got out of hand. Unfortunately, some of the hecklers were sitting right behind us, which made it kind of hard to hear Horowitz talk sometimes.

The funniest moment, to me, was when Horowitz started complaining that Islam had not gone through a Reformation. Then he caught himself, and reflected out loud that maybe he shouldn't make positive mention of the Reformation at a Catholic University. Then he said something like, "Well, even the Catholic Church has come a long way. They're not like they were during the Inquisition."

His best moment, I thought, was when he digressed to talk about all the millions of deaths under communism, in peace-time, in engineered famines. For a man who wrote books as a Marxist, this can't be an easy thing to talk about.

It's a good thing he wasn't a diplomat.
I think his career would have fallen flat.
His star has shone far brighter
As a trouble-making writer.

Talaq

Under Islamic family law, a man can divorce his wife just by telling her "I divorce you" three times.

Even though India is a predominantly Hindu country, Muslims are expected, by law, to live by Islamic rules. It's a legally encoded form of multiculturalism.

This brings us to the plight of a Muslim husband in India, who accidentally divorced his wife while talking in his sleep!

Clearly this is a case of clerics gone wild. But now he can't just marry her again. He has to wait a while, or let someone else marry and divorce her first.

I hope in the future he keeps
His mouth shut when he sleeps.

10G for Me & Thee

Charles Murray has "A Plan To Reduce The Welfare State." For some reason, this plan involves giving every American exactly ten thousand dollars a year. No more, no less. Of course, we will tax ourselves to give ourselves this money.

I am put in mind of a quote attributed to Isabel Paterson: "If you hear some bad collectivistic notions, chances are that they came from liberals. But if you hear or read something outrageously, god-awfully collectivistic, you may be sure that the author is a conservative."

As a rule, our current welfare state is conceived as a patchwork of safety nets and forced-insurance plans. It is not currently conceived as society owing you a living. In my view, this is its saving grace.

Putting aside the collectivist grounds,
Don't you think 10,000 sounds
Suspiciously round?

This number came from where?
Out of thin air?

I have a plan to make it rounder yet.
Zero is all that anyone will get.

Taboo

The New Individualist came in the mail. The one whose cover features that Danish cartoon with the Prophet wearing a bomb for a turban.

The issue broke another taboo, too. It contained a favorable discussion of romance novels in an Objectivist publication. The title of the article is "Individual Meets Pulp Fiction."

The author, Lou Villadsen, makes the very true point that successful businessmen are often the heroes of romance novels. She's obviously a fan herself and writes about the genre with enthusiasm. She doesn't try to make a strong aesthetic argument for romance novels, but makes a case for the values embodied in these books.

A lot of times the plot line goes like this:

When she meets a guy who embodies success
And she feels all tingly under her dress,
You know where the story's headed.
They're going to end up wedded
And thoroughly embedded.

The Great Debate

I spent the morning at the campus of my alma mater. This weekend it's the site of a big debate tournament for the Chicago public high schools. I was there to support gregorysparr in his debating efforts. I only got to watch him for one session, but I thought he won it, hands down.

At one point, while he was preparing for the next step in the debate, I looked over at him and saw him moving his fingers in a rhythmic way, as if counting time for music. It puzzled me, but it's something I sometimes do when I'm writing a poem. Sure enough, his closing speech was a rhymed poem! This delighted the judge. Gregory said most judges like it when you close with a poem, but that a few judges don't care for it.

Perhaps if you could ask
The judges first:
Please don't take me to task
For being well-versed.

Oppression

These people plan to kill a man
For converting to Christianity.
I thought we invaded Afghanistan
To get RID of religious insanity.

Oldest Tortoise Dies

This critter was a British officer's pet in the 18th Century. You know, like around the 1750s.

Farewell, Mr. Tortoise!
Human lives are not the shortest,
But avoiding rigor mortis
For 250 years,
Is a trick for deserving cheers.

Women's History Month

Stephen Hicks is going to talk about Ayn Rand as part of Rockford College's Women's History Month lecture series. On April 3rd.

She rarely gets in "Women's" stuff,
So I'm glad that she's included.
Something about her point of view
Usually gets her booted.

The Prying Eyes of Texas

Texas is using undercover agents to ferret out intoxicated people.

In bars.

No surprise, they found some. And arrested them.

I know you shouldn't be drunk
When you're driving a car.

But who'd have thunk
You couldn't get drunk in a bar?

Sunset

Streaks of pink and purple in the sky
Make me think of blue- and raspberry pie.
Although it wasn't on my list of wishes,
It's great to taste a sunset turned delicious.
Soon the sun will sink to something duller,
So seize the instant - gobble up the color!

Sprung

Spring sneaked in.
Just peeked around the corner,
And slid by without warning.

The increase in daylight
Was easy to sight,
But when will the cold wind
Cease against my skin?

An English Major's Lament

Why are there so many spammers
Lacking the basics of grammar?
Did they skip their studies
To play with their buddies?
Is that why they now work as scammers?

The Philosopher's Stone and The Klein Bottle

Tom Stone, owner of the valuable EpistemeLinks site has started up a new blog, called Philosopher Stone, which is a cute pun on his name and one of his big interests.

The original Philosopher's Stone was a much sought-after dream-stuff of Alchemy. It was a mysterious substance that would let you turn tin, and other cheap metals, into gold.

But if you kept making gold and didn't stop
Its market price would drop.

I also just learned that Shawn Klein has a blog up, which he just calls Philosophy Blog.

I began thinking about funny punny names Shawn could use for a blog. Maybe something to do with Klein Bottles? But do people even know what they are?

There's an anonymous limerick that explains:

A mathematician named Klein
Thought the Möbius band was divine.
Said he: "If you glue
The edges of two,
You'll get a weird bottle like mine."

The Most Distressful Country

Kirinqueen and Madbard both alluded to this traditional song:

I met with Napper Tandy and he took me by the hand,
And he said, "How's poor old Ireland, an' how does she stand?"
She's the most distressful country that ever yet was seen,
For they're hanging' men and women for the wearin' o' the green.

Today, Ireland is booming economically, and even the troubles in the north seemed to have abated a bit.

It's the most amazing miracle that ever yet was seen.
That most distressful country now is rolling in the green!

Alley Patrol

My dogs just treed a possum.
They thought that was awesome.

Wrong Number

Did you ever make an accidental cell phone call?
Did it set you up for a fall?
Was it to 9-1-1?
Was it when you were planning a robbery with your son?
Well, now that's been done!

Educational Reading

"The literary world had revolted against the yoke of coming capitalism - its money-lenders, its bank directors, and its railway magnates... The middle class had the power, and held its coal and iron well in hand, but the satirists and idealists seized the press..."

That's from The Education Of Henry Adams, which we did for book club this month. It was long stretches of yawn interrupted by bursts of insight.

Adams had been a professor of medieval history at Harvard, and in some ways his heart was still in the medieval world. On the other hand, he had a lively inquiring mind, and he saw that technology was transforming the world in the latter half of the nineteenth century.

In an often-anthologized chapter of the book, "The Virgin And The Dynamo," he argues that devotion to Mary was the power behind medieval civilization, but that the big electrical generator is the power behind modern civilization.

The Virgin's power controlled
Europe in days of old.
But now the Dynamo
Makes the whole world go.

Chop Shop

That New Jersey body parts scandal just keeps going.

There's a big demand for body parts from dead people. But not so much supply. Partly because there's not much immediate incentive to donate. It's not like your family gets cash for saying "Sure, take what you need."

So a plot hatched that was a crossover between the Sopranos and Six Feet Under. At a funeral home, corpses were stripped of some parts that wouldn't be missed. These parts were sold as medical supplies. Only... they weren't checked for diseases the way that real doctors are supposed to do.

People need spare parts!
Won't you share your heart?

On State Street, That Great Street

From the office today we could hear fire engines blasting, and when we looked out the window we could see a lot of them gathering about 2 blocks away.

Was it a fire?

Was it a pigeon with bird flu?

No. It was a case of refrigerator repair gone wrong. At the Hilton Palmer House. Fortunately, everyone is okay now.

They let the freon gas out
And people started to pass out.

Vermeer's Girl With A Pearl Earring

Good set of pictures here.

A turban-wearing girl
With an earring made of pearl
Looks out with shining eyes
With a glance of sweet surprise
As if she's glad you're there
And you wonder if her hair
When finally unbound
Could match the beauty found
In the sparkle of her gaze
In the glory of the rays
Of sun that bathe the girl
With an earring made of pearl.

For Better Or Curse

I'm told that one of the actors in my play reading last week remarked how unusual it was to do a contemporary play with no swearing.

On the other hand, one of my audience evaluation sheets asked me to clean up the language, specifically noting a "Jesus" exclamation in the first few lines and a smattering of "hell"s as well.

I could have cursed worse,
It's true.

Still, I could go through
And replace all hells with hecks,
And remove all mentions of sex.

I probably won't change it.
I'm just too lazy to rearrange it.

Saint-Andre Translates Kaufmann

Peter Saint-Andre has translated one of Walter Kaufmann's German poems, and a touching little poem it is. Thank you Peter!

Kaufmann is better known for all sorts of other things, but I like him a lot as a poet. At least, I Iike his English poetry. I don't know German, so I haven't been able to make sense of his German poetry.

Peter is better known for all sorts of other things too, but I also like him a lot as a poet.

So having Peter translate Kaufmann is a dream combination for me.

What could be sweeter
Than having Peter
Translate Walter
Without falter?

Thousands Demonstrate

There was a huge demonstration at Chicago's Federal Plaza today.

Your intrepid blog reporter was there.

They were protesting some House Bill that aims to crack down on illegal immigration. The Chicago Tribune's website said it was Irish, Polish and Mexican immigrants. Well, there may have been some Irish or Polish in there somewhere, but it was hugely Mexican.

They were peaceful. Kind of quiet.
I saw nothing resembling a riot.
But they did seem sort of worried
As if they might be hurried
Out of the country any minute.

I hope they're allowed to stay in it.

Madeleine

Madeleine Pelner Cosman passed away last week. She was quite a pistol as a grown-up: lawyer, amateur pilot and gun-toter. And somewhere in there she had a family. She was widowed, but is survived by children and grandchildren. Update: Robert Bidinotto has a tribute up.

Lately she had been campaigning against illegal immigration and the strain it puts on our health system. I somewhat disagreed with her on that issue, since it seemed to me the problem was more with the way our health system was set up.

It was less than a year ago that I spoke with her about her childhood. Her parents were European Jews who made a point of teaching her perfect German - along with some other children - so they could infiltrate Nazi Europe as spies if necessary when they grew up. And you know what, if the Allies had failed to take out Hitler, I believe Madeleine would have succeeded in killing him herself.

Around the same time I asked her about her beautiful speaking voice. Well, it turned out she had been an opera singer as well. It was part of the way she paid her way through Barnard College. She told me stories of having to take the subway from the Morningside Heights campus to the opera house. Sometimes in a long gown. And that's the image I want to end on. With her riding downtown on the IRT, in her evening gown, ready to sing.

Amazing talent, astounding drive,
She lived her life alive.

I Suppose I Have To Admit It

I thought "Wimbledon" was really cute.

Thanks for sitting through
This minimal movie review.

Ten Feet On The Ground

My running companions are hard to exhaust.
They're ready to go in the snow and the frost.

They sometimes delay me by sniffing at trees.
This takes even longer if one of them pees.

Product "Failure"

"A new study indicates an astounding half of all products returned to stores as 'malfunctioning' are really given back by buyers who can't figure out how to use them."

"She even brought in the designers and let them watch the test subjects struggling, a process that reportedly amazed the inventors."

Article here.

I'm not really surprised.  Between indecipherable instructions and counter-intuitive designs, I've had my share of trouble.

When reading product reviews
I look for things that are easy to use.

Multicultural Clips

Here are links to:

1) A funny little video about a "Call Center" in India.

2) A stunning TV appearance on Al-Jazeera defending secularism and Jews, by  Wafa Sultan, an Arab-American woman who is an L.A. psychologist.

Does the world shrink
As fast I think?

Thank You, Cast

I want to blog-thank the cast for the "Ready or Not" script reading yesterday.

Joe Collins organized the group of actors, casting them for the parts, and casting himself as Edward, the male lead. A couple of audience members asked whether he was purposely imitating ME in his role. No, we hadn't met before that day. But it's a funny commentary on how closely I must have written myself into that part, and on how well he read the role.

Kathy Holahan played Susan, the female lead. I believe this is the hardest part in the play, and I thought she pulled it off with depth of feeling.

Brian Rigg played Kyle brilliantly and got a high percentage of the laughs, much of it at his character's expense.

Kristel Flynn played Norma, the young lady from Mexico who has a tendency to steal the scenes she's in. Kristel stole those scenes.

David Soria played Thompson, the boss-man, with wonderful authority. His character was large and in charge.

Thanks to all five,
The play came alive.

I Do, But...

If you don't like dogs
And don't like snow
You shouldn't go
To Eight Below.

Reading Report

The reading, with an intermission, took a little under 2 hours. The old rule, "each page of playscript equals 1 minute" seemed to hold true.

The actors stood at the front of the room at podiums and read, without physically acting out the big actions. So if 2 characters kissed, that action was not actually executed, but was described by someone reading my stage directions.

The actors did an excellent job. They had rehearsed a bit, but somewhat disconnectedly. All 5 of them had not been together until today, about 20 minutes before show time.

We packed 60 people into the Studio Theater of the Beverly Art Center, pretty much all friends and relatives, some of whom had some theater background.

It went well. The audience was very quiet, except for periodic laughter. The good news is they were laughing at parts I had meant to be funny. They clapped loudly at the end. I got up in front of the audience and asked for feedback, particularly about what they thought might need fixing. I got a few ideas for things to fix, and we had some intelligent discussion about the play. The response was generally enthusiastic. I had people fill out evaluation forms, and I have still to go through those.

What's next? I don't know.
But... on with the show!

Bush Gets Hit In Pakistan

Well, he got hit by a cricket ball, while playing that strange baseball-resembling game with some Pakistanis.  Scroll toward end of link to see a sequence of still shots showing Bush getting clipped by the ball.

Now he'll never stop playing cricket -
It's a quagmire and a thicket.
The game is slow -
It's been known to go
For days on end.

I guess it's okay to send
The president abroad,
But playing foreign games must be outlawed!

EDIT: It seems he was hit by a tennis ball which was being used in place of a cricket ball.

Windy City Boots

Here in the Windy City you can get your car booted for a variety of offenses.  Today's Sun-Times has a story about some supervisors who were in charge of booting people... who finally got booted themselves.

I just have to say:
Turn-a-boot is fair play.

Taking a Limerick Break

There once was a writer named Rand
Who never feared taking a stand.
She staked out positions
And stocked up munitions!
The fireworks always were grand.

Kyle Sing To Speak

Our next NIF meeting is a couple of weeks away, but Ergosum asked me for a heads up.

Kyle Sing will lead a discussion
About marketing the philosophy of a certain Russian.

Click here for full details...

Caller Not-So-I.D.

Caller-I.D.s are no longer proof
Of identity. Beware of the spoof.

Honorary Street Names

We have something unusual in Chicago - honorary street names. The street is still known by its original name - as shown on a green sign, but it's also decorated with an honorary name - as shown on a brown sign.

As a native, I always ignore the brown sign, since it conveys no helpful information. But the poor out-of-towners often have trouble figuring out where they are.

Today, one of our alderman called for stopping the spread of the brown signs. I hope people listen to him.

Conflicting signs is one of the surest
Ways to confuse the average tourist.

Commuter Train

Just the idea of laying steel track,
Evenly spaced, there and back,
Boggles the brain.

But then - to build a train?
That makes the laying
Of track... seem like mere playing.

Harnessing explosive forces
To outpull a thousand horses...
How exactly is that done?

I wonder whether I'm the only one
Who's awestruck, as we glide along the rails,
At just how rarely this thunder beast fails.

Living Cheaply

Now and then, friends tell me they would like to retire to another country, where they could live more cheaply. Mexico, for instance. Do you know what I always think?

As you get older, you tend to get sick.
Sooner or later you need a doc quick.
But the healthcare there
Gives me a scare.

Tap Jamboree

My daughter and I attended a tap performance this afternoon.  We just watched the first half, when the professional dancers performed.  We didn't stay for the tip-top tap-school performances.

The pros were all excellent.  But... I wish they had danced to music more often.  There was a perfectly good jazz trio on stage, ready to play any standard on request.  But contemporary tap dancers seem to be in love with just dancing to their own percussion. 

I don't mind this in the middle of a performance, where they dance for a while on their own, then the music starts up again.  That has the effect of a drum solo, and I like it fine.

Tap without music is amazingly athletic
But strays from the aesthetic.

Symbolic Term Logic

I'm most of the way through George Englebretsen's Something to Reckon With: The Logic of Terms.  I hadn't read a book on logic for a while, but, sure enough, it has me thinking.

It's largely about Fred Sommers' system of symbolizing Aristotelian logic, in which "Some dogs are black" is represented as:

+D+B

And "all dogs are mammals" gets transcribed as:

-D+M

You can then arrange this into a symbolic syllogism:

-D+M
+D+B
--------
+M+B

Yes indeed, some mammals are black.

It's actually a somewhat complicated system.  Well, any worthwhile system of logic has to be somewhat complicated.  I've read 2 books that went into it before.  One was Fred Sommers' original Logic and Natural Language.  That's out of print.  The other book was David Kelley's old version of The Art of Reasoning: Expanded Version with Symbolic Logic.  The current version, while an excellent book, no longer includes this positive and minus letters stuff.

Anyway, I think I've almost gotten it, finally.  I found it useful to refer back to David's discussion.  His is nicely compact.  He defines a "canonical form" for the method, and also includes helpful practice quizzes - with answers in the back!

The form that still has me thinking is the one for disjunction.  "All dogs are good or bad" becomes:

-D+<--G--B>

Kelley, at least, concedes this is a bit unwieldy.

While searching Amazon for the above links, I just found out there is a new (2005) book on the subject, an anthology, The Old New Logic, from MIT Press.  Very exciting.  I may understand this stuff yet.

All dogs certainly should
Be good.

But every dog I've had,
Was sometimes bad.

I won't try to turn this into abstract letters.
I'll just tell my dogs: Act better!

Laptop Happiness

My laptop has been fixed by some young men from the northwest corner of China. They now have a shop on the south side of Chicago, about a block from my house.

They figured out the memory had gone bad.

Immigrants may make some frown,
But I'm glad to live in a melting-pot town.

Doggerel

Dogs, outside in the dark,
Enthusiastically bark
At some mystery passerby
Indiscernible to my eye.

Rally for Danes in Pain

There's a rally tomorrow (Friday 2/24) in DC for a certain beleagured Nordic country.

It's strange that satirical pen marks
Made so much trouble for Denmark.

Causal Conundrum

A friend of ours from New York is in town for technical training, so we had him over for dinner. Afterwards we were talking about one of the paradoxes of Buddhism. On the one hand, Buddhism stresses individual experience. On the other hand, it holds that there is no real self.

So how do you get individual experience if there's no real self?

It's like getting milk from a cow
That's not really there anyhow.

Still Getting Ready

If you happen to be in the Chicago area, the staged reading of my comedy-drama, Ready Or Not, is set for Sunday, March 5, 3:00 pm, at the Beverly Art Center, which is at 111th and Western, in Chicago.  There's no charge for admission.

On first nights, the author is traditionally drunk.  But at developmental staged readings, the author is supposed to be sober and studious, learning from the way the action plays and the way the audience reacts.

One tip I've read about the audience is this:  If they're quiet, that's a good thing - they're hanging on every word.  

On the other hand, if they rustling about restlessly, opening candy wrappers and clearing their throats, you've lost them.

For a comedies, of course, what's very much sought after
Is uproarious laughter.

President's Day

He was brave, bold, but supremely practical.  He was dignified and conscious of his own worth, but he did not reach for the trappings of kingly power, even when they were within his reach.  He was no great theoretician, but he loved liberty, and he did a great deal to insure its continuation in the 13 breakaway colonies of North America.  He was a slaveholder, but in the end he freed them.

In my calendar, it still says 
This is a day for only one:
The original Prez,
George Washington.

Marty Lewinter

Marty Lewinter, math professor, musician, poet and punster, gave a spellbinding rapidfire talk on the history of mathematics at our house last night.

He's the co-author of a The Saga of Mathematics: A Brief History.  One of the amazon.com reader reviews says "I finally understand math," which is amazing praise.  I haven't read the book yet, but Marty seems like the kind of math teacher everyone should have - enthusiastic and able to relate difficult mathematical concepts back to the real world and perceptual understanding.

Math can seem a cold, hard path,
Alien and aloof.

But when you grasp a proof,
The  numbers and the lines
Transform to something warm 
And glowing.

There's nothing more divine
Than really knowing.

King Lear

I've read King Lear a couple of times, but I'd never seen it played before.  Last night I went to a community theater production.  

Stacy Schneider, who I know from work, had the villainous role of Goneril.

As you probably know, poor Lear has 3 daughters.  Two of them, Goneril and Regan, are toadying but bad.  The remaining daughter, Cordelia, is stiff-necked but good.  Lear's tragedy begins when he gives up his kingdom to the bad daughters, letting each of them have half.

When I've read the play, I've often have trouble distinguishing the 2 bad sisters.  But Stacy Schneider did a great job of individualizing her role.  Her Goneril was sure of herself, thoughtful, serious, and smooth.  She contrasted nicely with Allyson Kennis's flippant and trashy Regan.

Here 
Lies Lear.

Falsely flattered,
Rudely battered,
And, 
In the end, 
Shattered to bits.

So use your wits -
Don't give away all your stuff!
Keep enough to live.