The week in entertainment

TV: Modern Family - I loved poor Phil and his panic at the mere possibility that Claire might leave him. "Tell me it was booze adultery physical abuse - it's okay I'm a monogamous social drinker and Claire only sleep-hits me." Sherlock - I had heard good things so I wasn't too nervous about an updating of the legend to modern times, but what I'd heard only underreported. It was brilliant - wonderfully cast and witty. I loved the "Just where were you shot?" and updating to "Afghanistan or Iraq?" and turning the Rachel-rache clue on its head. Really nicely done and lots of fun.

Read: Four light "classic" mysteries, Doan & Carstairs (the latter is a Great Dane). Scattered Families, a good read about dysfunctional people finding their way to function. Bitter in the Mouth, a truly excellent novel about a young woman with synesthesia growing up in the American South among among people hiding their secrets in plain view.

Happy Birthday, John

John Keats was born today in 1795, and died 25 years later of tuberculosis.

"Here lies one whose name was writ in water," he asked for his tombstone, but as time passed that became less and less true... Look here for his life and poetry in context of his times.

Cat! who hast pass'd thy grand cliacteric,
How many mice and rats hast in thy days
Destroy'd? - How many tit bits stolen? Gaze
With those bright languid segments green, and prick
Those velvet ears - but pr'ythee do not stick
Thy latent talons in me - and upraise
Thy gentle mew - and tell me all thy frays
Of fish and mice, and rats and tender chick.
Nay, look not down, nor lick thy dainty wrists -
For all the wheezy asthma, - and for all
Thy tail's tip is nick'd off - and though the fists
Of many a maid have given thee many a mail,
Still is that fur as soft as when the lists
In youth thou enter'dst on glass bottled wall.

more Keats here

Happy Birthday, John

The Atlas of Independence, the Sage of Braintree, John Adams, born this day in 1735 (if you don't count the 11 days 'lost' to the Gregorian calendar in 1752; his birthday was October 19, 1735 by the Old Style, Julian calendar. I don't know what Adams thought of that, but Washington is on record as feeling as though those days had been stolen from him). (On the other hand, these were people who could handle New Year on 25 March.)

Adams defended British troops charged in the Boston Massacre in 1770 (and got most of them off and two convicted of manslaughter only) - an action he later called "one of the most gallant, generous, manly and disinterested actions of my whole life, and one of the best pieces of service I ever rendered my country." Contrary to the 'obnoxious and disliked' image fostered in the play 1776, Adams was one of the most respected advocates for Independence in the colonies; Washington's nomination as general and Jefferson's as writer of the Declaration were both his ideas, and it was Adams who stood up on July 1, 1776 and spoke in favor of independence, extemporaneously, for two hours . Unfortunately, because he spoke without notes and no one took any, we don't have a record of this speech, but Jefferson later said that Adams spoke "with a power of thought and expression that moved us from our seats."

But a Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.

Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.
—'Argument in Defense of the Soldiers in the Boston Massacre Trials,' December 1770

There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.

(And Writer's Almanac last year featured a pessimistic quote we must prove wrong:) Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There was never a democracy that did not commit suicide.

I highly recommend Passionate Sage by John Ellis, and then John Adams by David McCullough, for those who want to know more about this least known of the great Founders - or Ellis's Founding Brothers for an overview of that remarkable group of men.

Happy Birthday, Boswell

Today in Edinburgh was born, in 1740, the man who invented modern biography and became a noun - Boswell, author of "Boswell's Life of Johnson" (The Life of Samuel Johnson). "I will not make my tiger a cat to please anybody," wrote Boswell, and made Dr. Johnson better known to us than any man before and most since. It's not the only thing he wrote (his Account of Corsica was deservedly famous), but it's the one he'll be forever remembered for.

How many legs does a butterfly have?

How many legs does a butterfly have? Check it out. (You can select a picture to enlarge it for better inspection.)

Cabbage White	Clouded Sulphur
Male tiger swallowtail	Female Peck's skipper

These butterflies (well, (technically a skipper is not a true butterfly, but it's still in the order Lepidoptera) clearly have six. Duh, right? They’re insects.

But what about these guys?

Monarch	Common Buckeye
Red-spotted purple (southern colormorph of the White Admiral	Red Admiral

The first is, of course, a monarch, and the last three are all brushfoots. They seem to have four!

Brushfoots have vestigial forelegs, and monarchs have slightly larger ones, but still small and kept tucked up near their heads.

Cool, huh? And startlingly obvious when you look at them - really look, that is. Yet somehow I managed to make it through more than half a century without noticing...

Happy Birthday, Valerie

Today in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1933, Valerie Worth was born. I love her Small Poems.

Stars

While we
Know they are
Enormous suns,
Gold lashing
Fire-oceans,
Seas of heavy silver flame,

They look as
Though they could
Be swept
Down, and heaped,
Cold crystal
Sparks, in one
Cupped palm.

I and the Bird Hits the Road

It's I and the Bird Number 137, and while some of the contributors were staying home, most of them were going somewhere - and sending back wonderful words and images.

Greg at Greg Laden's Blog offers us some notes from up north:

That's how we identify golden eagles around here. They are not supposed to be here, so we remain in denial as long as we can. Nonetheless, once or twice a year we see one. We never see evidence of nesting, so they are probably just passing through on their way north or south, depending on the time of year.

My own contribution is from my backyard, so to speak - the park near my office building.

It's October, and there are only a few things still blooming - yellow and purple daisies, those scrawny little daisy fleabanes, and the white joe-pye weed (or queen of the meadow). Birds of course are still around, though the summer visitors have left and the winter ones (juncos, mostly) haven't arrived yet. And there are a few butterflies left this late in October - some whites and sulphurs, and skippers, and the occasional brushfoot still. Here are a few shots from the park over the past week...

Tony at Tyto Tony gets great shots of a heron in Australia

'Here's mud in your eye' perfect toast to Striated Heron (Butorides striata) yesterday on tidal mud where Herbert River meets Hinchinbrook Channel east of Ingham. Bird waited without movement for more than five minutes close to water-filled hole in mud.

Dan at Nature Observances gets a good look at something new

"Ooh, quick get my camera, hurry hurry it's a peregrine" Not following my advice to myself to look well first with bins before shooting, I took several shots in the cloudy early morning lack of light. It was 30 feet away, enough for me with the naked eye to see all the identifying characteristics, and as my heart-rate slowed, I realized that bird flying away off the line was not a peregrine. I had an excellent look, and pulled out my field guide and confirmed it as a American Kestrel.

Susannah at Wanderin' Weeta gives us some lovable coots:

I think coots are my favourite birds. Ridiculous birds, black-suited and bejewelled as if for a formal occasion, but wearing someone else's floppy bedroom slippers. Contortionists, splay-footed divers, splashing maniacs running on water to get up enough speed to fly, with a voice like a kid learning to play the kazoo, or alternately, like the creak of a ratcheted wrench on a rusty bolt, or sometimes the ploop! of a cork coming out of an old medicine bottle. And, in spite of all that, just plain cute.

Amy at Magnificent Frigate Bird shares experiences of banding saw-whet owls, videos included:

Last Saturday night Arthur and I visited the Sand Bluff Bird Observatory in Durand, Illinois. The banding station is open each weekend during spring and fall migration, and they band a huge number of birds – up to 4,000 per year. The station has been in operation since 1967 and has always been run by a team of dedicated volunteers. Visitors are welcome to observe songbird banding activities, which takes place during the day. Our visit on Saturday night was to see a special, nocturnal bird: the Saw-whet Owl.

Nate at The Drinking Bird is County List Crazy:

In any case, with the successful twitch of the Connecticut Warbler, where I also found a handful of other good birds for the county, I finally found myself sitting in the first spot for Durham County. This was unexpected and sort of cool, until two days later when I got knocked back off that pedestal by one Robert Meehan (who also comments around these parts as BirdtrainerRobert). Rather than accept my demotion with the good graces you might expect from any reasonable individual, I decided to put myself on top for good, so this past weekend I went out for the first time to specifically find some birds in a specific county. This is the dawning of a new era for The Drinking Bird. One no doubt defined by repetition, naval-gazing, and mind-numbing minutia. Get ready!

Robert at Birding is fun! shows us how much more fun it is to help another birder:

My friend Jason, in Idaho, has been getting back into birding this year after a couple decades off. We've been Boy Scout leaders together this last year so our campouts have included a little element of birding. I have been a bad birding influence on him, like a drug dealer. Being home in the Boise area this weekend, Jason and I determined to get out and do a little birding together. The target bird was a Hooded Merganser, the male being one of the most showy and beautiful wintering waterfowl in this area and one that Jason has never seen before. I was happy to see a recent report of a Hoody on eBird in a nearby pond, so I felt our chances were good. Jason and I set out with a couple hours planned for a whirlwind tour of about two dozen Eagle, Idaho area ponds near the Boise River.

Joan from Anybody Seen My Focus? gets some nice shots of woodpeckers.

The berries have ripened and a lot of birds are more visible than usual. I encountered these two birds in an open area along the trail south of the Fishing Area (segment 13) last week. They were up in trees – twenty to thirty feet above the ground and just about as far away.

Jan at Jan Axel's Blog goes birding on the savannas in Panama - very successfully, too.

It was quite foggy, but anyway I found most of the typical birds of this habitat, and more. I noticed that many of the rice fields were flooded, attracting many birds, both residents and migrants. I saw (and photographed) most of the birds while seated in my car, using it as a hide.

Corey from 10,000 Birds went birding in Ft Tilden

The northwest winds were blowing hard and a trickle of birds were coming back to land after having been blown out to sea while migrating overnight. Most of the birds that we spotted during the morning in the hedges, bushes, and other assorted cover were Yellow-rumped Warblers, White-throated Sparrows, and Eastern Phoebes. Other sparrow species were around in smaller numbers and an occasional wren, cardinal, or kinglet enlivened our search for hoped-for rarities but the big three were dominating our fields of view.

John from my neck of the woods, A D.C. Birding Blog, went to Great Swamp and got some gorgeous shots

Yesterday I was at the Great Swamp NWR on a cool and blustery day. Despite the unfavorable weather for bird observation, a lot of people were on the boardwalk trails, most of them gathered in two tour groups. The wind kept much of the bird activity out of view, but there were still birds to be seen. Winter residents are arriving in good numbers now.

Pat from Costa Rica Living and Birding also took a trip, to Kiri Lodge:

The Kiri Lodge people are friendly enough to still serve you with a smile even if you don’t like trout and opt for fried chicken or a beef “casado” (a “casado” is an all purpose standard, tasty meal that usually consists of rice, beans, plantain, salad, vegetable, and beef, chicken, or fish). For the birder, of far more importance than their penchant for trout is their friendly attitude about birds. They demonstrate this with hummingbird feeders and a fantastic bird-feeding table.

James from Coyote Mercury went to Central Park:

A guidebook in the hotel suggested that The Ramble would be a good place for birding since it’s the wildest corner of Central Park, featuring landscapes similar to what might have existed in Manhattan before Europeans came. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but the area certainly was wilder than the rest of the park and to my surprise the birds most common in the rest of the city—pigeons, starlings, and house sparrows—were virtually absent in The Ramble.

Amber at the Birder's Lounge was in the right wrong place in Oklahoma:

I pulled to the side of the gravel road, parked, and watched a large flock of mostly Red-winged Blackbirds (Agelaius phoeniceus) moving amongst the abundant roadside vegetation. Swaths of sunflowers five to six feet tall lined the roadway, with expansive, flat, agricultural fields stretching out behind them. The flock bobbed for seeds, perched on stems and flowerheads.

Johnny Nutcase at Count Your Chicken! We're Taking Over! saw a beautiful bird in Black Canyon:

This lovely lady is a Dusky Grouse (Dendragapus obscurus), formerly known as the Blue Grouse. These guys have a fairly restricted range in some of the Western States up towards Alberta. I saw a small handful on my trip, but this one was awfully generous and let me take some pictures. I found her while I was wandering around just after sunrise in Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park.

Finally, GrrlScientist at Punctuated Equilibrium takes us into the realms of science as she looks at what's up with parrot feathers:

But among birds, the parrots are unique: their bright reds, oranges and yellows are not derived from dietary carotenoids. Unlike any other group of birds, parrots synthesize their own red, orange and yellow pigments, which were named "psittacofulvins" in honor of their avian creators. Interestingly, these lipid-soluble pigments are found nowhere else; not in other birds, not in plants, nor even in plankton.

No! It's a Trap!

Seriously, people. Could fawn-kicking, half-tame-animal-shooting, mean stepfather Frank, whose gubernatorial ambitions Mark thwarted and who Mark punched out in front of his big-time-political pals, be any more obvious? Could he?

Yeah.

Yeah. That's why the Founders explicitly wrote in the text of the Constitution that it was never to be amended, dammit.

Oh, wait.

Happy Birthday, John

John Hollander was born today in New York City in 1929. He is currently the Sterling Professor emeritus of English at Yale, and still writing (his most recent collection, A Draft of Light, was just published).


Another Firefly

In a turning instant, my head
Catches light of a leaping star
Over my left shoulder in a
Green region of space darkened,
Into distance beyond distance,
A cold, green star, not rising like
Sons and empires, slow as breath,
In the way of stars, but as no
Darkened water could have mirrored
The partly glimpsed meteor in
Surging reversal of falling ---
That sort of rising. They return
Bright rightings of our sinisters,
The mirrors; but this rise of light ---
As if in summer nights at still
Moments a death could yet retract,
Or a dim candle gutter on ---
Freshens the held air; far away,
Somewhere a breath has been taken.

Find more here

Happy Birthday, Katherine

Today in Birmingham, England, in 1846, Katherine Harris Bradley was born. She wrote, along with her lover, Emma Ward Cooper, under the name of "Michael Field".

Nightfall

She sits beside: through four low panes of glass
The sun, a misty meadow, and the stream;
Falling through rounded elms the last sunbeam
Through night's thick fibre sudden barges pass
With great forelights of gold, with trailing mass
Of timber: rearward of their transient glearn
The shadows settle, and profounder dream
Enters, fulfils the shadows. Vale and grass
Are now no more; a last leaf strays about,
Then every wandering ceases; we remain.
Clear dusk, the face of wind is on the sky:
The eyes I love lift to the upper pane --
Their voice gives note of welcome quietly
'I love the air in which the stars come out.'

Happy Birthday, Dylan

Dylan Marlais Thomas was born in Swansea, Wales today in 1914. (Yes, the Dylan Thomas from "the man's so square, when you say "Dylan" he thinks you mean "Dylan Thomas" - whoever he was" ...) Here's his Poem In October

It was my thirtieth year to heaven
Woke to my hearing from harbour and neighbour wood
And the mussel pooled and the heron
Priested shore
The morning beckon
With water praying and call of seagull and rook
And the knock of sailing boats on the net webbed wall
Myself to set foot
That second
In the still sleeping town and set forth.

My birthday began with the water-
Birds and the birds of the winged trees flying my name
Above the farms and the white horses
And I rose
In rainy autumn
And walked abroad in a shower of all my days.
High tide and the heron dived when I took the road
Over the border
And the gates
Of the town closed as the town awoke.

A springful of larks in a rolling
Cloud and the roadside bushes brimming with whistling
Blackbirds and the sun of October
Summery
On the hill's shoulder,
Here were fond climates and sweet singers suddenly
Come in the morning where I wandered and listened
To the rain wringing
Wind blow cold
In the wood faraway under me.

Pale rain over the dwindling harbour
And over the sea wet church the size of a snail
With its horns through mist and the castle
Brown as owls
But all the gardens
Of spring and summer were blooming in the tall tales
Beyond the border and under the lark full cloud.
There could I marvel
My birthday
Away but the weather turned around.

It turned away from the blithe country
And down the other air and the blue altered sky
Streamed again a wonder of summer
With apples
Pears and red currants
And I saw in the turning so clearly a child's
Forgotten mornings when he walked with his mother
Through the parables
Of sun light
And the legends of the green chapels

And the twice told fields of infancy
That his tears burned my cheeks and his heart moved in mine.
These were the woods the river and sea
Where a boy
In the listening
Summertime of the dead whispered the truth of his joy
To the trees and the stones and the fish in the tide.
And the mystery
Sang alive
Still in the water and singingbirds.

And there could I marvel my birthday
Away but the weather turned around. And the true
Joy of the long dead child sang burning
In the sun.
It was my thirtieth
Year to heaven stood there then in the summer noon
Though the town below lay leaved with October blood.
O may my heart's truth
Still be sung
On this high hill in a year's turning.

And again...

If the guy had said "Lavarr" instead of "Laver" he would have lost. But spelling doesn't count in Final Jeopardy, so he won big money instead.

Double Standard!

Totally Unexpected Sweetness

I bought the latest generation Kindle last week because it's globally active and it displays other than Latin fonts - several, including Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Arabic, and (my interest!) Cyrillic. Amazon doesn't have many Russian books yet, but they say they're working to expand their selection.

HOWEVER.

I was at kniga.com today buying something else, and they were teasing Aleksandra Marinina, a wildly popular thriller writer - in an e-book sale. When I looked at it, she was one of many, many authors with e-book versions. And then I discovered that they sell their e-books in a variety of formats - including the one Kindle uses.

Bliss. Russian books on the Kindle.

And with e-books, there isn't even shipping!

GOP -> MOP?

Things could get very bad in Colorado ... for the GOP, that is. As Talking Points Memo says (quoting the Denver Post), there's a fair chance that they will be reduced to minor party status for the next four years. What does that mean? Couple of important things. First,

minor party status means that Republicans wouldn't appear at the top of the ballot with the Democrats in 2012 and 2014. Instead, they'll be listed down with the Libertarian, Green Party and other third-party candidates.

And

minor party status might hurt the finances of Republicans running at the state level. According to the Associated Press, a "minor party cannot raise money for both primary and general elections unless it has more than one candidate in any primary race," whereas a major party must hold a primary, even if a candidate is unopposed.

This cuts their fundraising in half.

Funnier, Tancredo might propel the the American Constitution Party, with just 2,330 registered members, to major party status, and Tancredo only ran after Maes refused to drop out.

Double standard

It annoys me that Jeopardy! penalizes contestants for mispronouncing a name but lets them misspell it on Final Jeopardy. It's Sousa, not Souza!

Happy Birthday, Anne

Born today in 1941, Anne Tyler - Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist who celebrates the minutae of ordinary lives lived by ordinary people who are splendidly not ordinary in the narrow sense. I love her books - she's one of the few authors whose new novel I pre-order, in hardback, and who never disappoints. A private person, she makes no tours or public appearances, and I honor that here by not showing her face - only her latest three novels. May she write many more.

The week in entertainment

Film: Hereafter and Eastwood has crafted a masterpiece. I loved this movie.

DVD: The Terry Pratchett/Sky trilogy (Hogfather, The Colour of Magic, Going Postal). Hogfather is the best (see here for more), but Going Postal was excellent, too. CoM was okay.

TV: Modern Family - This episode was hilarious. First the whole Claire saying "My kids didn't go to pre-school" and realizing that... yeah. Then Cam and Mitch discover that being gay adoptive parents of an Asian child puts them in the "very desirable" category for diversity-hunger pre-schools. Mitch: "Finally being gay is a plus! It's like playing dodgeball in school and actually getting picked first!" Cam: "I always got picked first - I could throw a dodgeball through a sheet of plywood. But I take your point." And then ... dun dun. They lose out to "interracial lesbians in a wheelchair with an African baby!" The Middle remains sporadically amusing, but this was not a good episode, really. Better With You - I can't take it any more. These people aren't quirky, they're just annoyingly, impossibly weird. And Ben? He is so stupid. Her mother is filling your work inbox with junk email? Dedicated yahoo.com email address, idiot! IDIOT. House is improving. I still think getting him and Cuddy together is a mistake, but at least it's not totally dominating the plots. It was nice to see some House-Wilson action again, and to see somebody call Taub on his attitude (though I still like him better than Foreman!). No Ordinary Family had a better episode than last week's, but it's still an uneven show. The Mentalist had another engaging episode even if there was a little raggedyness about just how the crime the murder was covering up was supposed to work. Poor Grace - "I could come with--"

Read: Two more Inspector O novels (Hidden Moon and Bamboo and Blood), both very different not just from A Corpse in the Koryo but each other. Hidden Moon is a runaway train building to a helluva climax, and Bamboo is a confusing (in a good way) ramble through a minefield of politics where O never quite knows what's happening but knows it's dangerous. These books are excellent. Locked In, which I would have read a while ago but the virtual to-read list is harder to keep track of! Anyway, another taut winner from Muller. And finally got up the nerve to read Nemesis, which I'd been putting off because every review of it hinted darkly how someone Falco loved was going to die and push him into his darkest journey yet. Well, I was pretty sure it wasn't going to be Helena, but what with all the coyness I was afraid it might be Petro. Or Aulus or Quintus. Or Albia, or Maia... But it's Geminus. Yeah, his dad. And since he dies - of natural causes, at that - in the first chapter, I fail to see the point of all the secrecy. This is another riveting entry in the series. Brilliant.

Happy Birthday, Antonie

Antonie Philips van Leeuwenhoek was born today in Delft, the Netherlands. Now known as the Father of Microbiology, he was a master of the microscope - which he perfected - and the first to observe and describe single celled organisms, which he referred to as animalcules. He was also the first to record microscopic observations of muscle fibers, bacteria, spermatozoa and blood flow in capillaries.

Happy Birthday, Ursula

Today in 1929, Ursula K. LeGuin was born. I've read much of her work, but until a couple of years ago I didn't know that the K was for Kroeber, or that her father was Alfred Kroeber, the "dean of American anthropology" and the man who studied Ishi, the last Yahi.

Sky Watch: The Tree

more Sky Watchers here

The van will break your heart

Seriously - do people not think about the whole song? First Lincoln uses "Major Tom" to sell a car, and now Honda is selling the Odyssey (the van beckons like no van before) with ... "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes".

Happy Birthday, John

Today in 1805, John Russell Bartlett was born. He was a co-founder of the American Ethnological Society and author of that invaluable book, A Dictionary of American Regionalisms (on line here). Some entries:

GO AHEAD. To proceed; to go forward. A seaman's phrase which has got (into common use)

TO GO BY. To call; to stop at. Used in the Southern States.--Sherwood's Georgia. Mr. Pickering says this singular expression is often used at the South. "Will you go by and dine with me?" i. e. in passing my house will you stop and dine?.

TO GO FOR. To be in favor of. Thus, 'I go for peace with Mexico,' means I am in favor of peace with Mexico, or, as an Englishman would say, I am for peace with Mexico. This vulgar idiom is a recent one, and is greatly affected by political and other public speakers, who ought to be the guardians of the purity of the language instead of its most indefatigable corruptors.

TO GO IT BLIND. To accede to any object with out due consideration.

TO GO IT STRONG. To perform an act with vigor or without scruple.

TO GO THE WHOLE FIGURE. To go to the fullest extent in the attainment of any object.

TO GO THE BIG FIGURE. To do things on a large scale.

TO GO THE WHOLE HOG. A Western vulgarism, meaning to be out and out in favor of anything. A softened form of the phrase is to go the entire animal.

TO GO THROUGH THE MILL. A metaphor alluding to grain which has been through the mill. A Western editor observed that the mail papers looked as if they had been through the mill, so much worn were they by being shaken over the rough roads. It is often said of a person who has experienced anything, and especially difficulties, losses, &c.

Happy Birthday, Ivan Alekseevich

Иван Алексеевич Бунин (Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin) was born to a once-wealthy but impoverished land-owning family in Voronezh, Russia, on this day in 1870 (it was Oct 10, Old Style).

He was a poet, short story writer, and novelist. He wrote poetry first, including the collections "Под открытым небом" (1898 Pod otkrytym nebom, Under Open Skies) and "Листопад" (1901 Listopad, November (Leaf-fall)), and then short stories, the most famous of which include Господин из Сан-Франциско, Gospodin iz San-Frantsisko, The Gentleman from San Francisco), Антоновские яблоки (Antonovskiye yabloki, Antonov's Apples), Сосны (Sosni, Pines), Новая дорога (Novaya doroga, A New Road), and Чернозем (Chernozem, Black Earth), won him great acclaim.

But after 1905, things became darker in Russia and in Bunin's work. His first novels, Деревня (1910, Derevnia, The Village), and Сухдол (1912, Sukhdol, Dry Valley), written before he left Russia after the Revolution, portrayed a decaying countryside which destroyed the image of idealized peasants and garnered more criticism in his native country than praise.

Works written in exile in France include his diary, in which he attacked the Bolsheviks, Окаянные дни (published in 1920, Okayannye Dni, Cursed Days); Жизнь Арсеньева (1933, Zhizn Areseneva, The Life of Arsenev) - first in a projected but unfinished trilogy, Митина любовь (1925, Mitina Lubov, Mitya's Love), Тёмные Аллеи (1946, Tyomnyye Allei, Shadowed Paths) written during the Nazi occupation, and Воспоминания (1950, Vospominaniya, Memories and Portraits). As a translator Bunin was highly regarded. He published in 1898 a translation of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's The Song of Hiawatha, for which he was awarded the Pushkin Prize in 1903 by the Russian Academy of Science, to which he was elected in 1909. Among Bunin's other translations were Lord Byron's Manfred and Cain, Tennyson's Lady Godiva, and works from Alfred de Musset, and François Coppée.

Bunin was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1933, but he had become an unperson in the Soviet Union: not only were his books not to be found, his name was unspoken and certainly unwritten.

Over at Language Hat, Hat has a translation of Book (Книга) which is quite good.

Here are a few of his poems with my translations (same as last year - this week has been crazy...):


Неуловимый свет разлился над землею,
Над кровлями безмолвного села.
Отчетливей кричат перед зарею
Далеко на степи перепела.

Нет ни души кругом - ни звука, ни тревоги...
Спят безмятежным сном зеленые овсы...
Нахохлясь, кобчик спит на кочке у дороги,
Покрытый пылью матовой росы...

Но уж светлеет даль... Зелено-серебристый,
Неуловимый свет восходит над землей,
И белый пар лугов, холодный и душистый,
Как фимиам, плывет перед зарей.

1894

The elusive light spills over the earth,
Over the roofs of the silent town.
And before the dawn the quails' clear cries
Can be heard from across the steppe.

Not one soul is about - not a sound, not an alarm...
Untroubled dreams keep the sleeping oats...
Head tucked, the falcon sleeps on the hillock,
His tousled feathers covered in dull, dusty dew...

But light is in the distance now... Silvery green,
The elusive light covers the earth,
And white steam off the meadows, cold and sweet
Like incense, wafts before the dawn.

* * *

РОДИНА

Под небом мертвенно-свинцовым
Угрюмо меркнет зимний день,
И нет конца лесам сосновым,
И далеко до деревень.

Один туман молочно-синий,
Как чья-то кроткая печаль,
Над этой снежною пустыней
Смягчает сумрачную даль.

1896

HOMELAND

Under a sky leaden like death
The wintry day fades into murk;
There is no end to the piney woods
And any villages are far away..

Only fog, milky blue,
Like someone's gentle grief
Thrown over this snowy emptiness,
Softens the twilit distance.

* * *

Все лес и лес. А день темнеет;
Низы синеют, и трава
Седой росой в лугах белеет...
Проснулась серая сова.

На запад сосны вереницей
Идут, как рать сторожевых,
И солнце мутное Жар-Птицей
Горит в их дебрях вековых.

1899

More forest, and more. The day darkens,
Blue grows beneath, and in the meadows grass
With frosty dew grows pale...
The gray owl awakens.

To the west the line of pines
Stretches like an army of guards,
And the sun, smoldering like the Firebird,
Burns their ancient wilderness.

* * *
Не видно птиц. Покорно чахнет
Лес, опустевший и больной,
Грибы сошли, но крепко пахнет
В оврагах сыростью грибной.

Глушь стала тише и светлее,
В кустах свалялася трава,
И, под дождем осенним тлея,
Чернеет темная листва.

А в поле ветер. День холодный
Угрюм и свеж - и целый день
Скитаюсь я в степи свободной,
Вдали от сел и деревень.

И, убаюкан шагом конным,
С отрадной грустью внемлю я,
Как ветер звоном однотонным
Гудит-поет в стволы ружья.

1889

No birds can be seen. Subjected,
The forest withers, emptied and ailing;
Mushrooms are gone, yet in the copses
Lingers still their strong damp scent.

The thickets grow more still and bright,
Grasses tangle in the bushes,
And, moldering under autumn rains
Dark leaves turn ever darker.

But a wind is on the field. A cold day
Both gloomy and fresh - the whole day
I range across the open steppe
Far from village and town.

My horse's steps are a lullaby,
And in a pleasant melancholy
I hear the wind's single unchanging note,
Singing and piping into the barrels of the gun.

Subtitling fail

I'm watching Hogfather - the Sky movie version of Terry Pratchett's brilliant novel - and every once in a while the accents combined with the ambient sound compel me to turn on the subtitles. And clearly the person doing the subtitles had no access to the script.

Archchancellor Ridcully tells a dwarf who works for the college to "Man the pumps, Mr. Modo, or dwarf them in your case, of course."

And the subtitles read, nonsensically, "Man the pumps, Mr. Modo, all two of them in your case, of course."

(ps - this has got to be more "aw vs or", you realize? Otherwise, it's hard to see how "or dwarf" becomes "all two of".)

No obligation

Sigh. As the WashPo says,

The Obama administration won a temporary stay against the moratorium on "don't ask, don't tell" Wednesday, granting the Pentagon the right to once again enforce the 17-year-old ban on gay men and women serving openly in the military.

It's not true that "the Justice Department is generally required to defend existing law" - there have been plenty of times when the DOJ has not appealed. For instance, federal judge Lewis Kaplan’s decision barring prosecutors from calling the witness from whom accused terrorist Ahmed Ghailani purchased the TNT used to bomb the American embassy in Tanzania in August 1998; the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruling that the Park Service's regulation forcing individuals or small groups to obtain a permit for First Amendment-protected activities was unconstitutional; and numerous others over the past half-century or longer.

But Obama's DOJ has chosen not to defend civil liberties and civil rights. Instead, it defends warrantless wiretapping, DADT, DOMA, and the National Day of Prayer. Is there any wonder that progressives and liberals and others who were enthusiastic two years ago are now anything but?

Shame

Language hat posted about scanners - those guys who "spend 80 hours a week trawling junk shops with a laser scanner". He quotes someone who wrote for Slate:

If it's possible to make a decent living selling books online, then why does it feel so shameful to do this work? I'm not the only one who feels this way; I see it in the mien of my fellow scanners as they whip out their PDAs next to the politely browsing normal customers. The sense that this is a dishonorable profession is confirmed by library book sales that tag their advertisements with "No electronic devices allowed," though making this rule probably isn't in the libraries' financial interest. People scanning books sometimes get kicked out of thrift stores and retail shops as well, though this hasn't happened to me yet.

And Hat adds,

On the one hand, to the extent these guys rescue books from the trash compactor and sell them to people who want to read them, they're performing a valuable service. On the other, they're incredibly annoying if you're at the same sale; not only are they shoving you out of the way and keeping you from looking at books, they don't even care about the books as such, just about whether they can make a buck off them. I don't wish ill to befall them, but I'm glad they're banned from some library sales.

A number of his commenters agree that they don't like the "rude and horrible", obnoxious behavior, but they don't mind the actual act. And they don't understand why the guy asked "why does it feel so shameful?" For instance,

I don't get it either. He's obviously working very hard at a job that's completely legal and provides a service for others. Why be ashamed about it?

I think this relates to something I posted about a while ago, commenting on something in Steven Pinker's The Stuff of Thought, which was Pinker wondering why we pay extra for expedited shipping or first class seats, and we tip people for better service, all without angst, yet bribing a maitre d' fills us with dread. As I said then,

When you bribe a maitre d' to get you a table when you don't have a reservation, you are stealing that table from the guy who does have the reservation... I think that's the element that really changes the equation.

So, why does this scanner feel ashamed? Note he didn't say he was ashamed of his behavior - he's ashamed of his profession. Over at Hat's place I hadn't read the article, so I had an opinion based just on those two paragraphs. (It's wrong - he's really not doing what I thought - he's just a bulk amazon.com marketplace reseller, making a living but not a killing reselling for a few dollars on each book. His shame is that he doesn't care about the books as books, only as commodities, and that he's surrounded at these sales by people who actually want to read what he's snatching away from them.) But here's what I thought at first:

I think it's because he's using his scanner to discover that the book the person is selling for $1 is worth $100.

And not telling that person.

It's like the antiques guy who buys the $10 vase knowing it's Tang and worth thousands, but not telling the guy who inherited it from his great-aunt and thinks it's garish. Or the Navajo rug that someone's granddad bought for $3 bucks that's now worth hundreds of thousands. Except that he doesn't bring years of antiquing expertise to the sale; he only knows it because he has this little scanner.

It's the "getting over" on the original owner that makes him feel ashamed. He wouldn't if he offered a reasonable price - "I know who to sell this to for $250, and you don't, but I'll give you $200 for it" - he wouldn't. And it's exacerbated by the lingering notion that he's cheating to accomplish this fleecing.

Now, should he feel ashamed? That's a different question. Maybe he shouldn't - lots of people don't. But I think that's why he does.

For me, there's a sliding scale of shame. There are three variables, and they all interact. There's the one Hat mentions, which is the buyer's motive: if all you want is to resell the object at the highest price possible, you're different from someone who loves the book or vase or rug for itself.

Then there's how reasonable it is to think the current owner ought to know the value: buying something from someone selling off his dead grandmother's "junk" at a yard sale is different from a library selling books that no one checks out or an antiques shop that misvalued something. For me, there's a world of difference between buying an unopened box at a garage sale and finding a Tiffany pin inside, and telling the seller that well, nothing here is worth much, what say I give you twenty bucks for all this costume jewelry, all the while cackling inside over the pin. Doing that in an antiques mall, to a dealer, is different.

And finally, there's the question of how the seller got the item in the first place. One of the moments that made this really crystallize for me was watching an episode of Antiques Roadshow in 2004 (There's a transcript here). The guy showed up with a blanket he thought was Navajo: "I don't know an awful lot about it, except that, uh, it was given by Kit Carson-- given to the foster father of my grandmother." If you know about Kit Carson, that's a red flag right there. Maybe Carson gave the blanket to this guy's great-grandfather, and maybe the great-grandfather is the one who looted it, but it's a real good bet that the blanket wasn't "given" by the original owners. So this guy had what the appraiser called "a national treasure" worth maybe half a million dollars: a Ute first phase Chief's blanket.

I remember thinking at the time that I was glad I didn't have anything like that lying around, because I'd be faced with a dilemma I don't know how I'd resolve. This guy sold his blanket to a museum. Personally, I hope I'd have the grace to give half the cash to the Navajo Nation - but I don't know that I would. I just don't know. And I'm not saying this guy should have: he's four generations removed from the original acquisition. And that's all tangential to the point of this post.

Suppose somebody had seen that blanket in his living room and known what it was, and offered him a couple of thousand for it? And then suppose that that somebody had snapped a picture with his phone and emailed to somebody else, who told him to buy it?And then suppose that the buyer wanted to put it in his own living room instead of his gallery? And then suppose that the owner had just been talking about how granddad got a whole bunch of blankets from a village his cavalry unit had just emptied out? It changes things every time you alter a variable, doesn't it?

But the guy who goes to places intending to rip off the naive: he should feel shame. He hardly ever does, but that's a different topic altogether.

brilliant!

And once again, xkcd nails it:



(the mouseover text reads: Not to be confused with 'making money selling this stuff to OTHER people who think it works', which corporate accountants and actuaries have zero problems with.)

No one tells a New Yorker...

Alec Baldwin rules.



ps - note the lovely (and so necessary) "they".

moving in the right direction

A Federal Court has ruled that we can, after all, stand on public property and take pictures of federal buildings.

From the New York Times yesterday:

Under the settlement, announced Monday by the New York Civil Liberties Union, the Federal Protective Service said that it would inform its officers and employees in writing of the “public’s general right to photograph the exterior of federal courthouses from publicly accessible spaces” and remind them that “there are currently no general security regulations prohibiting exterior photography by individuals from publicly accessible spaces, absent a written local rule, regulation or order.”

As a photographer accosted by a security guard while I was taking pictures of goldfinches near a government building once (at least with a digital camera, they don't have to take your camera and ruin your film), I'm very glad to see this settled in the right way. It may be a baby step toward regaining what we've lost in the name of "security", but it is a step.

The tricks memory can play!

Well ... I have now watched every Mission: Impossible episode that Sam Elliott was ever in. And that one defining moment that I have remembered for forty years ... never happened. There wasn't even an episode that it could have been cut from before the DVDs were made.

This isn't the first time something like that has happened. I could have sworn that that in that scene in Walt Disney's Sleeping Beauty when Flora and Merryweather are arguing about whether Aurora's dress should be blue or pink, and they keep magicking its color, and puffs of blue and pink magic go up the chimney and Maleficent's crow sees them and discovers Aurora's location? Remember? Well, I could have sworn that the crow actually flew through the puffs and got turned pink. And that, too, never happened.

Almost makes me afraid to watch any other shows or movies not seen since my childhood!

Happy Birthday, Victor

Sen Yung, who later went by Victor Sen Yung, was born today in 1915 in San Francisco. He began by playing Number Two Son - Jimmy - with Sidney Toler Warner Oland in the Charlie Chan movies. After a break to serve in the USAF in WWII, he returned to Hollywood and Chan, playing Jimmy in the last Sidney Toler movies and then moving to the Roland Winters ones, where (confusingly) he played Tommy (who'd been played by Benson Fong in the Tolers...). After Chan, he continued to work in Hollywood and television, where he's probably best known as Hop Sing on Bonanza.

Happy Birthday, Lotte

Today in 1898 Lotte Lenya was born in Vienna. Best known for singing the songs of Kurt Weill, her husband, including Tony-award-winning performance as Jenny in the off-Broadway production of The Threepenny Opera (the only off-Broadway winner ever, by the way), she also earned an Oscar nomination for playing Contessa Magda Terribili-Gonzales in The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone, and she's also well known for From Russia With Love, in which she played the switchblade-shoe-wearing Rosa Klebb.

ps - this post originally had a picture of Blossom Dearie on it!

Stunningly inept tax phishing

Got this email today. I'm not terribly concerned... First, there's the timing. Dude, I already spent my refund. Months ago. Second, they sent it to everyone at my office... in the clear. And then there's the obvious fact that I didn't use them in the first place. And the redirect in the 'contact page' url.

And the thirty-three misspelled words don't inspire me with confidence, either. Spell-check is spotty, but these words? Yeah. It would have helped them...

In case you can't read it:
Your Federal Tax Payment ID: 01037597251 has been not accepted.
________________________________________
Plaese, make sure that all informtaion you have subimtted is crorect and refer to Code R21 to find out the infomration about copmany payemnt. Plaese cnotact this page if you have any questions:
http://eftps.gov/R21
Rteurn Reason Code R21 - The identifiaction nmuber you enetred in the Cmopany Identfiication Feild is not functional. Try senidng informtaion to your accountant advsier using other optoins.
EFTPS: The Electronic Federal Tax Payment System
WARNING!
You are uisng an Offiical United States Government System, which may be used only for authoirzed purposes. Unauthorized modification of any information stored on this ssytem may result in criminal prosecution. The Govrenment may monitor and audit the usage of system, and all presons are hereby notified that the use of this system constittues conesnt to such monitoring and auditing. Unauthorized attempts to upload inofrmation and/or change information on this web site are stirctly prohibited and are subject to proseuction under theCopmuter Farud and Abuse Act of 1986 and Title 18 U.S.C. Sec. 1001 and 1030.

I don't think so - and why did they?

So, here's the fortune I got today from my Chinese food:



Two things: Don't they realize that they've got a 50-50 chance of being completely wrong here? "Wife" isn't "spouse", after all.

And isn't it interesting how "willbe" is one word?

Happy Birthday, Noah

Today, 250 years ago, Noah Webster was born.

He had a profound influence on our spelling, but not nearly as profound as he would have liked:

1. The omission of all superfluous or silent letters; as a in bread. Thus bread, head, give, breast, built, meant, realm, friend, would be spelt, bred, hed, giv, brest, bilt, ment, relm, frend. Would this alteration produce any inconvenience, any embarrassment or expense? By no means. On the other hand, it would lessen the trouble of writing, and much more, of learning the language; it would reduce the true pronunciation to a certainty; and while it would assist foreigners and our own children in acquiring the language, it would render the pronunciation uniform, in different parts of the country, and almost prevent the possibility of changes.

2. A substitution of a character that has a certain definite sound, for one that is more vague and indeterminate. Thus by putting ee instead of ea or ie, the words mean, near, speak grieve, zeal, would become meen, neer, speek, greev, zeel. This alteration could not occasion a moments trouble; at the same time it would prevent a doubt respecting the pronunciation; whereas the ea and ie having different sounds, may give a learner much difficulty. Thus greef should be substituted for grief; kee for key; beleev for believe; laf for laugh; dawter for daughter; plow for plough; tuf for tough; proov for prove; blud for blood; and draft for draught. In this manner ch in Greek derivatives, should be changed into k; for the English ch has a soft sound, as in cherish; but k always a hard sound. Therefore character, chorus, cholic, architecture, should be written karacter, korus, kolic, arkitecture; and were they thus written, no person could mistake their true pronunciation.

3. Thus ch in French derivatives should be changed into sh; machine, chaise, chevalier, should be written masheen, shaze, shevaleer; and pique, tour, oblique, should be written peek, toor, obleek.

He won with draft and plow, but not with much he wanted. And here's his motivation:

1. The simplicity of the orthography would facilitate the learning of the language. It is now the work of years for children to learn to spell; and after all, the business is rarely accomplished. A few men, who are bred to some business that requires constant exercise in writing, finally learn to spell most words without hesitation; but most people remain, all their lives, imperfect masters of spelling, and liable to make mistakes, whenever they take up a pen to write a short note. Nay, many people, even of education and fashion, never attempt to write a letter, without frequently consulting a dictionary.

But with the proposed orthography, a child would learn to spell, without trouble, in a very short time, and the orthography being very regular, he would ever afterwards find it difficult to make a mistake. It would, in that case, be as difficult to spell wrong as it is now to spell right.

Besides this advantage, foreigners would be able to acquire the pronunciation of English, which is now so difficult and embarrassing, that they are either wholly discouraged on the first attempt, or obliged, after many years labor, to rest contented with an imperfect knowledge of the subject.

2. A correct orthography would render the pronunciation of the language, as uniform as the spelling in books. A general uniformity thro the United States, would be the event of such a reformation as I am here recommending. All persons, of every rank, would speak with some degree of precision and uniformity. Such a uniformity in these states is very desireable; it would remove prejudice, and conciliate mutual affection and respect.

3. Such a reform would diminish the number of letters about one sixteenth or eighteenth. This would save a page in eighteen; and a saving of an eighteenth in the expense of books, is an advantage that should not be overlooked.

4. But a capital advantage of this reform in these states would be, that it would make a difference between the English orthography and the American. This will startle those who have not attended to the subject; but I am confident that such an event is an object of vast political consequence. For,

The alteration, however small, would encourage the publication of books in our own country. It would render it, in some measure, necessary that all books should be printed in America. The English would never copy our orthography for their own use; and consequently the same impressions of books would not answer for both countries. The inhabitants of the present generation would read the English impressions; but posterity, being taught a different spelling, would prefer the American orthography.

Think about the publishing business. Think about the Internet!

Happy Birthday, Oscar

Today in 1854, in Dublin, one of the world's most quotable men - Oscar Wilde - was born.

It is only an auctioneer who can equally and impartially admire all schools of art.

It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating.

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written.

And, of course,

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.

A survey? A study? Whichever, it's not that great

Over at headsup Fred looks at that "survey" of Tea Party signs. His conclusions are journalistic in nature (no surprise), but important on many more levels - not least of which is this one:

Social science ought to be a tool that illuminates how the world works. When I look at this set of content, I think I'm seeing stuff that helps show why a fairly significant organized political movement thinks Occupied Dearborn needs to be freed from the fell grip of Islamic law. Both the newspaper and the researcher seem to be missing the point.

Check it out - it's a good read.

Not just NO...

In Miss Manners' most recent column is this question about a drive-thru beer store:

You drive in, open a window and tell the girl in a bikini what you want.... I assume part of the business model includes the girl in the bikini being underpaid and expecting tips from fellows who find her appearance compelling.

As a gay man with a tiny rainbow Texas on my license plate (covering up the actual silhouette of Texas thereon), am I exempt from this? If a man of similar age, attire and friendliness served me in the same situation, I'd give him a dollar.

Buddy, listen up. Miss Manners shirked her duty here, but I'm telling you: No. You're from Texas, so let me make that, "Bless your heart, darlin', but hell no, what are you thinking?"

You even admit you know the girl is underpaid. You don't tip because you're sexually attracted. That's why you overtip. (And a dollar? Really?) You tip because the agreement is that you pay part of the server's salary.

Sure, everyone would be better off if the servers were just paid decent wages and/or the tip was part of the bill. But as it is, restricting your tips to people who you find pretty is appalling. If you know she's not being paid the lesser minimum wage that assumes she'll make tips, that's one thing. But to open with "underpaid" and reject your part of the bargain - guy, get out of your damned truck and walk into a liquor store. Sheesh. What next? Straight men don't have to tip male waiters?

(And speaking of that truck, the one with the rainbow decal on it - one thing you might want to consider. Do you really want that girl to decide that gays are cheap bastards?)

Sky Watch: Gold in the Sky

Clouds billow in the early dawn, gold underneath from the rising sun.





more Sky Watchers here