"took him no time at all"?

Category: Before they were famous

In 1902 he lost his job as a tutor but family friend Marcel Grossman got him a job as a clerk in the Swiss patent office.

The guy said Einstein immediately and Alex said, sounding very surprised, "That took you no time at all! You're obviously familiar with the story."

Aren't most people - at least those who'd be on Jeopardy! ? I mean, really, aren't they?

ps - "Slavic" with the vowel of "cat"? Really, Alex? And you claim to speak Russian?

pps - I have to confess I did not come up with Custer.

Political Poster, Russian-Style 2

This poster is hilarious on many levels, especially the "Better Red Than ..." which recalls all the "Better Dead Than Red" posters of my youth. It's the CPRF - Communist Party of the Russian Federation (the number two party in terms of votes and Duma representatives), with the slogan "Better to be Red than Blue". Across the bottom it reads "Parasitical Party 'We'll Eat Russia'", which works much better in Russian: paraziticheskaya partiya puns on politicheskaya partiya, political party, while Edim Rossiyu is similar to Edinaya Rossiya, United Russia. Also, the tiny running people... (ps, the not-funny Communist logo reads Russia · Labor · Popular Rule · Socialism)

Purposeless eye dialect

Eye dialect is when you write a character's dialog as he pronounces it, in an attempt to reproduce his dialect or speech patterns. It can be done to good effect, as by Mark Twain, say. It can also be a lazy way to shorthand a judgement or a characterization - say, by writing "was" as "wuz", which is how everybody says it, or the relentless apostrophe for the 'dropped g', or "coulda, shoulda, gonna, wanna". In comics, kids' speech is often done that way, to show how cutely they're mispronouncing things.

And then there's this:

Frankly, I haven't a clue what this is meant to show us. Is there anyone out there who wouldn't say "The fuhn pahrt wuz beein reskyood"? Maybe the "beein", but how else would you pronounce "fun, part, was, rescued"?

This isn't the first time they've done this, either (see below, from Jan 21). I suppose it's meant to be cute, but all it really does is make me wonder if her father says things like "wass that foon?" and "ill joost craool likuh yo."

Happy Birthday, Jackie

Today in 1919 Jackie Robinson was born.

A stunning second baseman over ten seasons, he played in six World Series and contributed to the Dodgers' 1955 World Championship. He was selected for six consecutive All-Star Games from 1949 to 1954, was the recipient of the inaugural MLB Rookie of the Year Award in 1947, and won the National League Most Valuable Player Award in 1949 – the first black player so honored. He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1962 on the first ballot. In 1997, Major League Baseball retired his uniform number, 42, across all major league teams.

And of course, he was the first black major leaguer since 1880, breaking baseball's color barrier... and contributing massively to the advancement of civil rights.

Exemplar

Scheherazade? What 1960s tv show was she in?

Seriously. That is what I think of as a quintessential Jeopardy! question. Category is a clue, and then the clue is

One of her first lines was translated as "You have the face of a wise and gentle caliph."

Now there is no way in hell I'd have known the answer to "What was Jeanie in I Dream of Jeanie's first line?" But asked like this?

And yet the champ missed it! (Didn't wager much and still won...)

Happy Birthday, Gelett

Today in Boston in 1866 (Frank) Gelett Burgess was born.

He wrote more than 35 books of fiction and nonfiction, including Lady Méchante or Life As It Should Be (which is funny), as well as several plays, and he coined the word "blurb". But he is best known for this (which has a title I never knew till today):

Purple Cow: Reflections on a Mythic Beast Who's Quite Remarkable, at Least

I never Saw a Purple Cow;
I never Hope to See One;
But I can Tell you, Anyhow,
I'd rather See than Be One.

This poem haunted his life , eventually causing him to write this little sequel:

Confession: and a Portrait Too, Upon a Background that I Rue

Ah, yes, I wrote the Purple Cow;
I'm sorry now I wrote it;
But I can tell you, Anyhow,
I'll Kill you if you Quote it.

(But he's dead, so I'm not afraid.)

The Week in Entertainment

Film: A Separation which was quite a bit different what I expected (which was the wife's point of view, and about the divorce) but was intense, filled with escalating tension, ultimately devastating, and quite, quite beautiful. It's an emotional wallop, and the final credits roll over a scene that grips you with surprisingly visceral emotion. Highly recommended.

DVD: Murder by Decree, an ... interesting ... Sherlock Holmes with Christopher Plummer and James Mason, in which we discover that Jack the Ripper was a Masonic cabal defending Prince Eddy from the follies of his marriage to a (gasp!) French Catholic woman. Also a couple of Indian films: Bhoothnath (Lord of Ghosts), a remake of The Canterbury Ghost with Amitabh Bachchan as the titular ghost, which was a lot of fun and succeeded in making me teary at the end; and Paheli (Riddle), with Shah Rukh Khan as a ghost (theme night!) who falls in love with a human woman (played by the exquisite Rani Mukerji, so who can blame him?) and impersonates her husband when that one takes off on a five-year business trip immediately after the wedding. (Yes; this is Bollywood. Immediately after the wedding.) He confesses who he is to her and asks her to decide if he should stay. It's the first time in her life anyone has actually asked her what she wants, and she decides she wants him (it's Shah Rukh saying he loves her madly, so who can blame her?) The trouble starts when the husband comes home... Enjoyable fairy tale of a story, and simply beautiful to look at it.

TV: Once Upon A Time had a bit of intrigue developing - who's the writer? Does he have to be a fairy-tale person? Caught up on Downton Abbey's second season; they're plunged into the slaughterhouse of WWI, new characters and such. No real character development, and since it's now 1916, i.e. 2 years later than the end of season 1, that's a bit disappointing. There's just some "oh, Matthew is engaged now" stuff, but he - and everyone else - are exactly the same as they were. This, of course, is probably by design - and I'll watch the rest of the season, so I guess they're doing something right.

Read: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (after seeing the brilliant movie), and then I reread The Spy Who Came In From The Cold which I didn't really remember very well. I picked up an omnibus for Kindle of all three Karla novels; I haven't ever read the other two.

Happy Birthday, Anton Pavlovich

Today in 1860 Антон Павлович Чехов (Anton Pavlovich Chekhov) was born. He was a doctor throughout his life, and probably contracted the tuberculosis that killed him while practicing medicine in the labor camps of Siberia - not as a prisoner, but as a volunteer medic, a logical conclusion to a career that began with free clinics and sliding-scale fees for Russia's working poor and included building schools and a fire station.

But if medicine was his lawful wife, literature, as he said once to Alexei Suvorin, was his mistress (Медицина — моя законная жена, а литература — любовница), and he wrote four classic plays (Three Sisters, Uncle Vanya, The Seagull, and The Cherry Orchard) and many short stories - his masterpiece "The Lady with the Dog" was written in Yalta, where he'd gone to battle his tuberculosis. (The picture is Chekhov with a dog, in Yalta...) Many consider him the father of the modern short story, many of whose forms he pioneered. He also formulated what's often called "Chekhov's Law" of "economy in narrative": "Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass." Or, in a more famous formulation, often called Chekhov's Gun: Если в первом акте на стене висит ружье, то в последнем оно обязательно выстрелит - "If there's a gun on the wall in the first act, it has to be fired by the end of the third act."

In May 1904 he became so ill that he went to a German health spa, where he died two months later.

All 201 of his stories, in the Constance Garnett translations and in chronological order, can be found here, with notes. And here they are in Russian.


«Если ты кричишь "Вперед!", ты должен принять безошибочное решение, в каком направлении нужно идти. Разве ты не понимаешь, что, не сделав этого, ты взываешь как к монаху, так и к революционеру, и они будут двигаться в противоположных направлениях?»

"If you cry 'Forward!' you must make it absolutely plain which direction to go. Don't you see that if, without doing so, you call out the word to both a monk and a revolutionary, they will go in precisely opposite directions?"

Regret

Went to A Separation this evening, followed by dinner at Mon Ami Gabi. Both were wonderful.

But the theater was pretty full, and my friend and I moved over to open up two seats for a couple. I don't know what it is, but every time I've done that in the last four or five years I've ended up regretting it. This time, the woman had somehow, best as I can tell, managed not to realize that this was a foreign film. Or at least, that it had a Farsi soundtrack with English subtitles.

How do you manage that? And why must you read so many of the subtitles aloud to yourself?

Happy Birthday, José

José Martí was born today in Havana, Cuba, in 1853. He was exiled to ASpain at 17, later moving to Mexico, Guatemala, and back to Cuba, from which he was again deported to Spain; he fled to France and then the US, living in New York and working for Cuban independence. He joined the war in 1895 and died shortly after the invasion.

Por Tus Ojos Encendidos... (Verso XIX)

Por tus ojos encendidos
Y lo mal puesto de un broche,
Pensé que estuviste anoche
Jugando a juegos prohibidos.

Te odié por vil y alevosa:
Te odié con odio de muerte:
Náusea me daba de verte
Tan villana y tan hermosa.

Y por la esquela que vi
Sin saber cómo ni cuándo,
Sé que estuviste llorando
Toda la noche por mí.


translation by Manuel A. Tellechea:

Because your eyes were two flames
And your brooch wasn't pinned right,
I thought you had spent the night
In playing forbidden games.

Because you were vile and devious
Such deadly hatred I bore you:
To see you was to abhor you
So lovely and yet so villainous.

Because a note came to light,
I know now where you had been,
And what you had done unseen —
Cried for me all the long night.


(More of his poems in Spanish and in English here)

Bananas!

It's true: you can learn something every day. I had no idea that O. Henry coined the term "banana republic" - and possibly less that it originally referred to Honduras having only one export.

Happy Birthday, Charles

Charles Dodgson, better known as Lewis Carroll, was born today in 1832, near Daresbury, Cheshire, England.

Four years ago you got The Mad Gardener's Song; three years ago Bessie's Song to Her Doll, two years ago Tema Con Varizioni, last year A Sea Dirge, and this year A Valentine:

Sent to a friend who had complained that I was glad enough to see him when he came, but didn't seem to miss him if he stayed away.

And cannot pleasures, while they last,
Be actual unless, when past,
They leave us shuddering and aghast,
With anguish smarting?
And cannot friends be firm and fast,
And yet bear parting?

And must I then, at Friendship's call,
Calmly resign the little all
(Trifling, I grant, it is and small)
I have of gladness,
And lend my being to the thrall
Of gloom and sadness?

And think you that I should be dumb,
And full DOLORUM OMNIUM,
Excepting when YOU choose to come
And share my dinner?
At other times be sour and glum
And daily thinner?

Must he then only live to weep,
Who'd prove his friendship true and deep
By day a lonely shadow creep,
At night-time languish,
Oft raising in his broken sleep
The moan of anguish?

The lover, if for certain days
His fair one be denied his gaze,
Sinks not in grief and wild amaze,
But, wiser wooer,
He spends the time in writing lays,
And posts them to her.

And if the verse flow free and fast,
Till even the poet is aghast,
A touching Valentine at last
The post shall carry,
When thirteen days are gone and past
Of February.

Farewell, dear friend, and when we meet,
In desert waste or crowded street,
Perhaps before this week shall fleet,
Perhaps to-morrow.
I trust to find YOUR heart the seat
Of wasting sorrow.

Happy Birthday, Thomas

Today in 1621 Thomas Willis was born - the father of modern neurology. He discovered much about the way the brain is put together - nerves and cranial anatomy, including the Circle of Willis, and the circulation of the blood into and through the brain.

Carl Zimmer has written a (typically) brilliant book, Soul Made Flesh, that tells his story - and others (did you know Christopher Wren was more famous in his lifetime for his anatomical drawings than his architecture?) - highly recommended. I happened to read it shortly before visiting London, and it made me hunt out Willis's tomb in St Paul's.

Happy Birthday, Wolfgang

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born today in 1756 in Salzburg.

Symphony No 40

"fraudsters who dubiously perpetrated fraudulent acts with first degree ulterior motives against you"

OMG. I wish I'd seen this one before I posted Major Steve's effort. This one puts that one to shame. (I particularly like the signature.)

Office of the British Secret Intelligence Service Mi6 P.O Box 1300,Vauxhall - London SE1 1BD - United Kingdom.
Website: http: //www.sis.gov.uk/output/sis-home-welcome.html S.I.S
Ref: LN/mi6/SIS/XX027

Dear Beneficiary, BRITISH JURISDICTIONAL FUND LETTER: As Britain's Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) also known as Mi6, SIS provides the British Government with a global covert capability to promote and defend the national security and economic well-being of the United Kingdom. Regional instability, Financial Frauds, terrorism, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and illegal narcotics are among the major challenges of the 21st century. SIS assists the government to meet these challenges. To do this effectively SIS must protect the secrets of its sources and methods.

In regards to Legislation and accountability, SIS like other British intelligence and security agencies, is subject to parliamentary, ministerial, judicial and financial oversight. Oversight is based on two pieces of UK legislation, the intelligence services Act 1994 (I.S.A) and the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (R.I.P.A). With notice, SIS has litigated a group of apprehended UK-based multimillionaire financial fraudsters who dubiously perpetrated fraudulent acts with first degree ulterior motives against you through your e-mail over the internet in the United Kingdom. By court order, prior to 12 years prison sentence charged upon them by the Lord Chief Justice and President of the Courts of England and Wales (R.H, The Lord Judge: Igor Judge, Baron Judge), the culprits were placed on a bail by way of compensation to you in a sum of 2,350,000 (Two million, three hundred and fifty thousand British Pounds Sterling) in lieu of British International Fundamental Human Rights Ordinances of 1997, of which your benefited fund has been brought in cash to our Head Office by the culprits' Legal councils prior to their inception of jail term.

Click on johnsawers56@yahoo.co.uk to contact the British Secret Intelligence (MI6) Chief of Operations indicating your names, phone contact, age, current residential address & a valid identity card. Caution: Do not recopy this letter or publicize the above Britain's secret agent or the secret email identity above. For SIS diligence & effectiveness, it must protect the secrets of its sources & methods.

The Management, British Secret Intelligence Service London, United Kingdom.

He's baaaaack

Amy Goodman writes:

In his State of the Union address, many heard echoes of the Barack Obama of old, the presidential aspirant of 2007 and 2008.

Indeed.

And why is this?

It's because he's now the presidential aspirant of 2012.

Look, I'm probably going to vote for him. Bad as he is, he's better than whichever Republican emerges from this dog-fight. But he's not a populist. He's not a progressive. He's not even a liberal, let alone a socialist.

I'm not falling for that again.

Happy Birthday, Jules

Today in the Bronx in 1929 Jules Feiffer was born.


Here's my annual offering of a classic... still (unfortunately) relevant.

Some verbs just aren't intransitive

This morning I spotted this local news item

Driver crashes, kills fleeing police

The salient bits of the article are:

Baltimore County Police say Aaron McCoy, 20, of the 4000 block of Cedardale Rd. in Baltimore, was driving a Honda Accord while he was trying to flee police.

Five minutes later, at Dulaney Valley Rd. and Ivy Church Rd., police say McCoy crashed into the two other vehicles.

He was transported to Shock Trauma, where he died.

So he didn't actually kill any police, fleeing or otherwise.

Parallelism is all well and good, but especially in headlinese you can't say "driver kills" without providing a direct object. Even moving "fleeing police" away from the DO slot (fleeing police, driver crashes, kills) doesn't work (and please note you need that comma! "Fleeing police driver crashes, kills" is all other kinds of bad.).

In fact, even if you convert "kills" into the participle, if you write this in headline syntax (as they have now changed the headline to read) you get a bad reading:

Driver crashes, killed fleeing police

The whole point is, he didn't kill any police, fleeing or otherwise; in fact, he didn't kill anyone, except himself.

Why the heck not "dies fleeing police"? Fev?

Major Steve, do you know Major Tom?

I got this email today. Being "the bad type" I'm going to disregard the major's request and not just delete it, but share it with you... it's just too good not to.

Greetings,

My name is Major Steve ,, I am an British soldier in peace keeping force in Afghanistan, I am serving in the 16 Air Assault Brigade in Afghanistan,as you know insurgents everyday and car bombs are attacking us. On the other hand I want to inform you that I have in my possession the sum of US$7.3Million dollars in cash, which was recovered from one of our raids on terrorists here in Afghanistan, because they keep most of their money at home for evil activities which they normally get through illegal deals on crude oil.

Based on the suffering we undergo here some of us do meet such luck.It happened that I went for this raid with the men in my unit and I decided to take it as my share for my stress here in this evil land filled with suicide bombers.

I deposited this money with a red cross agent informing him that we are making contact for the real owner of the money.It is under my power to approve whoever comes forth for this money. I wish to use this money and invest anywhere in world because that is where i intend to move over with my family at my retirement.

i am a uniformed man and I cannot be parading such an amount so I need to present someone as the beneficiary, and i need somebody i can trust and it would be wise working with somebody like you.If you accept,I will move the money out where you will be the beneficiary

I am British soldier and an intelligence officer at that so I have 100% authentic means of transferring the money through diplomatic means. I just need your acceptance and all is done. Please if you are interested in this transaction, get back to me so that i will give to you the complete details you need for us to carry out this transaction successfully.

Where we are now we can only communicate through our military communication facilities which is secured so nobody can monitor our emails.I will only reach you through email,because our calls might be monitored.

If you are interested please send me your personal mobile number so I can call you for further inquiries when I am out of our military network.I am writing from a fresh email account so if you are not interested do not reply to this email and please delete this message. I am doing this on trust,you should understand and you should know that as a trained military expert I will always play safe in case you are the bad type,but I pray you are not.

I wait for your response so we can go on. I will give to you 30% of the sum and 70% is for me. Reply to(stevebill81 @hotmail.com) Regard s,

Major Steve,

Ah, Politifact... you used to be good

Paul Krugman asks how to tell if a fact isn't a fact:

The criterion, according to Politifact, seems to be that a fact isn’t a fact if it helps a Democratic narrative.

Jared Bernstein watches the train wreck. Obama said:

In the last 22 months, businesses have created more than three million jobs. Last year, they created the most jobs since 2005.

which is just true. Period.

But Politifact rated it as only “half true” because he was “essentially taking credit for job growth”. He didn’t actually take credit — and even if he had, a fact is still a fact.

I do not think that word means what Politifact thinks it means.

Now, it seems they've revised this to "Mostly True". But it also seems that Politifact is so vested in balancing Right vs Left in the Truth Ratings that they're really stretching to find ways to say things aren't true when they are - as in labelling the Democrat statement that RyanCare would destroy Medicare as "Lie of the Year".

Happy Birthday, Rabbie!

Robert Burns was born today in 1759, two miles (3 km) south of Ayr, in Alloway, South Ayrshire, Scotland.

The Highland Widow's Lament

Oh I am come to the low Countrie,
Ochon, Ochon, Ochrie!
Without a penny in my purse. To buy a meal to me.

It was na sae in the Highland hills,
Ochon, Ochon, Ochrie!
Nae woman in the Country wide Sae happy was as me.

For then I had a score o' kye
Ochon, Ochon, Ochrie!
Feeding on you nill sae high, And giving milk to me.

And there I had three score o' yowes,
Ochon, Ochon, Ochrie!
Skipping on ou bonie knowes, And casting woo to me.

I was the happiest of a' the Clan,
Sair, sair may I repine;
For Donald was the brawest man, And Donald he was mine.

Till Charlie Stewart cam at last,
Sae far to set us free;
My Donald's arm was wanted then, For Scotland and for me.

Their waefu' fate what need I tell,
Right to wrang did yield;
My Donald and his Country fell Upon Culloden field.

Ochon! O Donald, oh!
Ochon, Ochon, Ochrie!
Nae woman in the warld wide, Sae wretched now as me.

Right on cue

At 9:30 am today, Paul Krugman wrote:

Meanwhile, the Romney campaign is signalling that it’s going to try to spin this as “he pays lots of taxes”! How stupid do they think we are? Actually, don’t answer that.

No kidding. The shuttle driver at 8 this morning was listening to some talk-show where the host told us it sounded like "a lot of taxes" to him.

Happy Birthday, Vasily

Born today in 1848 in Krasnoyarsk, Vasily Ivanovich Surikov (Василий Иванович Суриков).

He is probably the foremost Russian painter of large-scale historical subjects, which often focused on events that resonated with the ordinary person, though he also painted smaller events and portraits. His major pieces are among the best-known paintings in Russia.

Four years ago I showed you his portrait of the Bronze Horseman - Peter I (the Great) in St Petersburg - and depiction of the arrest of the Boyarina Feodosia Morozova, three years ago it was a light-hearted game, Taking of the Snow Fort, and one of his more intimate works, a portrait of Menshikov and his daughters in exile; two years ago, a moody picture of Stenka Razin in his boat, and a portrait of an old man in his vegetable garden, and last year, two of his landscapes, a herd of horses on the Barabin steppe and a seasonally-apt watercolor of the Kremlin. This year, a water-color church in Dyakovo, and the Yenisey river.






You can find more of his pictures at this Russian-language site if you're interested.)

Officially an adjective? Not quite

So, over on Twitter this is going around (for a limited definition of "going around", to be sure):

"Pete Caroll" is officially an adjective. As in "Chip Kelly just Pete Carroll'd his way out of town"

Errrrr - that's a verb, guys. An adjective would be

Chip Kelly is very Pete Carroll today, isn't he?

Happy Birthday, Sergei

Born today in Riga, Latvia, in the then Russian Empire, Sergei Eisenstein (Сергей Михайлович Эйзенштейн), one of the great pioneers of film directing, often called the "Father of Montage." He directed some of the early great movies - the silent films Strike [Стачка](1924), Battleship Potemkin [Броненосец Потёмкин] (1925) and October - Ten Days That Shook the World [Октябрь «Десять дней, которые потрясли мир»](1927), and the historical epic Alexander Nevsky [Александр Невский] (1938). Potemkin has some of the most famous sequences (or montages) in film - particularly the utterly brilliant Odessa Gates steps sequence.

The Week in Entertainment

Film: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy - finally got around to seeing this. What a tremendously good movie this is. So well-made, and brilliantly acted. Gary Oldman, especially - so very different from the flamboyant Oldman villains.

DVD: Moneyball, very entertaining. I remember that Oakland team, when "that Bill James bullshit" suddenly became the new paradigm, and small-market teams could compete with the big dogs. Brad Pitt was very good (no surprise there), and it's very well filmed.

TV: The Mentalist - last week's was good. I love how when the bomb went off Jane ran away from it. But my god, that whole framing-the-dead-guy-for-the-murder - wow. Jane is absolutely a piece of work; it's just hard to figure out what kind of work he is, isn't it? "Hunting monsters changes you" he said, and it did. And the second episode was okay, some nice work by Jane. But while I'm glad that they're showing us that Van Pelt can't escape the consequences of killing O'Loughlin, I could have done without the hint that the ghost was real. Once Upon a Time stays intriguing, especially Gold/Rumplestiltskin who is a lot more than he seems. Grimm is still interesting, too - Monroe's killing the ogre might bring down some trouble from Hank and the captain (who's intriguing in his own right) - and, the second episode shows it's bringing some trouble from other Others.. Modern Family - OMG voters think Claire is "angry and unlikeable"! ROFL. The Middle: the Donahues are just plain weird! Our Vines Have Tender Grapes, one of those episodic 'slice of life' movies with Margaret O'Brien and Edward G Robinson.

Read: The Rope by Nevada Barr, the latest Anna Pigeon novel is chronologically the first, exploring how she came to be the person she is in Track of the Cat, the first one written and covering the themes of monster-hunting, feminine strength and survival, and wilderness compared to city living. Two sets of short trilogies, one really funny and one so-so. The funny one is DEAD(ish), by Naomi Kramer about a ghost who can't find her body and the PI she hires to do it - fair warning, lots of foul language. The other one is a crossing-into-fairy-tale-land thing called "The Clever Detective", who isn't really (she's just read the fairy tales) - they're very short, and very cheap (on Kindle), but not really worth the time. The Unholy Trinity by Paul Adam, a thriller about the Vatican and WWII and modern-day Italy.

We no longer believe in due process

A rather depressing conclusion from Glen Greenwald:

The U.S. really is a society that simply no longer believes in due process: once the defining feature of American freedom that is now scorned as some sort of fringe, radical, academic doctrine. That is not hyperbole. Supporters of both political parties endorse, or at least tolerate, all manner of government punishment without so much as the pretense of a trial, based solely on government accusation: imprisonment for life, renditions to other countries, even assassinations of their fellow citizens. Simply uttering the word Terrorist, without proving it, is sufficient. And now here is Megaupload being completely destroyed — its website shuttered, its assets seized, ongoing business rendered impossible — based solely on the unproven accusation of Piracy.

It’s true, as Sanchez observes, that “the owners of Megaupload don’t seem like particularly sympathetic characters,” but he also details that there are difficult and weighty issues that would have to be resolved to prove they engaged in criminal conduct. Megaupload obviously contains numerous infringing videos, but so does YouTube, yet both sites also entail numerous legal activities as well. As Sanchez put it: “most people, presumably, recognize that shutting down YouTube in order to disable access to those videos would not be worth the enormous cost to protected speech.” The Indictment is a classic one-side-of-the-story document; even the most mediocre lawyers can paint any picture they want when unchallenged. That’s why the government is not supposed to dole out punishments based on accusatory instruments, but only after those accusations are proved in an adversarial proceeding.

Whatever else is true, those issues should be decided upon a full trial in a court of law, not by government decree. Especially when it comes to Draconian government punishments — destroying businesses, shutting down websites, imprisoning people for life, assassinating them — what distinguishes a tyrannical society from a free one is whether the government is first required to prove guilt in a fair, adversarial proceeding. This is a precept Americans were once taught about why their country was superior, was reflexively understood, and was enshrined as the core political principle: “no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” It’s simply not a principle that is believed in any longer, and therefore is not remotely observed.

"this is not a miracle"

I watched Our Vines Have Tender Grapes this week. Not at all a bad movie but one weird thing- I always heard that cows would leave a burning barn, though the ones in this movie just stood there and had to be shot.

So I looked it up, and by gosh, it certainly does look like cows have to be chased out. So much for that "cows-are-smarter-than-horses" factoid. (PS - this story was heart-warming: "The farmers say it's rare that livestock survive a fire like this. And to people like Pagel, this is not a miracle or a heroic thing; it is just what farmers do. It's what good neighbors do.")

Happy Birthday, George

George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron, later George Gordon Noel, 6th Baron Byron, commonly known simply as Lord Byron, was born today in 1788.

So, we'll go no more a roving
So late into the night,
Though the heart be still as loving,
And the moon be still as bright.

For the sword outwears its sheath,
And the soul wears out the breast,
And the heart must pause to breathe,
And love itself have rest.

Though the night was made for loving,
And the day returns too soon,
Yet we'll go no more a roving
By the light of the moon.

Rodents? I don't think so

Note to the people on Grimm - or possibly the writers: Raccoons are not rodents. They are carnivores, caniform musteloid carnivores of the family Procyonidae. They are somewhat related to bears and weasels and to seals.

They are not rodents.

That said, no, Juliette, Nick is right. You do not want them in your garbage - or, worse, in your house.

Happy Birthday, Louis

Today in 1952, Louis Menand was born in Syracuse, New York.

I confess that my favorite thing by him was his book review of Eats, Shoots & Leaves, which begins:

The first punctuation mistake in “Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation” (Gotham; $17.50), by Lynne Truss, a British writer, appears in the dedication, where a nonrestrictive clause is not preceded by a comma. It is a wild ride downhill from there. “Eats, Shoots & Leaves” presents itself as a call to arms, in a world spinning rapidly into subliteracy, by a hip yet unapologetic curmudgeon, a stickler for the rules of writing. But it’s hard to fend off the suspicion that the whole thing might be a hoax.

You can read the whole review here, and you should, and not just because his take-down of Truss is masterful and humorous. There's more, as the saying goes; the second half begins with this question:

Why would a person who is not just vague about the rules but disinclined to follow them bother to produce a guide to punctuation?

Menand has an answer, and it's an examination of writing itself :

Though she has persuaded herself otherwise, Truss doesn’t want people to care about correctness. She wants them to care about writing and about using the full resources of the language. “Eats, Shoots & Leaves” is really a “decline of print culture” book disguised as a style manual (poorly disguised). Truss has got things mixed up because she has confused two aspects of writing: the technological and the aesthetic. Writing is an instrument that was invented for recording, storing, and communicating. Using the relatively small number of symbols on the keyboard, you can record, store, and communicate a virtually infinite range of information, and encode meanings with virtually any degree of complexity. The system works entirely by relationships—the relationship of one symbol to another, of one word to another, of one sentence to another. The function of most punctuation—commas, colons and semicolons, dashes, and so on—is to help organize the relationships among the parts of a sentence. Its role is semantic: to add precision and complexity to meaning. It increases the information potential of strings of words.

What most punctuation does not do is add color, texture, or flavor to the writing. Those are all things that belong to the aesthetics, and literary aesthetics are weirdly intangible. You can’t taste writing. It has no color and makes no sound. Its shape has no significance. But people say that someone’s prose is “colorful” or “pungent” or “shapeless” or “lyrical.” When written language is decoded, it seems to trigger sensations that are unique to writing but that usually have to be described by analogy to some other activity. When deli owners put up signs that read “ ‘Iced’ Tea,” the single quotation marks are intended to add extraliterary significance to the message, as if they were the grammatical equivalent of red ink. Truss is quite clear about the role played by punctuation in making words mean something. But she also—it is part of her general inconsistency—suggests that semicolons, for example, signal readers to pause. She likes to animate her punctuation marks, to talk about the apostrophe and the dash as though they were little cartoon characters livening up the page. She is anthropomorphizing a technology. It’s a natural thing to do. As she points out, in earlier times punctuation did a lot more work than it does today, and some of the work involved adjusting the timing in sentences. But this is no longer the norm, and trying to punctuate in that spirit now only makes for ambiguity and annoyance.

One of the most mysterious of writing’s immaterial properties is what people call “voice.” Editors sometimes refer to it, in a phrase that underscores the paradox at the heart of the idea, as “the voice on the page.” Prose can show many virtues, including originality, without having a voice. It may avoid cliché, radiate conviction, be grammatically so clean that your grandmother could eat off it. But none of this has anything to do with this elusive entity the “voice.” There are probably all kinds of literary sins that prevent a piece of writing from having a voice, but there seems to be no guaranteed technique for creating one. Grammatical correctness doesn’t insure it. Calculated incorrectness doesn’t, either. Ingenuity, wit, sarcasm, euphony, frequent outbreaks of the first-person singular—any of these can enliven prose without giving it a voice. You can set the stage as elaborately as you like, but either the phantom appears or it doesn’t.

He goes on, and like most of Menand, it is well worth your time.

Etta James: Gone from us

Maybe you only knew her from crossword puzzles: she had that name perfect for 4x4 squares, and if you do enough puzzles you could see her name two or three times a week. But there was a reason they would use words like "legend" or "great".

Etta James died today. She was a true legend and we're lucky to live in a time when her voice could be preserved forever.

Here are five of her songs - You Tube has hundreds.

Sweet Memories:



I've Been Loving You Too Long:



Lie No Better:



Stormy Monday:



Someone to Watch Over Me:

Not quite...

A truce called ... to rearm?

It would take some real nerve to ask for that!

Buy Thin Mints!

Or Samoas, or whichever is your favorite.

But definitely step up and buy a couple of boxes from the Girl Scouts this year. They're getting hammered by the Christian Right for accepting transgender Scouts.

The rightwing Washington Times I get has run at least four major articles and columns demonizing them for abandoning traditional morality and values, including Jesus (yes, that's right; their 'family values' columnist would restrict Scouting to Christians if she had her way).

So make sure to pony up for a box or two, even if you don't want to eat them yourself. (Surely you know someone who will.)

Support the tolerant Scouts and show them you appreciate their values just fine.

Happy Birthday, Buzz

Today in 1930 in Glen Ridge, New Jersey, Buzz Aldrin was born (as "Edwin", but he legally changed it to Buzz, his childhood nickname, later). One of the first men to land on the moon, he was the second to set foot on it. He made many crucial contributions to the space program, including the use of water for neutral-buoyancy training, and coordinate rendezvous.

And when moon hoaxer, conspiracy nut, and stalker Bart Sibrel ambushed him, poking him in the chest with a Bible and calling him "a coward, a liar, and a thief", Buzz Aldrin, 72 at the time, punched him in the face. Sometimes, that's what it takes.

Political Poster, Russian-Style

I love this! United Russia's bear, like Pooh, dipping into the honey pot. "Party of Crooks and Thieves" indeed...

"a very brave person"

In the Ask Amy in today's print WaPo (online in December, apparently) is this letter:

DEAR AMY: I was merging onto the freeway just before Christmas when I hit a patch of ice and lost control of my car. I spun across all four lanes and slid back into the middle of the highway. Finding myself face-to-face with oncoming traffic, I helplessly watched as dozens of headlights came toward me at 65 mph.

After several cars narrowly dodged mine, a very brave person came to a standstill in front of me and turned on his/her emergency blinkers. Other drivers saw the flashing lights and followed suit, creating a wall so that I could turn around.

Had a stranger not risked his/her life to save mine, I certainly would not have celebrated Christmas this year (or ever again).

Thank you to my guardian angel. -- Hannah, Denver

Amy's answer?

DEAR HANNAH: This reminds me of that tear-inducing Carrie Underwood song “Jesus, Take the Wheel.” I’m so relieved you survived this, and very happy to help you thank your fellow motorists.

WTF?

Carrie Underwood's song is about abdicating all responsibility to Jesus. This letter is about "a very brave ... stranger" who risked their life for another human being. There's no resemblance here. Unless you think only Jesus could have made someone do that - and the history of the world suggests otherwise.

Way to devalue human bravery and capacity for altruism there, Amy.

Only regular nouns need apply

Funky Winkerbean's use of "girls basketball team" and "the boys team" sparked a discussion over on The Comics Curmudgeon over whether there should be apostrophe's there. A commenter dug up this:

the AP stylebook says: “Do not add an apostrophe to a word ending in s when it is used primarily in a descriptive sense: citizens band radio, … a teachers college, … a writers guide. Memory Aid: The apostrophe usually is not used if for or by rather than of would be appropriate in the longer form: a radio band for citizens, a college for teachers. An ’s is required, however, when a term involves a plural word that does not end in s: a children’s hospital, a people’s republic.”

And if that's not the perfect example of how totally illogical, inconsistent, and risible the "rules" of English can be, I don't know what is. The word's function changes depending on whether it's a regular noun or not? Because that is totally a hospital for children, right?

Happy Birthday, Edgar

Today in 1809, in Boston, Edgar Allan Poe was born. Wikipedia notes

Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective-fiction genre. He is further credited with contributing to the emerging genre of science fiction. He was the first well-known American writer to try to earn a living through writing alone, resulting in a financially difficult life and career.

Oh, that Wikipedia and its wacky understatements!

He died in Baltimore, probably as a result of drug- and alcohol-poisoning due to cooping (the practice of kidnapping someone and forcing them to vote often in many precincts), though there have been many theories of his death, all records being lost. Until a couple of years ago, three roses and a bottle of cognac, half empty, were left on his grave every year for more than 60 years. Two years ago was the first time the anonymous visitor didn't come. Last year, he didn't come again, meaning it's likely that he died and left no-one to carry on the tradition.

Here's one of his shorter, less macabre works:


To Helen

Helen, thy beauty is to me
    Like those Nicean barks of yore,
That gently, o'er a perfumed sea,
    The weary, wayworn wanderer bore
    To his own native shore.

On desperate seas long wont to roam,
    Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,
Thy Naiad airs have brought me home
    To the glory that was Greece
And the grandeur that was Rome.

Lo! in yon brilliant window-niche
    How statue-like I see thee stand,
    The agate lamp within thy hand!
Ah, Psyche, from the regions which
    Are Holy Land!

More can be found here

The Party of Fools and Frauds

It's not quite as catchy as "crooks and thieves", but it'll do. Krugman yesterday:

It goes as follows: to be a good Republican right now, you have to affirm your belief in things that any halfway intelligent politician can see are plainly false. This leaves room for only two kinds of candidates: those who just aren’t smart and/or rational enough to understand the problem, and those who are completely cynical, willing to say anything to get ahead.

...

So what you have are fairly dim types like Perry, on the one side, and the utterly cynical Romney, on the other. (Gingrich manages to be both a fool and a fraud). Maybe, just maybe, the GOP could have found someone able to achieve Romney-level cynicism while coming across as sincere; but political talent on that level is quite rare.

by definition

Glenn Greenwald:

That the targeted assassination plot aimed exclusively at the Saudi Ambassador was “Terrorism” was the automatic, unexamined, consensus claim from major media outlets, foreign policy experts, and the U.S. Government. Indeed, the accused defendants were formally charged with “international acts of terrorism” notwithstanding that it was to be a targeted assassination of a Saudi official. If anyone disputed this characterization, it escaped my notice, and I pay close attention to debates over the Terrorism label. Very few people, if anyone, objected at all when this allegedly Iranian plot was repeatedly denounced as Terrorism.

But now that it’s widely believed that some combination of Israel and the U.S. are behind the ongoing plot to serially extinguish Iranian scientists — see here, here and here for just some of the evidence suggesting that — it’s suddenly improper, even outrageous, to suggest that this is Terrorism. That’s because the U.S. and Israel are incapable of committing Terrorism, by definition. Terrorism is only something done to those countries and by Muslims, not the other way around (the list of examples proving this to be true is extensive indeed).

Does anyone have any doubt whatsoever that if Iran were sending hit squads to kill Israeli scientists in Tel Aviv, or was murdering a series of American scientists at Los Alamos (while wounding several of their wives, including, in one instance, shooting them in front of their child’s kindergarten), that those acts would be universally denounced as Terrorism, and the only debate would be whether the retaliation should be nuclear, carpet-bombing, or invasion? As always, Terrorism is the most meaningless — and thus most manipulated — term of propaganda; it’s always what They do and never what We do.

As always, the whole thing is well worth your time.

Happy Birthday, Peter Mark

Peter Mark Roget was born today in 1779, in London.

His Thesaurus has been an invaluable tool for many writers - a work of genius. More people need lessons in how to use it, but that's not his fault. For one thing, he didn't intend it to be a dictionary of synonyms, but rather a classification of English's lexicon - "of the words it contains and of the idiomatic combinations peculiar to it, arranged, not in alphabetical order as they are in a dictionary, but according to the ideas which they express."

And then there's this shirt I got for my birthday last year!


(lol image from loltheorists)

Happy Birthday, Genndy

Today in Moscow, Russia (then USSR), in 1970 Genndy Tartakovsky was born.

Happy Birthday, Ben

Born today 302 years ago in Boston - yes, Boston - Benjamin Franklin, "inventor of the stove" — which he never patented because he created it for the good of society. Also, inventor of the fire company, fire insurance, bifocals, a flexible urinary catheter, swim fins, the glass harmonica, the odometer, the lightning rod, and - boon to all us vertically challenged readers - the "long arm" — a long wooden pole with a grasping claw at the end — to reach the books we want to read. Also, a very quotable man, one way or another. Here's Adams on Franklin:

“Franklin did this, Franklin did that, Franklin did some other damned thing. . . . Franklin smote the ground and out sprang George Washington, full grown and on his horse. . . . Franklin then electrified him with his miraculous lightning rod and the three of them--Franklin, Washington, and the horse--conducted the entire Revolution by themselves.”

And here's Franklin himself:

If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead and rotten, either write something worth reading or do things worth the writing.

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

Happy Birthday, Robert

Robert W. Service was born today in Preston, England, in 1874. At the age of 23 he moved to Canada, which become his home (though he died in France at the age of 84). And, no; I'm not going to give you a bunch of the boys whooping it up in the Malemute Saloon - you can find that anywhere. Instead, here are two things from his Ballads of a Bohemian, written in the lead-up and early days of WWI, in which Service was an ambulance driver, two prose poems interludes between the poems themselves:

Near Albert,
February 1915.

Over the spine of the ridge a horned moon of reddish hue peers through the splintered, hag-like trees. Where the trenches are, rockets are rising, green and red. I hear the coughing of the Maxims, the peevish nagging of the rifles, the boom of a "heavy" and the hollow sound of its exploding shell.

Running the car into the shadow of a ruined house, I try to sleep. But a battery starts to blaze away close by, and the flame lights up my shelter. Near me some soldiers are in deep slumber; one stirs in his sleep as a big rat runs over him, and I know by experience that when one is sleeping a rat feels as heavy as a sheep.

But how ~can~ one possibly sleep? Out there in the dark there is the wild tattoo of a thousand rifles; and hark! that dull roar is the explosion of a mine. There! the purring of the rapid firers. Desperate things are doing. There will be lots of work for me before this night is over.

In Picardy,
January 1915.

The road lies amid a malevolent heath. It seems to lead us right into the clutch of the enemy; for the star-shells, that at first were bursting overhead, gradually encircle us. The fields are strangely sinister; the splintered trees are like giant toothpicks. There is a lisping and a twanging overhead.

As we wait at the door of the dugout that serves as a first-aid dressing station, I gaze up into that mysterious dark, so alive with musical vibrations. Then a small shadow detaches itself from the greater shadow, and a gray-bearded sentry says to me: "You'd better come in out of the bullets."

So I keep under cover, and presently they bring my load. Two men drip with sweat as they carry their comrade. I can see that they all three belong to the Foreign Legion. I think for a moment of Saxon Dane. How strange if some day I should carry him! Half fearfully I look at my passenger, but he is a black man. Such things only happen in fiction.

.............

We have just had one of our men killed, a young sculptor of immense promise.

When one thinks of all the fine work he might have accomplished, it seems a shame. But, after all, to-morrow it may be the turn of any of us. If it should be mine, my chief regret will be for work undone.

Ah! I often think of how I will go back to the Quarter and take up the old life again. How sweet it will all seem. But first I must earn the right. And if ever I do go back, how I will find Bohemia changed! Missing how many a face!

Daventry, the sculptor, is buried in a little graveyard near one of our posts. Just now our section of the line is quiet, so I often go and sit there. Stretching myself on a flat stone, I dream for hours.

Silence and solitude! How good the peace of it all seems! Around me the grasses weave a pattern, and half hide the hundreds of little wooden crosses. Here is one with a single name:

AUBREY.Who was Aubrey I wonder? Then another:

~To Our Beloved Comrade.~
Then one which has attached to it, in the cheapest of little frames, the crude water-color daub of a child, three purple flowers standing in a yellow vase. Below it, painfully printed, I read:

~To My Darling Papa -- Thy Little Odette.~
And beyond the crosses many fresh graves have been dug. With hungry open mouths they wait. Even now I can hear the guns that are going to feed them. Soon there will be more crosses, and more and more. Then they will cease, and wives and mothers will come here to weep.

Ah! Peace so precious must be bought with blood and tears. Let us honor and bless the men who pay, and envy them the manner of their dying; for not all the jeweled orders on the breasts of the living can vie in glory with the little wooden cross the humblest of these has won. . . .


all his works

The Week in Entertainment

Back from vacation, I mostly read this week...

TV: Leverage - all of the promos showed us Jimmy Ford, and the trailers. But even if that weren't true, there was no point at all in being so coy about who Nate was charging off to rescue, with the big "surprise" camera reveal. Tom Skerritt was in the danged credits, after all. Also, I love the way Eliot always lectures his opponents on how to be better. But I didn't expect Dubenich. I tell you: war is not nearly a strong enough word. I'm excited about the season finale, I really am. Once Upon a Time had a nice look at Mr. Gold's backstory (one wonders how powerful he could be if he remembered himself). The Middle was funny - I love Sue's cheerleaders - and Modern Family, with Luke's desperate attempt to blame it all on Manny.

Read: Two Cremona-based mysteries by Paul Adams, about a violin-maker, easy and pleasing reads (The Rainaldi Quartet and Paganini's Ghost). All five of Beverle Graves-Myers' 'Baroque' mysteries about an 18th century Venetian castrato - well-written and -plotted and very engrossing.

Happy Birthday, Noel

Today in 1899 Noel Coward was born, in Teddington, Middlesex, England.

He chose his own epitaph: A Talent to Amuse.

And how perfectly fitting it is.

Happy Birthday, Martin

January 15, 1929-April 4, 1968

I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.

She's back

I spotted her from the road, sitting in the dead tree that gives her a commanding view of the park and the water (I think this is her, but if the pair isn't there I can't be sure). She's so gorgeous, especially against that high January sky. A red-shouldered hawk, one of the pair that breeds nearby.

Happy Birthday, Berthe

Berthe Morisot was born today in Bourges, Cher, France, in 1841. One of the Impressionists, she exhibited in the Salon and then, along with the other "rejected Impressionists" (Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Alfred Sisley), in their own exhibitions.

The Dining Room

Summer Day

On the Balcony


(More here)

oh, goody

It's going to a long campaign. As Paul Krugman indicates, though he's discussing Romney's stump speech:

Now, however, Mitt Romney seems determined to rehabilitate Bush’s reputation, by running a campaign so dishonest that it makes Bush look like a model of truth-telling.

I mean, is there anything at all in Romney’s stump speech that’s true? It’s all based on attacking Obama for apologizing for America, which he didn’t, on making deep cuts in defense, which he also didn’t, and on being a radical redistributionist who wants equality of outcomes, which he isn’t. When the issue turns to jobs, Romney makes false assertions both about Obama’s record and about his own. I can’t find a single true assertion anywhere.

And he keeps finding new frontiers of falsehood.

Happy Friday

Happy Birthday, Salmon

Salmon P Chase was born today in Cornish, New Hampshire, in 1808. He used to be best known - in fact, only known - to me as the odd man out in American currency: Hamilton and Franklin were Founding Fathers, if not presidents, but who was this Salmon P Chase and why did he rate the $10,000 dollar bill?

Well, he was Senator from Ohio and Governor of Ohio; Treasury Secretary under President Abraham Lincoln; and Chief Justice of the United States. He was an Abolitionist, and he coined the slogan of the Free Soil Party, "Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men." The whole of his political life was dedicated to destroying slavery and its threat to the America's republican government.

Not bad.

Chase was first a Whig, then a member of the Liberty Party, then a founding member of the Free Soil Party (ah, yes; the US's multi-party days). And he founded the modern Republican Party - oh, how things have changed! - by uniting Whigs and liberal Democrats within a party dedicated to fighting slavery. He ran for President but ended up supporting Lincoln, and while Treasury Secretary he established the modern banking system - including the first federal treasury notes, which is why he's on the money.

In 1868 he wrote in a private letter:

"Congress was right in not limiting, by its reconstruction acts, the right of suffrage to whites; but wrong in the exclusion from suffrage of certain classes of citizens and all unable to take its prescribed retrospective oath, and wrong also in the establishment of despotic military governments for the States and in authorizing military commissions for the trial of civilians in time of peace. There should have been as little military government as possible; no military commissions; no classes excluded from suffrage; and no oath except one of faithful obedience and support to the Constitution and laws, and of sincere attachment to the constitutional Government of the United States."

He was appointed to the Supreme Court by Lincoln, as Chief Justice, and one of his first acts was to appoint John Rock, the first black attorney to argue cases before the Supreme Court.

Chase dearly wished to be president, but his unflinching support for equality for black Americans meant he couldn't find a party which would back him. He even founded the Liberal Republican Party to combat Grant and the Radical Republicans, and although that party didn't last much beyond the election of 1872, most of its leaders didn't return to the Republicans but instead became Democrats, beginning the swap of positions that finds the "party of Lincoln" where it is today.

Happy Birthday, Clark

Clark Ashton Smith was born today in Auburn, California, in 1893. Mostly self-educated (he had only an 8th-grade formal education), he was one of the the member of the great triumvirate who wrote for Weird Tales (the other two being, of course, HP Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard). Although he outlived them by more than twenty years, after their deaths - in quick succession, Lovecraft from cancer in '37 and Howard by suicide in '36 - he ceased writing, ending the Golden Age of fantasy. He's certainly best known for his fantastic fiction, but his artistic career had three parts: in his later years he was a sculptor, and he had written poetry before fiction. In fact, he had been called "the Keats of the Pacific". Though most are long, here are two of those poems:

September

Slumberously burns the sun
Over slopes adust and dun,
Leaning southward through September. . . .
I forget and I remember,
Life is half oblivion. . . .
Somnolently burns the sun.

Close and dim the horizons creep,
Earthward lapse the heavens in sleep;
Woodlands faint with azure air
Seem but bourns of Otherwhere:
Swooning with ensorcelled sleep,
Close and dim the horizons creep.

Embers from a dreamland hearth,
Glow the leaves in croft and garth;
Vines within the willows drawn
Relume the gold of visions gone;
Darkly burn, in croft and garth,
Embers from a dreamland hearth.

Sleepy like an airless fire,
Smoulders my supreme desire:
Throeless, in the tranquil sun,
Hearts could melt and merge as one
In forgetful soft desire
Drowsy like an airless fire.

Snowfall on Acacia

I

Drooping low,
Acacia-branches bear their double
Burden of flowers and snow.

II

Humped with snow, the golden
Sprays careen, lifting free
Suddenly.

You can find his works (and more) at the Eldritch Dark.