Sky Watch: Sunset over the ridge

Just in time for Sky Watch, a spectacular sunset over the ridges tonight.




more Sky Watchers here (this week, a midnight sun)

Southwest Fares...

And one more thing about flying Southwest. (When you work for the government, you fly the airline they pick, and this year, to Boston, that's Southwest...)

They have these commercials in which they tell you that "there's only one place for great low fares: Southwest dot com". "We're not on Orbitz", they say cheerfully, not on Travelocity or the others. Just Southwest dot com.

Well, I was wondering about that as I sat in my middle seat (despite having paid top dollar for it), waiting for the guy to finish up his joke-filled safety spiel, so I decided to check that out. Seriously, if their fares are so low - $49 to Boston! - why don't they want them out there where everyone can see them?

Turns out it's because those fares are part of an elaborate ... well, no. I won't say that. But it does turn out that those fares are part of a triple-tier pricing system. Yes, you can fly to Boston on Southwest from Washington for $49... as long as you book really early and your plans don't change. Because that fare is non-refundable and non-changeable, and exists for a tiny percentage of seats on the plane. Otherwise... well, book for couple of weeks from today, and it's $54. A few days closer, and it's now $84. A week from now, $91. Tomorrow? "From $101 to $136". And that is of course one way, so you're looking at from $98 to $202-272. For those few seats.

For the rest of the seats, you pay $143, again one-way, which means a total charge (according to their website) of $307 or higher. On Airtrans, that same flight - same days, a couple of minutes off - is $213. That's leaving tomorrow. Next week it's $129, and even cheaper on Jet Blue, $103, when Southwest is (still) $143 = $307. And yeah, they're not going to charge you for your bag, but check one bag and it's still cheaper on Jet Blue or AirTrans.

No wonder they don't want you comparing them on "those other travel websites".

That "Wanna Get Away" fare is indeed cheap. But like every other business out there, they subsidize the cheap come-on by making it limited in availability and jacking up the price on what you'll probably end up having to buy.

Southwest isn't evil. They're just a profit-making company. And it doesn't do to forget that, even when they're whispering low fares into your ear.

Thangksgiving

I hope all who wanted it had a great Thanksgiving. I did. Here's one reason why - a grandnephew, not quite crawling yet but such a happy baby!

Sloppy

Oh, dear. Today's Washington Post crossword called anime a "genre" again.

But then they did something worse. They clued "Stans" with "comic Laurel and comic artist Lee". Points (maybe) for the double meaning of 'comic', but Stan Lee isn't an artist.

Happy happy

In Sunday's Boston Globe magazine is a story called A Star Is Born, about a baby gorilla and the zoo's breeding program. Throughout they quote assistant curator Jeannine Jackle, who manages the Tropical Forest and who has worked closely with the zoo’s gorillas for just over two decades. Towards the end she does something I find peculiar. I mean, I understand resisting talking about gorillas like they're people, anthropomorphizing them instead of treating them like gorillas, but the adjective she's resisting - the one she uses hoping she's not "being too anthropomorphic"? It's happy.

Goodness me. Surely we can say gorillas can be happy. Dogs can be happy. Heck, horses can be happy. Surely gorillas can be. That's not a complex emotion. It's not self-abnegating love, or schadenfreude, or smug I-told-you-so-ness. And gorillas are pretty complex beings. I'd think happiness was well within their range.

“She seems content,” Jackle says. “She’s doing a lot of the behaviors that we see when they’re – I hate to be anthropomorphic – but when they’re happy. They wiggle their toes, they wiggle their arms. She’s holding the baby and walking back and forth. And if I can say that’s a happy gorilla without being too anthropomorphic, that’s a happy gorilla.”

Happy Birthday, Hrihoriy

Григорій Савич Сковорода - Hrihoriy Savych Skovoroda - was born today in Chornukhy, near Poltava, in the Hetamanate of Ukraine which at the time (1722) belonged to Russia. He spent the last thirty years of his life wandering Ukraine with a flute, teaching and philosophizing; he wasn't published till after he died. His epitaph - which he composed - reads: Світ ловив мене, але не піймав (The world tried to catch me, but did not succeed / Svit lovyv mene, ale ne pijmav).

On a linguistic note, this epitaph is interesting as it contains an aspectual pair of verbs which come from different roots, a rare but not unheard of situation. The verbs - ловити and піймати (lovyty, pijmaty) - mean "to catch" but the imperfective means "to be trying to catch" (success not implied); "ловити рибу (lovyty rybu)" is thus "to go fishing". Hence, the compact "ловив мене" becomes "tried to catch me", and "не піймав" is "did not catch".


(Find some Skovoroda in Ukrainian here.)

The other part of a sentence

Oh, no no no.

The category was "They Come In Twos" and the clue was "The two main parts of a sentence are the subject and this unit."

The contestant said: "Verb."

NONONO

The answer is "Predicate."

Yes, predicates contain verbs. But a verb is (often) not a complete predicate. There are objects - direct and indirect (gave my brother a book); there are prepositional phrases (indirect objects can be expressed that way (bought a book for my brother); also goals and sources with verbs of movement (walked from the house to the library); instruments (drove in my car); predicate adjectivals (seems happy); adjuncts of time and place...

"Verb" is not the answer. Verb does not equal predicate.

Reflection on Etiquette

Two things from the weekend.

One, if you're attending a convention with over 8,000 others, along with hundreds of presenters and exhibitors, it's not really polite to (a) walk down the hall staring at your phone, (b) walk backwards while talking, (c) stand in the middle of the hall at typical American conversation distances perpendicular to traffic flow and chat, or (d) stop dead at the bottom of an escalator or just through a door to check which way you want to go next.

Two, if you really want to sit in first class so you can sprawl out in your seat, then don't buy Southwest Business Preferred. That doesn't get you a bigger seat or more room, it just gets you on the plane first. You still have to share with us plebes in B or C boarding groups who end up in the middle seats.

And one more thing ... if you want to talk with your spouse all the way from Boston to Baltimore, don't take the aisle and window seats and expect the person in the middle to be be happy with your conversation, your leaning over to look at sentences in Nooks or iPads or magazines, your handing each other stuff, and your wanting to hold hands while the plane lands. Suck it up and sit next to each other, dammit.

KTHXBAI.

The Week in Entertainment

Film: Inspector Bellamy - wow. Such a good movie, so quiet and so devastating. Also, Budrus, which is both infuriating and uplifting.

TV: Nothing. Nothing at all. I'll catch up this week when I'm on vacation.

Read: Союз рыжых, a translation of "The Red-Headed League". Also The Ferryman, by Christopher Golden, which was an enjoyable horrorish/fantasy, though to be honest I bought it 'cause it came up when I searched on Charles de Lint though all he did was write the introduction.... The Glass Devil, another by Tursten, and good as well.

Happy Birthday, Voltaire

Born today in Paris in 1694 was a man who helped spark the Enlightenment in France: Francois-Marie Arouet, better known as Voltaire. He spent most of his life in exile, and his writings built up support in Europe for what we now think of as basic human rights.

It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong.

Superstition is to religion what astrology is to astronomy: the mad daughter of a wise mother. These daughters have too long dominated the earth.

Woe to the makers of literal translations, who by rendering every word weaken the meaning! It is indeed by so doing that we can say the letter kills and the spirit gives life.

Happy Birthday, Dick

Hmmmmmm.

I got a comment today that read:

Gumbo Limbo had this to say...
Well, color me confused. Headline says "Happy Birthday Dick" and then talks about Tom being born this day in 1937. Lil Dickie Smothers was born today in 1939; Tommy's birthdate is Feb 2, 1937. FSM help me, I don't know HOW I remember this, but I learned it back when the Comedy Hour was on and it's stuck with me.

The problem is, that post was a draft for Dick's birthday ... and I hadn't actually written it.

Sheesh, November 20th got here fast!

Happy Birthday, Dick

Born today in 1939 in New York, New York, Dick Smothers. He was actually the younger of them, though as a kid I always thought he was the older. Mom loved him best, and so did I... I'm old enough to remember them on television (The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour) - that's Tom with the guitar, and Dick with the bass... Here's a bit from a long interview with Ken Paulson on "Speaking Freely":

And Dick was doing an introduction. I came out in a bunny suit with just my face showing with these big ears and a pink bunny suit. He says, "What are you doing?" I said, "I'm protesting our policies in Central America." "So, wearing a bunny suit doesn't make any sense." I said, "Neither does our policy in Central America." "Well, that looks stupid." "So does our policy!" "Well, get out of that bunny suit!" "We ought to get out of Central America!" Big laughs, very funny. And that was at dress rehearsal. The guy says, "Well, now, you've got to say at the end there, 'But it's up to our elected officials to get us out of this.'" (Laughter) So I said, "OK." Then that was even funnier, like they're gonna do that.

And here's another interview, with David Bianculli who wrote "Dangerously Funny: The Uncensored Story of the Smothers Brothers".

Tommy gets most of the press - and the laughs. But it wouldn't have worked with the patient straight man. So thanks, Dick - for the songs, the jokes, and the passion.

Sky Watch: Clouds over Boston

The clouds in the sky over Boston today - one single little one is glowing with
sunlight shafting through a rift in the high cover. The dome is the top of the Christian Science church. I'd have cropped out the edge of the Sheraton, but I don't have a decent photo editing program on the netbook, so there it is.




more Sky Watchers here

Licensed to steal

The airlines have a helluva racket going, don't they?

My friend was supposed to join me in Boston, but she got sick and can't come. So I called the airline to see what could be done about her ticket. Answer?

Well, she has a year to use the ticket - a year from the day it was bought, of course, not the day it was issued for. So there's a month gone from that year - and it makes my having bought insurance for my big vacation in April, the ticket for which I bought back in September, look like a very good decision.

Second, while she can fly anywhere, not just to Boston, if the trip she chooses costs more than the face value of the Boston trip, she has to pony up the difference (that's actually reasonable). But if it costs less ... she loses the difference.

And either way she has to pay $150 "change fee". Which is a fee for sweet damn-all.

It's a racket. Pure and simple, a racket.

No. He doesn't

In Pickles this week, Earl has been accusing Opal of having a crush on "that pretty boy, Alex Trebek", and she's been denying it. Today, the argument escalates, as Earl disparages Alex's brains and Opal defends him.


Unfortunately, her defense isn't true. Alex may be okay with the French, but despite his Slavic heritage, he's been wrong with Russian and Ukrainian on more than one occasion...

Fun times ahead

It looks like the loopier wing of the House may have a hard time living up to their rhetoric.

Take Dr. Andy Harris (as he likes to be called). He beat out the only Maryland incumbent Democrat to lose his seat, proudly Blue Dog Frank Kratovil, and he did it running on a mantra of little government and lower taxes and attacking Kratovil for supporting Obama and Pelosi (indeed "Frank Kratovil and Nancy Pelosi have made a mess of things" was a recurring theme, despite Kratovil's bragging about not actually supporting the party's agenda...). It seems he's shocked, dismayed, and even angered to learn that he'll have to wait a month for his Federal Health Care to kick in. He claims that he's never known a job where he wasn't covered from day one.

That's probably true for professionals, like anesthesiologists. But most people have to wait longer. Maybe he should have shelled out the big bucks for COBRA coverage, eh? Still, I'm sure Dr. Andy is rich enough to survive a month... though a nice new pre-existing condition to take with him to his next job might give him a look at why we need health care reform.

And also take (please!) Michell Bachman. She's adamantly opposed to earmarks, like all the Tea Partiers. Except that she wants a redefinition of what an earmark is, so she can get one or two for herself while still staying Pure. I guess "earmarking" is one of those irregular nouns - it's not an earmark when I do it!

Oh yeah. Gonna be an interesting two years.

How badly do they want it?

Advertisement for Dancing with the Stars:

They want it so badly they can almost touch it.

Interesting... I've never heard that, nor is it on the web. With "they" there only a few hits for the version I do know (can almost taste it), but when you take out the pronouns the "taste" version is pretty common, while "touch" is, again, not there.

It occurs to me that

They want it so badly; they can almost touch it

would work, but the prosody of the ad was wrong for that.

It’s not a happy birthday for Elizabeth Cady Stanton

A bit belated but ...

On 195th birthday of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, women in politics still under attack
By Annie Laurie Gaylor, November 12, 2010


It’s not a happy birthday for Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

The leading suffragist was born on Nov. 12, 1815, but her 195th birthday comes amid a concerted attack on the nation’s highest elected woman.

he despicable attempt to demean Nancy Pelosi’s achievements as the House Democratic leader and to belittle her determination to keep her leadership role shows how precarious a woman’s place in U.S. politics remains.

It was Pelosi who insisted that President Obama deliver meaningful health care reform instead of abandoning ship. It was Pelosi who got the House to pass crucial bills on jobs and global warming, which the Senate unfortunately squashed. She kept a fractious Democratic Party in line in the House, which is no small task.

No male politician with her skills and accomplishments would be treated so badly. The double standard lives on.

Stanton would applaud Pelosi’s grit and determination, in the face of ridicule, to carry on in the leadership position she has rightfully earned.

Stanton was not only among the first to call for women’s suffrage. She was the first woman candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives. She firmly believed in the importance of women’s political power.

When Stanton grew up, there wasn’t only a glass ceiling; there was a “no woman allowed” sign at every door.

Despite a brilliant intellect, Stanton was barred, as a woman, from college, from a respectable career, and from the rights and duties of citizenship itself.

As a newly married abolitionist, Stanton was silenced and curtained off from participation at the World’s Anti-Slavery Convention — a humiliation that opened her eyes to the civil enslavement of all women. As a disenfranchised citizen, Stanton called the ballot “the mightiest engine yet . . . for the uprooting of ignorance, tyranny, superstition, the overturning of thrones, altars, kings, popes, despotisms, monarchies and empires.”

Even some friends castigated her when she had the temerity to insist that suffrage be part of the plank of the first women’s rights convention in 1848. The press, the clergy and representatives of polite society piled on.

Stanton later recalled “how the Bible was hurled at us from every side” by critics citing scripture and verse to gag “uppity” women. And the very women’s movement she had co-founded scorned her for writing “The Woman’s Bible,” which criticized religion and fearlessly urging women to replace superstition and belief with “science and reason.”

But Stanton never backed down. Neither should Pelosi.

Annie Laurie Gaylor is co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, based in Madison, Wis., and is editor of the newspaper Freethought Today and the anthology, “Women Without Superstition: No Gods - No Masters.” She can be reached at pmproj AT progressive DOT org. Source: http://progressive.org/mpgaylor111210.html

I'll support them while they agree with me

John McCain, on "Hardball", Oct 18, 2006:

And I understand the opposition to [DADT], and I‘ve had these debates and discussions, but the day that the leadership of the military comes to me and says, Senator, we ought to change the policy, then I think we ought to consider seriously changing it because those leaders in the military are the ones we give the responsibility to.

Troops surveyed in 2010:

the effect of lifting the gay ban would be positive, mixed or nonexistent

Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Feb 2, 2010, to the Senate Armed Services Committee :

It is my personal belief that allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly would be the right thing to do.

General Colin Powell, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, statement Feb 3, 2010, in support of Adm Mullen:

In the almost seventeen years since the ‘Don't Ask, Don't Tell' legislation was passed, attitudes and circumstances have changed... For the past two years, I have expressed the view that it was time for the law to be reviewed by Congress. I fully support the new approach presented to the Senate Armed Services Committee this week by Secretary of Defense Gates and Admiral Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

John McCain, on "Meet the Press", Nov 14, 2010:

We need a thorough and complete study of the effects - not how to implement a repeal, but the effects on morale and battle effectiveness. Once we get this study, we need to have hearings. And we need to examine it. And we need to look at whether it's the kind of study that we wanted.

So... John McCain will support the leadership of the military as long as they agree with him.

Funny how some things just never change.

The Week in Entertainment

Film: Kawasaki Rose - a lovely Czech film exploring the uneasy relationship of the new present with the authoritarian past, in the microcosm of one family, that of a prominent dissident who may have cooperated with the regime. The actors are brilliant, the cinematography gorgeous, the writing wonderful. Also You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, which was quite entertaining.

DVD: Some episodes of an old TV series of Sherlock Holmes with Ronald Howard and H. Marion Crawford. It's interesting in that sometimes they take little bits from Doyle, but apparently all but 2 of the 39 episodes are original. Those 2 are "The Red-Headed League", very faithful - and "The Greek Interpreter", which became "The French Interpreter" (much easier to find French speakers, I'd have thought!) and acquired a happy ending!

TV: Yikes... my DVR didn't get The Mentalist last week! How annoying! Modern Family (Barn folk!) and The Middle, very good. House - I'm having my doubts about this season. Seriously. A third-year med student? That's ... just ridiculous. The third episode of Sherlock was fantastic - lots of wonderful allusions, a good tight plot, excellent character stuff, and aaiiieeeeee that ending. Damn, there'd better be a second series! Also, happy happy joy joy: Psych is back! Shawn: "This guy is loaded! What do you pay your Crown Prosecutors?" Macintosh: "Oh no, it's his wife. Her family are the waffle people." Shawn: "Gus, are you thinking what I'm thinking?" Gus: "You know it. We have to try those waffles."

Read: Charles deLint's The Painted Boy, lovely. Also Detective Inspector Huss, by Helene Turlen. Hilda Wade by Grant Allen and The Malcolm Sage Mysteries by Herbert Jenkins.

Happy Birthday, Claude

Today in 1840 Claude Monet was born. One of the first Impressionists, Monet painted many series of paintings - the same subject from the same place under all different light and weather, exploring the idea that you can never really see the same thing twice. Here for instance are two from the Houses of Parliament series (above) and two from the Poplars on the Epte series (below).


(Monet at WebMuseum)

Not as helpful as they might think

I'm reading Helene Tursten's The Glass Devil in translation from the Swedish. For some reason, either her translator or her American publisher felt the need to footnote the words kilometer, meter, centimeter, kilogram, degree, and krona, and provide conversion units.

Except for the money, I didn't need that. It would have been much more useful if they'd footnoted and converted other things. For instance - how expensive is "a relatively new black Skoda"? Is it a Chevy, a Datsun, a Honda, a Nissan, a Porsche, a Jag? That is, what does it tell me about the owner? And the money could have been handled better, too. Sure, it was helpful to learn that a krona is about a dime (or was when the book was written), but what's the purchasing power? When I was in the UK last, a pound was about two bucks, but bought about as much as one. So is 8,000 krona like $800, or can you buy more (or less) with it?

Anybody can memorize the kilometer-mile and Fahrenheit-Celsius conversions. If you're going to offer us footnotes, you might consider what we can't know so easily.

A winter's bushful of birds

November brings first hints of winter, not just in the weather and the shortening days, but in the birds. Juncos come, and others - like redwings and orioles - are gone. Here are some from the first ten days in November. First, some winter robins in bare branches:

Another year-round resident, a mockingbird:



A red-bellied woodpecker:





And a much smaller downy woodpecker (note the small bill, one sure way to know it's not a hairy woodpecker):




One more permanent resident, this is a juvenile starling - still mostly gray this late into November:



And here's a winter visitor, a junco no, no it's not. It's a goldfinch, dressed in winter grey:

And a reminder of summer, this oriole's nest swings in the autumn breezes, sturdy enough to last until a real winter storm comes through:

Deer

In early evening - 4:30 - on last Friday evening the deer were already out on the grounds, looking for dinner. Three does and one of this year's fawns, no longer dappled but darker and smaller than the adults.

Sky Watch: Morning Star

In the early hours before dawn, the morning star - Venus - dominates the deep blue sky in the east.




more Sky Watchers here

They'll sell like hotcakes

So the government has decided to put gruesome warning labels on cigarettes.

I predict a few people will stop smoking. Probably a good number won't start.

And cigarette cases will make a big comeback.

Because damn few smokers haven't heard that it's bad for them, you know?

argh

I was walking to work yesterday when I looked up and saw this:



Oh, yeah. A big old raptor. I got my camera out and took that shot. Then I walked closer, raised the camera and ... blinking red light. I had forgotten to change the battery yesterday! Argh! I quickly pulled out my phone (better than nothing) but he flew off. Very annoyed with myself I walked on, and there he was again, on a different tree along the same creek. I took a couple of pictures with the phone, but he was really so close. If only I'd remembered ...





A mockingbird nearby was screaming, but the hawk was unmoved. I stood there watching him for five minutes or so before I reluctantly went on into the building. He was glancing around the whole time, and several times he stared straight at me, though clearly I didn't bother him any more than the one mocker...

So beautiful. So very beautiful.

I hope he's back next week. Believe me, the camera will have a fresh battery!

Veterans Day

Four years I wrote a post which began:

It's called "Veterans Day" here in the States - we renamed it, I guess, when it became clear that the War to End War hadn't and wouldn't. So it's Veterans Day, now - not Memorial Day, for the dead, that's in May,... now we remember the living.

At least, we say we do. Well, I'm a veteran. I don't want just another day off work with no commitment behind it to actually give a damn about the veterans, especially those who come home from these modern wars all torn up, because medicine can save their bodies, only to find that no one in the government intends to take care of them. Veterans Day is nothing more than automobile sales, and servicemen get a 5% discount!, and wear your uniform, get in free! It's not go to a hospital and see what the price really is; it's not lobby the congress to restore the benefits cut in 1995; it's not give them their meds and counseling on time and affordably; it's not tell the VA to actively take care of vets instead of waiting for them to find out on their own what they're eligible for. And it's most certainly not the government actually giving a damn....

Since then, of course we had ever accumulating proof of that, in the Walter Reed scandal (you do remember that?); we've had "Warriors in Transition" (the catchy new name for wounded soldiers on their way to discharge via the VA and therapy); acres of missing paperwork - much of it shredded "in error"; "personality disorders" being diagnosed by the dozens so soldiers can be kicked out of the army without benefits; six months and more for initial claims to be processed; National Guardsmen brought back from Iraq after 729 days of active duty - so they don't qualify for the educational benefits that kick in at 730; numerous VA holdover appointees left in place and working against Shinseki; and more jobs still unfilled and a Defense hiring freeze in place - not to mention that Obama continues to prosecute the war in Afghanistan. This past year the suicide rate in the military exceeded that of civilians for the first time. (Read this interview with Steve Robinson, advocate and expert in military mental health for a sobering look at how the military treats this problem for active-duty vets). And though the military dropped those "personality disorder discharges" - which debar the vet suffering from PTSD or other mental injuries from benefits and care - they decreased from 1,072 in 2006 to just 64 through 2010 - discharges for other physical or mental conditions ("adjustment disorder") have increased from 1,453 in 2006 to 3,844 in 2009 - same game, different name (source) ... Need I go on? I could.

Today is Veterans Day. It's not Memorial Day. It's not a day to refuse to fight wars - some wars are necessary.

But it is a day to honestly assess the price of the war - any war - to those who fight it and come home, and to promise ourselves to do the right thing by them. Because it is the right thing. Because we owe it to them. Because we sent them into harm's way, and they were harmed, and our contract with them is to take care of them. As I said before,

We don't need people paying lip service to vets while ignoring them in the VA hospitals or on the street corners. We don't need to mythologize veterans, turn them into some great symbol of our nation's righteous aggression while we forget their humanity. We don't need a holiday that glorifies war by glorifying soldiers.

Let's contemplate the cost of the non-stop, endless wars this country feels somehow called upon to fight. And let's stop all our ultimately empty fetishization of the military, like calling them "Wounded Warriors" in ordinary prose. Let's stop capitalizing Solider and Wounded Warrior and Troop - and stop capitalizing on them, too. Let's stop the relentless glorification of the figure of the soldier, and start actually caring about them. Let's stop Supporting the Troops with magnets and signs, and start some actual damned support - with money, first of all, money and beds and hospitals and benefits that actually are.

In the last couple of years we've made a start. The VA's funding was made more timely, so the rationing of care that comes from uncertainty has ended. And we've streamlined the requirements and application processes for the stunning over 30% of veterans that apply for psych help. Congress approved funding for an aggressive program for veterans at risk of suicide. But we need to do more. Funding in advance is great, but it must be adequate funding. The days of a hospital having one psychiatrist taking appointments two days a week, for instance, must end. And expansion to meet the growing need - fueled by this apparently endless "war on terror" and the better medical care that brings more vets home to live instead of be buried - is expensive and slow.

The new Congress soared in with promises to cut spending. Privatizing the VA, at least the hospitals, is high on some agendas. It's a bad idea, and we mustn't let it happen. The VA may be that scary thing - government-funded health care - but it is genuinely good, efficient, affordable, available health care, and let's never forget that it's health care for people whose lives the government put at risk. Supporting the Troops is more than magnets and slogans.; it's supporting and fully funding the VA.

So let's save the worship for Memorial Day. Today's for the ones who are still alive, and most of all for the ones who still need us.

Last year my poem was Li Po's Nefarious War, translated from the Chinese by Shigeyoshi Obata (read it here). The year before it was The Next War by Robert Graves (read it here), three years ago it was Aftermath by Siegfried Sassoon (read it here), and the first year it was 1916 seen from 1921 by Edmund Blunden (read it here). This year I offer you a pair of short poems by Carl Sandburg, written during WWI: Iron and Grass. Last year's poem spoke of The long, long war [that] goes on ten thousand miles from home. This year's speaks of those who die so far away from home. We owe it to them to make sure what they die for is worth it, and them...

Iron

Guns,
Long, steel guns,
Pointed from the war ships
In the name of the war god.
Straight, shining, polished guns,
Clambered over with jackies in white blouses,
Glory of tan faces, tousled hair, white teeth,
Laughing lithe jackies in white blouses,
Sitting on the guns singing war songs, war chanties.

Shovels,
Broad, iron shovels,
Scooping out oblong vaults,
Loosening turf and leveling sod.

I ask you
To witness-
The shovel is brother to the gun.

Grass

Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.
Shovel them under and let me work—
I am the grass; I cover all.

And pile them high at Gettysburg
And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun.
Shovel them under and let me work.
Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor:
What place is this?
Where are we now?

I am the grass.
Let me work.

Happy Birthday, Kurt

Kurt Vonnegut died just three years ago, but he was born, fittingly, today in 1922. Fittingly, I say, because he was a veteran, and it was his experience in WWII - specifically and famously surviving the fire-bombing of Dresden and living through the horrific aftermath - that shaped his writing.

Happy Birthday, Neil

Born today in 1960, in the English town of Portsmouth, Neil Gaiman.

Mirrormask, Sandman, Neverwhere, Stardust, American Gods, Coraline, The Graveyard Book, Anansi Boys...

Thank you, Neil. Happy Birthday, many happy returns of the day, and keep writing...

Change of meaning

In 1899 Grant Allen died, leaving his novel Hilda Wade unfinished. I'm reading it now, and in the publisher's preface they discuss Allen's untimely death (of illness at 51) and his distress at not being able to complete the book. The publisher says that this distress was relieved by his neighbor, Conan Doyle, who discussed the final chapter with Allen and then, using his notes, wrote it for publication.

The publisher called this "a beautiful and pathetic act of friendship which it is a pleasure to record".

How words do change.

"something catastrophic"

Mount Merapi may be tip of the iceberg, so to speak. William Sargent has a piece in today's Boston Globe:

THE MERAPI volcano, currently exploding more forcefully every day in Indonesia, is located on the Sundra Arc, one of the planet’s most complex and dangerous geological areas. This is where two large plates of the earth’s crust, the Australian and Indian plates, are rapidly plunging down below the mini Burma plate to create the world’s deepest and most powerful earthquakes and the world’s largest and most dangerous volcanoes. Some scientists fear that something catastrophic may be brewing beneath the Sundra Arc.

...

But Merapi is not the only volcano now active on the Sundra Arc. Within the past few weeks there have been many more deep earthquakes and 20 other volcanoes have also become active. Indonesia is also home to the Lake Toba supervolcano, believed to be the largest explosive eruption to have occurred on our planet during the past 25 million years.

Reading the Bible, losing his faith

ABC News is featuring a story about pastors who've lost their faith. Here's a taste - emphases mine:

Jack said that 10 years ago, he started to feel his faith slipping away. He grew bothered by inconsistencies regarding the last days of Jesus' life, what he described as the improbability of stories like "Noah's Ark" and by attitudes expressed in the Bible regarding women and their place in the world.

"Reading the Bible is what led me not to believe in God," he said.

He said it was difficult to continue to work in ministry. "I just look at it as a job and do what I'm supposed to do," he said. "I've done it for years."

Adam said his initial doubts about God came as he read the work of the so-called New Atheists -- popular authors like the prominent scientist Richard Dawkins. He said the research was intended to help him defend his faith.

"My thinking was that God is big enough to handle any questions that I can come up with," he said but that did not happen.

"I realized that everything I'd been taught to believe was sort of sheltered," Adam said, "and never really looked at secular teaching or other philosophies. ... I thought, 'Oh my gosh. Am I believing the wrong things? Have I spent my entire life and my career promoting something that is not true?'"

Yep. That seems to happen. It's no wonder so many Christians (and not just Christians) fear encountering - or worse, letting their children encounter - other ways of thought, particularly scientific ones.

At home?

The headline reads:

At home in Indonesia, Obama reaches out to Muslims

Really, AP? You couldn't say "Comfortable"? "Relaxed"? "At ease"? "On familiar ground"?

You had to say "at home"?

At least it's not Kenya...

Happy Birthday, Carl

Carl Sagan was born today in 1934, in Brooklyn.

I'm sure I don't have to say anything about him, but if I did, besides Cosmos and The Demon-Haunted World and The Dragons of Eden, I'd mention his insistence on putting cameras on space probes. Imagine Cassini without cameras...

He was a national treasure, no, a global - no, a specific treasure and he's missed.

An ancient and gorgeous monster...

Look at this guy.

Really look.

Isn't he gorgeous? Those claws. Those spikes. Those eyes...

You wouldn't want to poke at him, that's for sure.

And I know he's taken a gosling or two. But, hey; he has to eat, too. (And if geese raised five goslings to adulthood every year, we'd be up to our asses in geese.)

Sky Watch: Clear Dawn

Here's a clear, cold dawn - undramatic, calm, frosty.




more Sky Watchers here

The Week in Entertainment

DVD: Part of the Siberiade, a long Russian movie spanning several generations - beautifully filmed.

TV: Surrogates, which undercut itself badly at the end. No surrogates crashed into something that blew up? No surrogates were transporting cargo? Planes or trucks? No surrogate doctors were operating? He just got deactivated every surrogate on earth and no people got hurt? Modern Family stays funny. The Middle was pretty good. Sherlock - the second wasn't quite as good as the first but it was still very entertaining - I loved John's battle with the PIN machine at the store. The Mentalist - I loved the weariness in Cho's voice when he answered "Who is that man?" with "It's a long story." And his expression when she said she didn't kiss Mashburn and he was saying "Not my business." And the housekeeper at Bajoran's - her look when she watched them leave - running them out - was priceless. And the guy at the glamp (glamorous camp): "Mr Mashburn, that won't be necessary. We have your card on file."

Read: I Shall Wear Midnight and then, because I realized I hadn't, Wintersmith. I do like Tiffany, and I'm glad that she realized she and Roland weren't "meant". Christmas Mourning, a good entry. Coming Back, the arrival of which reminded me to read Locked In last week. A couple of classic mysteries, Death Points a Finger (featuring one of those annoying polymath scientists people loved to read about as crimesolvers back in the 20s and 30s), Murder at Bridge, a light romantic mystery, and Murder at Hampstead, which featured a complex mystery that involved several people being arrested (tried even) before the solution showed up.

you hatchet-faced nutmeg dealer!

Election ads from 1800 - possibly the nastiest campaign ever. Possibly. (The Jackson race of 1828 wasn't all that civil, either. And let's not forget 1884 and "Ma, ma, where's my pa?")

Happy Birthday, Suleiman

Suleiman the Magnificent was born today in 1494. Known also as Suleiman the Lawgiver, he ruled over the Golden Age of the Ottoman Empire, doubling it during his reign.

Happy Birthday to the Big Train

Walter Johnson was born today in 1887, in Humboldt, Kansas.

Ty Cobb talked about facing Johnson the first time:

The first time I faced him, I watched him take that easy windup. And then something went past me that made me flinch. The thing just hissed with danger. We couldn't touch him... every one of us knew we'd met the most powerful arm ever turned loose in a ball park.

They called it a pneumonia ball - the wind it raised was so strong it would chill you to the bone (where most fastballs are "heat", the Big Train's were cold...)

When it comes to the perennial debate, there were no speed guns. Johnson said, "Can I throw harder than Joe Wood? Listen, Mister, no man alive can throw any harder than Smokey Joe Wood." But Wood said, "Oh, I don't think there was ever anybody faster than Walter." We'll never know. But we do know this: In an era when the strikeout was not king, Johnson racked up 3,509 of them, a record that stood for 55 years (he's now 9th on the list). Batters feared facing him, and in return he feared killing them - Cobb exploited that fear by crowding the plate; he couldn't hit Johnson but he could draw walks.

He won 417 games, second to Cy Young's impossible 511, and the two of them remain the only pitchers with 400+ wins.

"most obliviously optimistic nincompoop"

The current Mark Trail storyline has been going on for well over two months now. First it was about a mysterious fence, and then a remarkably stupid little girl and her mother found a fawn and took it home as a pet, and then we discovered the step-father wanted to be governor and was hosting a canned hunt to boost his chances, which Mark of course foiled. Now the embittered and punched out step-father is planning to murder Mark by running him off the road, having cunningly laid his plans by telling Mark to meet him on the mountaintop. Cherry and her father both said they wondered at Frank's wanting to apologize.

Now, today, Mark officially earns the title of "most obliviously optimistic nincompoop" in comicsdom:

Oedipus' relationship with his mother

In a review of "Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture", Blake Gopnik writes:

For a queer man who's lived through McCarthy's Lavender Scare, when more gays than leftists lost jobs, gazing at your fresh-faced object of desire was as perilous as when Oedipus looked wrong at his mother.

Point taken.

But although Freud took the myth and twisted it for his own purposes, it should be remembered that the tragedy wasn't the Oedipus wanted to marry (and did) his mother, it was that the woman he married turned out to be his mother. Which is to say, Oedipus didn't suffer from his eponymous complex.

Keep It Wild

This is a good idea.

Let's protect ANWR from drilling by making it a monument, like Yosemite.

Write the president here.

Happy Birthday, Kazuo

Today in 1954 in Nagasaki, Japan, Kazuo Ishiguro was born. His family moved to Great Britain when he was six, and he has become one of the great writers in the English language, winning the Whitbread Prize in 1986 for his second novel, An Artist of the Floating World, and the Booker Prize in 1989 for his third, The Remains of the Day, and being shortlisted for the Booker for When We Were Orphans and his most recent novelNever Let Me Go. Ishiguro explores memory in his books, and the clash of memory with reality - The Unconsoled is a tour-de-force of shifting memory - and his work is fascinating. Nocturnes is his latest, five short stories about "music and memory" and easily among his better work. Not one of these guys who turns out a book every year (every five or six years, more likely), he's well worth the wait for the next one.

Happy Birthday, Will

Today in 1879, near Claremore, Oklahoma, Will Rogers was born.

An ignorant person is one who doesn't know what you have just found out.

There's no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole government working for you.

We can't all be heroes because somebody has to sit on the curb and clap as they go by.

It could be worse

How's that for a stirring sentiment?

But it's true. Here in Maryland we stayed Chesapeake Blue - Bob Ehrlich failed miserably to scare people into voting for him, and Mikulski and Hoyer and others won. Out of state, most of the people I gave money to won - Dennis, of course, and Barney Frank and others. Not all of them. We didn't get Angle or O'Connell, but we lost Feingold, a heavy loss.

So yeah. It could be worse.

We lost the House - but a lot of those we lost were those damned Blue Dogs who fought and dragged their feet. I don't know but what I wouldn't rather have Republicans than Democrats who vote like Republicans - here in Maryland, Frank Kratovil campaigned on voting against the health care bill... and lost. And we lost the veto-proof Senate but c'mon: what did they do with it? (And at least nobody has to suck up to Lieberman.)

It could be worse.

But dammit. It could have been so much better. And it's not all the economy this time. Not all of it.

So we'll have to see what happens now.

Happy Birthday, Walker

Let us now praise Walker Evans, portrait-maker of America, who was born today in 1903. Of his work, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art says

Evans' elegant crystal-clear photographs and articulate publications inspired artists of several generations, from Helen Levitt to William Eggleston. The progenitor of the documentary tradition in American photography, Evans had the extraordinary ability to see the present as if it were already the past and to translate that knowledge and historically inflected vision into an enduring art. His principal subject was the vernacular -- the indigenous expressions of people found in roadside stands, cheap cafés, advertisements, simple bedrooms, and small-town streets. For fifty years, from the late 1920s to the early 1970s, Evans recorded the American scene with the nuance of a poet and the precision of a surgeon, creating an encyclopedic visual catalogue of modern America in the making.

Probably his greatest work came in 1941 when he co-published, along with James Agee, the ground-breaking book Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. The book chronicled the pair's journey through the rural South during the Great Depression - words by Agee, photos by Evans, presenting a stark yet deeply moving portrait of rural poverty. The pairing of the anguished dissonance of Agee's prose and the quiet, magisterial beauty of Evans' photographs of sharecroppers makes this book a powerful, wrenching experience.

Steady stream

I voted after work - left a bit early so as to be sure of getting a bus back, but might not have needed to. I got there a little after 4. It wasn't crowded by any means, but there was a steady stream of people - six ahead of me and by the time I left eleven in the line. Waited 15 minutes to actually vote, so had plenty of time to make the bus - but of course, if I'd left it as late as I could, the polls would have been crowded!

Now we wait. And see.

Vote

Sorting my way through the new, revised Hatch Act guidelines for on-line and social media, especially for a the more restricted agencies, has meant not much posting on the election this time.

Also, not much is happening in my state (though Barb Mikulski has run tv ads for the first time I can remember). The gubernatorial race is tight, Andy Harris and Frank Kratovil are still knives-out for each other, and Slots at the Mall is consuming even more air time than those two. And most of my money has been sent to out-of-state or national campaigns this year.

But I'm still going to vote And I hope you are or have or will, too.

I love the costume

Cowbirds in Love is one of my favorite webcomics. Today's is poignant. Check it out.

Happy Birthday, Grantland

Today in 1880, in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, Grantland Rice was born.

He coined the term "the Four Horsemen" for Notre Dame's 1924 backfield:

Outlined against a blue-gray October sky the Four Horsemen rode again. In dramatic lore they are known as famine, pestilence, destruction and death. These are only aliases. Their real names are: Stuhldreher, Miller, Crowley and Layden. They formed the crest of the South Bend cyclone before which another fighting Army team was swept over the precipice at the Polo Grounds this afternoon as 55,000 spectators peered down upon the bewildering panorama spread out upon the green plain below.

One of the great sportswriters of all times, he dabbled in verse, too. A defender of the right of athletes to earn a living, he also decried the influence of money in sports:

"Money to the left of them and money to the right
Money everywhere they turn from morning to the night
Only two things count at all from mountain to the sea
Part of it's percentage, and the rest is guarantee"

And if you think you don't know him, you almost certainly know this:

"For when the One Great Scorer comes
To write against your name,
He marks - not that you won or lost -
But how you played the Game."