Tweener geese

I've been working elsewhere this past month, so I only saw the geese family once before last week. Four goslings this year. They're cute when they're tiny and yellow...





But they get bigger, gawkier, gray - and start to look a lot like dinosaurs.

Memorial Day

A Dirge for Two Veterans
by Walt Whitman

THE last sunbeam
Lightly falls from the finish'd Sabbath,
On the pavement here, and there beyond it is looking,
Down a new-made double grave.

Lo, the moon ascending,
Up from the east the silvery round moon,
Beautiful over the house-tops, ghastly, phantom moon,
Immense and silent moon.

I see a sad procession,
And I hear the sound of coming full-key'd bugles,
All the channels of the city streets they're flooding,
As with voices and with tears.

I hear the great drums pounding,
And the small drums steady whirring,
And every blow of the great convulsive drums,
Strikes me through and through.

For the son is brought with the father,
(In the foremost ranks of the fierce assault they fell,
Two veterans son and father dropt together,
And the double grave awaits them.)

Now nearer blow the bugles,
And the drums strike more convulsive,
And the daylight o'er the pavement quite has faded,
And the strong dead-march enwraps me.

In the eastern sky up-buoying,
The sorrowful vast phantom moves illumin'd,
('Tis some mother's large transparent face,
In heaven brighter growing.)

O strong dead-march you please me!
O moon immense with your silvery face you soothe me!
O my soldiers twain! O my veterans passing to burial!
What I have I also give you.

The moon gives you light,
And the bugles and the drums give you music,
And my heart, O my soldiers, my veterans,
My heart gives you love.

The Week in Entertainment

Film: The Secrets in Their Eyes, a very fine Argentine film - cop/mystery/political thriller full of time shifts and splendid acting, especially from Ricardo Darín.

DVD: Rosemary & Thyme, a very enjoyable light mystery series from Granada, with excellent acting and gorgeous settings.

TV: Not much ... waiting for the summer series to start on cable. Which is why I got through three seasons of Rosemary & Thyme!

Read: All six Charlie Chan novels, and Call Mr Fortune. On kind of a vintage mystery kick - Anna Katherine Green next, having started The Leavenworth Case.

Sky Watch: A Red May Sky

Last Friday we had a spectacular dawn - red as it could be, though the day proved fair.






more Sky Watchers here

Unsettling

I know he's not the pharmacist, just the kid who runs the cash register. But still, it was unsettling when he couldn't spell penicillin. Or Tylenol, either.

One right doesn't guarantee another

Especially when the other isn't one...

In today's Boston Globe, Michael Levenson writes:

Governor Deval Patrick, decrying partisanship in Washington, said yesterday that Republican opposition to President Obama is so reflexive that it “is almost at the level of sedition.’’

The headline writer felt that was "arcane", and Levenson felt he needed to define it. That's a little odd, to me anyway, but fine. "Sedition" isn't thrown around much anymore. No; what really caught me was this, a bit later in the story:

The Massachusetts Republican Party quickly condemned Patrick for using the word.

“Apparently our First Amendment rights are only guaranteed if we agree with the tax-and-spend policies of Deval Patrick and Barack Obama,’’ Jennifer Nassour, the party chairwoman, said in a statement.

Sorry, Jennifer. Your First Amendment rights aren't abridged just because someone puts a label on what you say (as your party should know all too well). As Hubert H. Humphrey once said, "The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously." And the right to free speech does not automatically include the right to have your words called something they aren't. Like "smart".

Or "patriotic".

Or "true".

The Week in Entertainment

Two weeks, actually ... crazy, crazy spring at work this year!

TV: The finales of several shows (Modern Family, The Mentalist, House, The Middle) which were pretty good to very good. I'm not at all sure I understand (or really believe) Cuddy's about face, but we'll see. Jane is well shut of that woman: even if (by virtue of this being television) is a genuine psychic, she's also a nut with no sense of personal boundaries, and obnoxious. Since I don't think she's genuinely psychic, she's a jerk. Were I Jane, that whole bit with the waiter would have been the signal to fake a phone call and never, ever talk to her again. And now ... the wait for the summer series - bring on Psych and Leverage! Also, Doctor Who, which isn't on the same cycle. I am glad to see the Doctor learned something from the Rose and Mickey debacle (though both of them came out of happy enough), and it's always nice with several Companions.

Read: A slew of Philo Vance novels (in an omnibus), mindless reading with a few interesting puzzles surrounded by out-dated (and often fascinating) details, an obnoxious protagonist, and a somewhat overblown style. Kathapurna, a brilliant novel by Raja Rao about India in the late 1930s and the impact of Gandhi on the rural people.

Sky Watch: May Sky

Caught this one off my balcony window abut two hours before the rain set in...



more Sky Watchers here

RIP Martin Gardiner (1914-2010)

I just learned from John Lynch's blog that Martin Gardner has died.

He will be much, much missed. Head to John's for links with more.

A kick in the pance, indeed.

The Garden Murder Case was published in 1935. It's far from the best Philo Vance novel. Among its deficiencies is that the author (Willard Wright) has completely forgotten his premise, established so thoroughly and insistently in the earlier books: "Philo Vance" is a false name for a man now living in Italy, who helped his friend the DA solve murder cases but never took any credit for doing so. Instead, people know Vance as "the eminent sleuth" and Van Dine as "his patient and retiring chronicler", and someone even refers to the famous Ogden Nash couplet "Philo Vance / Needs a kick in the pance." (A sentiment I agree with, by the way.) This would be reasonable - the way Holmes chaffed Watson and others read about them in the Strand - except that "Van Dine" is supposed to be writing these books about things that happened much earlier, having changed his protagonist's name...

But what prompts this post is one of the most ludicrous "scientific" statements Philo Vance has ever made:

"Earlier today I saw Swift put the head-phone on for a minute, and he was careful toplace the receiver over his left ear -- the custom'ry way. The telephone receiver, d' ye see, Markham, has always been placed on the left side of the phone box, in order to leave the right hand free to make notations or for other emergencies. The result is, the left ear has adapted itself to hearing more distinctly over the wire than the right ear. And humanity, as a result, has accustomed itself to holding a telephone receiver to the left ear. Swift was merely conforming to custom and instinct when he placed the receiving end of the headphone on the left side of his head."

Let's assume that (back story be damned) the action of this novel happened the year the book was published, 1935. It had then been 58 years since the founding Bell Telephone. Evolution doesn't happen that fast. Cripes, Swift was meant to be 30; he'd have been born 28 years after the phone. Wright should have stuck with "he wore it on the left, like most people" and forgotten about "adaptation" and "instinct"...

What was their first clue?

A Picasso, a Modigliani, and a Matisse are among the five art works stolen from the Modern Art Museum in Paris.

Astonishingly, ABC News just felt obliged to describe them as "museum-quality art".

I blame Alanis

See, "ironic" would be if his name had been Dale.

8 hours earlier

I am very tired of television shows opening with a dramatic shot of an explosion or a guy in a pool of blood or gunshots going off and then - a peaceful scene with a caption, "8 hours earlier" or "two weeks earlier" or whatever.

It's a cheap tactic to catch my interest. Make me care linearly, guys. If I don't care about the people by the time the explosion comes, knowing it's coming won't buy it.

Sky Watch: Cotton Candy

Here's a wild April sky ...





more Sky Watchers here

This explains a lot

Two panels from Sunday's Zits :

It led to a "rather text than write"joke, but I'm still stuck on - no, not his mom's horrible grimace, though that's pretty tacky. It's the fact that in ten years she hasn't noticed that he writes with the entirely typical left-hander's curled up hand. No wonder they don't communicate well!

The Week in Entertainment

DVD: Some more of Justice John Deed, still well-written though I want to smack the justice up the side of his head.

TV: The Mentalist, an enjoyable episode (though too many clowns!!!) Doctor Who - the Weeping Angels were creepier in "Blink", though their using Bob to talk for them was kind of creepy. I find River Song somewhat annoying, and I'm still on the fence about Amy. And perhaps I should clarify my "I like the new guy" - I meant I can watch him. Unlike some previous incarnations, one of whom I hated so much I still haven't seen but three of his eps (and one of those had Patrick Troughton in it.) Modern Family - poor Jay! But I loved how Phil came to Mitch's rescue not realizing how Claire would react, I laughed like crazy when Phil told Mitchell Claire was "a little tight-strung, some people are like that" and Mitchell snapped at him, and the TSA guy solemnly interviewing Manny, and - heck, I loved it all. "I'm totally clueless"- Ty Burrell is a genius. (plus, Jay? Your Kindle? It's new, it's under warranty still, they'll replace it before your family leaves Hawaii. voice of experience here) House - I like it that Wilson's ex doesn't like House, I mean who could?, but I see heartbreak ahead for poor Wilson...

Read: Some Prefer Nettles by Junichiro Tanizaki, which was mesmerizing in its simplicity. The Secret Notebooks of Agatha Christie, which inspired me to read (or reread) some of the ones he talked about in detail. Peril at End House I don't think Id read before, of if I had it was a long time ago, so long ago I'd forgotten it, and then Roger Ackroyd, ABC, Five Little Pigs, and Death by Appointment.

Happy Birthday, Charles

Today is the birthday of America's poet laureate, Charles Simic. Born in Belgrade in 1938, he was a child of war. His family ended up in Paris in 1953, where he and his mother waited while his father moved on the New York, where they joined him after a year's time. "My travel agents were Hitler and Stalin," he has said. "Being one of the millions of displaced persons made an impression on me. In addition to my own little story of bad luck, I heard plenty of others. I'm still amazed by all the vileness and stupidity I witnessed in my life. ... If you came to New York in 1954, it was incredible. Europe was still gray; there were still ruins. New York was just dazzling."

They moved to Chicago where he learned English, and began to write poetry while still in high school. He's won the Pulitzer for his poetry, and last year was named the Laureate. Here's one of his poems :

Old Couple

They’re waiting to be murdered,
Or evicted. Soon
They expect to have nothing to eat.
In the meantime, they sit.

A violent pain is coming, they think.
It will start in the heart
And climb into the mouth.
They’ll be carried off in stretchers, howling.

Tonight they watch the window
Without exchanging a word.
It has rained, and now it looks
Like it’s going to snow a little.

I see him get up to lower the shades.
If their window stays dark,
I know his hand has reached hers
Just as she was about to turn on the lights.


And here are more of Simic's poems.

I don't get it...

You know how crosswords often have themes? I'm not going to tell you that I always get the theme before I start or even after I do one of the theme clues, because it usually takes two of them for me to see it, especially if they're bad puns.

But until now I haven't ever not been able to see the them after I've done the whole puzzle!!

The title is "Lighten Up". 17A: An example of Emeril's largesse? (free recipe) 27A: Lust for Gore? (al attraction) 49A: To whom a madam relates sin? (her confessor) 66A: Yakety-yak (and a hint to the starts of 17-, 27-, and 49-Across) (chew the fat)

I'm certain of the answers. But I just don't see how "chew the fat" is "a hint to the starts of" "free recipe", "Al attraction", and "her confessor".

Go ahead, I beg you: make me slap my forehead and say "Oh, of course..."

Please.

Happy Birthday, Petr Ilich!

Петр Ильич Чайковский (Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky) was born May 7 in 1840.

Вдохновение - это такой гость, который не всегда является на первый зов. (Inspiration is the kind of guest who doesn't always come the first time it's called.)

Вдохновение - это такая гостья, которая не любит посещать ленивых. (Inspiration is the kind of visitor who doesn't enjoy visiting the lazy.)

Работать нужно всегда и настоящий честный артист не может сидеть сложа руки под предлогом, что он не расположен. (One must always work; a self-respecting artist must not fold his hands on the pretext that he is not in the mood.)

Happy Birthday, Robert

Today Robert Browning was born in Camberwell, south London, in 1812. A brilliant, learned poet who fell in love with Elizabeth Barrett after reading her poetry...

A Face

If one could have that little head of hers
Painted upon a background of pure gold,
Such as the Tuscan's early art prefers!
No shade encroaching on the matchless mould
Of those two lips, which should be opening soft
In the pure profile; not as when she laughs,
For that spoils all: but rather as if aloft
Yon hyacinth, she loves so, leaned its staff's
Burden of honey-colored buds to kiss
And capture 'twixt the lips apart for this.
Then her little neck, three fingers might surround,
How it should waver on the pale gold ground
Up to the fruit-shaped, perfect chin it lifts!
I know, Correggio loves to mass, in rifts
Of heaven, his angel faces, orb on orb
Breaking its outline, burning shades absorb:
But these are only massed there, I should think,
Waiting to see some wonder momently
Grow out, stand full, fade slow against the sky
(That's the pale ground you'd see this sweet face by),
All heaven, meanwhile, condensed into one eye
Which fears to lose the wonder, should it wink.

Oooo. Lucky break there

Danger in Wonderland: "She tried to whack Alice with that 'Off with her head' line; wait till she gets a load of you": I love Michael McKean but he just got that WRONG and Alex gave him a real break. The Red Queen isn't in Wonderland, she's in Through the Looking Glass - she's not the same person as The Queen of Hearts.

Home Thoughts from Abroad

I meant to put this in while it was still April, but I missed the whole thing this year ... Still, enjoy!


Home Thoughts from Abroad,
or,
Browning Discovers Baseball

Oh, to be in America,
Now that April's there,
For whoever wakes in America
Sees each morning, unaware,
How the box scores in the papers lie
With the stats and the articles spread nearby
And the pictures of men and balls on the fly
In America, now.

.

For your convienence

That's such an odd phrase. It very often means something quite different from the surface meaning.

For instance, I just purchased tickets to The Thirty-Nine Steps, for the Hippodrome in Baltimore next month. I tried to do it on-line, but first BroadwayAcrossAmerica.com didn't recognize my account (despite my having just used it to get season tickets for next year) so that I was forced to create a new one, and then it told me that account "doesn't have access" to the price and purchase of that show.

So I called the numbers. "For your convenience" their phone lines are open till 5 pm, Central. Oh well, I could always call the Hippodrome. Oh ... "for your convenience" the box office is open between 10 am and 3 pm. Gosh, unless I work in Baltimore that's not actually so very convenient. (Convenient hours would be, say, 3-9 pm.) Well, I could call back the next day.

So I did. And discovered that, for ticket purchases, the Hippodrome's box office phone number routes you to - yes - Broadway Across America, and for actual purchases that means you end up with Ticket Master. Who assesses a "convenience" fee of $10. Per ticket.

Now, that "convenience fee" is, actually. Clearly unless I can run up to the Hippodrome during the work day, which I can't without taking time off work, it's more than "convenient". And though the amount stunned me when I heard it, on reflection it's really probably less than the $1 per ticket I remember paying back in the 1970s when I first encountered Ticket Master (though it still annoys me that it's a per ticket fee, not a per call fee). But how can anybody have the gall to present extremely limited hours of operation as "for the customer's convenience"?

I'm not saying you have to actually have convenient hours (though that would be nice)You don't have to say anything at all. Just tell me your hours. Just drop the stupid phrase. It's annoying..

The Magnificent Cy

On this day in 1904, pitching against the Philadelphia Athletics at the Huntington Avenue Grounds, Cy Young of the Boston Americans throws the first perfect game in the modern era of baseball.

Sweet.

Lineup for Yesterday

Y is for Young
The magnificent Cy;
People batted against him,
But I never knew why.

— Ogden Nash (full lineup here)

Happy Birthday, Sisses!

My sisters were born on May 5, 1955 - 5/5/55. Which makes them 55 today!

Happy Birthday!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Happy Birthday, Thomas

Born May 4 in Ealing, England, in 1825, the man known as "Darwin's Bulldog" - Thomas Huxley. Huxley was a doctor and a highly respected scientist in 1856, when he went to visit his friend Charles Darwin, and Darwin explained to Huxley his theory of evolution. Darwin was by nature a reclusive person, a great writer but not a great public speaker. But Huxley enjoyed public debates, and engaged in many over the years. In one - with Archbishop Wilberforce - he said:

"I would rather be the offspring of two apes than be a man afraid to face the truth."

However, Huxley was more than a defender. He made many of his observations of his own and refined the theory. In particular, where Darwin had seen evolution as a slow, gradual, continuous process, Huxley thought that an evolving lineage might make rapid jumps, or saltations. As he wrote to Darwin just before publication of the Origin of Species, "You have loaded yourself with an unnecessary difficulty in adopting Natura non facit saltum [Nature does not make leaps] so unreservedly." (Punctured Equilibrium, anybody?) He also was the first to hypothesize that birds were descended from dinosaurs, a theory that has only recently been accepted by most paleontologists (T-Rex tasted like chicken???)

Huxley was a fine writer, clear and expressive. His most famous book, published in 1863, is Evidence on Man's Place in Nature. This book, published only five years after Darwin's Origin of Species, was a comprehensive review of what was known at the time about primate and human paleontology and ethology. In it, Huxley explicitly presented evidence for human evolution. Much has been learned since then, but the book is still eminently readable.

He also coined the word "agnostic," to describe his own religious idea that the only things worth believing in were things that could be directly observed in the world. His definition:

Positively the principle may be expressed: In matters of your intellect, follow your reason as far as it will take you, without regard to any other consideration. And negatively: In matters of the intellect, do not pretend that conclusions are certain which are not demonstrated or demonstrable. That I take to be the agnostic faith, which if a man keep whole and undefiled, he shall not be ashamed to look the universe in the face, whatever the future may have in store for him.

Happy Birthday, Pete!

Pete Seeger is 91 today. Singer, songwriter, and long-time activist, he's still performing and still making us think, still wanting us to be better...

"I still call myself a communist, because communism is no more what Russia made of it than Christianity is what the churches make of it."

in front of HUAC: "I am not going to answer any questions as to my association, my philosophical or religious beliefs or my political beliefs, or how I voted in any election, or any of these private affairs. I think these are very improper questions for any American to be asked, especially under such compulsion as this."

"Most of my life I have assumed that the kind of songs I sing would not normally get played on the airwaves. I pointed to examples like Woody Guthrie's song, "This Land Is Your Land" to show that they don't have to get played on the airwaves. If it's a real good song, it will get spread around anyway."

On "Waist Deep in the Big Muddy" and the Smothers Brothers show incident: "Of course, a song is not a speech, you know. It reflects new meanings as one's life's experiences shine new light upon it. (This song does not mention Vietnam or President Johnson by name.) Often a song will reappear several different times in history or in one's life as there seems to be an appropriate time for it. Who knows."

Here's a verse from Waist Deep in the Big Muddy:

Now I'm not going to point any moral —
I'll leave that for yourself.
Maybe you're still walking, you're still talking,
You'd like to keep your health.
But every time I read the papers,
That old feeling comes on,
We're waist deep in the Big Muddy
And the big fool says to push on.

Waist deep in the Big Muddy,
The big fool says to push on.
Waist deep in the Big Muddy,
The big fool says to push on.
Waist deep, neck deep,
Soon even a tall man will be over his head.
We're waist deep in the Big Muddy,
And the big fool says to push on.

Happy Birthday, Frankie

Frankie Valli is 72 today.

I'll celebrate by playing his music day. But truth be told, I play The Four Seasons in the office a lot anyway. I love this man's music. (And Jersey Boys is coming to the Hippodrome next season!)

From Sherry to December, 1963 - I grew up on this stuff and I still can't get enough of it. "Anthology" is a great album - the only thing it's missing is My Eyes Adored You, and you know I've got that on other albums. Tell It to the Rain. Marlena. Opus 17 ... that gorgeous cover of I've Got You Under My Skin (yes, they did Cole Porter and it's fabulous).

Oh, yeah... Rock on, Frankie.

The Week in Entertainment

DVD: Doctor Who: The End of Time - yes finally got it. And enjoyed it quite a lot. Also Wallander series two, which is brilliant.

TV: Caught up on Doctor Who. I like the new guy, though couldn't they have waited just a little before bringing back the Daleks??? Two eps of The Mentalist - a lot of fun. Modern Family - Dude, you should label those drumsticks! I also caught up on House.

Read: Science Friction by Michael Shermer, a little ragged but some of the essays were very good. Brigade - the further adventures of Inspector Lestrade, a very easy-to-read, enjoyable pastiche of Holmes, with the inimitable Sholto Lestrade as the protagonist.

Why, BBCA? Why?

Catching up on Doctor Who, I am bemused to see that BBC America is going to start showing Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Honestly, is Patrick Stewart enough? Aren't there enough shows out there actually made in Britain?

Sky Watch: Two Days, Two Dawns

Two days apart, two suns through clouds ...







more Sky Watchers here

Two Moons

It looks like a world and its moon, but it's not. It's two of Saturn's moons, captured by Cassini - great Titan and much smaller Dione.

There shouldn't be there, let alone him

Franklin Graham says he's not anti-Muslim, just anti-Islam. To be precise, he says

I love Muslim people. I want people to understand this. I am not on a crusade against Muslims. Christ died for Muslims... but I don't agree with the teachings of Muhammad.

That's true, I expect; I have no reason to believe otherwise (for some values of "love" at any rate). Of course, Graham doesn't add two things: one, that although he loves them he sincerely believes Muslims are all going to Hell, and two, that he feels exactly the same way about Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, pagans, Wiccans, Taoists, Shintos, animists, atheists, agnostics, and many self-identified Christians...

And that's why he doesn't belong at a White House event*. Or, to be precise about it, that's why the White House shouldn't be having this event in the first place. He shouldn't be there, but "there" shouldn't exist in the first place. Because we have all those people - and more! - in the USA. And an event which takes sides against them (or anyone) shouldn't be sponsored by the White House.

Moreover, if it doesn't take sides, I fail to see how any preacher or religious person of any bent, not just the painfully honest Franklin Graham, can participate. If they sing the hymn from Lanark Primary School in Thurloe (courtesy of Fry & Laurie), their "religion" is so watered down as to be meaningless:

We worship you, o god or gods,
Whoever you may be.
We realise that you operate
Supernaturally.
We thank you for the birds and bees,
For creatures live or dead.
But if you actually don't exist,
Then ignore what we've just said.

And if they don't - even if "all" they do is say "Almighty God" - they've taken sides against someone.

And that shouldn't happen. Not in the White House.

* Let me clarify: I mean the "National Day of Prayer". (If you want something sobering, try National Day of Prayer.org - the national seal and PRAYER and ""The LORD is good, a refuge in times of trouble. He cares for those who trust in Him" Nahum 1:7"....

And this year, as last, there will NOT be a National Day of Prayer breakfast at the White House, as in the past 50+ years there has been. Which is the right thing; it's not just Franklin Graham who doesn't belong there. It's all of them.