Happy Birthday, Walt

Born today in 1819, in West Hills, Long Island, Walt Whitman:

Fitting for Memorial Day (though this year they are off by one day), here is his Dirge for Two Veterans

1

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.

2

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

3

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.

4

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.

5

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.

6

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

7

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

8

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.

9

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.

(a few more poems are here)

Mother of presidents

Presidential Resting Places: Only 3 sites have the remains of 2 presidents: 1 at Quincy, Mass., 1 at Arlington, & 1 in this state capital

Even if you didn't know the answer (and I didn't), I'd have thought Richmond (Virginia! Mother of presidents!) the first guess. But I was wrong.

Guesses were Albany, Boston, and Columbus .... What? Ohio is "mother of presidents" too? Huh. Who knew?

But Richmond is still the right answer.

"legal memos locked in a DOJ safe"

Michael Hayden says:

“This program rests on the personal legitimacy of the president, and that’s not sustainable. I have lived the life of someone taking action on the basis of secret OLC memos, and it ain’t a good life. Democracies do not make war on the basis of legal memos locked in a DOJ safe.”

Michael Hayden is right.

So is Josh when he adds:

Ha ha, guess he feels kind of mad about what the Dumb-o-crats are doing with all the precious terrorist-killing powers he and his buddies so carefully put together between 2001 and 2008. Just like you’ll be pissed when Romney uses all of Obama’s totally legit flying deathbot policies for evil, rather than good. Don’t worry about that Secret Kill List, though, Romney doesn’t believe in government bureaucrats compiling Secret Kill Lists. That can be done more efficiently by the private sector.

Yeah, Josh on the Secret Kill List. Good reading.

A clown died

An oldie (new to me) but it's hysterical. A series of photos of Dmitry Medvedev at a 2009 awards ceremony for Russian Olympians is posted by a Ukrainian paper. The article says

В президенті Медведєві помер клоун-мім.
Президент Росії Дмитро Медведєв нарешті роздав російським олімпійцям-2008 ордени.
Церемонія вручення нагород пройшла у Єкатеринському залі московського Кремля.
У ході заходу Медведєв продемонстрував можливості своїх мімічних м‘язів й активно виражав свої почуття не лише словами, а й всім обличчям.
President Medvedev could have been a mime (lit: Inside President Medvedev a clown has died)
Russian president Dmitry Medvedev has at last handed out medals to the Russian Olympians of 2008. The ceremony took place in the Catherine the Great hall in the Kremlin in Moscow. During the bustle, Medvedev demonstrated the potential of his mimicry, expressing his emotions not only in words, but with his whole countenance.

Here are a couple - check it out.

Memorial Day

Ode in Memory of the American Volunteers Fallen for France

To have been read before the statue of Lafayette and Washington in Paris, on Decoration Day, 30 May 1916

I

Ay, it is fitting on this holiday,
Commemorative of our soldier dead,
When—with sweet flowers of our New England May
Hiding the lichened stones by fifty years made gray—
Their graves in every town are garlanded,
That pious tribute should be given too
To our intrepid few
Obscurely fallen here beyond their seas.
Those to preserve their country's greatness died;
But by the death of these
Something that we can look upon with pride
Has been achieved, nor wholly unreplied
Can sneerers triumph in the charge they make
That from a war where Freedom was at stake
America withheld and, daunted, stood aside.

II

Be they remembered here with each reviving spring,
Not only that in May, when life is loveliest,
Around Neuville-Saint-Vaast and the disputed crest
Of Vimy, they, superb, unfaltering,
In that fine onslaught that no fire could halt,
Parted impetuous to their first assault;
But that they brought fresh hearts and springlike too
To that high mission, and 'tis meet to strew
With twigs of lilac and spring's earliest rose
The cenotaph of those
Who in the cause that history most endears
Fell in the sunny morn and flower of their young years.

III

Yet sought they neither recompense nor praise,
Nor to be mentioned in another breath
Than their blue-coated comrades whose great days
It was their pride to share—ay, share even to the death!
Nay, rather, France, to you they rendered thanks
(Seeing they came for honour, not for gain),
Who, opening to them your glorious ranks,
Gave them that grand occasion to excel,
That chance to live the life most free from stain
And that rare privilege of dying well.

IV

O friends! I know not since that war began
From which no people nobly stands aloof
If in all moments we have given proof
Of virtues that were thought American.
I know not if in all things done and said
All has been well and good,
Or of each one of us can hold his head
As proudly as he should,
Or, from the pattern of those mighty dead
Whose shades our country venerates today,
If we 've not somewhat fallen and somewhat gone astray,
But you to whom our land's good name is dear,
If there be any here
Who wonder if her manhood be decreased,
Relaxed its sinews and its blood less red
Than that at Shiloh and Antietam shed,
Be proud of these, have joy in this at least,
And cry: `Now heaven be praised
That in that hour that most imperilled her,
Menaced her liberty who foremost raised
Europe's bright flag of freedom, some there were
Who, not unmindful of the antique debt,
Came back the generous path of Lafayette;
And when of a most formidable foe
She checked each onset, arduous to stem—
Foiled and frustrated them—
On those red fields where blow with furious blow
Was countered, whether the gigantic fray
Rolled by the Meuse or at the Bois Sabot,
Accents of ours were in the fierce mêlée;
And on those furthest rims of hallowed ground
Where the forlorn, the gallant charge expires,
When the slain bugler has long ceased to sound,
And on the tangled wires
The last wild rally staggers, crumbles, stops,
Withered beneath the shrapnel's iron showers: —
Now heaven be thanked, we gave a few brave drops;
Now heaven be thanked, a few brave drops were ours.'

V

There, holding still, in frozen steadfastness,
Their bayonets toward the beckoning frontiers,
They lie—our comrades—lie among their peers,
Clad in the glory of fallen warriors,
Grim clustered under thorny trellises,
Dry, furthest foam upon disastrous shores,
Leaves that made last year beautiful, still strewn
Even as they fell, unchanged, beneath the changing moon;
And earth in her divine indifference
Rolls on, and many paltry things and mean
Prate to be heard and caper to be seen.
But they are silent, clam; their eloquence
Is that incomparable attitude;
No human presences their witness are,
But summer clouds and sunset crimson-hued,
And showers and night winds and the northern star
Nay, even our salutations seem profane,
Opposed to their Elysian quietude;
Our salutations calling from afar,
From our ignobler plane
And undistinction of our lesser parts:
Hail, brothers, and farewell; you are twice blest, brave hearts.
Double your glory is who perished thus,
For you have died for France and vindicated us.

-- Alan Seeger

Happy Birthday, TH

Today in 1906, in Bombay, India, T.H. White was born. The Once and Future King is enough to warrant celebrating him, but his other novels are fun, and England Have My Bones and The Goshawk are fascinating looks into English country life.

Here's a lovely website devoted to White.

Cowbird

Here's a male brown-headed cowbird. That name makes me think of the guy who asked the park ranger what was the name of that black bird with the yellow head, and got angry when the ranger said "yellow-headed blackbird", thinking the ranger was making fun of him...

green heron

Early Thursday the green heron was perched up on the dead tree.

Memorial Day (observed)

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.

-- Carl Sandburg

Happy Birthday, Kirk

Kirk Gibson was born today in 1957. He's not one of my favorite players; it's not that I don't like him, it's that he never played for a team I like - in fact, played most of his career for a team I don't like at all.

But his home run in 1988 off Dennis Eckersley in Game 1 of the World Series is one of the all-time great moments in sports.

So, Happy Birthday, Kirk.

The Week in Entertainment

DVD: Some more of 55 Degrees North, which I'm still enjoying.

TV: The last three of Once Upon a Time, which wrapped up with a really nice dragon. But I really hope they didn't just push the reset button, only with Rumple in control instead of Regina. That would be lame. Jesse Stone: Benefit of Doubt. I do like these brooding movies; Tom Selleck is good in the role. Dolphin Tale, which was really quite moving.

Read: Silent, a brilliant YA paranormal that I discovered in reading this Big Idea entry at Whatever. Also Half-Sick of Shadows, one of the co-winners of the inaugural ‘Terry Pratchett Anywhere But Here, Anywhen But Now First Novel Award’, which was pretty good but, for me, sort of lost it at the very end; your mileage might well vary. A very engaging mystery set in Thailand called Killed at the Whim of a Hat - I love Google Maps; I found the little town it's set in and there were photos, even of the navy monument the narrator mentions. It's by a writer called Colin Cotterill, who has another series - the Dr Siri series, about an aged (70+) Communist-because-his-wife-was doctor pressed into service as the coroner for Laos in the immediate aftermath of the Pathet Lao takeover. I had never heard of them, but I gave the first, The Coroner's Lunch, a try and loved it - a blend of political satire, mystery, and mild paranormal, with a fascinating protagonist. I've picked up the rest (the wonderful thing/big problem with the Kindle) and will be reading them all.

A (ahem) squirrelly sequence

Friday morning I saw this squirrel sneaking through the grass. While I snapped some shots he crept onto the sidewalk, stood up and looked out, then ran down the sidewalk in my direction, stopped, stood back up and looked out again, then leapt madly across the grass. Spring!

Happy Birthday, Tony

On this day in 1925 in Sacred Heart, Oklahoma, Tony Hillerman was born. Most of his novels take place on the Navaho reservation and feature Navaho cops - first Joe Leaphorn, "the legendary lieutenant", and later Sergeant Jim Chee, and then later both of them. Leaphorn is in his fifties in the first book, long married, secular and a master of his craft; Chee is young, single, religious (training to be a Singer/shaman), and just learning that and police work. Nevertheless, people couldn't keep them straight, and enough people actually had conversations with Hillerman which made it clear they thought the two characters were the same person that he put them into the same book. The clash between their world-views worked well in the novel, and they've been in the books ever since. I love these books; even when the quality dropped a bit I still bought them in hardcover - so-so Hillerman is still better than the best of many others - and the last few were a return to his best form.

Bringing home the veggies

Muskrat, taking home a mouthful of greens

Cleaning up

A house finch at his morning ablutions

they grow up so fast

The goslings are teenagers now, growing their adult feathers and galumphing about in a stompy pack. They'll be flying before we know it. But dad hasn't let up one bit. He still tries to keep them all together...






Remember how little they were six weeks ago?

Maybe he's going to make a regular stop?

I don't know how often he'll come back, but here he was again - the yellow-crowned night heron.

Imperial Mindset

Glenn Greenwald (he discusses this from a number of angles - I recommend you read the whole thing):

In light of all the righteous American outrage over this prison sentence, let’s consider what the U.S. Government would do if the situation were reversed: namely, if an American citizen secretly cooperated with a foreign intelligence service to conduct clandestine operations on U.S. soil, all without the knowledge or consent of the U.S. Government, and let’s further consider what would happen if the American citizen’s role in those operations involved administering a fake vaccine program to unwitting American children. Might any serious punishment ensue? Does anyone view that as anything more than an obvious rhetorical question?

There are numerous examples that make the point. As’ad AbuKhalil poses this one:“Imagine if China were to hire an American physician who would innocently inject unsuspecting Americans with a chemical to obtain information for China. I am sure that his prison term would be even longer.” Or what if an American doctor of Iranian descent had done this on behalf of the Quds Force, in order to find a member of the designated Iranian Terror group MeK who was living in the United States (one who, say, has been working with Israel to help assassinate Iranian nuclear scientists and wound their wives, or one who was trained by the U.S.), after which Iranian agents invaded his American home, pumped bullets in his skull and shot a few others (his wife and a child) and then dumped his corpse into the Atlantic Ocean? Or take the case of Orlando Bosch, the CIA-backed anti-Cuban Terrorist long harbored by the U.S.; suppose a Cuban-American doctor sympathetic to Castro had injected American children as part of a fake vaccination program in order to help Cuba find and kill Bosch on U.S. soil; he’d be lucky to get 33 years in prison.

I am emphatically not saying that the CIA shouldn't subvert recruit people in other countries. I am saying that just because the CIA did so doesn't mean we should expect those other countries to be pleased.

And that's not even going into the massive public health dangers created by a fake vaccination program. Third Worlders have been, justifiably, suspicious in the past - Pfizer in Nigeria, anyone? - and now here we are admitting to everyone that the CIA was in fact behind a "vaccination program".

We really have to stop acting and talking as if the whole world were part of our empire. It isn't. Treating it as if it were only enrages people.

Two new nest cams

First, American kestrels, aka sparrowhawks - they have two cams, one in and one out - five hatchlings.

And then Pacific loons in Alaska.

Enjoy!

Salome Wagner

If you Google "Salome Wagner" (without the quotes) you will discover that quite a few people seem to have that name.

What you will not discover, however, is that Richard Wagner wrote the opera "Salome", as stated on Jeopardy! last night.

In a Wagner opera, it's heads up for Jochanaan, who is this Biblical figure.

That's because the opera "Salome", which features the character Jochanaan, aka (as the clue was asking) John the Baptist, was written by another German guy called Richard: Strauss. (Libretto based on Oscar Wilde's play.)

Shame on you, Clue Crew!

(Thanks, Kathie: this is why I hate to leave the room during the show!)

Wear the Lilac!

Truth, Justice, Freedom, Reasonably Priced Love, and a Hard-Boiled Egg!

(from bigcat132)



And if you want to kick in a bit in honor of Terry Pratchett, go here...

¡Feliz cumpleaños, Rosario!

Today in Mexico City, in 1925, Rosario Castellanos was born. She was one of Mexico's great literary figures. Her novel Oficio de tinieblas (The Book of Lamentations) dealt with cultural oppession in the Chiapas region and is one the classic novels of Mexican, or perhaps world, literature. She was also, or primarily, a poet.





Nocturne

Para vivir es demasiado el tiempo;
Para saber no es nada.
A que vinimos, noche, corazon de la noche?
No es possible sino sonar, morir,
Sonar que no morimos
Y, a veces, un instante, despertar.


Nocturne

Time is too long for life;
For knowledge not enough.
What have we come for, night, heart of night?
Nothing is possible but dreaming and dying,
Dreaming that we do not die
And, at times, for a moment, wake.

This translation is by a coworker of mine.

Happy Birthday, Bob

Bob Dylan was born today in Duluth, Minnesota, in 1941.





I can’t understand
She let go of my hand
And left me here facing the wall
I’d sure like to know
Why she did go
But I can’t get close to her at all
Though we kissed through the wild blazing nighttime
She said she would never forget
But now morning’s clear
It’s like I ain’t here
She just acts like we never have met

It’s all new to me
Like some mystery
It could even be like a myth
Yet it’s hard to think on
That she’s the same one
That last night I was with
From darkness, dreams are deserted
Am I still dreaming yet?
I wish she’d unlock
Her voice once and talk
’Stead of acting like we never have met

If she ain’t feelin’ well
Then why don’t she tell
’Stead of turnin’ her back to my face?
Without any doubt
She seems too far out
For me to return to her chase
Though the night ran swirling an’ whirling
I remember her whispering yet
But evidently she don’t
And evidently she won’t
She just acts like we never have met

If I didn’t have to guess
I’d gladly confess
To anything I might’ve tried
If I was with her too long
Or have done something wrong
I wish she’d tell me what it is, I’ll run and hide
Though her skirt it swayed as a guitar played
Her mouth was watery and wet
But now something has changed
For she ain’t the same
She just acts like we never have met

I’m leavin’ today
I’ll be on my way
Of this I can’t say very much
But if you want me to
I can be just like you
An’ pretend that we never have touched
And if anybody asks me
“Is it easy to forget?”
I’ll say, “It’s easily done
You just pick anyone
An’ pretend that you never have met!”

Happy Birthday, Michael

Michael Chabon, author of (among others) The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Wonder Boys, and Summerland, was born today in 1963. His The Yiddish Policeman's Union was tremendous. I've also read Borderlands, essays about reading and writing, and enjoyed most of them a lot.

Painted turtles

According to my desktop calendar, today is World Turtle Day. So, here are some Eastern painted turtles!

Now that the afternoons are getting warm, the turtles come out to bask. Their shells are covered in the stuff on the pond's surface - algae or whatever - as they lie on the cattail stalks that have fallen over, and watch the muskrats bustle about.

Happy Birthday, Bernie

Born today in 1950, in Lincolnshire, England, "the man who writes the words for Elton John" - and other people - Bernie Taupin. Here's one of my favorites of his lyrics...

Rocket Man

She packed my bags last night pre-flight
Zero hour nine a.m.
And I'm gonna be high as a kite by then
I miss the earth so much I miss my wife
It's lonely out in space
On such a timeless flight

And I think it's gonna be a long long time
Till touch down brings me round again to find
I'm not the man they think I am at home
Oh no no no I'm a rocket man
Rocket man burning out his fuse up here alone

Mars ain't the kind of place to raise your kids
In fact it's cold as hell
And there's no one there to raise them if you did
And all this science I don't understand
It's just my job five days a week
A rocket man, a rocket man

And I think it's gonna be a long long time
Till touch down brings me round again to find
I'm not the man they think I am at home
Oh no no no I'm a rocket man
Rocket man burning out his fuse up here alone

Grattis på födelsedagen, Carl

Today in 1707 in the countryside of Småland, in southern Sweden, Carl Linné, who is better known by the Latinised version of his name - Carolus Linnaeus - was born. The family's surname was chosen by his father, Nils Ingemarsson, son of Ingemar Bengtsson, when Nils went to the University of Lund and needed a permanent surname; he used the Latin form in the academic setting. The inspiration for the name was a giant linden tree on the family homestead - their warden tree, in fact.

Linnaeus was primarily a botanist, and throughout his life he made efforts to introduce new crop-plants into Sweden, most of which were failures (due to the climate); he did succeed with rhubarb, though.

But his legacy is the scientific naming system - the binomial nomenclature - used to this day, and the taxonomic system for classifying living things that it encapsulates. When you speak of Families and Orders, of Genera and Species, you're using Linnean language. When you say Homo sapiens, Quercus alba, Tyrannosaurus rex, or Buteo lineatus, your precision is his gift.

Happy Birthday, Edith

Today in 1936, Edith Grossman was born today in Philadelphia. She's one of the great translators from Spanish - her Don Quixote, which came out in 2003, is considered one of the, if not the, best translations (Carlos Fuentes called it "truly masterly") and was a best-seller, and Gabriel García Márquez calls her "my voice in English". She has also translated Mario Vargas Llosa, Mayra Montero, Augusto Monterroso, Jaime Manrique, Julián Ríos, and Álvaro Mutis. In 2003, at the PEN Tribute to Gabriel García Márquez, she said:

"Fidelity is surely our highest aim, but a translation is not made with tracing paper. It is an act of critical interpretation. Let me insist on the obvious: Languages trail immense, individual histories behind them, and no two languages, with all their accretions of tradition and culture, ever dovetail perfectly. They can be linked by translation, as a photograph can link movement and stasis, but it is disingenuous to assume that either translation or photography, or acting for that matter, are representational in any narrow sense of the term. Fidelity is our noble purpose, but it does not have much, if anything, to do with what is called literal meaning. A translation can be faithful to tone and intention, to meaning. It can rarely be faithful to words or syntax, for these are peculiar to specific languages and are not transferable."

Or, as she put it in an interview with Guernica:

Yes, I think we have to be faithful to the context. But it’s very important to differentiate between fidelity and literalness. Because you can’t be faithful to words, words are different in different languages. You can’t be faithful to syntax, because that changes from one language to the other. But you can be faithful to intention and context. Borges allegedly said to one of his translators, “Don’t translate what I said. Translate what I meant to say.” That is, in fact, what a translator does. Because languages are very resonant and various levels of diction and styles of discourse echo in the mind of the native reader and native speaker. I always think that my job is to find the English that will resonate like the original Spanish for the English speaking reader.

And here's a bit about translating García Márquez for the first time, from a piece in Criticas:

“I knew this Colombian writer was eccentric when he wrote me saying that he doesn’t use adverbs ending with -mente in Spanish and would like to avoid adverbs ending in -ly in English.” She remembers thinking, what do you say in English except slowly? “Well, I came up with all types of things, like without haste.”

Herons!

Yesterday when I walked past the larger pond (in the light rain) there was a green heron in the water. (In the one shot is a redwinged blackbird, to show the heron's size: he's a little, compact guy. The feather is probably a crow's.) Today, at the muskrat's pond, I was startled by a huge bird lifting off as I approached - it circled and I saw it was a yellow-crowned night heron, which is rather uncommon around here. It landed on the dead tree and stood there for a while, long enough for me to get a few shots, though the morning was quite gray and misty. Then, this afternoon, there he was, back. It was sunny, so better shots.

In the water

The muskrat pair in their small pond - in the bottom shot he kind of looks like a guinea pig.