One does not advance the swimming abilities of ducks by throwing the eggs in the water.
– Multatuli
(pen name of Eduard Douwes Dekker)
novelist (1820-1887)
Midnight’s Children Wins Third Booker
Salman Rushdie’s 1981 novel Midnight’s Children (Jonathan Cape) was recently announced winner of the Best of the Booker award, a celebratory honor given to mark the fortieth anniversary of the Man Booker Prize. Rushdie’s novel about the birth of India won the Booker Prize in 1981, and received a second honor, the Booker of Bookers, during the twenty-fifth anniversary of the award in 1993.
Salman Rushie, poster child for my long-held maxim, Nobody has the right not to be offended. I wonder if he can go outside yet, without fear of death. I hope so. Meanwhile, practicing a religion still seems to mean having the right to be offended by other people’s thoughts.
So it goes, we make what we made since the world began.
everybody bail!
This comes from the vast archives of Uncle Kyle’s Strange but True:
Disneyland’s venerable Small World ride has been shut down for a retrofit. Boats have been bottoming out – and taking on water ‘cross the gunwales – because we are bottoming out. People are getting fatter, and the ride designed in 1960 – when the average adult weighed 25 pounds less – can’t handle the loads.
I guess it’s not such a small world anymore, after all.
For the record, Disney says it’s not the people, but the ever-thickening fiberglass which results from repairs. What would you expect them to say? “Ya bunch of fatties are groundin’ our boats!”
Welcome to Tomorrowland, Kids!
leisure?
The only thing one can give an artist is leisure in which to work. To give an artist leisure is actually to take part in his creation.
-Ezra Pound, poet (1885-1972)
Now in my case that’s just ironic to the point of being … well… disturbing.
maybe we should just learn to telecommute
“It has been more than 70 years since the giant Hindenburg zeppelin exploded in a spectacular fireball over Lakehurst, N.J., killing 36 crew members and passengers, abruptly ending an earlier age of airships. But because of new materials and sophisticated means of propulsion, a diverse cast of entrepreneurs is taking another look at the behemoths of the air.”
come on, guys
This is an open message to all the weather forecasting professionals out there:
Would you guys please, for cryin’ in the mud, put your little heads together and straighten out your act?
Look at this screen shot from today’s Google News. You may have to click it to make it big enough.
Cooler weather, and a heat wave, at the same time in the same place. Oh dear.
All of my life, I’ve been watching you guys predict the weather. You’ve never been right more than a few days in a row. I look at the prediction, say 72 degrees, and then I look at the thermometer the next day. 78 degrees. That night, the prediction for the next day, 70 degrees. And on and on. No! You got it wrong, and it’s really warmer than that out here!
Never any adjustment in thinking based on empirical evidence. Isn’t it supposed to be a science?
I get stuff wrong all the time, but like most people I try to learn from my mistakes, get a little closer to correct the next time. I’m just sayin.
emergency shelter
Old friend and fellow poet Joseph Gallo writes of a long dark night of survival in the face of the Gap Fire, on Yarblehead.
Facing the flames, I have no idea what I would try to save. But I must say that Joseph has admirably more apparent respect for his creative work product that I have for mine. I think I would be more concerned for things I have inherited from others.
That their ancestral contributions to the product of human presence in our transitory realm has ceased, but that my own effluent might continue for a time, despite any covenant to that effect, is my point.
Welsh Poet Wins Prize
Poet Dannie Abse was named winner of the Wales Book of the Year for his memoir The Presence … which he wrote following his wife’s death in 2005.
Am I wrong, or was his competitor rather a poor sport?
make haste
A wise man will make haste to forgive, because he knows the true value of time, and will not suffer it to pass away in unnecessary pain.
– Samuel Johnson
big mistake
It is the greatest of all mistakes to do nothing because you can only do a little.
-Sydney Smith, writer and clergyman (1771-1845)
Possession
a fine poem by William Stafford, which has the insight to find its way through interior darkness.
I’ve read most of Stafford’s poems, but this little treasure is new to me.
electric blues
- These are called Lectric Flowers. Not Electric flowers, Lectric. My Dad planted them from seeds sent from Arkansas by my cousin — seeds which belonged to my great grandmother. Not quite grain from the bowels of a pyramid, but nothin’ to sneeze at either.
Pretty, aren’t they? I’ve never seen them before. And they grow pretty tall; the tallest in this picture is around 5 feet. Here are more photos of them, along with some sweatpeas and stuff.
- We had ourselves a power failure in Carp today. Four hours it was out. I had no particular plans for using my electricity during that time, but still hate it when there’s no juice. And it was worse than usual. Both of the supermarkets were closed, and the big drug store. Starbucks closed and never did reopen, which I thought showed a lack of fortitude. I guess you might say they didn’t have the beans.
The best thing about a power failure – except that sometimes you get a chance to read a book – is that feeling you get when it comes back on. “Hot damn, my toys are workin’ again! Sweet.”
- Since metaphor hopes to be a clean well-lighted, literary place, these lines of Whitman:
I SING the Body electric;
The armies of those I love engirth me, and I engirth them;
They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them,
And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the Soul.Was it doubted that those who corrupt their own bodies conceal themselves;
And if those who defile the living are as bad as they who defile the dead?
And if the body does not do as much as the Soul?
And if the body were not the Soul, what is the Soul?
Metaphor 