Archives for April 2009

It’s Gnawing at Me

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[Click Play button to begin. While audio is playing, volume control appears at left — row of little vertical bars.]

[audio:threestooges.mp3|titles=Three Blind Mice|artists=(some orchestra)]

Help me out with something here: What, exactly — even approximately — is the deal with mice? meaning, specifically, mice as humans? (I do recognize there are many deals with mice.) And of course when you extend the question to the rest of order Rodentia, well, the mystery deepens: rats, beavers, chipmunks, groundhogs… There’s no end (so it seems) to the number and variety of normally furry, four-legged, big-incisored, nose-twitching creatures wearing little suits and dresses and hats.

Sometimes, indeed, people even become rodents — and rodents, people — as here:

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The Teachable Moment

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I don’t usually just post a link to someplace else, without using it as a springboard for my own ramblings. (Indeed, one of those ramblings is forthcoming.)

But this slice of life would be ruined by elaboration: “Choose your own adventure at Lee NAILS” (Deb on the Rocks, via Maggie). Highly recommended reading for parents of teenagers. Or parents of teenagers to be. Or former teenagers. Or future teenagers.

The setup:

My son and I were driving home from the dog park last night, talking about the politics of the park (they can be thick, with both dogs and owners throwing down on any given day) and Swine Flu and his course selections for next year and very other important stuff like dinner.

The sign at the side of the road (in the photo at the right) caught my eye. I’ve never been to Lee’s, but I know it’s a stripmall nail salon. Free wine/beer/soft drinks! I guess the recession must be killing pedicure places. If money’s tight, it’s pretty easy to say “Ya know, nail polish is three bucks at CVS, I bet I can slap some lotion and paint on my own damn toes at home.” It’s really not that tricky.

Then I heard my son Salo ask me, “Mom, did you hear me, I asked you which one would you choose?”

And things go on from there…

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“Just Where Have You Been, Young Man?!?”

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Three Little Maids from School (click to enlarge)

So, yes, I disappeared for[…counting…] four days there. (Friday’s whiskey river-based meditation brought to you through the miracle of WordPress’s scheduled-posts feature.) Long story short (so unlike me, I know), for now: I spent the time with The Brother, up in NJ. We were joined Saturday by The Sisters.

That’s the three of them in the photo above (click it to enlarge), channeling Gilbert & Sullivan; and, for reference, a somewhat earlier photo of all four of us in the photo at right.

(If you want to try your hand at morphing them from their 1950-something selves to now, note that the bottom row at the right is in the opposite order from the sequence in the top photo.)

And just to keep things fair — actually more than fair — I’ll include one photo of me (and The Younger of Two Sisters) below the fold.

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These Things Must Be Done Delicately

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From the originating page: “Osmanthus [JES: a/k/a cinnamon flower] is a unique Asian flower, with a smooth and rich scent of green tea, apricot and suede leather. It is used to scent green tea as well as special confections and Chinese baked goods. The peak of the osmanthus flowers season is… end of September until mid October, when the days start to become short, and rainstorms fight to take over the last sunny days. The osamnthus flowers falls to the wet ground and release their dusky aroma which fills the moist, air.”

From whiskey river:

In our idleness, cinnamon blossoms fall.
In night quiet, spring mountains stand
empty. Moonrise startles mountain birds:
here and there, cries in a spring gorge.

(Wang Wei)

…and:

People are delicate, aren’t they?

(Yusunari Kawabata)

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No Wonder Johnny Grew Up So… Troubled

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You may have imagined that until the Internet, parents didn’t need to worry that technology might endanger their children. If so, you were wrong.

Photo below the fold. Found it at the wonderful Found in Mom’s Basement site: “Vintage advertising — found in my mother’s basement, flea markets and various corners of the Internet — dusted off and displayed for your viewing pleasure.” Click the image to see the whole ad; then spend a little time visiting there, and prepare to be entertained (or creeped out) yourself.

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Notes from the Clearing

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[Above “homage to Miller’s Crossing” also represents a tip of the hat to Froog.]

So it’s been a year now: 365 days, 309 published posts [Editor’s note: 310, or have you forgotten that you wrote this one yesterday?], 1,295 comments (counting my own replies to comments, and occasional replies to those replies).

When I started Running After My Hat — the blog, not the activity for which the blog is named — I didn’t know, really, what it would turn out to be. I had a few ideas for “practical” goals, (almost?) none of which materialized, and one idea for… well, call it a spiritual goal.

I started my first blog in late 1999; it didn’t last long. (You can see a snapshot of it here, courtesy of the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine.) Since then I’ve worked on maybe a half-dozen others, some as the only contributor and some as a co-blogger. Without exception, I think, they’ve all been single-topic blogs: about politics, writing, or technology; blogs I’ve been paid to develop for someone else’s purposes; even a blog — currently open to just my siblings and me — for recording family memories we want not to be lost to the next generation.

Only RAMH, though, has worked out to be something like I really wanted to do. Like the creators of the Seinfeld TV show famously insisted about their product, RAMH is pretty much about nothing, at least nothing in particular, and so it’s turned out pretty much to my liking.

One of my favorite Web watering holes is the here often-touted Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast site. (Oddly, or so I keep insisting, even though 7-Imp‘s nominal topic — children’s literature, and especially illustrated children’s literature — even though this is a topic I know little about, nor spend much time following otherwise, I’ve found myself really at home there.) Not incidentally, in their blogroll you’ll find a link to RAMH; if you hover your mouse over that link, you’ll see one of the nicest and most unexpected comments anyone has made about this blog:

John E. Simpson shows us that “a man could, if he felt rightly in the matter, run after his hat with the manliest ardour and the most sacred joy.”

As it happens, they got that embedded quote from a page here at RAMH. I’d challenge the “manliest” and the “most sacred” seasonings in that clause, but will happily accept the ardour and joy side dishes. Throw in a bit of labour (especially of love) and the ridiculousness of pursuing one’s hat in the first place, and I’ll be satisfied indeed.

To wrap up this look back, and in connection with the section of this post which follows, I’ll offer these five as among my favorite posts of Running After My Hat‘s first year, for specific reasons best known to myself:

Finally, thanks, as ever — for things understood, and for things neither she nor the rest of you may ever pick up on — to The Missus. She’s indulged me a lot as I’ve tried to grow and maintain RAMH this first year.

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Brief Fable for Our Time, Maybe, from the WIP

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Emrys ap Rhys, an 18th-century Welsh brewmaster-to-be, is bidding farewell to an old man he has met on his return from London to Wales. He and Charlie met during a steady rainfall, in the shelter of a lean-to attached to the back of an English family’s barn; they’ve shared what food they have, and Charlie has spoken mostly (but not entirely) unintelligible nonsense, without end, as they ate. Emrys himself has feigned muteness, lest his accent betray him, but wants to thank Charlie somehow for a favor he believes Charlie has done him. But how to do so, if he can’t speak…?

He reached up, removed the floppy cowhide headgear with the rough threadwork and narrow brim. It was soaked; he might as well go bareheaded, truly, though the sun would eventually come out and he might miss the scrap of shade. He had worn the hat on his way out of Wales, four years ago, and he had put it aside and not worn it again until setting forth from London. It was a poor thing, but — he reminded himself — he was a poor man for now, and Charlie a poorer man than he, and in such circumstances even a poor thing can be a very great thing. He held the hat out in his benefactor’s direction, looked at it and then at Charlie, and grunted and nodded.

Again the grin broke across the lower half of Charlie’s face, and his damp silver whiskers glittered with a brief bit of light from somewhere behind Emrys — a lantern in the farmhouse window, perhaps. The old bent fingers reached up greedily, latched onto the hat, twisted it a bit to wring some of the excess water from it, and perched it upon his head.

Emrys was never sure in later days and weeks, months and years, because except for the brief interlude of lucency Charlie had spoken little sense, or at least little that was sensible. Yet he managed to convince himself that the last words he heard from Charlie were grateful ones, long unheard, especially with such an assured tongue and throat: Dioch yn fawr.

Or so he told himself even as he nodded in reply, touched his forehead, and walked again in the direction of the rain-chilled woods, leather-clad feet squelching in the farmyard’s soggy ground.

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“There Is No Next-Time-Round”

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Leaping polar bear, found on the First People site (click to go there)

From whiskey river:

Shifting brilliancies. Then winter light
In a doorway, and on the stone doorstep
A beggar shivering in silhouette.

So the particular judgement might be set:
Bare wallstead and a cold hearth rained into —
Bright puddle where the soul-free cloud-life roams.

And after the commanded journey, what?
Nothing magnificent, nothing unknown.
A gazing out from far away, alone.

And it is not particular at all,
Just old truth dawning: there is no next-time-round.
Unroofed scope. Knowledge-freshening wind.

(Seamus Heaney, Lightenings: i)

Not from whiskey river; I just liked the soft chime it makes when paired with the above:

The annals say: when the monks of Clonmacnoise
Were all at prayers inside the oratory
A ship appeared above them in the air.

The anchor dragged along behind so deep
It hooked itself into the altar rails
And then, as the big hull rocked to a standstill,

A crewman shinned and grappled down the rope
And struggled to release it. But in vain.
‘This man can’t bear our life here and will drown,’

The abbot said, ‘unless we help him.’ So
They did, the freed ship sailed, and the man climbed back
Out of the marvellous as he had known it.

(Seamus Heaney, Lightenings: viii [source])

…and:

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Another Reason to Love NYC

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Tweenbots.

Tweenbots are human-dependent robots that navigate the city with the help of pedestrians they encounter. Rolling at a constant speed, in a straight line, Tweenbots have a destination displayed on a flag, and rely on people they meet to read this flag and to aim them in the right direction to reach their goal.

Given their extreme vulnerability, the vastness of city space, the dangers posed by traffic, suspicion of terrorism, and the possibility that no one would be interested in helping a lost little robot, I initially conceived the Tweenbots as disposable creatures which were more likely to struggle and die in the city than to reach their destination…

The results were unexpected. Over the course of the following months, throughout numerous missions, the Tweenbots were successful in rolling from their start point to their far-away destination assisted only by strangers.

My favorite bit:

One man turned the robot back in the direction from which it had just come, saying out loud to the Tweenbot, “You can’t go that way, it’s toward the road.”

I hope that guy’s having a great day. He earned it with that little bit of altruism. (Ditto Kacie Kinzer, creator of the Tweenbot experiment.)

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Programmed Dyspepsia

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[This is the second of three brief(ish) posts on the experience of being sick, sorta-kinda-like, for four (sorta) days. (Here‘s part 1.)]

So I was sleeping quite a bit. Going online or otherwise sitting at the computer, almost not at all. Beyond that, pretty much, I was on the living-room floor, with The Pooch. Watching daytime television.

Two highlights, if that’s the word, and disregarding all the low spots (like ’50s-game-show re-runs, infomercials, and talk shows/soap operas whose unintelligibility to me would be helped not at all by closed captions, since everyone (including the captioners) speaks a language other than English): (1) the MD show, and (2) the Food Network (daytime edition).

Disclaimer: Yes, I know, I know: this is television I’m ranting about here. It’s not a rant about the great issues of the day, of which there are many. Give me a break. I was sick(ish). When little Billy has a fever or Susie can’t keep her porridge down, surely you don’t rebuke them for wanting to read comic books all day. (Or do you, you wicked old witch?)

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