Well That's Just Great: blog by Anthony Giffen

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There are some interesting characters on the Net. One of my favorite scifi / fantasy authors, Diane Duane, has a Tumblr account, and I love the fact that she interacts with her fans (none of whom is more starstruck than I). There’s George Takei, who is a national treasure. There’s Robert Reich, my favorite former Cabinet member, who posts discursively intelligent pieces on Facebook.

 

 

And then there is Anthony Giffen.

 

 

He lives in central Florida, not far from DisneyWorld. He has a Tumblr account called wellthatsjustgreat, and he co-writes a Tumblr with his dog Ducky called – what else? – wellthatsjustducky.

 

 

Anthony is one of the most naturally funny people I’ve ever encountered online,

 

 

He is witty, and funny, and outrageous. He posts sentimental pics of Disney attractions. His faintly political posts suggest that he’s a liberal, as I am.

 

 

His dog Ducky is bossy and imperious. (I love that he talks to Ducky, and that Ducky talks back. There’s a Ducky post once a week, usually on Sunday evenings.) Ducky doesn’t like the household cat, or waiting for Anthony to come home, or seeing Anthony sad.

 

 

And Anthony is sad sometimes. He speaks very frankly about his depression, and his relationships past and present, and his daily life.

 

 

He is an interesting person, and you can do yourself a favor by subscribing to his Tumblr account.

 

 

Also: he’s putting together a book – a real book! – of his conversations with Ducky.

 

 

I predict great things for this young man, and for his goofy dog.

 

 

Please go look them both up. I assure you that you won’t be disappointed.

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Goodbye to Posterous

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I wrote something in late 2012 about leaving Posterous. It was getting treacherous, and the website was often difficult, and I decided I’d leave it.

 

 

But – here’s the thing – when it works, it’s wonderful! It autoposts to everything! It’s so convenient!

 

 

So I decided to think about it for a while.

 

 

Well, there’s no more thinking to be done. Posterous is done, as of March 31: finished completely. Twitter is absorbing its staff and its servers.

 

 

What does this mean?

 

 

Well, it means that I’m posting this blog in five places rather than six. My method currently is this: I post these blogs on Posterous and Wordpress, and they automatically post to all of the other Internet properties (Blogger, Tumblr, Facebook, and Twitter).

 

 

Now what?

 

 

I began with Posterous because some of my favorite celebrity bloggers, like Mark Bittman, used Posterous. It seemed reliable and steady, and the create-post screens were pretty straightforward. Also: it autoposted everywhere.

 

 

Except that, once in a while, it got uppity and refused to do anything at all.

 

 

Irritating!

 

 

Well, no need to worry about that now. For those of you (not many) who read me or who subscribe to me on Posterous: please move over to futureworldblog.wordpress.com.

 

 

Rest in peace, Posterous.

 

 

The cursed restaurant

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There is a small restaurant right across the street from my office building. When we first got there thirteen years ago, it was a luncheon counter / bar, and it got pretty regular business, and you could buy lottery tickets there. It was grimy-looking inside and out, and gave the impression that it had been there for years.

 

 

And suddenly, after a few years, it closed.

 

 

The building stood empty for a couple of years. Then two young entrepreneurs bought it and turned it into a club (upstairs) and restaurant (downstairs). The club did very well, and is still going strong (I find lots of broken glass and car keys and discarded compacts and cigarette wrappers in our parking lot on Monday mornings).

 

 

The downstairs restaurant flailed around for a few years and finally closed.

 

 

Then it redecorated, and put out new signs. It was now a cute little Italian restaurant! Partner and I ate there once, and it was excellent. We made a resolution to eat there again, but before we knew it, it was gone.

 

 

Then it became a “Latin grill.” The few people who ate there said it was pretty good. Then I spoke to someone who said he’d eaten there the week before and it was pretty bad. Then, a few days after that, they closed.

 

 

Now I see it’s Jamaican/Caribbean.

 

 

How long do you think this incarnation will last?

 

 

Some people think that there are buildings that have curses on them. Remember Babu’s Pakistani restaurant on “Seinfeld”? Babu didn’t succeed, and neither did anyone else in that venue.

 

 

It’s a curse, I tell you.

 

 

(So: do you feel like Jamaican food? If so, act quickly! In a few weeks, it’ll be Korean!)

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Redacting the trash

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My office recently began recycling its trash in earnest.

 

 

And guess who gets to lead the recycling effort? Yes, you guessed it: little old me, natural offspring of the Lorax and Woodsy Owl.

 

 

I am a natural Green Warrior. I have no car, and I walk a lot, and I take public transportation. I turn off lights and appliances when they’re not in use. I buy compact fluorescent bulbs (even though I’ve noticed they don’t last as long as everyone said they would; they seem to burn out almost as quickly as regular incandescent bulbs). I take sackloads of household goods and clothing to the Salvation Army. I was born in Ecotopia, after all, and I’m still an Ecotopian citizen in my heart.

 

 

But not everyone feels the same way about recycling.

 

 

I tried to make the office recycling method as easy as I could. We have blue garbage cans (for recyclables) and gray garbage cans (for non-recyclables). We have color-coordinated bin liners! We have posters, and lists, and information!

 

 

And still, every day, I find the wrong garbage in the wrong garbage can.

 

 

It’s usually first thing in the morning, when I arrive at the office. I think the University police use our cafeteria at night when they’re patrolling, and they throw their greasy pizza boxes and burrito wrappers and orange peels in the blue garbage bin, where it doesn’t belong.

 

 

I sigh. I like the fact that the cops come in at night; the building is much more secure as a result. I can deal with a little non-Green behavior.

 

 

And I roll up my sleeves, and dig the greasy wrappers out of the blue bin, and deposit them in the gray bins. And the orange peels, and slimy plastic containers, and everything else.

 

 

One of our computer programmers was watching me do it the other day. “What in the hell are you doing?” he asked.

 

 

“Redaction,” I said. “I’m redacting the garbage.”

 

 

He shook his head and grinned.

 

 

I don’t mind. I have no pride, and I have no shame. If someone sees me digging in the garbage with both hands, I can brush it off with a smile.

 

 

I’m working for the good of the planet.

 

 

(And you know what? My great-aunt Estelle was a cleaning lady for years. It’s not a bad job. It’s simple and repetitive and calming. If I ever lost everything and had to start over again, I think I could be a custodial worker.)

 

 

(It’s an honest living.)

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For Sunday: The Cars sing “Tonight She Comes” (1985)

 

Music was all over the place in the 1970s and 1980s: punk, acoustic, disco, the Eagles, the Doobie Brothers, Minnie Riperton, Blondie, Phoebe Snow, Foghat, the Talking Heads, the B52s.

 

 

But there was a moment in 1985 when New Wave and dance music and rock ‘n roll and crazy hairstyles were in exact alignment.

 

 

Ladies and gentleman: Ric Ocasek and the Cars sing “Tonight She Comes.”

 

 

Enjoy.

 

 

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The Rhode Island School of Design

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The Rhode Island School of Design, or RISD (pronounced “risdee”), is Brown University’s little brother to the west, on the downward slope of College Hill facing downtown. It has produced many creative artists: I will name only Seth MacFarland and the Talking Heads, but there are lots more.

 

 

When I went to hear Lynda Barry a while back, I entertained myself before the presentation by watching the audience (mostly RISD students) coming in. Ah, kids, they appear to be having a lot more fun than the average college student! They were dressed very entertainingly. One had a hoodie like a faux panda, made to look as if the panda was eating her head from behind. Another’s hoodie was (I think) Piglet from “Winnie-The-Pooh.” There were lots of other interesting hats, from various cultures around the world, and from no culture at all.

 

 

Hair color: why stop with one? A little blue on this side, maybe some crimson on the other.

 

 

And did you ever think the 1990s would be retro? The kid sitting next to me had a flannel shirt and a mock-Rasta hairstyle and a kind of Peruvian jacket; he was carrying his skateboard, and it dropped and rattled noisily, and he looked at me very apologetically.

 

 

O my the faculty! One was very dignified, balding, handsome, but wearing something that looked like Charlie Brown’s zigzag-embossed shirt. Another was wearing something like formal pajamas.

 

 

Everyone was having a wonderful time. More than that: they were having a lot more fun than I remember having in college.

 

 

Is it too late for me to get a degree in design?

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Biographies

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Lately I’ve found myself drawn to the biography section of the Providence Public Library. Think of it! Truman, Marechal Foch, Thomas Cranmer, Napoleon, Cleopatra, Nellie Bly, all side by side.

 

 

Recently I read two biographies in a single weekend: one of Edna St. Vincent Millay (“Restless Spirit,” by Miriam Gurko), and “O Rare Don Marquis!” by Edward Anthony.

 

 

By Sunday evening I was sad and thoughtful.

 

 

Biographies generally end with the death of the protagonist. These two were no exception. Millay loved life and dreaded death, so the account of her death at the age of fifty-eight (very soon after the death of her beloved husband) was very saddening. Marquis saw much death in his life – his two children, both of his wives – and died young himself, of a stroke, at fifty-nine years of age.

 

 

I’m fifty-five. Maybe you can see where I’m going with this.

 

 

Millay was the spirit of her age. She wrote tons of lyric poetry, in traditional meter and rhyme; she lived in Greenwich Village and associated with all kinds of people; she was a feminist ahead of her time. Her poetry is memorable, and still anthologized. I find that I know lots of her poetry by heart, even now.

 

 

Is she still taught at all? Does anyone still read her?

 

 

Marquis was a newspaper columnist. He created characters: the Old Soak, an alcoholic managing to get by during Prohibition; Hermione, a fashionable intellectual; Archy, a cockroach who’d been a free-verse poet in a previous life; and Mehitabel, an alley cat who claimed she’d been Cleopatra in a previous life.

 

 

Marquis wanted to be remembered for his serious verse, and his plays.

 

 

He is remembered to this day for Archy and Mehitabel.

 

 

He foresaw this, and dreaded it. He did not want to be remembered for two comic characters he’d created: a literary cockroach, and a cat who was a lady in spite of everything.

 

 

And yet, to this day, these are his books that are remembered.

 

 

There are lessons to be learned from biographies, if you know where to look for them.

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Mnemonics

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I used to have a spectacular memory. I remembered everything: lists, conversations, details, names, embarrassing stories.

 

 

But now I am getting old, and my memory is getting all Swiss-cheese. Proper nouns are the first things that seem to be getting jettisoned. I can’t remember the name of the eldest son of Pandu in the Mahabharata. I can’t remember the name of the character who begins “Anna Karenina” with his very entertaining dream of “tables who are women.” I can’t remember the name of the actress who played Katniss in “The Hunger Games”!

 

 

So I am trying to rely on mnemonics, for what little good it will do me.

 

 

One is “the house.” Picture the floorplan of the house you grew up in. Now: walk around the house, in your mind. Put something you want to remember in each room. If you go back later (in your mind), you’ll find those things there.

 

 

This works pretty well for me (when I remember to do it). My childhood house had a long hallway, with rooms on either side, and I put things in the beds, and in the toilet, and on the sofa in the living room.

 

 

Also there’s the Peg Bracken method: flagpole, underwear, tricycle, pig.

 

 

A flagpole is vertical, like the number one. Underwear come in pairs, like the number two. Tricycles have three wheels. Pigs have four legs.

 

 

So let’s say you want to buy butter, and yogurt, and flour, and ground beef.

 

 

The flagpole is flying a flag made of butter. The underwear has a big picture of yogurt on it. There’s a big bag of flour on the tricycle. The pig is eating a big trough full of ground beef.

 

 

I’ll stick with the “house” method, thanks.

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Snowflakes

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I was waiting for the University shuttle the other day, and it was snowing very lightly. The temperature was probably twenty-five degrees Fahrenheit.

 

 

And the snowflakes were perfect.

 

 

I watched them as they landed on my jacket, one by one. Each was a six-pointed miracle, and all of them were different.

 

 

Did you know that you can actually preserve snowflakes? You can use something called Formvar, or even clear acrylic spray paint. If you do it right, you will have perfect little gems that will last forever.

 

 

(I first read about this in a children’s magazine in the 1960s. I have always wanted to try it. But I know in my heart that never in a billion years would I ever get something like that to work.)

 

 

It’s nice, in any case, to think of nature’s infinite variety: that every snowflake is different from every other snowflake.

 

 

Except – surprise! – it’s not true.

 

 

From Sciencebase.com:

 

 

The short answer is no. Despite what you may have heard some snowflakes are exactly the same shape and size as other snowflakes.

 

 

Of course they are.

 

 

Linus and Lucy knew this as long ago as 1963:

 

 

 

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News is news

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Recently I wrote about young George Stephanopoulos on “Good Morning America” and his (evident) impression that two men kissing was newsworthy.


Well, it got me thinking. What do we mean – what do I mean – by “newsworthy”?


There’s an excellent show on Sunday mornings called “Reliable Sources,” hosted by Howard Kurtz, which tries to answer that question. It examines the news of the week – not for itself, but for the way it’s been covered. It asks: are we getting the news correctly? And, just as importantly: Are we getting the right news?


This last Sunday, Kurtz and his guests examined the relative importance of this week’s big stories: President Obama’s State of the Union address, the crazy California policeman who killed people and then got killed himself, Marco Rubio’s drink of water, and the Carnival cruise that stalled in the Caribbean.


Obviously the State of the Union was the most important story of the four: it will have the most lasting implications, over the coming months. But the networks were apparently thinking about split-screening it with the Jonathan Dorner siege, if it came to it.


Well, wasn’t the Dorner story news? Yes, in a way. It was certainly important to Californians, as it impacted their own safety. It also reflected on the inner workings of the police force, and how they react to attacks on their own. But it wasn’t as weighty a story as the State of the Union. And the standoff at the mountain cabin was pure theatrics. And – imagine – the networks thought about split-screening it with the State of the Union!


The Marco Rubio story was purely fluff, naturally. However: like Dan Quayle misspelling “potato,” and like Howard Dean’s unfortunately Muppetish scream in 2004, it showed him to be maybe less than Presidential timber. So it was probably half a story, at most.


The Carnival cruise? One “Reliable Sources” guest quoted statistics on the number of Americans who take cruises, and it’s a significant number. And Carnival is based in Panama, and sails under Bahamian flags, and has offices in Miami. This raises serious questions about management and organization. How many times over the past few years have Carnival cruises come to grief? Several, including (most tragically) the Costa Concordia in Italy. This is a real story. (But it’s a story about a mismanaged corporation. It’s not a story about how badly the passengers suffered. They ate a lot of vegetable sandwiches, and used smelly toilets for a couple of days. They weren’t transported forcibly to Somalia.)


I love “Reliable Sources.” It grounds me. It reminds me of a passage from the Analects of Confucius (chapter seven, verse 21): “The Master did not speak of anomalies, feats of strength, rebellions, or divinities.”


In other words: flashy stuff is fun, but it’s not really worth your serious attention.


So how ‘bout them Kardashians?

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The deaccession of the old Confederacy

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I have been listening with growing despondency to the various gun nuts who have been defending (in the face of the Newtown catastrophe) their right to own guns.

 

 

Get it? Their right to own killing machines overrides any other rights. It’s in the Constitution!

 

 

(Just like slavery.)

 

 

There was one especially virulent nut on “Hardball” not long ago who threatened, in veiled terms, that he and his fruitcake army might rise up against the government if any further attempt toward gun control were made.

 

 

I am feeling more and more these days that I have very little in common with certain of my fellow Americans. The whole blue states / red states thing is getting to be less of an Election Night truism and more of a reality.

 

 

There’s this thing that libraries and art galleries do, called “deaccessioning.” This means getting rid of something that you’ve acquired along the way. Maybe it’s extra. Maybe it’s out-of-date, or has been ruined in some way.

 

 

It occurs to me that, in light of all the secessionist talk after the past election, we might talk about deaccession instead.

 

 

Let’s just give it away.

 

 

Let’s give the crazy people the remnants of Dixie, and maybe a chunk of the Plains, per this map of illiteracy:

 

 

 

 

I could have used lots of other maps: obesity, educational level, etc. But illiteracy seems appropriate.

 

 

(California shows up on this map, because of its immigrant population. California can go its own way, though we in the Original USA would like it to stay. They can make up their own minds. I have a feeling they’ll stick around and not go over to the Neanderthals.)

 

 

Maybe the Deaccessioned Former States of America will be smart and unite, as in the CSA days. But even if they do I doubt that they’ll stay together. Once the secessionist principle has been put into practice, they’ll use it to secede from one another, region by region: King Huckabee of the Christian Republic of Arkansas can secede from President Perry of the People’s Damned Right State of Texas, and the Gulf states can form their very own banana republic, the Free Caribbean States of No Health Care and No Human Rights.

 

 

Naturally they won’t have any kind of government-funded education. How ridiculous! Or income tax. Or gun control. They can legislate all of the race-specific bills they like; they don’t even have to pussyfoot about “voter fraud” anymore. They won’t have to let Hispanics or blacks vote at all, if they like!

 

 

They’ll have some resources, to be sure, mostly the Texas oil basins. If Texas goes its own way (which it most probably would), this will do the rest of Dixie little good, as King Cotton no longer rules the world.

 

 

And what would Texas be? An oil republic, like Venezuela. Neato! Do you think Texas will join OPEC?

 

 

Why wait for secession?

 

 

Let’s go for deaccession.

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For Sunday: Edward Abbey’s recipe for Hardcase Survival Pinto Bean Sludge

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I have not posted a recipe for yonks.  This is because I haven’t found or cooked anything really new or interesting.

 

 

This recipe (from the fabulous website Letters of Note) is a little exceptional. It answers the question: What does a penniless curmudgeon loner poet cook for himself while living in the American Southwest?

 

 

 

I’ve never prepared this recipe. It sort of fascinates me, however, and I think I may someday make a scaled-down version of it, minus the tennis shoes and saddle blankets.

 

 

1. Take one fifty-pound sack Colorado pinto beans. Remove stones, cockleburs, horseshit, ants, lizards, etc. Wash in clear cold crick water. Soak for twenty-four hours in iron kettle or earthenware cooking pot. (DO NOT USE TEFLON, ALUMINUM OR PYREX CONTAINER. THIS WARNING CANNOT BE OVERSTRESSED.)

 

2. Place kettle or pot with entire fifty lbs. of pinto beans on low fire and simmer for twenty-four hours. (DO NOT POUR OFF WATER IN WHICH BEANS HAVE BEEN IMMERSED. THIS IS IMPORTANT.) Fire must be of juniper, pinyon pine, mesquite or ironwood; other fuels tend to modify the subtle flavor and delicate aroma of Pinto Bean Sludge.

 

3. DO NOT BOIL.

 

4. STIR VIGOROUSLY FROM TIME TO TIME WITH WOODEN SPOON OR IRON LADLE. (Do not disregard these instructions.)

 

5. After simmering on low fire for twenty-four hours, add one gallon green chile peppers. Stir vigorously. Add one quart natural (non-iodized) pure sea salt. Add black pepper. Stir some more and throw in additional flavoring materials, as desired, such as old bacon rinds, corncobs, salt pork, hog jowls, kidney stones, ham hocks, sowbelly, saddle blankets, jungle boots, worn-out tennis shoes, cinch straps, whatnot, use your own judgment. Simmer an additional twenty-four hours.

 

6. Now ladle as many servings as desired from pot but do not remove pot from fire. Allow to simmer continuously for hours, days or weeks if necessary, until all contents have been thoroughly consumed. Continue to stir vigorously, whenever in vicinity or whenever you think of it.

 

7. Serve Pinto Bean Sludge on large flat stones or on any convenient fairly level surface. Garnish liberally with parsley flakes. Slather generously with raw ketchup. Sprinkle with endive, anchovy crumbs and boiled cruets and eat hearty.

 

8. One potful Pinto Bean Sludge, as above specified, will feed one poet for two full weeks at a cost of about $11.45 at current prices. Annual costs less than $300.

 

9. The philosopher Pythagoras found flatulence incompatible with meditation and therefore urged his followers not to eat beans. I have found, however, that custom and thorough cooking will alleviate this problem.

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George Stephanopoulos, Ewan McGregor, journalism, and casual homophobia

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I hate to sound like an old man, but here goes: journalism was better in the 1960s when I was young.

 

 

There are a few good and reputable newscasters on TV. I especially like Brian Williams and Scott Pelley: they are mostly impartial, and they manage to relay the news without noticeable bias. (Also they are both pretty cute.)

 

 

Then there are the rest. I won’t even try to list them. You know the ones: the ones who confuse opinion and fluff with news. 

 

 

Here’s one who caught me by surprise: George Stephanopoulos of “Good Morning America.” He wasn’t really a journalist to begin with; he was one of Clinton’s guys, who resigned after four years because the stress became too much for him. He wrote a book. He turned into a pundit. And now he’s on the morning news.

 

 

I recently saw this clip online. It's a thirty-second fragment of George interviewing actor Ewan McGregor. Watch it, and then rejoin me, please:

 

 

 

 

George really wants this to be an issue. Ewan calls him out.

 

 

Makes you see Georgie in a different light, doesn’t it?

 

 

I used to hate just the right-oriented journalists. Now I find that I hate most journalists.

 

 

Please, people. Kardashians are not news. Men kissing are not news.

 

 

News is news.

 

 

Ponder on that awhile, and then let’s try to get on with our lives.

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Another asteroid near-miss: Devo sings "Space Junk"

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Today, February 15, another asteroid – 2012 DA14 – such an unattractive name! – will graze the earth. It will come within 17,200 miles of the earth’s surface, in fact – closer than some of our own communications satellites.

 

 

How do we let these things happen?

 

 

Oh, that’s right, we have no say in the matter one way or the other.

 

 

These things have been whizzing past us for eons. Some of them hit the earth, and then it’s an “Oh my goodness!” moment. (Check this link for what happened in Siberia about a hundred years ago.) And, if they’re a bit larger, you get something like an extinction event, as happened 60 million years ago near the Yucatan.

 

 

Today, however, we can give 2012 DA14 a wave and a smile.

 

 

And now, ladies and gentlemen, from almost forty years ago: Devo’s brilliant song “Space Junk.” I posted this song back in 2011, but who cares? It’s still a classic.

 

 

She was walking all alone 
Down the street in the alley 
Her name was Sally 
She never saw it hit
She was hit by space junk 

In New York Miami Beach 
Heavy metal fell in Cuba 
Angola Saudi Arabia 
On Christmas Eve said Norad
A Soviet Sputnik hit Africa 
India Venezuela

Texas Kansas
It's falling fast in Peru too 
It keeps coming 
And now I'm mad about space junk 
I'm all burned up about space junk 
Oh walk and talk about space junk 
It smashed my baby's head 
And now my Sally's dead 

 

 

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Never, never, never, never, never

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I made contact with an old friend recently, and she informed me that she intends to climb Kilimanjaro in 2013. Imagine!

 

 

My first thought was: I’d love to do that.

 

 

My second thought was: I’ll never do that.

 

 

And, for the first time in my life, the word “never” suddenly took on a new and terrible meaning.

 

 

I will never use up those stupid greeting cards I bought six years ago.

 

 

I will never see Timbuktu (though I certainly had the chance a long time ago), or Nepal, or Kazakhstan.

 

 

I will never conduct a real symphony orchestra, or win a Nobel Prize, or even a Pulitzer Prize.

 

 

Never, never, never.

 

 

Awful.

 

 

That’s from “King Lear,” isn’t it? The lines that Lear speaks, holding the dead Cordelia in his arms:

 

 

Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life,

And thou no breath at all? Thou’lt come no more,

Never, never, never, never, never.

 

 

 

I will never return to the house I grew up in; it’s been sold and belongs to strangers now, who have almost certainly changed it beyond recognition.

 

 

I can never revisit my old elementary school; it  burned down a few years ago.

 

 

I will never speak to my late mother or father again, nor to my late sister Darlene from whom I was estranged at the time of her death, nor to my late sister Susan of whom I was very fond.

 

 

Never, never, never, never, never.

 

 

When we’re young, we are full of hope.

 

 

Later, we come to terrible realizations.

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Naming Pluto's moons

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Astronomers just found two new moons orbiting Pluto. I’m sure they’re very dismal little rocks, but that’s not the point. The point is: those dismal little rocks need names! And you can vote on those names!

 

 

Astronomy has very strict rules about naming things, however. New names have to follow specific patterns and rules, and they have to be approved by the International Astronomical Union. What fun is that?

 

 

Sometimes it’s a good thing. William Herschel discovered the seventh planet in 1781 and wanted to call it Georgium Sidus, “George’s Star,” after King George III of England. Terrible! That got voted down, and we ended up with the much more entertaining “Uranus,” which makes me giggle no matter how I pronounce it. (Actually, the seventh planet also got called “Herschel” for a while, which is also pretty terrible.)

 

 

On the other hand, the discoverers of a large trans-Neptunian object called it “Planet X” first, and then “Xena,” which I think would have been fabulous. “Xena” got voted down, however, and now it’s Eris. Yes, you heard me: dull, dull Eris.

 

 

The ex-planet Pluto was named by its discoverer, Clyde Tombaugh, who rationalized it very carefully: it’s very far away from the sun, so naming it after the god of death seemed appropriate, and it begins with the letters PL, which is also the monogram of famous astronomer Percival Lowell, who predicted Pluto’s existence.

 

 

Given all this, the rules for naming Pluto’s moons are simple: their names have to be connected with Hades or the Underworld in Greek mythology. The first three moons are Nyx (the personification of Night), Charon (the gentleman who paddles the boat that crosses the River Styx), and Hydra (a very unpleasant monster who got chopped up and barbecued by Herakles). Among the proposed names: Acheron, Eurydice, Erebus, Cerberus, Obol.  “Cerberus” would be cute; Cerberus was the dog who guarded the gates of Hell, and I love doggies. “Obol” was the name of the coin put into the mouth of a corpse, so that the dead soul could pay the ferry-toll to the abovementioned Charon.

 

 

The rest of the suggested names are very appropriate and mythological and very dull.

 

But go vote anyway.

 

 

Let’s reset everything, and change the rules, and add a little fun to the nomenclature in the outer solar system.

 

 

Pluto can stay Pluto.

 

 

Let’s name the moons Mickey, Minnie, Donald, Daisy, and Goofy.

 

 

Wouldn’t this brighten up outer space just a teeny bit?

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This week in the Papacy

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It was big news the other day when we heard that old Benedict XVI had resigned. “Are you getting ready?” a coworker asked me. “Ready to be summoned to Rome?”

 

 

“If called,” I said modestly. “Who am I to ignore a summons from Holy Mother Church?”

 

 

Let’s not even worry about why Benedict is resigning; we’ll never know the real reason in any case. (I’m assuming the “age and feebleness” rationale being advanced by the Vatican is a big fat lie; he became Pope at the age of 78, and he wasn’t exactly a spry little bunny in those days either.) It’s fun to theorize about scandal, hidden secrets, blackmail, etc., etc., but it will end up being one of the Mysteries of Church History, like Pope Joan and the throne with the big hole in the seat.

 

 

The word is that there’s already a top contender, Cardinal Angelo Scola, to wear the Shoes of the Fisherman. The current Pope (soon to be Herr Ratzinger again) has apparently given him his blessing. We will see how well this works. (Two Africans and a Canadian are in contention too, but – I mean really – is the Church ready for a Canadian?)

 

 

To be honest, I’d love to be Pope, for about a billion reasons. The hats alone would make me deliriously happy.  I love being chauffeured around. I’ve always thought candles and incense dress up a place.

 

 

And then there’d be all the fun I could have with Church dogma. I have a couple of ex cathedra statements ready for my first couple of weeks – priesthood for women, marriage for priests, etc. It’s time to shake some of the cobwebs off the Church; the Second Vatican Council was a nice start, but it didn’t go anywhere near far enough, and the last two Popes did everything they could to take the church back to the way it was before Vatican II.

 

 

You might think it’s unrealistic of me to think I’d be made Pope, given that I’m not in holy orders. Not a problem! Any baptized Roman Catholic man is eligible. See?

 

 

Best of all, I could probably figure out a way to pre-canonize myself, so that I’d go straight from the Papacy to the Litany of the Saints upon my expiration.

 

 

I tell you: if there were a Pope like me, I might actually become a practicing Catholic again.

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Prime numbers

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Partner and I share a mystical feeling about numbers. We like playing games with them, and matching them up, and making them make sense. I think both of us are convinced that there’s no such thing as a “random” number; when we watch the Rhode Island Lottery drawing in the evening, we both call out numbers in advance, as if somehow we can break the code.

 

 

And maybe someday we will.

 

 

Partner is especially taken with the Fibonacci series: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, et cetera. If you don’t see the pattern, here it is: start with zero and one, then add each pair of numbers in succession. 0 + 1 = 1. 1 + 1 = 2. 1 + 2 = 3. 2 + 3 = 5. And so forth.

 

 

You’d think that this is just a meaningless pattern, except that it’s everywhere in nature. It shows up in snail shells and the centers of sunflowers. It shows up in natural cycles. See how simple and elegant it is?:

 

 

 

 

I myself prefer prime numbers. There is something brave and tribal and mysterious about them. Mathematicians have bashed their brains against them for centuries, trying to figure out their pattern and their frequency. Every so often, someone computes the (new) “largest” prime number; it doesn’t look like there’s really a largest one, though.

 

 

And then there are the twinned primes, that follow the pattern x / x+2: 11 and 13, 29 and 31, 137 and 139. Mathematicians have proved, more or less, that there is no limit to these. They become scarcer as the numbers get bigger, but there will never be a “largest” set of twinned primes.

 

 

How about “emirp” primes? They’re prime forward and backward. 13 backward is 31. 17 backward is 71.

 

 

There are Fermat primes, and Mersenne primes, and relative primes. I love them all.

 

 

When I go to the health club, I try always to find a locker with a prime number; it’s a sad day when I have to settle for an even number (other than 2), or some sodden multiple like 51 or 57.

 

 

One of my favorite writers, Ursula LeGuin, created a whole civilization, on a planet of the star Tau Ceti, which includes mathematics as part of its religious life, and where they “chant the primes.”

 

 

Tell me how to get there, and I’ll go.

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For Sunday: You've been Rickrolled!

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I didn’t even know what “Rickroll” meant until I encountered the word in a crossword puzzle a few years ago. (See what an unworldly geek I am?)

 

 

If you already know, you’re part of the 99 percent. If you don’t: it means someone offers you a really interesting Internet link, and you click it, and you’re redirected to an inane video of Rick Astley dancing and singing a homogenized 1980s song.

 

 

I promise you that, if you click on the video below, you will learn something that will change your life.

 

 

(Consider yourself Rickrolled.)

 

 

(And, you know, it’s not such a bad song.)

 

 

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Sweetness and cruelty; or, the Christian religion

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I recently picked up a translation of a sixteenth-century Catholic treatise on “Christian tortures,” mostly concerning the various ways in which the martyrs died.  There’s a modern (illustrated) appendix explaining how crucifixion works. A Protestant version of the same book – the famous “Foxe’s Book of Martyrs,” narrating the tortures and deaths of the early Lutherans and Calvinists at the hands of the Papists – was very popular in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

 

 

Before you say “Ugh!” and turn away, ask yourself: why were these books so popular? And why do we continue to be so morbidly fascinated with pain and torture and death?

 

 

Let’s look at it more closely. Saint Lawrence (my name saint!) died on a barbecue grille, and is often depicted holding the instrument of his death (see the above image). Barbara was thrown from a high tower by her own father. Catherine was broken on a wheel. Many early martyrs were thrown to wild animals, or torn apart. The Protestant martyrs were mostly burnt or hanged, but often suffered horrible tortures beforehand.

 

 

Again: why do we read about these things, over and over again?

 

Maybe it’s the same reason we enjoy picking at a scab: it’s a mild agony, a remote pain. It reminds us that we’re alive.

 

 

Also we seem to like gruesome stories, up to a point.

 

 

However: religion – and in particular the Christian religion – seems to like to tell us that pain and suffering and death are a positive experience. We will get there sooner and more smoothly, we’re told, if we accept and even welcome suffering into our lives.

 

 

(A co-worker spoke to me once, with great feeling, about her experience in Catholic school back in the 1950s and 1960s. She was taught about Maria Goretti, the twelve-year-old who’d been raped and murdered, and later made a saint (mostly through the agency of her very aggressive mother). She was, therefore, for some perverse reason, presented as a model of Catholic girlhood: suffer, and you’ll go to Heaven.

 

 

(My friend said that, even as a child, she was horrified by this.

 

 

(I don’t blame her one tiny bit.)

 

 

We need to remind ourselves – we, who are comfortable in our lives – that human suffering is very real. But we should not revel in it, or reassure ourselves that it’s the summit of the human condition. And we should not in any way make it a religious trial, as if suffering were a prerequisite for happiness.

 

 

This is a poem by Stevie Smith. I’ve quoted it before. It’s her response to the doctrine of Eternal Hell. It’s the most eloquent rejection of suffering in the name of religion that I’ve ever read.

 

 

Is it not interesting to see

How the Christians continually

Try to separate themselves in vain

From the doctrine of eternal pain

 

 

They cannot do it,

They are committed to it,

Their Lord said it,

They must believe it.

 

 

So the vulnerable body is stretched without pity

On flames forever. Is this not pretty?

 

 

 

The religion of Christianity

Is mixed of sweetness and cruelty

Reject this Sweetness, for she wears

A smoky dress out of Hell fires.

 

 

 

Who makes a God? Who shows him thus?

It is the Christian religion does.

Oh, oh, have none of it,

Blow it away, have done with it,

 

 

 

This god the Christians show

Out with him, out with him, let him go.

 

 

 

 

Inspiration

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I like doing cryptic crossword puzzles. In these, you don’t get a straightforward clue, but a pun, or an anagram, or a rebus, or something else clever; you have to figure out what’s going on. (Example: “Choose Providence for power,” eleven letters. Answer: ELECTRICITY (“elect R.I. city”). Get it?)

 

 

Well, I finished one recently, all but one definition, as follows:

 

 

15 DOWN: Raise drink, imbibing one (5)

 

 

So I’m looking for a five-letter word that means “raise,” or “raise drink,” or “one,” or something. I could not make head or tail of this.

 

So I took a bath. And, just as I was getting into the tub – just as my toes were hitting the hot water, in fact – it came to me.

 

 

HOICK (meaning “raise” in British slang). This is “hock” (a kind of wine) which has “imbibed” I (Roman numeral one).

 

 

Isn’t it interesting how the mind works?

 

 

Ideas come from everywhere. They come from nowhere. Our minds are churning all the time; they burp out all kinds of interesting information when we least expect it. We just need to be grateful for the inspiration when it comes.

 

 

Grant Wood, the artist, said he got his best ideas while milking the cows. Phyllis McGinley said she worked on poems while vacuuming the house; Agatha Christie said she got ideas while doing the dishes.

 

 

But the best story of all is this:

 

 

Anton Bruckner, the Austrian composer, was asked where he got the idea for a melody in one of his symphonies (I think the opening of the Seventh, but some say the Ninth). “Well,” he said, “I was hiking in the Alps. What a lovely day! The mountains, the forests! But it was a hot day, so I sat down to rest on a fallen log, and I unwrapped my lunch. And – well, my wife had packed me a cheese sandwich, and it was very strong cheese. And as soon as I smelled that cheese, the melody popped into my head.”

 

 

Okay, kids, you heard Anton. Go make yourselves a cheese sandwich, and then go make some good art.

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The Little Golden Book of Words

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Brain Pickings, a website which curates interesting books and info, recently featured a children’s book: The Little Golden Book of Words, first published in 1948.

 

 

It’s no longer available, unless you can find an old copy on eBay or a similar site.

 

 

But it’s precious.

 

 

It is beautifully designed and written and drawn, first of all. Here’s the “things to do” page, very straightforward:

 

 

 

 

Then it becomes a little more obscure. Here’s how to tell the time of day:

 

 

 

Hmm. Maybe a little rural.

 

 

Best of all: here are the days of the week.

 

 

 

 

Can you imagine explaining this to a modern child? And here’s a better question: do you, the reader, understand what these drawings mean?

 

 

There was a time when these were universally understood. Monday was washday, Tuesday ironing day, et cetera. And, best of all, Sunday we all trooped off to church. (And that looks like a very Protestant group to me, somehow.)

 

 

It all seems very quaint now. The assumptions we made! And the ideas we had!

 

 

It makes you wonder: what assumptions are we making right now, that will seem silly and irrelevant fifty or sixty years from now?

 

 

Time will tell.

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The pitfall of correspondence

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My only resolution for 2013 was that I'd try to answer my correspondence more promptly. Several times over the past years, I’ve left letters and emails unanswered for months. Why? I don’t know. I’m lazy. I’m shy. Personal relationships (even via correspondence) take a lot of energy, and by the time I get home from work, I don’t have all that much energy to spare.


But correspondence is traditional. Victorian ladies wrote letters by the bushel. My mother spent time almost every day writing letters; she wrote to her own mother once a week, and fretted if her mother didn’t write her back immediately. “Grandma’s mad at me,” she’d say nervously. She bought little twenty-nine cent pads of letter paper, about six inches by eight inches, and filled at least three or four pages per letter. I have a bundle of letters she wrote to me over the years; I don’t like rereading them – they bring back too many memories of my foolish youth – but I like keeping them. Maybe, after I’m dead, someone else can read them and chuckle over them a bit and then throw them away.


Anyway: so I “resolved” to answer my correspondence. And I had some free time between Christmas and New Year’s Day. Perfect! I answered one or two every day, and soon I was free and clear.


Except that people kept answering me.


Now I remember the problem with correspondence: it never ends. Now I just have a whole bunch of additional emails to write.


What to do?


Keep writing, I guess.


Oh god here comes another one.


Why am I so popular?

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From paradise to parking lot

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You know I have a great affection for weeds. I grew up on the edge of a National Forest, and we had more land than we could use (my parents started with twenty acres of woods and pasture, sold half, and still couldn’t figure out what to do with the remaining ten acres). There was one small patch of weeds, probably twenty feet square, just off to one side of our house, on a little hill. My mother insisted that it be mowed from time to time, but I resisted. I rejoiced in it. It had everything: dandelion, chess, quack, vetch, three kinds of clover, plaintain. I literally used to roll in that weed patch on sunny days. It was a miniature jungle, just right for a little boy.

 

 

I visit my old home on Google Earth from time to time. The house is still there (though greatly changed). But I see that my old patch of weeds is all plowed up now, made into useful ground.

 

 

What a pity.

 

 

Even here in Providence, where people have been building and ripping up and building again for over three hundred years, there are still little patches of chaos. One of my favorites was on Angell Street, a few blocks from where I’m writing this. In summer it was practically tropical; it featured a couple of gigantic trees-of-Heaven (Ailanthus altissima), that fabulous fast-growing weed tree, bigger than any I’d ever seen in southern New England, and at least two dozen smaller species.

 

 

Then, about ten years ago, the bulldozers moved in, and they plowed it under, and they built a Starbucks.

 

 

Another piece of paradise gone.

 

 

There’s another little patch close to our apartment, a hill with trees and flowers. Huge mullein thrive there, and weedy maples, and Queen Anne’s lace in summertime.

 

 

The backhoe was there this morning, ripping it all up.

 

 

Sing it, Joni Mitchell!

 

 

 

 

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Movie review: "Quartet"

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There’s a certain kind of movie: you take mature actors and give them a simple drama with a simple framework, and you let them have fun with it.

 

 

“The Whales of August” was one of these movies. So was “Autumn Sonata.” So was “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.”

 

 

And now we have “Quartet.”

 

 

It has the simplest of simple plots: a group of elderly musicians in a retirement home. They still sing, and play, and recall their former glory. Then a great diva (Maggie Smith) comes to live there, which greatly disturbs another resident, her former husband, a great tenor (Tom Courtenay). Their friends, the sweetly demented Cissy (Pauline Collins) and the randy Wilf (Billy Connolly), heckle and coax them from the wings.

 

 

But the big gala is coming up. Will the four of them reunite to sing the quartet from “Rigoletto,” as they’d done so gloriously five decades before?

 

 

Well, yes, of course they will.

 

 

The joy is in the acting: Billy Connolly’s bright-eyed mischief-making, Pauline Collins weaving in and out of reality. Michael Gambon plays the impresario, and I swear he’s wearing his Dumbledore outfit, and he yells at everyone. Also, there are a bunch of real musicians, vocalists and instrumentalists, who came out of retirement to perform here, and they are all wonderful. (There’s a trio of elderly retired sopranos who reprise “Three Little Maids From School,” in costume yet, and they’re wonderful.)

 

 

You will not be surprised to hear that the audience (here in the Avon Cinema, a small local movie-theater on the east side of Providence) was mostly older – even older than Partner and me together (combined age 121!). This is an older person’s movie. One of the most resonant messages is this: during the credits, we see the names of the actors and performers one by one, accompanied by pictures of them when they were younger. The message is that growing old is hard, but that life is not over until it’s over.

 

 

The ultimate cliché in this kind of movie is to have someone die; it’s usually the turning point, the “message.” It doesn’t happen here. It’s not necessary. We know all too well what’s going to happen.

 

 

And in the meantime, we can still make some music.

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