On a cool June morning tendrils of mist and fog
Rise from the still waters of the lake.
The sun rises above the full green branches of trees.
It lights the mist, then melts it away.
Cottonwood seeds ride the lake's shimmering surface
While songbirds work their own morning routine.
A blue heron walks along the wooden seawall
Searching the shallows for his morning meal.
He is a prehistoric figure, a dweller of swamps
With the same gait as so many generations before.
On such a morning it is impossible to deny
The harmony, the purpose, and the mystery
Of Life.
Friday, June 5, 2009
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
The Rhymin' Ballad of Dirk McGurk
Rhymin' is a lot of work,
A duty that we should not shirk,
So I'll write about a rhymin' Turk
Whose name must needs be Dirk McGurk,
Who when surprised thus stutters, "Erk?"
That is a quite annoying quirk.
What shall I do with pesky Dirk?
Shall I have him cuss by saying, "Firk!"
Or send him on a trip to Herk-
imer. <-- Forced rhyme like that makes meter murk,
Though the license is my poet's perq.
What else to do with Dirk the Jerk?
He could meet up with Captain Kirk.
They could a pot of coffee perk,
But their breakfast plan would go bezerk
When they drank fresh-squeezed juice of orange.
A duty that we should not shirk,
So I'll write about a rhymin' Turk
Whose name must needs be Dirk McGurk,
Who when surprised thus stutters, "Erk?"
That is a quite annoying quirk.
What shall I do with pesky Dirk?
Shall I have him cuss by saying, "Firk!"
Or send him on a trip to Herk-
imer. <-- Forced rhyme like that makes meter murk,
Though the license is my poet's perq.
What else to do with Dirk the Jerk?
He could meet up with Captain Kirk.
They could a pot of coffee perk,
But their breakfast plan would go bezerk
When they drank fresh-squeezed juice of orange.
Interregnum: The Not-So-Smooth Poetic Segue
This little post doesn't really have anything important to say. It's just that I wrote two poems this afternoon when I got back from lunch, and they were completely different in tone and structure. It's hard to believe the same brain contained the same two poems at the same time, but I reckon that's why it feels so crowded in my skull some days.
Really, the blog format doesn't support a smooth segue between two completely different poems that arrived at the same time, especially since some folks will be reading up, some will be reading down, and some will be reading the little subset of posts called "poetry".
And thus, this little post, in which I tell you that the next poem is different, no matter which direction you're reading. If it has made the transition less jarring, it has done its job, albeit in an entirely too verbose manner.
Cue John Cleese: "And now for something completely different--"
Really, the blog format doesn't support a smooth segue between two completely different poems that arrived at the same time, especially since some folks will be reading up, some will be reading down, and some will be reading the little subset of posts called "poetry".
And thus, this little post, in which I tell you that the next poem is different, no matter which direction you're reading. If it has made the transition less jarring, it has done its job, albeit in an entirely too verbose manner.
Cue John Cleese: "And now for something completely different--"
Intersection
I hit a sparrow as I drove in to work this morning.
I had slowed to go through an intersection.
He changed direction to fly up, away from me.
It was just a glancing blow on my windshield,
A soft, puffy thump of feathers in my vision ...
... and then he was gone, up, over the roof of my car.
When I looked back I saw
A flutter of grey and brown wings
Out of the corner of my eye.
But there were cars all about me,
And I don't know whether he was flying
Or falling.
And then I was through the intersection and saw no more.
I wish you well, little bird.
I hope the same feathers that help you fly
Spared you from my car,
And left you surprised but safe,
Singing a slightly indignant song
That begins:
I hit a windshield as I flew in to work this morning....
I had slowed to go through an intersection.
He changed direction to fly up, away from me.
It was just a glancing blow on my windshield,
A soft, puffy thump of feathers in my vision ...
... and then he was gone, up, over the roof of my car.
When I looked back I saw
A flutter of grey and brown wings
Out of the corner of my eye.
But there were cars all about me,
And I don't know whether he was flying
Or falling.
And then I was through the intersection and saw no more.
I wish you well, little bird.
I hope the same feathers that help you fly
Spared you from my car,
And left you surprised but safe,
Singing a slightly indignant song
That begins:
I hit a windshield as I flew in to work this morning....
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Godfather, Part III: An offer you *can* refuse
Monique and I just watched the Godfather trilogy. It was on the HD Movie Network over Memorial Day weekend (HD, no ads. Yippee!) It had been quite a while since I had seen I and II, Monique had only seen the first one, and neither of us had seen III, so I recorded them all on the DVR and we finally watched them all over the last few days.
No surprise, Godfathers I & II continue to stand up well. Four-star stuff, and if you've never seen them, do yourself a favor and watch 'em., preferably together. I prefer the first one, but there are lots of responsible opinions in favor of #2, and I shan't quibble here.
But the third one is a stinker. It was made about fifteen years after the others, and after watching it I can only conclude that Francis Ford Coppola needed more money for his winery up in Rutherford, CA. (Which is very cool and well worth touring -- a much better use of your three hours than this crappy movie.)
I knew Godfather, Part III had gotten bad reviews, but somehow I had let the hope that there was still one more half-decent Godfather flick out there that I hadn't yet seen. My hopes were in vain. I had pretty low expectations going in, and it didn't come close to meeting them. I shan't relive the horror, except to say that for the first hour or so, I thought a good editor might have saved this movie. The final two hours convinced me that it was an unredeemable mess. Worse yet, both Monique and I guessed the ultimate end less than five minutes into the flick.
And I don't think I'll even go into the weird cousin-love subplot, except to say that I thought the Corleones came from Sicily, not deepest Appalachia.
I could go on and on, but why bother. It was crap. You've been warned.
The last thing I'll say is that tonight Monique and I are watching Terror of Mechagodzilla (1978) and it makes quite a bit more sense than Godfather, Part III.
I won't even provide a link out to number three, so as not to encourage any of you. But here are a couple of handy links to more on Godfather, Parts I & II, which I would heartily encourage anybody to watch, or watch again.
IMDB:
The Godfather
The Godfather, Part II
Netflix:
The Godfather
The Godfather, Part II
No surprise, Godfathers I & II continue to stand up well. Four-star stuff, and if you've never seen them, do yourself a favor and watch 'em., preferably together. I prefer the first one, but there are lots of responsible opinions in favor of #2, and I shan't quibble here.
But the third one is a stinker. It was made about fifteen years after the others, and after watching it I can only conclude that Francis Ford Coppola needed more money for his winery up in Rutherford, CA. (Which is very cool and well worth touring -- a much better use of your three hours than this crappy movie.)
I knew Godfather, Part III had gotten bad reviews, but somehow I had let the hope that there was still one more half-decent Godfather flick out there that I hadn't yet seen. My hopes were in vain. I had pretty low expectations going in, and it didn't come close to meeting them. I shan't relive the horror, except to say that for the first hour or so, I thought a good editor might have saved this movie. The final two hours convinced me that it was an unredeemable mess. Worse yet, both Monique and I guessed the ultimate end less than five minutes into the flick.
And I don't think I'll even go into the weird cousin-love subplot, except to say that I thought the Corleones came from Sicily, not deepest Appalachia.
I could go on and on, but why bother. It was crap. You've been warned.
The last thing I'll say is that tonight Monique and I are watching Terror of Mechagodzilla (1978) and it makes quite a bit more sense than Godfather, Part III.
I won't even provide a link out to number three, so as not to encourage any of you. But here are a couple of handy links to more on Godfather, Parts I & II, which I would heartily encourage anybody to watch, or watch again.
IMDB:
The Godfather
The Godfather, Part II
Netflix:
The Godfather
The Godfather, Part II
Grilled Peaches. Yummy!
Here's a tasty and easy dessert recipe that a friend of mine from one of my fantasy baseball leagues passed along. He picked it up from Bobby Flay, of Food Network fame.
---
Ingredients:
Prepare and preheat the grill to high. Brush and oil the grate. Next, place the skewered peaches on the hot grate and grill until nicely browned, 3 to 4 minutes per side, basting with the rum and butter glaze. Spoon any remaining glaze over the grilled peaches and serve at once.
---
We put most of ours on a metal skewer and only did a couple of the cinnamon-stick skewers. The ones on the metal skewer were every bit as yummy, though the cinnamon-stick skewer does make for a very cool display. Having a bed of mint by our porch made acquiring the mint super easy, but you could certainly do it without the mint leaves and still have yummy grilled peaches.
Monique and I served ours over vanilla ice cream. It was extremely yummy. I suspect we'll be serving up quite a few more grilled peaches before the summer is out.
---
Ingredients:
- 4 large ripe freestone peaches
- 8 (3-inch) cinnamon sticks
- 8 fresh mint leaves
- 4 tablespoons unsalted butter
- 1/4 cup firmly packed brown sugar
- 1/4 cup dark rum
- 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- Pinch salt
Rinse the peaches and blot them dry with paper towels. Cut each peach in half and discard the pit. Then, cut each peach into quarters. Using a pointed chopstick or metal skewer, make a starter hole in the center of each peach quarter, working from the pit side to the skin side. Skewer 2 peach quarters on each cinnamon stick, placing a mint leaf between the 2 quarters. Combine the butter, brown sugar, rum, cinnamon, and salt in a saucepan and bring to a boil over high heat. Let the glaze boil until thick and syrupy, about 5 minutes.
Prepare and preheat the grill to high. Brush and oil the grate. Next, place the skewered peaches on the hot grate and grill until nicely browned, 3 to 4 minutes per side, basting with the rum and butter glaze. Spoon any remaining glaze over the grilled peaches and serve at once.
---
We put most of ours on a metal skewer and only did a couple of the cinnamon-stick skewers. The ones on the metal skewer were every bit as yummy, though the cinnamon-stick skewer does make for a very cool display. Having a bed of mint by our porch made acquiring the mint super easy, but you could certainly do it without the mint leaves and still have yummy grilled peaches.
Monique and I served ours over vanilla ice cream. It was extremely yummy. I suspect we'll be serving up quite a few more grilled peaches before the summer is out.
Monday, June 1, 2009
Assorted items for a Monday evening
First off, a link to the Sunday Telegraph article on the new Gale database, British Literary Manuscripts: Oscar Wilde love letters among thousands of literary originals in new collection.
Here's how they describe the collection:
The handwritten, intimate correspondence is among 600,000 pages of manuscripts and original documentation in a new online resource called British Literary Manuscripts Online c1660-1900.
The collection is the first of its kind and could revolutionise the study of English literature.
Until now, the material, which includes letters, diaries, sketches and early drafts of works by such literary greats as Charles Dickens, William Blake, the Brontës, Robbie Burns, Walter Scott and Wilde, has been scattered across the globe in different libraries and has been impossible to source in a single place.
I know there's often this murky question out there among my family and friends about what it is exactly that I do at my job. In this case, I went through a lot of the preliminary content about three years ago and came up with a strategy and plan for how we could use controlled author and work names on this 600,000+ pages of handwritten manuscripts, so that people using the database can search easily and consistently for specific items or groups of related items. I won't go into the details, but it was pretty complicated, since we didn't have the manuscripts themselves yet and had to work off a series of "finding aids" that the British Library had assembled over the last fifty years or so and our budget was limited.
Um, and then I asked for status updates as other people did the genuine work. (Call that the "management" part of my gig.) That's pretty much what the "Manager of Indexing and Metadata Tagging" does. I figure out clever, practical, and affordable ways to search accurately across vast piles of data. Then I ask somebody else to do the real work.
The real point here is that I worked on something that yesterday's Sunday Telegraph claims "could revolutionise the study of English literature" and even if you spell "revolutionise" in the silly British way, that's still pretty cool. (And I'm sure it would be a huge shock to any number of my former English Lit professors to know that I was involved in creating such a thing.)
---
Item #2 is a very interesting article from The Atlantic on the "Grant Study", a long-term study that followed several hundred Harvard students from the 1940s over nearly 70 years, and which had as one of its goals determining why it is that some people succeed in life, while others do not: What Makes Us Happy?
Here's one of its most interesting points:
In an interview in the March 2008 newsletter to the Grant Study subjects, (Dr. George) Vaillant (the study's director for the last 42 years) was asked, “What have you learned from the Grant Study men?” Vaillant’s response: “That the only thing that really matters in life are your relationships to other people.”
I won't go into the article in depth here, but it's a fabulous read for many reasons. Not least of which is that it leads you to reflect on the course of your own life.
---
The last item that I have to pass along results from a silly little Facebook quiz. Those of you who have been on Facebook know that these things are all over the place. About every two weeks or so one catches my eye. In this case, I'm sure it comes as no surprise that I found this quiz irresistable: What Godzilla character are you?
The results? According to the quiz -- which I'm sure carries every bit as much scientific validity as that 70-year Harvard study run by assorted doctors, sociologists, and psychiatrists:
John took the What Godzilla character are you? quiz and the result is You are Godzilla!
Nobody else can dominate your domain. You are brash, yet loyal. You can be protective as well as destructive in your social endevors. In the end, you are the master over all that you put your mind to.
Well sure, that makes sense. It does, however, leave us with one question. Why is it that my beagle is the one with the radioactive fire breath?
Here's how they describe the collection:
The handwritten, intimate correspondence is among 600,000 pages of manuscripts and original documentation in a new online resource called British Literary Manuscripts Online c1660-1900.
The collection is the first of its kind and could revolutionise the study of English literature.
Until now, the material, which includes letters, diaries, sketches and early drafts of works by such literary greats as Charles Dickens, William Blake, the Brontës, Robbie Burns, Walter Scott and Wilde, has been scattered across the globe in different libraries and has been impossible to source in a single place.
I know there's often this murky question out there among my family and friends about what it is exactly that I do at my job. In this case, I went through a lot of the preliminary content about three years ago and came up with a strategy and plan for how we could use controlled author and work names on this 600,000+ pages of handwritten manuscripts, so that people using the database can search easily and consistently for specific items or groups of related items. I won't go into the details, but it was pretty complicated, since we didn't have the manuscripts themselves yet and had to work off a series of "finding aids" that the British Library had assembled over the last fifty years or so and our budget was limited.
Um, and then I asked for status updates as other people did the genuine work. (Call that the "management" part of my gig.) That's pretty much what the "Manager of Indexing and Metadata Tagging" does. I figure out clever, practical, and affordable ways to search accurately across vast piles of data. Then I ask somebody else to do the real work.
The real point here is that I worked on something that yesterday's Sunday Telegraph claims "could revolutionise the study of English literature" and even if you spell "revolutionise" in the silly British way, that's still pretty cool. (And I'm sure it would be a huge shock to any number of my former English Lit professors to know that I was involved in creating such a thing.)
---
Item #2 is a very interesting article from The Atlantic on the "Grant Study", a long-term study that followed several hundred Harvard students from the 1940s over nearly 70 years, and which had as one of its goals determining why it is that some people succeed in life, while others do not: What Makes Us Happy?
Here's one of its most interesting points:
In an interview in the March 2008 newsletter to the Grant Study subjects, (Dr. George) Vaillant (the study's director for the last 42 years) was asked, “What have you learned from the Grant Study men?” Vaillant’s response: “That the only thing that really matters in life are your relationships to other people.”
I won't go into the article in depth here, but it's a fabulous read for many reasons. Not least of which is that it leads you to reflect on the course of your own life.
---
The last item that I have to pass along results from a silly little Facebook quiz. Those of you who have been on Facebook know that these things are all over the place. About every two weeks or so one catches my eye. In this case, I'm sure it comes as no surprise that I found this quiz irresistable: What Godzilla character are you?
The results? According to the quiz -- which I'm sure carries every bit as much scientific validity as that 70-year Harvard study run by assorted doctors, sociologists, and psychiatrists:
John took the What Godzilla character are you? quiz and the result is You are Godzilla!
Nobody else can dominate your domain. You are brash, yet loyal. You can be protective as well as destructive in your social endevors. In the end, you are the master over all that you put your mind to.
Well sure, that makes sense. It does, however, leave us with one question. Why is it that my beagle is the one with the radioactive fire breath?
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